Minions And their Traits

[Lily.1935]

Minions are in a bit of an Odd spot in GW2. They have a very strong cult following while at the same time being pretty poor at everything. Even if you are going to roam in Open world PvE there are more optimal options for you to take, since minions can't target multiple foes at once and don't have great damage output. They're Okay in open world, but they wont help you much when trying to get credit for events that will end soon because of their slow nature. So I wanted to have a discussion about these minions. In the past I've made some pretty extreme suggestions for changes, but here I feel like making a simpler change that might give them more usability. And I feel that the Minions skills as well as the traits need to be addressed in regards to this.

 

**Minon Skills**

A few things about the minions skills is they are on their way to being good, but just aren't quite there yet in some cases. You have fringe uses for some, Shadow Fiend is used for its life force, Flesh wurm is used as a way to teleport up on platforms and so on. But its rare that they function together very well. One aspect I'd like to change about that is Give the minion skills Charges. So when you summon them after a while a charge will refill and summon another one until you've hit the max number of minions of that type. So even if one of those minions dies, it wont go on cool down unless all minions of that type die.

* **Bone Minions**: For Bone Minions I'd increase the number of the minions you summon from 2 to 3. It would have the shortest charge recharge of all minion skills and you'd summon 1 at the start and as time passed more minions would begin to pop up until you hit the cap. Bone minions would be easily recyclable for damage but be the bulk of your army.

* **Blood Fiend**: You'd gain 2 charges for this but the healing and damage they'd each provide for you would be reduced by half. You'd summon one and another would pop up about 7 seconds later and you could use them to heal yourself. These Minions would also have a reduced total health pool as opposed to their current version. The sacrifice would be on a 2 second cool down but provide less healing than it currently does.

* **Shadow Fiend**: You'd Gain a charge count of 2 and a new shadow fiend would pop up after 10 seconds. Each shadow fiend would teleport at the same time and each one would provide you with 6% life force as opposed to the current 10%. Their health pools would be reduced compared to what it is currently.

* **Bone Fiend**: Charge count of 2 and a new bone fiend would pop up after 15 seconds. These ones would not much of a reduction in health and damage as compared to others. They would be a bit more powerful as a whole since their charge count is on a longer cool down.

* **Flesh wurm**: Charge count of 1. No additional charges would be given to this skill without traiting for it. And no changes to it otherwise. However, if you do trait for it, your flesh wurm will spit in a random location after 20 seconds which will spawn a second Flesh wurm. Your original flesh wurm will be prioritized over the new one when using

necrotic travel unless it is out of range to teleport you the full distance. Then the second will be used.

* **Flesh Golem**: No charge count, no changes.

 

The way that I look at the minion skills is that they should be high in numbers but fairly easy to dispatch on their own. The charges give them a means to snowball without changing their over all feel and giving them some more power. Minions shouldn't be difficult for a player using massive amounts of AoE attacks, so these will go down fairly quickly without too much issue in PvP or WvW.

 

**Traits:**

The Traits honestly shouldn't be set up the way they are. In order to use minions you need to dedicate yourself to 3 traits to maximize minion use. But I feel this isn't a great idea. In this regard we should be treating the traits much like we treat the turret traits. Compress them into a single grandmaster trait while leaving room in Death magic for 2 new traits that could aid minions, but aren't their only focus.

* **Grandmaster:** Death Nova: Minion skills Gain an additional charge. Whenever a Non jagged horror minion would die, summon a Jagged horror and poison and damage foes. Whenever a enemy or player dies, reduce the recharge of your minion charges.(Jagged horror recharge is 5 seconds per minion death) _A bit of a mouth soup and for that I'm sorry. The point is though to increase your numbers with the minions and give you benefit when killing foes. Minions should be this sort of slow swarm that gets stronger the more death is around and I feel this as the sole trait would work very well for that._

