A strange suggestion for Minions and Marks

[Lily.1935]

Mark skills and minion skills are both things I've been thinking about for quite some time. Although I've made probably 30+ posts on Minions I haven't spoken too much on mark skills and I Wanted to make some suggestions about marks in relation to Minions and two weapons. Main hand Dagger and Focus. This might be an odd combination but I don't want to write a post that requires 2 pages on every single necromancer change I'd like to see like I've done in the past so i'll keep it to a couple ideas and how they could relate to each other.
 

• Death Nova: A Change to this trait to give it synergy with Marks. Granting the trait the ability to summon a Jagged horror when one of your marks is triggered at that location. Death nova is a unique trait and the only Minion trait I feel is worth keeping because of its uniqueness. And giving it a means to summon minions when deaths aren't happening could aid the Minion master in areas they otherwise would struggle to keep their minions up would be nice. A number limit on Jagged horrors would be fine by me, between 5-8 seems reasonable.
• Dark Pact: Make this a 600 Range mark skill. Its Immobilize could be dropped to 2 seconds and boon corrupt to 1 to compensate in PvP or WvW. This could give this skill some unique crowd control. It could afford to be powerful since it does inflict you with bleed and its range is still fairly short.
• Soul Grasp Change to homunculi Curse(Or something): Make this a 1,200 range mark still with the 2 charges, causes vulnerability and summons 2 unstable horrors at target location. What can I say, I really want to summon minions out of a weapon. Weapons are the most active part of your build and I love summoning things.
   

That's about it for me. I have other ideas, like Dagger skill 2 turning into a flip skill when you begin bleeding for a few seconds rather than it just getting a buff which doesn't have good synergy with other party members who might accidentally cleanse you and prevent the boost. But this post is more about pushing a bit more synergy and fun with Marks for some unique builds. As well as Bone minion's numbers being increased to 3 and have it auto summon on the ammo system like Mantras do, but that's another post I've made a while back.

[Dadnir.5038]

I think that, if the devs feel the need to add new ways to summon minions, it should be tied to the shrouds instead of the weapons skillsets.

[Lily.1935]

5 hours ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

I think that, if the devs feel the need to add new ways to summon minions, it should be tied to the shrouds instead of the weapons skillsets.

Adding means to summon very temporary minion to some weapons wouldn't harm a shroudless elite spec in the future. (I say shroudless because that would be better for controlling and summoning minions than a shroud.)

[Dadnir.5038]

1 minute ago, Lily.1935 said:

Adding means to summon very temporary minion to some weapons wouldn't harm a shroudless elite spec in the future. (I say shroudless because that would be better for controlling and summoning minions than a shroud.)

You'll always have a shroud, even scourge have it's own "shroud".

[Lily.1935]

6 minutes ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

You'll always have a shroud, even scourge have it's own "shroud".

That's a semantics argument. You know full well what I mean.

[Dadnir.5038]

1 minute ago, Lily.1935 said:

That's a semantics argument. You know full well what I mean.

Sure, but I still think it's better to tie an eventual minion summon to the shroud than to a select few weapon sets. At the very least it would allow the way to many minion centric traits to have a "reason d'être" no matter which weapon set you use.

[Lily.1935]

17 minutes ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

Sure, but I still think it's better to tie an eventual minion summon to the shroud than to a select few weapon sets. At the very least it would allow the way to many minion centric traits to have a "reason d'être" no matter which weapon set you use.

Well, I do think temporary minions being on weapon skills would be good with the permanent minions being utility skills. We can reasonably assume that a new necromancer elite spec centered around minions wouldn't have minion utility skills and the shroud skills would give a limited number of a very specific minion.

With this suggestion at most you could get 8 jagged horrors at once since that was the upper limit of the cap I suggested. Without a cap, yeah it could be an issue since Staff has such short cooldown marks. My personal opinion on that would be limit it to probably 5 or 6. 8 wouldn't be an issue in PvE due culling. I think it could be as low as 3 in PvP and it would still be pretty good. Also the unstable horrors which we see from summon maddness only live for 6 seconds. so you couldn't maintain them indefinitely. Which is the only actual minion specifically added to a weapon.

