Necro minions nearly worthless after last update

[Mytee.4752]

The minions don't hold argo so it is on the necro full time. The golem even runs from the fight. None of the minions live long and the cool down is longer then they are alive. Pretty much screwed the necro with pets. What they needed was a skill to turn off the minions and to hit the skill again to turn them on. Hopefully I can find a build where the Necro will be more then worthless.

[Stalkingwolf.6035]

what update? i played dungeons and fractals last week solo and had no problem with my minions.

[derd.6413]

minions were always useless

[Nimon.7840]

And always died fast if you didn't play deathmagic

[Dawdler.8521]

Havent noticed any difference at all playing minionmancer in PvE at least. Can still stack 15 minions on a reaper.

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

@"Mytee.4752" said:Necro minions nearly worthless after last updateList of changes to Necro doesn't seem to include any changes to minions or minion-related traits.https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Game_updates/2019-04-23#Necromancer

[kmfart.7480]

Necro pets arent really made for their DPS, its more about the sustainability they can add when traited with leeching & transfer abilities. In PvE it has a huge sustain, but obviously balanced with a low dps to compensate somewhat (and to limit the afk necro farming problem prolly). When the necro was nerfed a few years ago, it hit a real low point (until buffed again in a later update), but the flesh golem back then was often out DPSing the actual necro player :-)

[Dadnir.5038]

What's fun is that in PvE toughness draw agro while death magic (arguably the minion traitline) give you toughness. Better, a trait give you more toughness the more minions you got. Either minions aren't meant to tank anything or death magic's traits aren't well thought. (You don't have to choose only one option, you can take both! It's free!)

[Arzurag.7506]

As far as I know minions always have been useless, even in the open world due them being too squishy and they can´t even hold aggro properly so not gonna waste an utility-slot for a useless minion.

[Anchoku.8142]

Ah, buggers; click-bait. ( )'

[Thornwolf.9721]

Perhaps work in more bone skills into their weapons (Staff, axe and even maybe dagger.) * Rework dagger to be faster; Give it a teleport of some sort. Make it medium range like the axe and let the necromancer be completely based around long to medium range combat. Rework the dagger to have better skills as right now main-hand dagger sucks so bad.

1. "Bitter strike"=====>"Fangs of Death"====>"Sacrificial Marking". The first two are basic projectiles that hurl energy slashes at the foe; The final is a small class specific DoT that makes bleeding and dagger skills more effective against them for a short time.
2. "Witness Darkness": Send forth a shadowy mist to an enemy; If struck the enemy will be held in place and done constant ticks of damage for the duration, upon expiring the skill will place "Marked for Sacrifice" Similar to sacrificial marking on the enemy which makes sacrifice more powerful.
3. "Sacrifice" : you use your dark powers to offer up your foe for sacrifice; If the enemy is struck they are given tons of condition damage depending on the boons they have. As well a sizable burst based on how LOW their health is. If the foe is below ten percent this skill has a chance to summon a spectral wraith; Who then will follow the target and heal the caster for all damage done to them within the next ten or so seconds.

• Rework staff to be more thematic as right now it feels meh; It's still passable as a weapon and works for what it is intended to be used for. But it does not really mesh well with the current game as it has changed alot.
  1. Bone Spear, Shoot bone spears at your enemy causing bleeding and vulnerability. The bone spears hover around you as long as there is a staff in your hand; And yes they should change based on the legendary you are using.
  2. "Lament" : Send two corpses (Zombies, Skeletons, Something as we have alot of undead models we could use now.) Whom rush a foe and explode on contact applying vulnerability and cripple, upon the second use once the skill is used these corpses explode and cause AOE burst with tons of condis.
  3. "Onto Darkness" Become one with shadow and vanish into the ground, (Could use the soul beast leap back animation from the Devourer's) And slither through the earth to erupt under and enemy and knock them prone. This skill causes weakness, and fears the enemy as death looms before them.
  4. "Call of the grave" You let loose a bone curdling howl as your true nature maifests; Causing torment, fear and weakness as your enemy cowars before you. Any ally near you gets a dark aura.
  5. "Requiem" You call forth the powers of malignant darkness and bombard your foe with shadow visages of their own demise; This swirling mass of black hatred swirls around you and blinds enemies as it does constant damage. Upon expiring it then explodes into a dark nova and applies torment, bleed, burning and vulnerability as the last remnants of your power vacate sight for the moment.

