The Necromancer class doesn't really scratch that "summoner" itch.

[Puck.3697]

On 12/4/2021 at 5:54 PM, Zalavaaris.5329 said:

Then they suck at naming and nomenclature. 

Eeeeh games have their own fantasy tied to them. Not everything has to be strict to the orginal nature. 

Necromancer in gw2 is pretty fun in all honesty and has some rly cool themes. It won't be perfect for everyone no. But AI sucks and we are better off without it.

[Lahmia.2193]

On 12/4/2021 at 1:30 PM, Teratus.2859 said:

Necro Minions are a defensive!, support! mechanic for the Necromancer and if more people played them that way they would understand just how good they are at keeping you alive.

 

Bingo! I don't want minions to change. Currently they are a great 'solo/make any pve content easy' mechanic, on a profession that already has it easy in open world pve. My personal favourite is using them to solo most of the HoT hero points, if I'm ever in need of quick currency/loot.

[Doggie.3184]

I miss Shambling Horrors. Where's the trait to evolve all the pets into them so I can have an army of Giant Boreworm bros from Splatterhous- mean Guild Wars 1?

Edited December 10, 2021 by Doggie.3184

[Asum.4960]

I feel like with some creativity there are plenty of ways to make MM work in GW2's active combat system. 

From entirely passive summons that only execute skills and attacks when commanding them to by pressing buttons/their flip overs (but with more interesting effects and shorter CD's), or just being short skill effects that deliver their attacks via a minion summon which then quickly withers away after a few seconds (more akin to Phantasm gameplay), to some minions not even having to be actual targetable entities, like a horde of Jagged Horrors following you around as cosmetic only skill effect for having them equipped, which you can then send to swarm an enemy akin to Hunter's Call. 

 

Minions don't have to be an afk-mode. Even in GW1 where you could initially summon giant 30+ minions hordes, it was a constant active effort to heal and resummon them since minions in GW1, iirc, rapidly degenerated health at an increasing rate the longer they were "alive", capping at a degen rate that required constant attention and healing. 

Likewise, plenty ARPG's feature Minion Masters focused around constant resummonings, actively using temporary damage buffs and or healing your horde to keep things interesting and active.

 

Disliking AI gameplay is a fairly poor cop-out for the sorry state of GW2's Minions.

[Shinigami.5230]

On 12/4/2021 at 3:30 PM, Teratus.2859 said:

There is certainly room for improvement although I've long believed that too many people in Gw2 mistake the Necromancers Minions for "offense mechanics" when they are far more proficient as defensive support utilities.
Just look at all the traits that benefit them, it's all defence/support based.

Death Magic.

Flesh of the Master:
Increases Minion Health and gives the player Carapace for every minion they have.

Carapace increases the players Toughness stat by +20 per stack to a max of 30 stacks = 600 toughness.
Minions alone can provide and even sustain 6 to 10+ stacks if played right which is an easy 120 to 200+ free and easily accessible toughness.

Necromantic Corruption:
Minions deal more damage and take conditions from you, transferring conditions to targets when they attack with a 10 second cooldown per minion.

The damage increase on this is largely irrelevant, Without any kind of boost from your own stats Minions are never going to be pushing out insane dps, even if you know how to make yourself a 1 man army with 12+ minions dishing out damage.
The biggest benefit of this trait is the condition cleansing aspect, the more minions you have the harder it is for enemies to keep conditions on you, thus the harder it is for said conditions to stack!
Fast stacking can get around it but could also end up being dangerous for the enemy should that huge stack of burning etc get pulled off and sent back by a minion.
Admittedly this is a tricky trait to make active use off but nevertheless it is definitely a useful support utility to have, even if it is just for keeping your Necromancer condi free as much as possible.

Death Nova:
Creates a poison field when a minion dies and summons a Jagged Horror in it's place.

Admittedly this isn't that good of a trait in PvE, the Jagged Horror is probably the most useful element of it since it keeps your minion count up when you loose one, (Thus maintaining some Carapace) however the CD makes this skill significantly less useful as most of the minions that will be "dying" will be Shambling Horrors and they will mostly die around the same time leaving you with only 1 Jagged Horror rather than multiple.
The poison fields they produce can be useful in competitive modes I guess but not really in PvE.
The potential of combo fields however is not too bad but unfortunately Necromancer really really!! sucks in this department so there are very very few times where you will be taking advantage of a Poison Field to pull off a Blast Finisher for AoE Weakness which is arguably the better combo effect they have access to.
Most of the time you'll be throwing out Poison Bolts from a Whirl finisher which are just not that useful.