* **Master:** Boon of Creation: Whenever you summon a creature grant allies around that summon 3 seconds of protection and resistance. 240 radius. 5 seconds internal cool down. _I went back and forth on this one. Should it remove conditions? Should it convert conditions? I had a hard time deciding and I'm still not entirely sure what would be too strong, too weak, I wasn't sure. I knew that without a cool down you could give people massive amounts of whatever it provided and that condition conversion would be OP. The biggest point of this though is that it would work with Shades as well as minion or even spirits if we were ever to get that skill type which would offer some support to allies. The current master trait is way way too powerful for what I'm trying to achieve with these changes. Each minion transferring while I'm increasing the numbers would be too much, and the damage increase with the numbers would also be too much._

* **Adept:** Grizzly Salvage: Summons you control now grant 3% life force when they die or fade away. 2 second internal cool down. _Shades, Minions and spirits(if we get spirits) would all count for this. Your shades would grant you a bit of that life force back making this useful to Scourge while minions at the moment would really benefit from this. I hope this one is good enough or not too good because it took me a while to figure out what the minor should do._

 

I realize that what I'm doing with the traits is I'm overall making the minions weaker and removing some of that defensive utility that they passively give to the players. The issue with that I feel is that the Death line is already defensive as it is and a Minion master shouldn't have that extra defenses just by standing there at the start of a fight. Minions should snowball but that snow ball should be stoppable if an enemy is specked right for it. Yeah I removed some condi cleans from it, but this is an area I feel that the minions are too strong in right now. And there isn't any reason not to believe that some of the benefits I removed couldn't be given to an elite spec that specializes in minions.

 

All and all, what are your guys's thoughts on this? I'm trying to work things out because I want to play a minion build, but I don't want it to be overwhelming. I always don't want to hyper focus death to minions only and give more traits in the death line more options for other builds we could see in the future. Let me know how you feel about it, anything you'd do differently? Tell me in the comments.

[derd.6413]

the main problem with minions is their traits. the skills themselves are mostly fine with each having their use.

 

also give us underwater golem pls.

[Lily.1935]

> @"derd.6413" said:

> the main problem with minions is their traits. the skills themselves are mostly fine with each having their use.

>

> also give us underwater golem pls.

 

When's the last time you used Bone minions? They are a bad skill. And the minions themselves don't function well as a unite. Individually they can be mediocre but together they're pretty terrible. You should want to use 2-5 minion skills on a minion build. Consider the old Minion master build before the jagged horror nerf, It used a grand total of one minion skill. Blood fiend. And its minions were all produced through Lich form. Now, minions have no real good use. And no, Leveling isn't a good use and I mentioned in Open world they're sub optimal.

[Brujeria.7536]

Bad idea, really. It does not fix minions you just have more of them and more frequent. This doenst really fix their lack of DPS or sluggish nature. Besides, Minion traits should be condensed to one single trait, streamlining it with every other utility skill.

 

The best solution is to change the minion actives to something good, that can be used by A.) more builds or B.) in minion builds. Shadow Fiend active, for example, is on a good way - its an okayish defensive skill. The port needs to appear instant, so its reliable, and the minion skill itself needs a much lower cast time (or instant, with a few seconds untill the minion really is "there" ) and a couple seconds less cooldown. That way, its a good defensive skill against single targets - lifeforce , blind weakness and chill instant is worth a slot as a defensive skill in many builds.

[derd.6413]

> @"Lily.1935" said:

> > @"derd.6413" said:

> > the main problem with minions is their traits. the skills themselves are mostly fine with each having their use.

> >

> > also give us underwater golem pls.

>

> When's the last time you used Bone minions? They are a bad skill. And the minions themselves don't function well as a unite. Individually they can be mediocre but together they're pretty terrible. You should want to use 2-5 minion skills on a minion build. Consider the old Minion master build before the jagged horror nerf, It used a grand total of one minion skill. Blood fiend. And its minions were all produced through Lich form. Now, minions have no real good use. And no, Leveling isn't a good use and I mentioned in Open world they're sub optimal.

 

the main "upside" to bone minions is that they get more out of minion traits which as we established are bad and just because one skill is bad doesn't mean all of them are bad. you're also forgetting that in the lich minion-mancer build the minions that make up your army have deteriorating health + used an exploit allowing you to spam a high cooldown skill (unless you're talking about something else).

