Necro minions

I have always kind of disliked pet classes in most games. The AI controlled NPCs are dumb, buggy, like to get stuck in unlikely places or simply disappear and necro pets do all those things and beyond.

I find it amusing that rangers have pets which come with their own bars, but can only control one at a time.Necros, on the other hand can fill entire utility bar with minions, but can never command them. While I may dislike having pets, it is undeniable how much sustain and survivability they bring in open world and that is why I use them despite the annoyance. But only in open world because the unpredictable nature of those minions can cause huge problems.

I remember that soon after getting a necro to 80 I ran the Arah dungeon where in one of the wings you have to lure certain enemies during a boss encounter to specific places in order to progress to the next stage of the fight. As can be expected, my minions lured the enemies away from the spots where they were supposed to go and I got the blame. What can I do? Can't run from combat and change skills, can't destroy the minions, can't make them stop aggroing.

This was the first time I heard one remarkable phrase "F your minions". And I often started hearing this not directed at me, but at the other necros in dungeons. Why not at me? Because after the aforementioned dungeon I never brought my necro to any group content other than random world events to avoid such frustrating situations.

Necros which have minions among their utility skills should get a pet bar as well. It doesn't have to even be exactly like the one rangers have. I'd be perfectly happy with 3 buttons to determine behavior. One to follow and disengage from combat, second to "banish" if they aggro something they shouldn't have and third to attack my target. While at it, is there a particular reason why every time you go through a loading screen, you have to summon everything all over again? I mean, necros aren't the most active of professions anyway and having to resummon a bunch of minions so frequently certainly won't raise a "skill cap" which struggles to go above the very bottom of the floor. Might as well let them stay.

This game is 6 years old. If Anet did not add such a simple convenience as a pet bar for a profession which desperately needs it, then their dev team clearly either doesn't play the said profession or doesn't have their priorities straight.

@EpicName.4523 said:This game is 8 years old. If Anet did not add such a simple convenience as a pet bar for a profession which desperately needs it, then their dev team clearly either doesn't play the said profession or doesn't have their priorities straight.

...or, and I'm just spitballing here, perhaps they don't want necromancers to have the control over minions that would provide?

@"SlippyCheeze.5483" said:...or, and I'm just spitballing here, perhaps they don't want necromancers to have the control over minions that would provide?

Why wouldn't they? Let's say for the sake of argument that they don't want it because of flavor, to make the necro more "unique" by stripping it of mechanics which allow it to manage his minions. However, wouldn't it make sense for someone who summons dead things to be in complete control over them? Ranger pets for example, are living beings with their own will while the dead are just thralls. If anyone, it is the necros who should have a pet bar even more so than the rangers.

Realistically looking, there is absolutely no reason for necros NOT to have this huge convenience. Not for lore, not for the sake of being different, not for balance reasons.

We haven't had our 6th anniversary yet. However, I'd love to be able to command my minions. Perhaps we could have flags for commands like we did for our GW1 heros. I'd even welcome the ability to destroy our minions while in combat. We all know the frustration of our minions keeping us in combat situations.

@EpicName.4523 said:

@"SlippyCheeze.5483" said:...or, and I'm just spitballing here, perhaps they don't

want

necromancers to have the control over minions that would provide?

I don't know. ANet have not, to the best of my knowledge made a public statement on the matter, so all we can do is infer from their actions, their intentions.

Given, as you correctly point out, they have had six years and have not changed this, I think it is very reasonable to conclude that they intend for it to work like this. It seems ... rather on the unlikely side, shall we say, that they have just accidentally forgotten to add this for six years, as well as completely failing to notice anyone requesting it.

Let's say for the sake of argument that they don't want it because of flavor, to make the necro more "unique" by stripping it of mechanics which allow it to manage his minions. However, wouldn't it make sense for someone who summons dead things to be in complete control over them? Ranger pets for example, are living beings with their own will while the dead are just thralls. If anyone, it is the necros who should have a pet bar even more so than the rangers.

Realistically looking, there is absolutely no reason for necros NOT to have this huge convenience. Not for lore, not for the sake of being different, not for balance reasons.

shrug I'm indifferent to that: I've had minion control classes, and minion AI-only classes, in a bunch of MMOs, and frankly, the micromanagement never, ever paid off. The only thing of value was the "come here, stop hitting that thing" button, and even that was of limited use.