Blood Magic.

Vampiric:
Siphon Health (lifesteal) when you attack a target, Minions also siphon health (lifesteal) when they attack and transfer that health to you.

This trait is arguably the best Minion trait in the game by far!! and it's a bloody minor.. pun intended 😄 
If you are playing a minion Necromancer with the focus on the one man army playstyle (having as many minions as possible as much as possible and maintaining them) then you are going to be having a significant amount of constant incoming healing from this trait.
Every hit you do is around +30 health and every minion hit will give you +50 health.

So lets check the minions themselves.

Blood fiend, Healing minion: 
It attacks once around every 3 seconds and heals it's master for around 920 health.
Add Vampiric and that gets boosted to almost 1000 incoming health every 3 seconds, nothing to scoff at at all.

Bone Fiend, Ranged Minion:
The main thing about this minion is that every attack it does is a x2 double hit and from range.
Range alone is going to help keep this thing alive and out of danger like the Blood Fiend.
Now while I haven't checked specifically I am pretty sure that Vampiric triggers on both hits from this minions attacks effectively doubling the incoming health it provides when it attacks every few seconds.

Bone Minions, Sacrificial minions:
You get 2 of these minions upon summoning but they are very weak and won't really survive for long in combat even with buffs which is why I personally choose to go with the Bone Fiend instead.
Having two minions will also double the incoming lifesteal healing every 3 seconds when they attack and will provide 2 carapace stacks instead of just one, but the most useful element of these summons by far is that they are one of the only ways that Necromancers can access somewhat reliable blast finishers.
It's a matter of preference here but personally I other options.

Flesh Wurm, Artillery support:
This isn't a bad minion, certainly deals more damage than most of them and has some useful utility allowing you to teleport to it's location and again trigger one of the rare blast finishers that Necromancers have access too.
But it also has some drawbacks as well, It is always rooted in place and cannot move and unlike other minions it attacks once every 4 seconds.
Sadly this means that it isn't really that good for lifestealing support.
This minion is far more useful in competitive modes for it's teleport function if you ask me, which is why I don't use it.

Shadow Fiend, The Fast attacker:
Shadow Fiend is a must on minion builds that utilise Vampiric, It has a teleport to target skill that Blinds, Chills and Weakens it's target as well as provides life force for the Necromancer and unlike most other minions it attacks every 1,5 seconds rather than every 3 seconds like most others do.
This effectively doubles it's lifesteal healing potential for the usual 3 second attack rotation of other minions.

Flesh Golem, The Elite Minon:
Not much to say, it's the elite minion, it attacks pretty much constantly at .8 second intervals which is great for Vampiric and it's on command move is a huge and very useful CC attack that does massive damage to break bars.

Summon Madness, The Lich Skill:
Honestly I never use for multiple reasons, the cooldown on Lich form is way too long for me especially on a skill that only lasts 30 seconds.
Summon Madness has you constantly summoning short lived minions that can explode if they survive for 6 seconds.
It's not compatible with how I enjoy minions so yeah I don't use it and have little to say about it.

Lastly and most definitely the best minion skill in the game!
Rise!, The Reaper specialization exclusive shout:
This skill is frankly amazing!
It's a weak AoE attack that deals some damage to all enemies around you in a 600 radius.
It summons a Shambling Horror at your location every time you use it as well as upto 5 additional Shambling Horrors for every enemy you hit with the shout, potentially giving you 6 minions every use of the skill.
If you are running the Death Magic minion traits as well then all the Shambling Horrors you create using Rise! will Leave Death Novas upon death which can add a little extra damage and they will also provide extra carapace stacks.
6 Horrors = another 120 toughness for you while they are alive.
Vampiric also works with these minions as well so every Shambling Horror you have will be feeding you another 50 health per attack, that's another 300 health every attack rotation with 6 Horrors in your army.

The main thing you want these minions for however is their Dark Bond ability!
When a Shambling Horror is attacking/in combat, you get the Dark Bond buff.
This buff cannot be removed or ripped from you, the only thing that removes it is killing all of the Shambling Horrors you have summoned.
Dark Bond is basically a unique Protection boon, reducing incoming damage by 33% and on top of that it stacks with the Protection boon as well with diminishing returns.