Having minions available from core on weapons gives players more of a means to interact with enemies while playing a minion build which is mostly passive. It doesn't change the over all passivity of the minion spammer but it would open up a more focused Minion master build that uses these minions more as walking bombs which is another very popular style of Minion master.

This doesn't strip design space for an elite spec either as command skills like the ranger has which influence minions can offer further options giving a buffer style minion spec which can supplement a bombing sub style added into it.

I'm also not really thrilled about the idea of waiting another 2 years to not get a minion elite spec either. I'd like to summon Minions from my staff and book(focus) because for me, that fills a fantasy I have for the game. I COULD make a viable minion build in fractals or raids with this too. It wouldn't be as strong as some other builds but it could be strong enough.

[Rhingeim.3974]

Well, in general they can simply rework DM traits to buff permanent minions instead of design whole system about temporary minions from weapon skills. 

 

In general, there're only few tweaks needed for necro minions became good:

 

1) scale their stats from character stats (like current mech inherit mechanist stats) 

 

2) add traits for minions providing some buffs around them. Bone minions grants fury, flesh golem pulse might, something like that (again, similar to mech skills) 

 

Minions sustain is fine. Sustain they can provide to master is overtuned in my opinion (DM+BM = immortality), but their damage is extremely low to be viable in end-game PVE. 

[Kaladel.1670]

2 hours ago, Rhingeim.3974 said:

Well, in general they can simply rework DM traits to buff permanent minions instead of design whole system about temporary minions from weapon skills. 

 

In general, there're only few tweaks needed for necro minions became good:

 

1) scale their stats from character stats (like current mech inherit mechanist stats) 

 

2) add traits for minions providing some buffs around them. Bone minions grants fury, flesh golem pulse might, something like that (again, similar to mech skills) 

 

Minions sustain is fine. Sustain they can provide to master is overtuned in my opinion (DM+BM = immortality), but their damage is extremely low to be viable in end-game PVE. 

1- Golem is the main mechanic of the Mechanist, minions are more akin to turrets and spirits
2- Except they are more mobile/permanent. Giving them boon share would probably be a bit too strong.

And both would be promoting passive gameplay.

The best solution probably resides in a rework of the traits (as other have already said above) and making their active skills better and/or adding some QoL (Blood Fiend and Bone Minions could fonction like mantra and auto-reappear after the CD, for instance).

 

[Rhingeim.3974]

15 minutes ago, Kaladel.1670 said:

1- Golem is the main mechanic of the Mechanist, minions are more akin to turrets and spirits
2- Except they are more mobile/permanent. Giving them boon share would probably be a bit too strong.

And both would be promoting passive gameplay.

The best solution probably resides in a rework of the traits (as other have already said above) and making their active skills better and/or adding some QoL (Blood Fiend and Bone Minions could fonction like mantra and auto-reappear after the CD, for instance).

 

1) Well, I'm not see any problem in upping necro minions with the same idea - I think majority of people see necromancer as minion based spec. And as minion spec, it's pretty weak in GW2 in comparison to other professions with pets. 

 

2) I'm absolutely fine with passive gameplay. Probably the whole history of necromancer as class in game industry was about being behind minions, doing some support. I've created a necromancer in first place for passive gameplay without pianorolling between skills, kits etc... I would gladly trade shroud for extra powerful minion or overall buff of minions) 

Edited June 30, 2022 by Rhingeim.3974

[Lily.1935]

7 hours ago, Rhingeim.3974 said:

Well, in general they can simply rework DM traits to buff permanent minions instead of design whole system about temporary minions from weapon skills. 

 

In general, there're only few tweaks needed for necro minions became good:

 

1) scale their stats from character stats (like current mech inherit mechanist stats) 

 

2) add traits for minions providing some buffs around them. Bone minions grants fury, flesh golem pulse might, something like that (again, similar to mech skills) 

 

Minions sustain is fine. Sustain they can provide to master is overtuned in my opinion (DM+BM = immortality), but their damage is extremely low to be viable in end-game PVE. 

Their is no new system in my suggestion. We already have traits which trigger effects based on a set of situations. To add to that, Not a single minion I suggested be added for this is a new minion. They all already exist in the game.

