New Elite: Lich

Minion masters in Guild Wars 2 so far are... less than adequate, but they're okay enough for a baseline Necromancer. But elite specializations show that we're a step above the average Necromancer. The Reaper channels their power through greatswords and a powerful new Shroud form. The Scourge channels their power through the sands. What we need is an elite specialization that uses the life force they generate to create short lived minions.

Enter the Lich.

I know what you're thinking, "Why call it a Lich if we already have Lich Form?" Allow me to present this excerpt from the wiki: "While it is common for necromancers of all paths of life to practice reanimation of the dead, there exist powerful undead necromancers known as liches. Liches not only exhibit a much greater capability of reanimating and maintaining entire armies of undead, but also extreme intelligence and an inability to be killed by conventional means." So let's take their army raising capabilities and make it into an elite.

All Liches that we've seen throughout both games use staves (or a staff sized Scepter of Orr if you're Khilbron), so rather than giving Necromancers a new weapon why not upgrade an existing one? Staff skills for Liches will be upgraded to new versions (as we've already seen happen with Devouring Darkness). Necrotic Grasp will now be Necrotic Reach and home in on five targets within 600 range, generating 3% life force for each hit while maintaining it's 20% projectile finisher. Mark of Blood will become Blood of the Master and cause bleeding on the caster, bleeding on enemies, and regeneration on allies in an area around the caster. Chillblains will become Deathly Swarm causing a swarm of undead carrion insects to circle the caster causing them to become a walking poison field for a short duration and enemies inside will receive chill and poison per pulse. Putrid Mark will now be Plague Sending and will now first transfer conditions from allies around the caster then transfer conditions on the caster to enemies in an area around the caster and continue to act as a blast finisher. Reaper's Mark will now be Demonic Flesh causing the caster to fear enemies within an area around them and apply protection to themselves.

This changes the Staff into a medium range weapon with a focus on the Lich making them much more difficult to kill (at least in melee).

But what is a Lich without an army? Rather than Shroud, the Lich will have the ability to use Life Force to summon timed minions. There are plenty of options in Tyria to make fleshy or skeletal constructs from (e.g. Pocket Bone Raptors, Bone Hounds, Flesh Bears (think a bear without the fur and skin), or even Gravelings), but the first choices should cost lower amounts of life force and last for a longer time but have lower damage while the stronger choices have much more damage but last a shorter time. EDIT: I figured out the fourth summon. https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Scytheclaw_Behemoth The only minion I am adamant about seeing is the biggest, the baddest, the Bone Dragon. The Bone Dragon should take at least 70% of your life force just to summon and have a powerful poison breath attack. EDIT: Each minion summon will have a cast time with lower strength minions summoning much faster than higher strength minions. Being interrupted will cause you to lose the life force invested in the summon.

And what kind of utilities would a Lich come with? Well, we bring back a classic from the first Guild Wars... orders. Order of Vampirism will cause allies and minions within 600-900 range (either is arguable) to steal life (0.5-1s ICD) for a 5 seconds. Order of Fury will cause allies and minions within 600-900 range to generate 2 stacks of might when attacking (1s ICD) for 5 seconds. Order of Apostasy will cause allies and minions within 600-900 range to corrupt 1 boon on enemies they hit (1-1.5s ICD) for 5 seconds. Order of Pain will cause allies to deal 5% more damage for 5 seconds. And Order of Undeath will lengthen the life duration of all current minions and grant them 10 stacks of might for 5 seconds.

Traits would be something like this:

1) Minor Proficiency - Staff skills are replaced with Lich staff skills.2) Minor Adept - Death Shroud is replaced with Minion skills. A maximum of 10 minions can be summoned at a time.2a) Major Adept - Do As I say: Orders have a shorter cooldown and last longer on non-minion allies.2b) Major Adept - Staff Familiarity: Staff skills have a 20% cooldown reduction and you now gain 100 concentration and 100 expertise while wielding a staff.2c) Major Adept - Life in Death: Minions lifetime is increased by 10%.3) Minor Master - Dark Bond: Some of the damage you take is redirected towards your minions instead.3a) Major Master - Feast For the Dead: Minion deaths refund 25% of their summon cost on death or expiration.3b) Major Master - Freezing Swarm: Deathly Swarm now pulses poison on every pulse, chill on the first pulse, cripple on the second pulse, and immobilize on the third pulse.3c) Major Master - Jagged Claws: Minions affected by orders apply bleeding on attacks.4) Minor Grandmaster - Unified Force: Your minions will now focus on your target.4a) Major Grandmaster - Blood Bond: Enemies bleeding from your attacks cause your allies and minions to heal when they hit them.4b) Major Grandmaster - Dark Army: Minions cost 33% less life force to summon, and your minion cap is raised to 15.4c) Major Grandmaster - Rip Enchantments: Minions gain any boons they corrupt, and Order of Apostasy lasts 8 seconds.