So think about it, Shambling Horrors live for 25 seconds.. in combat they will provide this Dark Bond effect.
That basically means Rise! on top of providing more minions, more Carapace, More incoming healing also provides 25 seconds of unremovable protection all of which is on a skill with a modified 36 second cooldown!
That is borderline broken as hell OP!! for a single skill if you ask me and I love it XD

So with this in mind.
A Minion build with Blood Fiend, Bone Fiend, Shadow Fiend, Flesh Golem and Rise! is easily going be constantly pumping you with incoming healing.
Is going to provide you with easy to access 200+ toughness from carapace regularly.
Is going to to be pulling conditions off you constantly 
Is going to provide you with regular 25 seconds of unremovable protection -33% incoming damage.

Combining all that with a more tanky focused Necro stat set as well as the awesome lifesteal healing you can get from the Dagger 2 skill and you are almost unkillable in PvE.

There are no other classes in the game that does a Summoner playstyle like this and personally I think that's actually quite sad as well.
I would love to see other classes like Elementalist get an Elite Spec based around summoning and sacrificing elemental minions.
But I would hate to see Necromancer minions become the kind of high DPS, offensively focused sacrificial minions that I have often seen other players wishing for on here.

Necro Minions are a defensive!, support! mechanic for the Necromancer and if more people played them that way they would understand just how good they are at keeping you alive.

they could still use some modifications as there are no interaction with minions and there stats are too weak

i understand that if they buffed flat stats minionmancer would be even stronger in pve,but they can give them these stat buffs as interactions with the necromancer through new or modified traitline like a stat buff with ICD or something,that way it can be more fun,alittle stronger and not completely ruining the game

also some minions are just too weak like the flesh wurm,it will only be used in pvp as escape tool which was the intended use for it

bone minions attacks are so bad and the active is a good cc but its single target making its effectiveness exclusive on boss breakbars

the exploding minions do a very decent damage on exploding but could use abit of improve 

only good minion all around imo is the shadow fiend which i personally wish they added fear to its active skill because it fits it thematically 

the trait changes could include inherting some stats like the mech would do in EoD from mechanist

also removing the condi related traits from death magic because they are just bad and if you wont take other traits you will probably take another trait line instead of death magic anyways. 

but overall yeah minions are kinda good rn but could definitly be even better

Ps. Rise is the best skill in the game minion related or not related,you cant change my mind i literally bought pof so i can get hot to get my hands on reaper and use it and to this day i still run blood minion master reaper for fun

[Stx.4857]

I recently returned to the game after taking a very long break, and I was sad to learn that they effectively removed the old sigil that summoned the flying Minion, I think it was called a flesh reaver?

 

I miss that guy and I don't care if it wasn't Meta, was a really cool part of the Minion horde.

[Puck.3697]

On 12/10/2021 at 2:22 PM, Asum.4960 said:

Disliking AI gameplay is a fairly poor cop-out for the sorry state of GW2's Minions

Outright saying they should be bad down to not liking them is sure

Acknowledging gw2 does pets rather badly and they generally end up being overall weak however is not. 

The best thing ranger got was the ability to not have a actual pet, the worst thing to come to engi will be the fact it's now got a pet. 

There's nothing to rly gain giving Anet the impression we seriously want more AI centric play. 

From a Spvp standpoint theyre outright boring for both the player playing it and the enemy player dealing with it. 

From a WvWvW point they are absolutely useless

And from a PvE standpoint your better off taking a DPS loss for the sake of not having them most of the time and even then rarely do u ever see such s thing being a DPS loss due to problems with giving pets boons and more . 

 

 

[Asum.4960]

19 minutes ago, Daddy.8125 said:

Outright saying they should be bad down to not liking them is sure

Acknowledging gw2 does pets rather badly and they generally end up being overall weak however is not. 

The best thing ranger got was the ability to not have a actual pet, the worst thing to come to engi will be the fact it's now got a pet. 

There's nothing to rly gain giving Anet the impression we seriously want more AI centric play. 

From a Spvp standpoint theyre outright boring for both the player playing it and the enemy player dealing with it. 

From a WvWvW point they are absolutely useless

And from a PvE standpoint your better off taking a DPS loss for the sake of not having them most of the time and even then rarely do u ever see such s thing being a DPS loss due to problems with giving pets boons and more . 

 

 

Not sure what your point is. 

As I said, there are plenty of ways, as shown by various ARPG's or even just GW1 to some extend, to make Minion/Pet gameplay exciting and active, both to play and play against. 

 

Just because Anet hasn't implemented them in such a way in GW2 so far doesn't mean there isn't any merit or possibility to do so in the future. 

 

As is, while minions are central to the theme of Necromancer, they are just a joke at ~200 DPS per minion skill you equip (when players do >35.000 DPS), as is the Trait that increases that by 25%. Basically their only function as of now is heals with BM and/or Condi Cleanses with DM, with next to zero active gameplay components (and which outside of PvP is not worth dedicating a Traitline to). 