 

your suggestion isn't even to make minions better, it's just to give necro more minions. and i would prefere better minions over more bad minions.

 

as for your trait suggestions:

 

death nova has potential, might need some tweaking during testing

 

Grizzly Salvage: i'm certain minions already give LF on death already

 

not a hundred percent on boon of creation tho.

 

also why add shades to certain traits?

[Lily.1935]

> @"derd.6413" said:

> > @"Lily.1935" said:

> > > @"derd.6413" said:

> > > the main problem with minions is their traits. the skills themselves are mostly fine with each having their use.

> > >

> > > also give us underwater golem pls.

> >

> > When's the last time you used Bone minions? They are a bad skill. And the minions themselves don't function well as a unite. Individually they can be mediocre but together they're pretty terrible. You should want to use 2-5 minion skills on a minion build. Consider the old Minion master build before the jagged horror nerf, It used a grand total of one minion skill. Blood fiend. And its minions were all produced through Lich form. Now, minions have no real good use. And no, Leveling isn't a good use and I mentioned in Open world they're sub optimal.

>

> the main "upside" to bone minions is that they get more out of minion traits which as we established are bad and just because one skill is bad doesn't mean all of them are bad. you're also forgetting that in the lich minion-mancer build the minions that make up your army have deteriorating health + used an exploit allowing you to spam a high cooldown skill (unless you're talking about something else).

>

> your suggestion isn't even to make minions better, it's just to give necro more minions. and i would prefere better minions over more bad minions.

>

> as for your trait suggestions:

>

> death nova has potential, might need some tweaking during testing

>

> Grizzly Salvage: i'm certain minions already give LF on death already

>

> not a hundred percent on boon of creation tho.

>

> also why add shades to certain traits?

 

Only 2 minions give life force on death. Flesh Wurm and Flesh Golem. The other minions don't. As for why include Shades? Pushing more along the lines of a summoner to also provide benefit from Death for Scourges. The way death is designed now it doesn't have much support. And it does make it better. More minions is better. Minions are supposed to be low quality high quantity in numbers. That's the point, its always been the point of minions. GW2 they tried to make them high quality and low numbers and achieved neither.

[Lily.1935]

> @"Brujeria.7536" said:

> Bad idea, really. It does not fix minions you just have more of them and more frequent. This doenst really fix their lack of DPS or sluggish nature. Besides, Minion traits should be condensed to one single trait, streamlining it with every other utility skill.

>

> The best solution is to change the minion actives to something good, that can be used by A.) more builds or B.) in minion builds. Shadow Fiend active, for example, is on a good way - its an okayish defensive skill. The port needs to appear instant, so its reliable, and the minion skill itself needs a much lower cast time (or instant, with a few seconds untill the minion really is "there" ) and a couple seconds less cooldown. That way, its a good defensive skill against single targets - lifeforce , blind weakness and chill instant is worth a slot as a defensive skill in many builds.

 

The traits all together are pretty powerful if the minions themselves are powerful. I have an issue with them. Especially the Master trait. That one is absolutely over powered if minions were to ever become viable. This I know to be true. Also the charges mean that minions will spawn automatically, so you don't have to worry so much about cool downs like you do now. Trust me, think about it a bit longer, its a good change.

[Anchoku.8142]

Very interesting suggestions, Lily. Here are a few more in addition to their current skills. (I know I am just dreaming.)

 

Jagged Horrors have super speed

Bone Minions become projectile finishers flying towards their target

Blood Fiend provides AoE condition condition consumption for allies as it blows up

Shadow Fiend makes 5% LF on its teleport

Bone Fiend inflicts agony on its target

Flesh Worm fully supports vertical teleports

Flesh Golem provides a 600 range conical stun before charging.

 

Traits

FotM and Necromatic Corruption seem fine.

Death Nova needs help because it is either unlikely, unnecessary, or impotent. Add "Sacrifice all minions to return from a downed state." - Anyone who builds for minions deserves extra help without being able to win a fight... maybe?