Anyway, I don't see any problem with asking for the feature. I'd just suggest you avoid speculating about why the developers have not added it, especially in negative terms, simply because that is more likely to discourage them from listening to what I think is a fairly reasonable request for a change.

Well. Tbh. I wouldn't mind deleting those minions from the game.

And here is why:-prevent afk farming (big point)-kill skillless gameplay. Sure it's an mmo. There will always be players, that are "bad" at the game because they only play 2hours a week.But I think the game is very easy right now. In POF you can solo almost every Heropoint, even with a" dumbass bad build" that don't has any synergy.And with minions this is even supported. You can almost go afk just press autowalk and change direction. Maybe sometimes an attack and there you go: you successful played through the whole game without doing anything.

The reason you have these issues with minions is because they are outdated tools of the past that anet refuses to update in anyway. Not counting faintly flesh golem and shadow fiend the rest are outdated back to like 2012 - 2013 they still have stupid high cooldowns on their skills, their skills dont actually do much of anything. They are very inaccurate for the fast minute to minute gameplay that happens now.

Overall they are bad.

People say they just support afk farmers but to be honest I dont think people understand how damn hard and how much investment it takes to actually make that work. You cant truely afk farm with minions unless you are super invested into do it and its not really worth it.Yes its an easy pve play style to the game but some people take them for thematic flavor over how challenging it is.

You have rangers that let a pet take all their agroMesmers have clones and phants to do the same thing

Ideally these are along the same levels when it comes to easy pve playstyle. Some of them just take more button presses.

The best solution anet could do is

• update the minions to at least HoT / PoF skill standards
• Reduced cooldowns on all minion skills
• Make them spawn and execute a skill just as mesmer phants, possibly copy some pet attacks from the ranger (shadow fiend having smoke assault like attack for example)
• After executing a skill the minions linger and auto attack for a few short moments or they become lesser minions that do the same like phants becoming clones after doing their skils.
• Possibly turn some minions into amo charge skills

This makes them better, removes the possibly of any afk farming what so ever, Promotes more active and slightly more skillful game play but not so much that some one who only has time to play a few hours a week cant master it within a few hours

I agree that minions could do with a rework, especially with Anet's recent lean away from passive gameplay. The lack of command options does make them a very passive option, not to mention limited. In defence of AI though, being dumb and buggy does usually make them somewhat predictable, which can somewhat compensate in certain situations.

I rarely use minions these days simply because they're so hit-and-miss when repeatedly mounting and engaging in most open world PvE, though when I do I usually use dagger to command them. As long as something is within around 1,200 range, targeting them and waving your dagger ineffectually in the air will send your minions to go and attack without ever engaging in combat yourself. That is often close enough to a command system for what I need, anyway.

The story mission in PoF where you get to command the awakened is how minionmancer should play out. Comes with too many issues though. Mesmer clutter is annoying already, nobody wants to have half a dozen necro minions with ranger pet AI chasing you down

Well the thing is minions arent such a huge deal like in GW1. They are basicly just a set of utility skills. I think if we will get a minion master espec at some point we will get better controll of them for sure, but att the time being focus on what we have now:

• Minion summon skills should be instant. They should not APPEAR instantly (they could bury themselves out of the ground over 2 seconds or spawn trough a rift or some neat animation) but the activation of the skill should not cost any time for the necromancer. Reasoning is they are too clumsy and fragile for such a huge drawback, you cant spend 5 seconds in fight to summon minions that die in 3 seconds of AOE burst.

• Minion actives should have a clear purpose, the minion should "cast" or "channel" the skill if needed.

• Shadow fiend for example is going a very good way - a defensive skill, if the port would be instant it would be perfect, as the minion skill would provide a on demand blind with weakness, which is a very solid defensive mechanic.

• Bone Minions should summon 3 and they could launch themself to a location, having a travel time and detonating on impact. That way they could deal more damage as there is more counterplay, forcing the enemy to back away or comboing with roots / stuns.

• Bone Fiend could spawn (a few? a single? ) traps around a location that root/bleed/cripple/knockdown or something similar.