Now that's a huge wall of text, and I'm positive at least some of these ideas will have to change, but this is a base line for the kind of minionmancer I'd want to see in Guild Wars 2. I feel going with a timed lifespan rather than degeneration is a better mechanism for Guild Wars 2, and Orders will be very appealing to take over all minion skills plus life force minions. Obviously, Flesh of the Master and Necromantic Corruption will need to be less effective on life force minions (a la Hardening Persistence before the rework). I hope fellow minionmancers from GW1 will enjoy this concept, and I also hope players who came in with GW2 will also like this concept.

Thanks for reading!

Anything that upgrades Minion Master and Staff is good by me.

Also the cosmetics for making my minions humanoid skeletons, thats what I need in my life.

I'm not so keen on the whole lich idea. Defense isn't what I think of or want then thinking minions. A frail master with powerful minions is what I want. We already have a tanky minion build. It's not good but it already exists in the game. We need minions to branch out into real sources of damage and support.

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/49593/the-deathcap-minion-master-elite-spec#latest

Plug my spec here since I'm shameless.

As long as is not good in pvp and wvw, all good. Minions are a passive play style, they must not be competitive.

@Lucius.2140 said:As long as is not good in pvp and wvw, all good. Minions are a passive play style, they must not be competitive.

This pvp mentality just holds back the diversity of buildcrafting, especially for things like Necromancer with minions and Rangers with pets. They don't have to be passive and pets in many ways are not passive. Possible reworks could make minions and pets more effective as well as involve more active gameplay. There's no point in making an entire line of skills useless in 2 out of 3 game modes just because some people don't enjoy feeling like they got beat by AI (when they were actually outplayed by the pc controlling the npcs)

@"Dedicant.6820" said:

@Lucius.2140 said:As long as is not good in pvp and wvw, all good. Minions are a passive play style, they must not be competitive.

Demonology warlocks in WoW and unholy Dk's are a good example of this, yes they summon minions but the minions are tools for the player and there is nothing passive about their gameplay. Infact Id say Demo is the hardest spec on warlock because it does not have some cheesy mechanic to deal with (Chaos bolt or the endless dot ticks of affliction). What are necromancers without a minion master spec that's fun to play? Well they are utterly lacking and dead on arrival, no... no puns...? Ok Ill see myself out.

This changes the Staff into a medium range weapon with a focus on the Lich making them much more difficult to kill (at least in melee).

Can I doubt the fact that it make them much more difficult to kill?

All in all this spec would be very dangerous to introduce in the game and would receive the hate of most PvP players while it would certainly threaten even high end PvE balance. I'm sorry to say it but the spec would be absolutely unhealthy for the game as a whole due to it's very high soloing capability. (You won't do high damage but the sheer sustain you'll gain from your 10+ minions will make you facetank most bosses without a sweat.)

This would just enforce the idea that necromancers are a noob profession in the end.

NB.: If you wonder why I say 10+ minion, it's because I doubt your spec encompass the core minions in it's limit, making the base limit at a 17-18 minions army if we count core trait minion and runes proc minion. With just vampiric you'd already be at 2000 hp/s from your minions alone. With dark army it's around 2500 HP/s from your minions alone (22-23 minions). The condi cleanse is so high, you probably wouldn't even see them... Add to that healing gear and perma regen, you're at 3400 HP/s on a very passive build with minions doing around 6k dps by themself... Count the fact that damage skills target max cap is usually 5 targets, Necromancer's corruption remove above 2 condi per second... Seriously, Just thinking of it I'm laughing like a vilain wicked lich, it's OP as hell.

@"Dedicant.6820" said:

@Lucius.2140 said:As long as is not good in pvp and wvw, all good. Minions are a passive play style, they must not be competitive.