 

There could be plenty to do to make them more interesting. For one, I personally think Reaper could be the only soaking Shroud spec, with Core getting Scourge like Fx skills instead, just as minion summon and control skills instead (one or two semi spammable skills summoning a minion (which could just like in GW1 rapidly degenerate health and require upkeep, as well as having a fixed time cap akin to Jagged Horrors), and a where to move, attack and recall commands). DM could use a major rework (since the last was so misplaced) focusing more on either drastically increasing minion damage and defense or personal survivability. Additionally Minion Utilities could be reworked to be more in line with command skills, featuring things like minions heals, as well as defensive and offensive choices, like temporarily empowering Minions to have increased damage and speed at the cost of personal health, or sharing incoming damage with minions for a short duration, etc., giving opponents choices of whether to focus the Necromancer or their Minions depending on how they are specced (expendable, weak minions increasing the Necromancer's survivability, or strong and high damage minions commanded by a frail Necromancer) and the situation/build at their hands. 

Necromancer Weapon skills could have also featured Minion components, akin to Guardian with Symbols, including some temporary Summons. Staff especially would imo be a lot more interesting as almost entirely temporary minion summon based Weapon, rather than the Marks (which could include similar effects, like a Regeneration granting minion, a condition transferring Minion, a powerful Minion that Fears surrounding Foe's on summon, etc.).

 

Alas, that's too much of a departure and rework to ever see the light of day. 

But again, to say Minions are useless/boring in WvW/PvE and unfun in PvP doesn't speak to Minions itself as concept, just the passive implementation Anet chose almost 10 years ago, as well as making them entirely AI based rather than giving players control tools, but then also not developing sufficient AI for them.

[Teratus.2859]

On 1/4/2022 at 11:37 PM, Shinigami.5230 said:

they could still use some modifications as there are no interaction with minions and there stats are too weak

i understand that if they buffed flat stats minionmancer would be even stronger in pve,but they can give them these stat buffs as interactions with the necromancer through new or modified traitline like a stat buff with ICD or something,that way it can be more fun,alittle stronger and not completely ruining the game

also some minions are just too weak like the flesh wurm,it will only be used in pvp as escape tool which was the intended use for it

bone minions attacks are so bad and the active is a good cc but its single target making its effectiveness exclusive on boss breakbars

the exploding minions do a very decent damage on exploding but could use abit of improve 

only good minion all around imo is the shadow fiend which i personally wish they added fear to its active skill because it fits it thematically 

the trait changes could include inherting some stats like the mech would do in EoD from mechanist

also removing the condi related traits from death magic because they are just bad and if you wont take other traits you will probably take another trait line instead of death magic anyways. 

but overall yeah minions are kinda good rn but could definitly be even better

Ps. Rise is the best skill in the game minion related or not related,you cant change my mind i literally bought pof so i can get hot to get my hands on reaper and use it and to this day i still run blood minion master reaper for fun

The problem with buffing their stats is that it would make them far too good as a universal mechanic.
Minions in Gw2 are not intended to be a DPS mechanic, they're a support/defensive utility which is why they have less than desired damage and excel so well at healing and condi cleansing their master.

I agree that some improvements could be made to better specialize some minion abilities but I can't justify giving them too much damage potential, at least not when it comes to flat stat increases.
Any damage increase for minions should only come from your ability to create and maintain a large army of them which isn't hard to do tbh.

And yes Rise! is amazing lol if not flat out OP as F XD
I also run it on all my minion builds due to the insane survivability it provides.

Edited January 20, 2022 by Teratus.2859

[Aplethoraof.2643]

On 12/4/2021 at 11:28 AM, Fueki.4753 said:

It's stated ingame by Trahearne that we do not summon the dead.

In fact, nothing about Necromancers is directly using the literal dead in any capacity (as far as player actions are concerned). The Death theme has been reduced to simply using the Death spectrum of magic.

I still have no idea why this is, lol.

My GW1 necromancer is rocking in his grave hearing that line.

I guess GW1 and GW2 are separate universes or GW2 is a soft reboot or some other crap lore.

They had Death Magic with all of its array of summoning, poison, disease, and cold damage possibilities. . .and then they said "you get armour lol".

Edited January 19, 2022 by Aplethoraof.2643

[Fye.7594]

Summoner is my favorite archetype in most games... in GW2, the only profession that "scratched my summoner's itch" is Mesmer. Necromancer doesn't even come close.

Maybe Mechanist will be close enough, but I still think Mesmer feels more like a summoner.