Also, I disagree. There's a lot of things necromancer needs for minions to be good. Inheriting stats should be baseline, I agree, however that IS a new design space the minions were not built with in mind. So that's a lot of work. And giving minions a means to buff allies might work for an elite specialization but that's not a core feature minions should have.

Also, My post wasn't about sustain. It was about making them more fun and engaging in content. Which fun is subjective at the end of the day. Minions now, imo, are not fun.

[DeathsProphet.7460]

Giving minions utility beyond their current defensive use would be best accomplished through a new elite spec imo. I fear there isn't enough room within the core skills and trait lines to give minions functionality beyond the passive low-hitting playstyle.

Nevertheless, however minions are eventually reworked/supplemented, I find the below important:

-Give the player more control over their minions' attacks and movements. Add commands similar to pet/mechanist or use use a ground target-like feature to order your minions to specific spots. These orders could buff your minions with swiftness or something.

-Utilize the existing minions rather than creating a new "class" of minions tied to shroud or weapon skills. Things could get "messy" if minion summons are added to a weapon/shroud. Instead, use a weapon/shroud to buff your existing minions in significant ways. For example, a grandmaster could revolve around the ability to summon multiple of the same types of minions. If NPC necros can summon multiple flesh golems, why can't we!? Another idea is a trait that visually modifies your minions and grants inherited stat percentages from the player. Even though the existing minions summons are being used, there are many options to significantly overhaul their role and abilities.

-Give minions the ability to deal "real" damage. "But this will be OP and lead to passive gameplay!" Easy solution, minions only become strong when their master sacrifices his/her health. Glass cannon type trade off. 

-Give use a tool to view our minions' health. Bring back the GW1 feature 

🙂

Edited July 1, 2022 by DeathsProphet.7460
Formatting

[GoingMenthol.7281]

I'd prefer the minions to be like how they were in Guild Wars 1; shorter life with health degen, but much more useful with condition application or the golem being buffed like it's an anime protagonist

[DeathsProphet.7460]

6 hours ago, GoingMenthol.7281 said:

I'd prefer the minions to be like how they were in Guild Wars 1; shorter life with health degen, but much more useful with condition application or the golem being buffed like it's an anime protagonist

  ^This

The health degen worked as a tradeoff to actually allow your minions to deal serious damage. We need a similar tradeoff in this game.

Edited July 1, 2022 by DeathsProphet.7460

[ZDragon.3046]

On 6/30/2022 at 2:37 AM, Dadnir.5038 said:

I think that, if the devs feel the need to add new ways to summon minions, it should be tied to the shrouds instead of the weapons skillsets.

gross.... i dont like this idea unless its done with some newer elite spec or core necro only.

[ZDragon.3046]

20 hours ago, Rhingeim.3974 said:

Well, in general they can simply rework DM traits to buff permanent minions instead of design whole system about temporary minions from weapon skills. 

 

In general, there're only few tweaks needed for necro minions became good:

 

1) scale their stats from character stats (like current mech inherit mechanist stats) 

 

2) add traits for minions providing some buffs around them. Bone minions grants fury, flesh golem pulse might, something like that (again, similar to mech skills) 

 

Minions sustain is fine. Sustain they can provide to master is overtuned in my opinion (DM+BM = immortality), but their damage is extremely low to be viable in end-game PVE. 

I prefer they did not go down this road with necro mechanist is already a big big problem right now thats causing all kinds of negativity in the community of this game we do not need more classes trying to be like it. 

 

Minions should act more like mesmer phantoms where they pop out do a powerful attack then die and leave like a jaggad horror or something for 10-15s some of the minions could even have ammo counts but overall lets not go with the whole keeping x minon alive provides x boon idea its a horrible trend that is making the game balance a hot mess right now and necromancer both in pve and especially in pvp and wvw  DOES NOT need that hot mess of a balance disaster tied to it.

[ZDragon.3046]

On 6/29/2022 at 1:53 PM, Lily.1935 said:

Mark skills and minion skills are both things I've been thinking about for quite some time. Although I've made probably 30+ posts on Minions I haven't spoken too much on mark skills and I Wanted to make some suggestions about marks in relation to Minions and two weapons. Main hand Dagger and Focus. This might be an odd combination but I don't want to write a post that requires 2 pages on every single necromancer change I'd like to see like I've done in the past so i'll keep it to a couple ideas and how they could relate to each other.
 