Then rework death magic to be... better? As on it's own it kind of sucks and really does not bring much to the table; Our minions suck now and they need a rework and or overhaul as well. This trait and utility tree being reworked could work really well with a revamped staff, perhaps even placing staff within the death magic tree as its region of choice as it seems more based around death magic with this rework. Dagger being in Blood magic as it is doesn't feel right as it really has little to do with the theme, making it a weapon that benefits from bleeding with a medium range and a sacrificial skill that offers benefits to the caster fixes this problem.

1. Offer traits in death magic that if proceed will summon additional minions.
2. Make minions beneficial with some form of interesting gameplay; Perhaps make them a limited time summon that do specific actions and can't be killed once activated unless the caster dies. Have them stay for a set time and offer their unique skills as a benefit not a deterrent.
3. Change the heal minion to be a specter who follows the caster and constantly steals health from the enemy and gives it to the caster; As well allies of the caster and boost its heals based on soul-reaping.
4. Change flesh golem to be more horrific and something you don't want to allow the necromancer to summon.
5. Add minions to the minion spells and give them more numbers since they are limited; Make each one good for different playstyles, for example bone horrors are good for sending in as expendable running bombs who explode on contact and provide good condition damage. Shadow horrors perhaps are good to send in on targets to cause blindness and prolong an encounter. Flesh wurms are good for being up on walls, and offer good long ranged support with putrid attacks at enemies making it good for when you're in a position to have range.
6. Opens the door for a curses/hex based elite spec so we can have our curse-mancer from guild wars one, that could also bring in the ritualist spirits. (For example Pain) Or those spirits could be rolled into the necromancer; As one of the minion spells. (Example : Summon four or five random spirits from the spirit world, from a group of five who will fight for you. "Pain, Shadowsong, Destruction, Tranquility, Madness" Each one has its own benefit. Tranquility would heal, madness would cause confusion to the enemy and shadow song would blind.)

Posted on another post, but I feel it could still be of use here.

[Aetatis.5418]

@"Dadnir.5038" said:What's fun is that in PvE toughness draw agro while death magic (arguably the minion traitline) give you toughness. Better, a trait give you more toughness the more minions you got. Either minions aren't meant to tank anything or death magic's traits aren't well thought. (You don't have to choose only one option, you can take both! It's free!)

does toughness really draw aggro? - generally speakingi know there are some raid bosses that fix on the person with the most toughness - for anything else its been almost a mystery.there is a table of threat with multiple factors for most enemies, but we dont know how it works. toughness is just one part of it for some mobs.as far as i know nobody ever managed to reverse engineer what the game actually calculates. (enlighten me, if i am wrong)my personal observation is - sometimes i tank, sometimes i dont. the very few occasion, where i know it is due to toughness i either shouldnt be running toughness (if i am not the tank for a specific boss) or it is not worth talking about bad traits, because there are so many different encounters where the toughness doesnt matter at all, in terms of aggroing.

back to topic.i havent tested anything minion related lately, so i cant really say if OPs observation is true. there is always the possibility of some stealth change happening. (e.g. minions not tanking being a measure against idling aka (semi)afk-farming)

actually i am a tiny bit confused by the phrasing.if minions dont hold aggro anymore and everything is on the necro - then minions should last longer, shouldnt they?they receive only a fraction of an npcs aoe-abilities too. http://dulfy.net/2015/10/19/gw2-upcoming-global-changes-to-player-minions/sounds more like the builds that use minions (even meta builds like the power reaper for raiding/fractals) would have been boosted that way.if the bigger issue however is the necro having to tank npcs, then there are options - i am sure - to adapt to that issue while keeping the minions if you would like.

either way - necro did not become worthless all of a sudden. atm the opposite is happening. necro did catch up big time with other classes in organized pve-content. for casual playing necro always has been and probably will always be one of the most forgiving profession on top of that.