• Blood fiend could attack a tad quicker and its active skill could be a channel - draining life from 5 targets in range and healing the necromancer (animation like kraits or orrian wraiths) providing more potential heal, but also more counterplay (minion can be bursted, cced, or you can move out of range as counter play measures)

• Flesh Golem active skill should be charged / casted by the golem itself, maybe some more damage.

• Flesh Worm - i really dont know, i never liked the idea of combining a port with a minion.

These things would be the biggest work - the rest is numbers - minion cooldown, skill cooldown and effects.

We only need one Button that kills all minions any time instantly that doesnt triggers the minions cooldowns.

....and we need the cooldown fixed...on map change...on in / out of water.

We dont realy need any more control.

Really no need for AI control and all the 200 issues that comes with. They'd easily become OP or even less useful than they already are

Compared to GW1 minions were always a total joke. It's such a huge difference. I never got, why the are so extremely shitty.

@"ProtoGunner.4953" said:Compared to GW1 minions were always a total joke. It's such a huge difference. I never got, why the are so extremely kitten.

GW and GW2 are just to different for anyone to compare skills that might have the same effect.All in all, a huge part of why GW2 minion suck compared to GW's is that the health pool are not as standardized than they were in GW. The rest is handled by the "death system" which is, in GW2, adapted to open world instead of instanced maps.

@ZDragon.3046 said:The reason you have these issues with minions is because they are outdated tools of the past that anet refuses to update in anyway. Not counting faintly flesh golem and shadow fiend the rest are outdated back to like 2012 - 2013 they still have stupid high cooldowns on their skills, their skills dont actually do much of anything. They are very inaccurate for the fast minute to minute gameplay that happens now.

Overall they are bad.

People say they just support afk farmers but to be honest I dont think people understand how kitten hard and how much investment it takes to actually make that work. You cant truely afk farm with minions unless you are super invested into do it and its not really worth it.Yes its an easy pve play style to the game but some people take them for thematic flavor over how challenging it is.

You have rangers that let a pet take all their agroMesmers have clones and phants to do the same thing

Ideally these are along the same levels when it comes to easy pve playstyle. Some of them just take more button presses.

The best solution anet could do is

• update the minions to at least HoT / PoF skill standards
• Reduced cooldowns on all minion skills
• Make them spawn and execute a skill just as mesmer phants, possibly copy some pet attacks from the ranger (shadow fiend having smoke assault like attack for example)
• After executing a skill the minions linger and auto attack for a few short moments or they become lesser minions that do the same like phants becoming clones after doing their skils.
• Possibly turn some minions into amo charge skills

This makes them better, removes the possibly of any afk farming what so ever, Promotes more active and slightly more skillful game play but not so much that some one who only has time to play a few hours a week cant master it within a few hours

@ZDragon.3046 said:The reason you have these issues with minions is because they are outdated tools of the past that anet refuses to update in anyway. Not counting faintly flesh golem and shadow fiend the rest are outdated back to like 2012 - 2013 they still have stupid high cooldowns on their skills, their skills dont actually do much of anything. They are very inaccurate for the fast minute to minute gameplay that happens now.

Overall they are bad.

People say they just support afk farmers but to be honest I dont think people understand how kitten hard and how much investment it takes to actually make that work. You cant truely afk farm with minions unless you are super invested into do it and its not really worth it.Yes its an easy pve play style to the game but some people take them for thematic flavor over how challenging it is.

You have rangers that let a pet take all their agroMesmers have clones and phants to do the same thing

Ideally these are along the same levels when it comes to easy pve playstyle. Some of them just take more button presses.

The best solution anet could do is

• update the minions to at least HoT / PoF skill standards
• Reduced cooldowns on all minion skills
• Make them spawn and execute a skill just as mesmer phants, possibly copy some pet attacks from the ranger (shadow fiend having smoke assault like attack for example)
• After executing a skill the minions linger and auto attack for a few short moments or they become lesser minions that do the same like phants becoming clones after doing their skils.
• Possibly turn some minions into amo charge skills

This makes them better, removes the possibly of any afk farming what so ever, Promotes more active and slightly more skillful game play but not so much that some one who only has time to play a few hours a week cant master it within a few hours

Id like when minions worked like phantasms