• Death Nova: A Change to this trait to give it synergy with Marks. Granting the trait the ability to summon a Jagged horror when one of your marks is triggered at that location. Death nova is a unique trait and the only Minion trait I feel is worth keeping because of its uniqueness. And giving it a means to summon minions when deaths aren't happening could aid the Minion master in areas they otherwise would struggle to keep their minions up would be nice. A number limit on Jagged horrors would be fine by me, between 5-8 seems reasonable.
• Dark Pact: Make this a 600 Range mark skill. Its Immobilize could be dropped to 2 seconds and boon corrupt to 1 to compensate in PvP or WvW. This could give this skill some unique crowd control. It could afford to be powerful since it does inflict you with bleed and its range is still fairly short.
• Soul Grasp Change to homunculi Curse(Or something): Make this a 1,200 range mark still with the 2 charges, causes vulnerability and summons 2 unstable horrors at target location. What can I say, I really want to summon minions out of a weapon. Weapons are the most active part of your build and I love summoning things.
   

That's about it for me. I have other ideas, like Dagger skill 2 turning into a flip skill when you begin bleeding for a few seconds rather than it just getting a buff which doesn't have good synergy with other party members who might accidentally cleanse you and prevent the boost. But this post is more about pushing a bit more synergy and fun with Marks for some unique builds. As well as Bone minion's numbers being increased to 3 and have it auto summon on the ammo system like Mantras do, but that's another post I've made a while back.

I've proposed marks on weapon skills a for a long while now. That said i dont think we we are going to easily get tons of traits that are going to simultaneously boost marks.
Making dark pact a mark would be fine but the immobilize would likely need to be dropped to 1s if we are talking about aoe immobilization on a common weapon skill. 

Offhand dagger (enfeebling blood) could also be turned into a mark while we are on the subject of daggers.
Soul Grasp is honestly fine and I would still find it hard to use in pve because its not the problem skill on focus. Boon ripping skills in pve need to deal increased damage to foes that have no boons (as a pve exclusive thing) many other classes that have boon rip tied onto their skills function this way. Additionally doing a change like this could be the boost necro weapons need to actually deal a bit more outside of shroud. In other words make spinal shivers actually worth something in pve first then we can maybe circle back around to soul grasp.

 

Edited July 1, 2022 by ZDragon.3046

[Rhingeim.3974]

4 hours ago, ZDragon.3046 said:

I prefer they did not go down this road with necro mechanist is already a big big problem right now thats causing all kinds of negativity in the community of this game we do not need more classes trying to be like it. 

 

Minions should act more like mesmer phantoms where they pop out do a powerful attack then die and leave like a jaggad horror or something for 10-15s some of the minions could even have ammo counts but overall lets not go with the whole keeping x minon alive provides x boon idea its a horrible trend that is making the game balance a hot mess right now and necromancer both in pve and especially in pvp and wvw  DOES NOT need that hot mess of a balance disaster tied to it.

 

Despite all negative, a lot of people, myself including, really like how mechanist is designed. 

 

With recent rework of rifle, I can avoid using engineer's kits (never liked them except flamethrower) while still pull reasonable damage (and people who like kits can deal even more) 

 

Jade mech itself is really useful, with decent damage and survivability, with cohesive interaction with character because of stat inheritance and selected traits. I really like the idea of build crafting not only around character, but around jade mech also, to create synergy between both. I don't need to constantly re summon it when changing instances, can control it's behaviour (necro minions on rampage trying to kill everything around is probably the biggest problem for minion necro in end-game) 

 

Would really like to see something similar for necro, especially something like risen abomination + rifle 🙂

 

Guess new elite spec can probably throw away shroud mechanic for traits that can convert existing minions to more powerful ones with additional utility on top of that. 

[ZDragon.3046]

57 minutes ago, Rhingeim.3974 said:

 

Despite all negative, a lot of people, myself including, really like how mechanist is designed. 