[Lily.1935]

> @"Anchoku.8142" said:

> Very interesting suggestions, Lily. Here are a few more in addition to their current skills. (I know I am just dreaming.)

>

> Jagged Horrors have super speed

> Bone Minions become projectile finishers flying towards their target

> Blood Fiend provides AoE condition condition consumption for allies as it blows up

> Shadow Fiend makes 5% LF on its teleport

> Bone Fiend inflicts agony on its target

> Flesh Worm fully supports vertical teleports

> Flesh Golem provides a 600 range conical stun before charging.

>

> Traits

> FotM and Necromatic Corruption seem fine.

> Death Nova needs help because it is either unlikely, unnecessary, or impotent. Add "Sacrifice all minions to return from a downed state." - Anyone who builds for minions deserves extra help without being able to win a fight... maybe?

 

Necrotic corruption is pretty absurd if you stop and think about it. Consider this, with the old Lich form minion master build, the necromancer would never suffer conditions for longer than a second because of how many minions were pulling conditions from you. You could take full corruption skills with no transfer of cleans on yourself and rely only on that trait and you'd never suffer a condition. Even with heavy application coming onto you. It was beyond insane. With the changes I'm suggesting necrotic corruption would absolutely become a problem.

 

FotM isn't as much of a problem, but I personally feel it could become problematic for enemies in PvP trying to dispatch the minions and having a hard time because of how bulky they could become. In PvE the trait doesn't matter in the slightest. Considering the focus clause in PvE, the minions wont be taking much damage unless being targeted specifically. As for the extra toughness? I feel that minions, since you have a wall of them, shouldn't be giving you extra toughness especially since they'll also give you a significant damage boost with the changes.

 

Bone Minions are actually blast finishers. The rest of them, I'm not sure what you're suggesting. Would you mind clarifying?

[Conqueror.3682]

Ok i read all your post and i find important to talk about this matter (also, being tired of read the sand savant thread in this forum).

 

As other posts said, i dont want more minions, i want better minions so giving charges to them its a bad idea, and a delay betwen a minion appearing , followed by a second one is no better, some active skills are designed for 1 minion. Per example, 2 bone fiends would be overpowered because you can root a target twice with little cooldown, same with 2 shadow fiends, because you could blind 2 targets at once.

 

And now, with respect to minions:

 

* Bone minion: The problem that i have with these minions is that their only use is to make them explode, ignoring the part where they hit their oponent with their negligible dps. If i would change this skill, i would make them a little stronger in their autoattacks and make them leap to the target and explode for single higher damage, let the trait do the aoe part and the skill hit for more in the main target, but i really want them to leap into the enemy, because sometimes i must wait them to run into the target to make them explode. Also reduce the cooldown to call them.

* Blood fiend: I see this minion more as a sigil than a minion, it has a pasive part which damages your oponent and heals you and the active part which you consume it and you gain health. If i would change this minion i would be to make my foe bleed to have a little more sinergy in condition builds and also heal your other minions with its autoattack.

* Shadow fiend: I see not much problem with this one, only i want to make its active attack faster, and why not giving it a 1 second fear?

* Bone fiend: I dont have idea with this minions immobilizes itself when uses its active skill, i would like to have a stun from this minion, i mean its rigor mortis, your body should be paralized.

* Flesh wurm: The problem that i have with this minion is that if i dont need to sacrifice it, it will stay in the same area and cant use it in another fight, i have left this minion very far to see that it dont despawns, so in order to use it in another fight i must use the active skill to sacrifice it, then wait for the long cooldown to use it again, nedless to say, this skill is useless in some meta events or running fractals.

* Flesh golem: "2 things, make it go underwater and make the charge skill instant or be a stunbreaker.

* Summon Madness: I dont have much problem with this skill, rather than the cooldown of lich form its inmense, i would like the horrors to give diferent conditions when they explode.

* "Rise!": not much to say about them, they are a good meatshield, they are a 25 second, undispelleable protection.

 

About the traits:

* Flesh of the master; Do minions really need more health? i would like them to heal you or give you regeneration when they die.