Ranger is weaker because the pets (more importantly there's only 1), the dps of them is already considered and f2 and pet swap is part of the class mechanic and active, necromancer isn't weaker because the minions and if the skills balance between no minion options and minions, part of said minion damage will be their auto attack dps, that's not only less active but generally can be easy to hit. The worst example of this was turret engineer, because exploiting the turret was less important than maintaining them and not doing much (and placing them properly isn't near a mid level, less a ceiling skill).

Also, i'm not sure how you did not get the obvious reason and instead went to the griefing one, this is simple:Active builds the ones that depend mainly on activation require more concentration, timing , resource managing and planning and has risk (or more risk).This means for the same performance you need to be more skilled than a passive build user, that's not fair, balanced (same skill same position is the best possibility, especially the higher the tiers)., healthy or joyfull.

Nearly nobody want to loss, tie or win against a build that performs easier than yours (i have a taste for killing mirages with core mesmer- shatter centered) and has a level near your level of performance (not skill).

An example with minions of a only active builds: they only hit with their special skills (that also will mean balancing them).

And for last who cares if the AI killed you, me or my neighbor there's important, obvius, logical, comprensible reasons for passives not been in the same level of actives and minions do have a part of passive gameplay.

I'd like to see a decent minion master spec (actually I'd like to see 2: one that focuses on "raising an army" and one that focuses on a single, more powerful minion (like a demon summoner)). Sadly the only somewhat decent summoner gameplay I can think of is the minion necro from Diablo 2 and that game is almost 20 years old. Everything else either boils down to the minions being meatshields or glorified attack animations.

As long as is not good in pvp and wvw, all good. Minions are a passive play style, they must not be competitive.Which should never be a factor since it's irrelevant to the balance of the game. If you lost against something that's inherently and objectify not stronger than you then it's your loss, everything else is just making excuses. Something being passive or overly simplified is often times also a big disadvantage since it usually can be taken advantage of by a more skilled player who has more control over his class / more ways to tackle a situation.

@"Tails.9372" said:I'd like to see a decent minion master spec (actually I'd like to see 2: one that focuses on "raising an army" and one that focuses on a single, more powerful minion (like a demon summoner)). Sadly the only somewhat decent summoner gameplay I can think of is the minion necro from Diablo 2 and that game is almost 20 years old. Everything else either boils down to the minions being meatshields or glorified attack animations.

As long as is not good in pvp and wvw, all good.

Minions are a passive play style

, they must not be competitive.Which should never be a factor since it's irrelevant to the balance of the game. If you lost against something that's inherently and objectify not stronger than you then it's your loss, everything else is just making excuses. Something being passive or overly simplified is often times also a big disadvantage since it usually can be taken advantage of by a more skilled player who has more control over his class / more ways to tackle a situation.

I couldn't agree more with what you said. Those saying a minion master spec would have to be super weak in wvw or PvP because its a "passive play style" are missing the fundamental idea that a new minion spec doesn''t have to be passive. Give the minion master more control over his minions or give them new active abilities that require more skill to use. But even if the new elite spec was a passive minion spec, its still not hard to balance it and make it decent in all gamemodes. Simply make the minions powerful at the expense of the necromancer's survivability. I'd love to see an elite spec that revolves around sacrificing your own health to buff your minions and actually do good damage in this way. Anyways, my point is that a minion spec doesn't have to be passive and there will always be a way to balance it.

@DeathsProphet.7460 said:

@"Tails.9372" said:I'd like to see a decent minion master spec (actually I'd like to see 2: one that focuses on "raising an army" and one that focuses on a single, more powerful minion (like a demon summoner)). Sadly the only somewhat decent summoner gameplay I can think of is the minion necro from Diablo 2 and that game is almost 20 years old. Everything else either boils down to the minions being meatshields or glorified attack animations.

As long as is not good in pvp and wvw, all good.

Minions are a passive play style

, they must not be competitive.Which should never be a factor since it's irrelevant to the balance of the game. If you lost against something that's inherently and objectify not stronger than you then it's your loss, everything else is just making excuses. Something being passive or overly simplified is often times also a big disadvantage since it usually can be taken advantage of by a more skilled player who has more control over his class / more ways to tackle a situation.