try to give us some more insight.the content you play (open world and events/soloing dungeons/wvw/spvp/fractals/raids)what changed along the way (if it did)? equipment/traits/maps/regions on maps/dungeons/mobs/episode of living storydid you play for hours? or did it happen 4-5 times when you last logged in, compared to what you felt happened the last 2 months."it doesnt work, its broken" is insufficient when there is nothing to count on (patchnotes, evidences and so on).

cheers :)

[Drarnor Kunoram.5180]

@Aetatis.5418 said:

@Dadnir.5038 said:What's fun is that in PvE toughness draw agro while death magic (arguably the minion traitline) give you toughness. Better, a trait give you more toughness the more minions you got. Either minions aren't meant to tank anything or death magic's traits aren't well thought. (You don't have to choose only one option, you can take both! It's free!)

does toughness really draw aggro? - generally speakingi know there are some raid bosses that fix on the person with the most toughness - for anything else its been almost a mystery.there is a table of threat with multiple factors for most enemies, but we dont know how it works. toughness is just one part of it for some mobs.as far as i know nobody ever managed to reverse engineer what the game actually calculates. (enlighten me, if i am wrong)my personal observation is - sometimes i tank, sometimes i dont. the very few occasion, where i know it is due to toughness i either shouldnt be running toughness (if i am not the tank for a specific boss) or it is not worth talking about bad traits, because there are so many different encounters where the toughness doesnt matter at all, in terms of aggroing.

Each enemy has its own threat assessment table. Some base on highest toughness, others highest healing output, others on rezzing, still others on damage, some even on range.

[Knighthonor.4061]

I must be doing something wrong. My golem holds aggro before taunt condition was added to the game in HoT.

[XECOR.2814]

I hate necro minions being justified because bunch of noobs dont want more effort than autoattacking in a fight. Such a great concept made into stale ai controlled bots. Its stupid how passive the gameplay/functionality and how bad the effects and animations are.

[Thornwolf.9721]

@XECOR.2814 said:I hate necro minions being justified because bunch of noobs dont want more effort than autoattacking in a fight. Such a great concept made into stale ai controlled bots. Its stupid how passive the gameplay/functionality and how bad the effects and animations are.

They could do something and force minions, and by extension one of the fundamental themes for the necro to be good. It requires reworks to staff and dagger main hand because those weapons are dated and need love. The design of the necromancer is still in this weird limbo and I hope they get to it because Im loving this class now; I just made one recently and she is a badass but I just can't help but feel like some of her tools and kit are dated. I feel like this along with some more rev stuff needs looking at, polish and some portions need redesigns lets hope they do so~

[Ghoulify.8027]

Golem = strong CC on decentish cooldown + small dps increaseBone minions / Shadow fiend = LF generator + small dps increase (only with shadow)Blood fiend = Best passive heal that ticks damage aswel.

[Xxnecroxx.4039]

just add them to the large pile of things that are useless overall with necro, pretty much all of necro belongs in that pile.... unless you need boons corrupted

[Tukaram.8256]

Mine hold agro just fine. They seem to work great.

[Kalavier.1097]

Minions are useless? Huh. News to me, as somebody who has played a minion master for years now and has never seen them drop in usefulness for me, besides in cases where I was trying to lose agro and they kept attacking.

I've never used them to distract/draw agro, they are they to boost my necromancer and deal damage.

[Electra.7530]

I don't always pay attention to the nerfs -- I mean, "rebalancing" patches. But, I've noticed for the last couple months that my minions are dying all the time. That never used to be the case. I play a full minion scourge for pve and I'm constantly looking at minions on cool down. I use my minions for toughness. It's an integral part of my build. Running around hot and pof maps, I need my scourge to be tough. I don't want half her hp disappearing with one hydra hit.

Something drastic changed with necros and not for the better. My minions are useless. When I was doing map clear in HoT, (before PoF elite traits) I was constantly scraping her dead butt up off the dirt. The minions made it doable.

[Naustis.8510]

I dont see your problem in the game. I am playing reaper with minions and my flesh golem can tank everything.

[XECOR.2814]

Minions are only useful for afk or semi afk players.