* Necromantic corruption: Minions are so dependable of this trait that it should be changed, 25% more damage should be baseline and this trait could be the minion cooldown reduction one, making them use their actives more often, but not improving their dps so drastically.

* Death nova: This is the trait that give an aoe component into minions, buti dont like the part of summoning horrors when you kill someone, generally i hate traits or effects that are conditioned in the death of enemies because these are useless in bosses, i would really prefer something like when your minions die they have a chance to reoriginate into a new minion or reducing the cooldown to summon a new minion or giving you alacrity, etc....

 

Well these are my suggestions, i dont want to suggest anything crazy because i know that it will not happen nd also i think that minions dont need to be reworked, just get some little adjustments to make them more enjoyable.

[Lily.1935]

> @"Conqueror.3682" said:

> Ok i read all your post and i find important to talk about this matter (also, being tired of read the sand savant thread in this forum).

>

> As other posts said, i dont want more minions, i want better minions so giving charges to them its a bad idea, and a delay betwen a minion appearing , followed by a second one is no better, some active skills are designed for 1 minion. Per example, 2 bone fiends would be overpowered because you can root a target twice with little cooldown, same with 2 shadow fiends, because you could blind 2 targets at once.

>

> And now, with respect to minions:

>

> * Bone minion: The problem that i have with these minions is that their only use is to make them explode, ignoring the part where they hit their oponent with their negligible dps. If i would change this skill, i would make them a little stronger in their autoattacks and make them leap to the target and explode for single higher damage, let the trait do the aoe part and the skill hit for more in the main target, but i really want them to leap into the enemy, because sometimes i must wait them to run into the target to make them explode. Also reduce the cooldown to call them.

> * Blood fiend: I see this minion more as a sigil than a minion, it has a pasive part which damages your oponent and heals you and the active part which you consume it and you gain health. If i would change this minion i would be to make my foe bleed to have a little more sinergy in condition builds and also heal your other minions with its autoattack.

> * Shadow fiend: I see not much problem with this one, only i want to make its active attack faster, and why not giving it a 1 second fear?

> * Bone fiend: I dont have idea with this minions immobilizes itself when uses its active skill, i would like to have a stun from this minion, i mean its rigor mortis, your body should be paralized.

> * Flesh wurm: The problem that i have with this minion is that if i dont need to sacrifice it, it will stay in the same area and cant use it in another fight, i have left this minion very far to see that it dont despawns, so in order to use it in another fight i must use the active skill to sacrifice it, then wait for the long cooldown to use it again, nedless to say, this skill is useless in some meta events or running fractals.

> * Flesh golem: "2 things, make it go underwater and make the charge skill instant or be a stunbreaker.

> * Summon Madness: I dont have much problem with this skill, rather than the cooldown of lich form its inmense, i would like the horrors to give diferent conditions when they explode.

> * "Rise!": not much to say about them, they are a good meatshield, they are a 25 second, undispelleable protection.

>

> About the traits:

> * Flesh of the master; Do minions really need more health? i would like them to heal you or give you regeneration when they die.

> * Necromantic corruption: Minions are so dependable of this trait that it should be changed, 25% more damage should be baseline and this trait could be the minion cooldown reduction one, making them use their actives more often, but not improving their dps so drastically.

> * Death nova: This is the trait that give an aoe component into minions, buti dont like the part of summoning horrors when you kill someone, generally i hate traits or effects that are conditioned in the death of enemies because these are useless in bosses, i would really prefer something like when your minions die they have a chance to reoriginate into a new minion or reducing the cooldown to summon a new minion or giving you alacrity, etc....

>

> Well these are my suggestions, i dont want to suggest anything crazy because i know that it will not happen nd also i think that minions dont need to be reworked, just get some little adjustments to make them more enjoyable.