Main flaw in what you say is that you don't take into account the fact that the defensive/sustain aspect of the current necromancer's minion masters build is already at a balanced level. If you add 10-15 more minions on the field like this e-spec suggestion propose, you break this balance.

NVM I didn't read properly.

@"Dadnir.5038" said:

This changes the Staff into a medium range weapon with a focus on the Lich making them much more difficult to kill (at least in melee).

I'm not sure that you took into account that the minions summoned would have a limited life span meaning they die outright after a period of time. Maintaining an entire army would require a lot of maintenance in life force generation and spending. The staff changes would mean this would work well against a lot of enemies, but against a single enemy your life force generation may not be enough to keep said army going. Players would need to sacrifice either death magic or blood magic for soul reaping to keep up an army, and if they took all minion skills then they'd lose out on Orders and have very little to buff the damage on the life force summoned minions (which would generally be weak without them). Think of "shroud 1" as if they were as strong as bone minions with minor steps in damage or utility until the Bone Dragon which would be a force to be reckoned with but have a shorter duration and much higher cost. In regards to condition cleanse, I've already stated death magic traits would be weaker on life force minions like Hardened Persistence was on upkeep for Heralds until the rework. The stat bonuses would be lower per minion, and the cooldown of condition transfers would be increased. As for the staff changes making Liches harder to kill, the changes to skills grants them a lot of pressure in a radius around them, and the toughness from Death Magic will add up with the protection from the enhanced fear skill.

The big kicker on this is that you need to maintain the minion army by continually replenishing forces much like GW1 but without the "permanent if you can heal them forever" effect. This playstyle is no longer passive when you're consistently managing Life Force spending while also maintaining pressure with your weapon and utility skills. That would be like saying Scourge is a completely passive playstyle because all you do it throw shades and press shade abilities.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that each life force summon will have a cast time and be interruptible.

@"Timarius.2895" said:I'm not sure that you took into account that the minions summoned would have a limited life span meaning they die outright after a period of time. Maintaining an entire army would require a lot of maintenance in life force generation and spending.

Think it's difficult to take dagger/Wh and rack in life force even against a single target?

The staff changes would mean this would work well against a lot of enemies, but against a single enemy your life force generation may not be enough to keep said army going.

The staff isn't necessary to build life force.

Players would need to sacrifice either death magic or blood magic for soul reaping to keep up an army, and if they took all minion skills then they'd lose out on Orders and have very little to buff the damage on the life force summoned minions (which would generally be weak without them).

Take soul reaping? For what? 15% more base LF that you won't even see because your minions creation will eat x% of the total LF? DM and BM both benefit more to your minions than orders can (50% more life, 25% more flat damage, vampiric effect... etc.). Why would you even sacrifice an utility slot for 5s of 5% increase in damage for your minions when in blood magic the vampiric effect itself might allow them to double their damage and heal you at the same time?

More than that, is there even a point in taking spite or curse?

Think of "shroud 1" as if they were as strong as bone minions with minor steps in damage or utility until the Bone Dragon which would be a force to be reckoned with but have a shorter duration and much higher cost.

I do think especially of shroud1, you see. Based on what you say it's inexpensive so you can summon them at will and that's exactly what make them OP. To be honnest, you don't even need to wonder what other F skills will be, you know that flooding your foe with cheap minions will be the best choice to do, plus there is even traits to refound on death and reduce minion cost.

In regards to condition cleanse, I've already stated death magic traits would be weaker on life force minions like Hardened Persistence was on upkeep for Heralds until the rework. The stat bonuses would be lower per minion, and the cooldown of condition transfers would be increased.

Ah, so make more trait with "exception"... So great! Why should an e-spec deal with the core when we can make the core deal with the e-spec?

As for the staff changes making Liches harder to kill, the changes to skills grants them a lot of pressure in a radius around them, and the toughness from Death Magic will add up with the protection from the enhanced fear skill.

So prot on a long CD staff skill make them much more difficult to kill... Ok...

The big kicker on this is that you need to maintain the minion army by continually replenishing forces much like GW1 but without the "permanent if you can heal them forever" effect. This playstyle is no longer passive when you're consistently managing Life Force spending while also maintaining pressure with your weapon and utility skills. That would be like saying Scourge is a completely passive playstyle because all you do it throw shades and press shade abilities.

Believe it or not, that's what most players from other professions already think of the scourge.

