2023 ideas for minion rework

[Dadnir.5038]

New year, new ideas. Obviously the chance for what I'll suggest to happen are abysmal but... Why not?

This time I'll go with a concept that bring minions closer to the necromancer's traitlines and main mechanism (the shroud). If the devs don't want to reduce the number of minion traits, let's increase them.

General:

• Now minions are considered "downed allies" despite moving and, as such, have a 2.5% health degen.
• Skills and traits that would revive allies now affect minions, restauring their health.
• Skills that allow one to stomp a downed foe affect minions, destroying them.
• One cannot stand close to a minion and initiate the stomp or revive mechanism, only profession skills work.

Minions:

• Taste of death: no longer sacrifice your minion (They do have natural degeneration now so it's unnecessary)
• Rigor mortis: It no longer immobilize a foe, it now apply slow (2s per hits) instead. CD reduced to 20s.
• Putrid explosion: This skill and death nova are redundant. The skill is now replaced by Pounce: Grant superspeed (3s) to your bone minions. CD 8s.

Blood magic:

• Last rite now affect minions preventing health loss (If this aura do have a target cap, it now prioritize minion).
• Life from death: Now additionally grant fury (5s) to minions that are withing the area of effect. (The boon application is independant of the healing fact and only affect minions. Capped at 6 minions)
• Transfusion: Now additionally grant might (8s) per pulse to minions that are within the area of effect. (The boon application is independant of the healing fact and only affect minions. Capped at 6 minions)

Death magic:

• Flesh of the master: The trait is changed in such a way that it now grant an additional 10 pts of vitality per stack and provide both the necromancer and it's minions with carapace stacks. The minions only receive the stacks that are provided by the number of minions controled. (the more minions, the more health and toughness they will have, possibly even power if deathly might is sloted)
• Necromantic corruption: The conditions are now only transfered upon hitting a foe with a minion's active skill. No longer increase minions damage, instead it grant resistance (4s) to all minions whenever you use a minion's active skill.

Spite:

• Death embrace: The 25% increase of damage while downed apply to your minions.

Curse:

• Furious demise: The precision buff also apply to your minions and is even doubled for them while you are in shroud.

Soul reaping:

• Vital persistence: The increased incoming healing component is also applied to your minions and is raised to 30% for them while you are in shroud.

Edited January 6, 2023 by Dadnir.5038

[PolarBear.3961]

I dont like degening minions. Id rather just have them share my stats like the jade mech does (like 10%).

[Asum.4960]

As long as Minions do <200 DPS on average, giving them +25% Damage, Fury, Might or even Quickness is pretty much pointless. 

There is no way to scale such a pitiful baseline up enough to justify their existence - especially when having to further sacrifice all personal DPS by taking DM and BM to make them do anything at all, which in turn results in a meme build which does nothing but survive (and yet still worse than other non-minion setups with still exponentially more damage).

 

As a GW1 player the degenerating minion health and having to manage them appeals to me, but they do need a significant rework to make any concept work. 

I theoretically like the idea of sprinkling in more minion Traits into other Traitlines (as additional, not replacement, effects - to synergise with DM as central enhancing line) - and I even considered what could have been if Necro had Minions as weapon skill mechanic, similar to Guardian's Symbols, Mesmer's Phantasms and such (Dark Pact summoning a Life Stealing Minion, Grasping Dead popping out a bunch of Bone Minions ready to explode on the crippled targets at the end of it's cast or creating a Minion inflicting Bleed at the location, Locust Swarm actually summoning a swarm to chase enemies or repeatedly triggering Death Nova's around you, Unholy Feast spawning a ranged Minion etc.) - and/or if Staff was a dedicated temporary Minion summoning weapon, rather than spamming out Marks. 

 

I think the current iteration of passive Utility skills that barely do anything beyond being an inconvenience due to either keeping you in combat in OW or getting destroyed by a multitude of mechanics in instanced content - just to go on full cooldown with lengthy cast times once back, is pretty much unsalvageable though. 

Edited January 6, 2023 by Asum.4960

[Dadnir.5038]

13 hours ago, Asum.4960 said:

As long as Minions do <200 DPS on average, giving them +25% Damage, Fury, Might or even Quickness is pretty much pointless.

I look at it in a different manner.