 

The best minion builds across both GW1 and GW2 have always been about quantity not quality. The jagged horrors, the reaper rise build, the pvp minion stall build. In all these cases the minions have always been high numbers but low quality. And the higher quantity have been more popular as well. If we get a minion elite spec it'll be about quantity not quality. And I've seen each minion build the first skills to be dropped from the bar are the summon minion skills in favor of stronger utility to either aid in numbers or abuse the minimal minions they did have unique traits. The minion skills themselves are not high quality and this philosophy is built into the lore of the game as well.

 

I do agree that the damage increase should be baseline. Not the transfer. I really do find this frustrating though. Half the necromancer community wants the zerg minion build and the other half seems to want final fantasy summoner. I say wait till we get ritualist for your summoner style. Let's go with zerglings.

[Dadnir.5038]

The main issue, which I personnally don't mind and would even support, is that you remove something that I don't feel the devs are ready to let go. I'm talking about the condition transfert from the necromancer to their minons. Be it as it is, anet have a fetish for the necromancer which drive this poor profession toward condition manipulation and removing some of it in favor of "boons" seem like a slap in their face.

 

So like I said, I support the idea but I get the feeling that it's something that might be a bit difficult to swallow for the devs that seem very attached to this necromancer's concept of theirs.

 

NB.: It's important to not forget that blood magic's _vampiric_ is also mandatory for an optimal minion build. I often get the feeling that this single trait make minions more usefull than any of the 3 Death magic's minions traits.

[Kodokuna Akuma.9570]

Minions needs some love and the perfect thing for this would be an minion based elite spec. we have the reaper for our brawling power kind of spec, we got our scourge for our sup / condi dmg. Minion could very well be the next one.

[Lily.1935]

> @"Dadnir.5038" said:

> The main issue, which I personnally don't mind and would even support, is that you remove something that I don't feel the devs are ready to let go. I'm talking about the condition transfert from the necromancer to their minons. Be it as it is, anet have a fetish for the necromancer which drive this poor profession toward condition manipulation and removing some of it in favor of "boons" seem like a slap in their face.

>

> So like I said, I support the idea but I get the feeling that it's something that might be a bit difficult to swallow for the devs that seem very attached to this necromancer's concept of theirs.

>

> NB.: It's important to not forget that blood magic's _vampiric_ is also mandatory for an optimal minion build. I often get the feeling that this single trait make minions more usefull than any of the 3 Death magic's minions traits.

 

I don't know about blood being required. But it sure helps. Transfusion seems to be the biggest aid I've noticed. Or at least it was for more bunker style MMs.

 

As for necrotic corruption I'd Be fine with seeing this sort of ability as an active for a minion elite spec but as a passive it's kinda too much. Their is an argument to be made to make the 25% damage increase baseline. But I don't necessarily agree with that. But aside from that. People want minions to be good. We all share that.

[Lily.1935]

> @"Kodokuna Akuma.9570" said:

> Minions needs some love and the perfect thing for this would be an minion based elite spec. we have the reaper for our brawling power kind of spec, we got our scourge for our sup / condi dmg. Minion could very well be the next one.

 

I'm currently conceptualizing a minion elite spec now with a sylvari theme behind it. But I have to work out a few bugs in my idea. I have it's theme and how it works conceptually but it's got some quarks.

[Kodokuna Akuma.9570]

> @"Lily.1935" said:

> > @"Kodokuna Akuma.9570" said:

> > Minions needs some love and the perfect thing for this would be an minion based elite spec. we have the reaper for our brawling power kind of spec, we got our scourge for our sup / condi dmg. Minion could very well be the next one.

>

> I'm currently conceptualizing a minion elite spec now with a sylvari theme behind it. But I have to work out a few bugs in my idea. I have it's theme and how it works conceptually but it's got some quarks.

 

sylvari master race!

 

also would be interesting to see what you end up with ;p

[Catchyfx.5768]

Personaly.

 

Im ok with most of minions. but Bone minions...hell... there is no need to pick them up. On detonate they die where they are, and cast time is funny..:D no need.