Edited January 19, 2022 by Fye.7594

[Shinigami.5230]

On 1/18/2022 at 6:38 PM, Teratus.2859 said:

The problem with buffing their stats is that it would make them far too good as a universal mechanic.
Minions in Gw2 are not intended to be a DPS mechanic, they're a support/defensive utility which is why they have less than desired damage and excel so well at healing and condi cleansing their master.

I agree that some improvements could be made to better specialize some minion abilities but I can't justify giving them too much damage potential, at least not when it comes to flat stat increases.
Any damage increase for minions should only come from your ability to create and maintain a large army of them which isn't hard to do tbh.

And yes Rise! is amazing lol if not flat out OP as F XD
I also run it on all my minion builds due to the insane survivability it provides.

That would depend on how much the stats are getting buffed for right? A slight damage increase won't make that difference in DPS probably even if you assigned a whole support for minions to give might and other boons(supposedly)

Maybe add diversity to minions with more different active skills that are not op like the ones they already have now,maybe they be like mantras with charges and each active combos well with the one before it but different from it and doesn't have that much damage or utility so it becomes op,or they would combo well with Necro skills themselves or both so that when they are off CD Necro can think of combos,and yes you would then have the choice to easily not do so if that was the original goal of minions

Maybe only add an auto attack chain like ranger pets on a CD.

But all this is just ideas that I don't know if they can even be translated into the game rather than just balance problems

[Teratus.2859]

On 1/29/2022 at 5:52 AM, Shinigami.5230 said:

That would depend on how much the stats are getting buffed for right? A slight damage increase won't make that difference in DPS probably even if you assigned a whole support for minions to give might and other boons(supposedly)

It's not quite that simple and you have to factor in the overall quantity of minions a single player can have at any one time as well.

There are a lot of people who only run a minion skill or two at most, Rise! is popular as is the Flesh Golem so for them any buff that would need to be made would have to be significant to satisfy any demands they have for damage increases.
But any significant buff to their damage would greatly improve those who run full minion builds, more so if all minions got increased.

Another factor has to be taken into account as well, due to minions having static damage (getting no impact from the stats the player chooses) it means that players running tankier stat sets can reliably lean on them to cover some of their overall damage loss from giving up more damage focused stat sets.
On top of the great survivability/sustain they also provide to benefit those tankier stats.
And Necromancers also have absurd access to crit chance through their traits as well further negating the need for precision stat investment.
Plus Shroud on top of all of that acting as a second health bar.. another very big boost to survivability.

It all combines into the class becoming utterly ridiculous in the PvE game and Anet always has to account for that when deciding whether to buff minions or not.
If they did flat out buff minions to appease those running more DPS focused Necro builds they would end up either turning Tankier Minion builds into absurdly broken gods lol
Or they'd have to compromise the damage increase by destroying the tankier minion playstyles which would really suck for those who enjoy it like myself.. plus it would be a complete role change for minions as well.
Minions being a support utility changing into a damage/offensive utility type.

I wouldn't like that change personally, and tbh I already consider the tankier minion playstyle to be quite  overpowered anyway, even for solo play.
I think everyone who believes minions need to have their damage buffed should try running around in PvE, Dungeons and Fractals on a full Minion DeathM/BloodM/Reaper build with Soldier stats first just to get an idea of what those damage buffs would do to something that is that hard to kill and capable of still doing decent enough damage for those game modes.

[SlitheSlivier.1908]

On 12/4/2021 at 11:11 AM, MikeG.6389 said:

Well, arguing by the real world definitions of in-game concepts can create a hole deep enough to swallow all of Tyria.

To stay with the professions, what's the real life definition of the word engineer, for example? I don't think it mentions dual wielding pistols, for one.

Engineer IRL here.  I don't dual wield... but I do whip out my pistol at work about twice a day and fire away. There is a room dedicated to it. Also sometimes I even drop a grenade... just sucks when I get hit by my own splash. 

XD

[pcgamefreak.5208]

The Necromancer concept is dead because too many classes have something like the 'Necro' class.  Look at the new "EOD" thief...  They have a shroud...  Really....  Just  turn them into a thief/necro, huh...  I don't agree with giving the new 'EOD' 'Necro' a gun; it just doesn't fit.  There's other major issues as well, like the 'Necro' not being able to do any real conditional damage in modes like WvW because Curses and Scepter are basically for that.  There's no 'Necro' in Necromancer in GW2 and the class is dead in WvW.

 

It's crazy to see every developer of an MMO making the same mistakes and that's basically killing their own works.