 

With recent rework of rifle, I can avoid using engineer's kits (never liked them except flamethrower) while still pull reasonable damage (and people who like kits can deal even more) 

 

Jade mech itself is really useful, with decent damage and survivability, with cohesive interaction with character because of stat inheritance and selected traits. I really like the idea of build crafting not only around character, but around jade mech also, to create synergy between both. I don't need to constantly re summon it when changing instances, can control it's behaviour (necro minions on rampage trying to kill everything around is probably the biggest problem for minion necro in end-game) 

 

Would really like to see something similar for necro, especially something like risen abomination + rifle 🙂

 

Guess new elite spec can probably throw away shroud mechanic for traits that can convert existing minions to more powerful ones with additional utility on top of that. 

Its less to do with how its designed and more of how it currently does a bit too much of everything the rifle changes are good although the damage may need to be adjusted. ITs more so the supply massive number of boons in addition to key boon kinda thing that concerns me. 

Im all for a minion rework of some sort but im not for tying a bunch of random boons to them. If anet wants to make minions good they will need to be more active and less passive from what they currently are. Like the jade mech is nice the rifle is nice but there are 2 things i would like to avoid. Making over powered passive minions and granting every boon in the game for long periods of time like engi does right now. 

Thats why I propose making them more like mesmer phantoms but making them far stronger than what they are now. Giving them trait synergy is fine but lets not do it via passive boon share that so man classes already have right now. 

 

As for a shroud that gives you stronger minions instead anet kinda missed out on that idea. Ideally thats what scourge could have been. I was hoping scourge would be more like the warlock from blade and soul that gets one powerful immobile minion that you can only move around with a few skills and gives a powerful effect to the caster an its allies depending on how you trait it. But nope...  scourge was just blast barrier and aoes all over the place.

[Rhingeim.3974]

Permanent minions is something that defines necromancer for me. We already have temporary summons from Lich Rune set, so I would rather not change necro minions to temporary ones, especially in elite specialization. 

 

Mechanist design and recent changes to it make me think that ANet's design team is thinking about balancing all professions around complex and LI approach, so each profession ideally will have at least one option of LI viable builds for new players to be able to take part in various end-game content. 

[DeathsProphet.7460]

49 minutes ago, Rhingeim.3974 said:

Permanent minions is something that defines necromancer for me. We already have temporary summons from Lich Rune set, so I would rather not change necro minions to temporary ones, especially in elite specialization. 

I couldn't agree more. Turning minions into phantasm-like entities would simply be a re-skin of what the Mesmer already offers. What we need is more variability with minions.

Just like the varying trait lines to customize the Jade Mech, I would love to see both offensive and defensive options for minion builds. Whether this could be accomplished by reworking DM and not through a new elite spec, I'm not so sure about that. 

Edited July 1, 2022 by DeathsProphet.7460

[Lily.1935]

14 hours ago, GoingMenthol.7281 said:

I'd prefer the minions to be like how they were in Guild Wars 1; shorter life with health degen, but much more useful with condition application or the golem being buffed like it's an anime protagonist

SHort lived with condition application like the minions of my suggestion are. Granted there isn't health degen, that used to be a thing on Jagged horrors. that's how reaper got over 100 bleed stacks in raids thanks to a combination of druid and 66% skill recharge reduction from  chronomancer.

Ironically, Anet solved that issue in GW1 but made the same mistake in gw2 as they did in GW1, but instead of giving it a cap on the number of jagged horrors you could have they gave them a 30 second life span and completely killed the minion mast reaper build back during HoT meta.

[Lily.1935]

1 hour ago, Rhingeim.3974 said:

Permanent minions is something that defines necromancer for me. We already have temporary summons from Lich Rune set, so I would rather not change necro minions to temporary ones, especially in elite specialization. 

 

Mechanist design and recent changes to it make me think that ANet's design team is thinking about balancing all professions around complex and LI approach, so each profession ideally will have at least one option of LI viable builds for new players to be able to take part in various end-game content. 

Its players like yourself why I didn't suggest changing the actual Minion skills. I like degenerating minions, some people like permanent minions. And that's okay. Which my suggestion only gives temporary minions through a single weapon skill and a trait. Nothing that impacts the skills at all.

Whenever I make minion suggestions like these, I always consider people who enjoy that play style, so no need to worry about that.