The wiki list the amount of dps from each minion

Quote

Their approximate DPS numbers(unbuffed) are as follows: Bone fiend 160, Bone minions(together) 115, Blood fiend 100, Flesh golem 670, Flesh wurm 260, Shadow fiend 380.

Just allowing them to crit (thanks to more precision and fury) more than double each dps output. 25 might stack increase the base power they do have by roughly a third. So you could say that offering them a reliable source of might can increase their dps by 33%.

So, for example, Blood fiend which have a convenient 100 dps would do 133 dps with 25 might and 332.5 dps if it could reliably crit. What I suggest already triple their damage output (and that's without taking into account death's embrace 25% increase in damage which would bring blood fiend's dps into the 400 dps).

Now, if you look at a very basic line up of minions: Bone fiend, bone minion, blood fiend, shadow fiend and flesh golem. We are talking about 160+115+100+380+670= 1425 dps that would basically be brought to 5700 dps. With vampiric you could probably flirt with the 6k dps just from your minions.

 

Again, I'm just allowing minion to get boons and crit reliably, resulting in 6k minion dps instead of 1.5k for a core necromancer (it's gonna be harder for e-specs to reach those heights).

[The Boz.2038]

Stat inheritance.
That is where any minion-related convo should start.
No stat inheritance? DOA.

Edited January 7, 2023 by The Boz.2038

[Asum.4960]

7 hours ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

Just allowing them to crit (thanks to more precision and fury) more than double each dps output. 25 might stack increase the base power they do have by roughly a third. So you could say that offering them a reliable source of might can increase their dps by 33%.

So, for example, Blood fiend which have a convenient 100 dps would do 133 dps with 25 might and 332.5 dps if it could reliably crit. What I suggest already triple their damage output (and that's without taking into account death's embrace 25% increase in damage which would bring blood fiend's dps into the 400 dps).

Now, if you look at a very basic line up of minions: Bone fiend, bone minion, blood fiend, shadow fiend and flesh golem. We are talking about 160+115+100+380+670= 1425 dps that would basically be brought to 5700 dps. With vampiric you could probably flirt with the 6k dps just from your minions.

 

Again, I'm just allowing minion to get boons and crit reliably, resulting in 6k minion dps instead of 1.5k for a core necromancer (it's gonna be harder for e-specs to reach those heights).

You try to make that sound impressive - but even 6k DPS isn't, if it costs you your Heal, all Utilities and your Elite skill, and most importantly, requires both Death- and Blood Magic to run, as well as now Spite (and I don't see how your suggested Traits would maintain things like 25 Might on all minions for that to be assumed, nor 100% Crit Chance - even if you could manage to stack your minions on target to buff them all, but regardless). 

So even with those assumptions, that's a full minion Core Necro which maybe does ~12k DPS total, for half of which it relies heavily on awful minion AI - which, even if the DPS wasn't still awful, would be unusable in countless instanced encounters which regularly delete all minions to be put on full CD with little phase transitions and transforms, or see the minions mess with mechanics due to bosses having aggro/teleport to furthest target mechanics and the like. 

With that, even after tripling their damage, it at best would still just be a low damage OW build for players who don't really know better or insist on it for theme - except there they will now constantly die away to degeneration if you don't constantly generate LF and spam Transfusion on CD, putting them either on CD when you need them or having to lengthily resummon them before every fight - as well as seeing their one single outstanding Utility (especially in PvP) nerfed with the passively spammed condi Transfer of Necromantic Corruption. 

Bone Minions also lose their one single niche Utility in allowing multiple Necros (esp. Scourges) to feed each other more LF with the minion sacrifice - granted, most selfishly pick Shadow Fiend anyway, but still. 

 

These changes would just kind of trap them between the current "permanent" but useless and a potential proper rework to highly temporary but potent, into still suffering from all the current base design making them still fairly useless, while also temporary. 

 

So unfortunately I stand by my initial response.

This is one step forward (in DPS) and two steps back (in Usability and Utility).

Edited January 7, 2023 by Asum.4960

[Gendalfs.7521]

My first character here when I started GW2 was necro and it carried me thought all Story and OW.

Only thing I really hated about minions was no such button as ''Follow Me/Disengage''. 

That resulted in a way that if you got knocked off your mount in a middle of enemies, GG. Ofc you could survive, but when there was a meta rush It was SO annoying, impossibility to remount.