I gw1 the number of minions was caped below 10 minions and we are talking about an e-spec that suggest a cap at 23 minions in a game which will be a lot more impacted by more minions than GW1 was. Some players still have lags issue in PvP, this number of minions would probably be the bane of their ping, They'd be dead without their PC even being able to show them more than 2 or 3 of the incoming minions. Killed by the lags, the worst.

I can already imagine Australian's players giving up on the game. "Dang it! I was bashin a mob when a lich c***t arrived and next thing I knew, I was ded!"

EDIT: I forgot to mention that each life force summon will have a cast time and be interruptible.

Which isn't an issue, really.

Now, there are even more issues, Where is the skill that act like you are in shroud? What happen to traits that apply an effect on shroud1? How does path of corruption work there? How does transfusion work here? More exception? Let's be honnest, exceptions like dhuumfire and path of corruption on scourge just show that ANet lacked foresight when they created the scourge. These are terrible bandaid fix that fix nothing yet you suggest more of them

I kinda miss the shape-shifting, so why not keeping the shroud that let´s you become a lich instead of staying a pity mortal and replace the weaponskills (not the utilities tho).The thing that I like the most about necromancer was his ability to become a shroud of death/reaper , despite the butchering that has been done to this it´s still the necromancer´s selling point for me.

i'm gonna go with no

@"Arzurag.7506" said:I kinda miss the shape-shifting, so why not keeping the shroud that let´s you become a lich instead of staying a pity mortal and replace the weaponskills (not the utilities tho).The thing that I like the most about necromancer was his ability to become a shroud of death/reaper , despite the butchering that has been done to this it´s still the necromancer´s selling point for me.

Because the idea is to bring a real MM back to GW2. The minions in GW2 are less than amazing, and I'd like to see a real minionmancer regardless of the hate that seems to be going around about "being beaten by AI".

@Dadnir.5038 Your aggressive attitude towards what is very obviously a first draft concept is unacceptable, and Hardening Persistence is a Herald trait, not a core trait. Your thoughts that summoning massive amounts of the smallest minion would be overpowered are noted, but these minions would hardly be the pinnacles of health. The percentage cost on the top summons is a % of BASE life force, not a set in stone cost. As for generating a lot of life force with a dagger and warhorn you have to put yourself in melee range to generate said life force and put yourself at risk. The lag issue has me stumped as I can't tell if you think minions affect ping just by being around somebody or if you're talking about framerate loss. If you were to force the elite spec to work around the core traits then you make Death Magic absolutely necessary since without it the minions would be extremely weak. The minion number of 10 is just a holdover from GW1 post-nerf (and you can have up to 12 with a +1 scar pattern, +3 rune, Masochism, and Aura of the Lich). As for Shroud based talents, they would apply to each respectable minion. Shroud minions could have a cooldown to prevent sudden minion bombs of 10 little monsters. There are plenty of ways to rework and improve this concept based on your feedback, but, again, I am not fond of your aggressive tone over a first draft concept. And as for having 23 minions... I used to have 25+ before the minion cap nerf in GW1. I'm just sad I lost all of my screenshots of my crazy armies of bone horrors, bone fiends, and shambling horrors.

the elite ability should be called "horde"

raise 5 zombies from the ground that rampage and attack your target siphoning life on each hit. reactivate to merge all 5 zombies into one massive zombie.

i really hate the fact that there are necromancers in this game that don't spawn zombies.

I’d rather have Sword, and a Minion Master Elite based on sacrificing minions for Damage, and CC. The minion cap is fine as is. Having a 15 cap would be way too much screen clutter, and look silly. Having loved, and played GW1 for years, that had a cap based on a stat, and with certain builds you could have 10-11 minions out at a time. I didn’t like this clutter, but it was a great build.

If they added a Minion Master type build, I’d want either minions to get an extra function added, or the Life Force part to be replaced by a pet bar. Your defense would be shared with your pet, and your damage would be buffed by its attacks. Skills like hard hitting attacks, and shielding you with it’s life to protect you.

The enemy I’d love to have added from GW1 is this, as a new Elite Minion.https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Dying_Nightmare

Or thishttps://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Hellhound

Necromacer having a sole hellhound, or nightmare soul with you would be amazing. It would bring the theme of controlling spirits, and the dead to life.