 

Traits..idk. I would like trait where minions get your stats. I mean if you reach some stats 70% you affect your minions with those stats. more dps,condi,hp,toughness

 

[ZDragon.3046]

You are trying to fix the loss of minion death in a fight by adding more charges **(which is a good idea)** minions still have incredibly long summon times. In the event a minion dies before its 2nd charge happens? Would you need to actually start the summoning again. If summon times were cut all together how would it be controlled? Would they not start to appear until you were in combat or would you just alway have them hanging around (which causes visual clutter and extra computer strain on players who dont have the strongest pc builds) After all minions will be higher in overall number per person in your concept.

 

- I like your count charge idea but i feel you idea needs more polishing than you might have foreseen or cared to type out in this particular post which is fine no one has all the answers and this is just concept/ idea.

 

**The minions**

 

I dont see much functionality change across the minions proposed meaning "They are still going to be bad and near useless against people in wvw and pvp. For example **Bone minions** will still die in one or 2 cleaves before they can likely properly keep in range of their target to go boom. Even if we ignore pvp and wvw and only look at PvE situations. The skills are still horrid and on too high of a cooldown.

 

You literally need to change their mechanics or add to their current mechanics to make them decent. I personally think minions should be revamped to work more like mesmer phantasms with a twist. That they pop out do their key attack (most damaging) and linger for a bit to attack before fading and either becoming a poison feild or lesser minion. I know this idea partly clashes with your own but its just throwing it out there. In any case active minion attacks and mechanics need to change

Things like

- Bone fiend having a bristle back like attack

- Shadow feind having a smoke scale like attack or apply a strong fear on hit

- Bone minions leaping at their target to go boom on hit

- Wurm giving you a instant shadow step and leaving its spawn location in your place while giving you another tp back (with a cast time on the 2nd one)

- Golem pops up knocks down and does a fast hitting aoe frenzy attack like ranger axe5

 

**Traits**

I get that Deathnova is an iconic thing of the past but ill be honest for a grand master its mechanic is lackluster. If the aoe Fields were faster pulsing they might be alright but as they are now they are just bad. More importantly minions dont die as easily in pve with the damage reduction anet added. Which means the trait is of lesser value in pve but in pvp and wvw its not strong enough to be of real value either.

 

- I proposed in some one eases post some time ago as new grand master.

**Masters Might**

Minions now gain bonus attributes for each stack of might on you.

Speed increase per might stack 1% max 25%

Damage increase per might stack 2% max 50%

Critical chance per might stack 2% max 50%

Damage/Condition damage reduced 3% (pvp only) max 75% (IF you dedicate yourself to a minion master build they should not die instantly when played smart to up keep might)

_Ideally this has alot of synergy with the spite line and even corruption skills like blood is power._

 

**Boon of creation** is pretty solid I always welcome ideas that offer all parts of necro more boons that are not might sense necros are 100% good on might and need no more than they already have.

 

- My main suggestion here is that you drop the protection because summoning a well traited gives you protection too. Resistance is fine or make the boon different for each minion. And have it pulse that boon every 5 seconds rather than only on summoning. The reason i say this is noted on every other trait. In pve your minions wont die fast meaning the trait is of lesser use in pvp/ wvw they die too fast and the durations of the boon is too short to only reap the reward after such a long cast time.

 

**Grizzly savage** I think it should be something more active that can be beneficial to the necro while the necro is being active with minions up rather than something that only functions when your minions die. Once again this is one of those things that would do little to no good in pve where your minions wont die very fast but wont do enough in pvp / wvw where they would die faster than you can summon them.

 

- I would personally do something that effects them while they are alive. As some minions will grant you life force when they die anyways. For this trait I would do something like.

**Grzzly Savage**

"Minions perform basic attacks 20% faster and have 20% increased moment speed."

Necro's minions are a bit too slow and a small boost to their movement fro a minor and some attack speed to help them confirm hits wouldn't hurt.

 

**Overall Note**

 

- Imo you should be reaping the most benefits from minions while you have them active. Not at the start of summoning or upon their deaths.

- You removed alot of things from minions that they performed while up and replaced them with things that only trigger upon summoning or upon death which is not going to useful in pve because the damage reduction will keep minions alive (even longer if you have blood magic) This means minions will hit their summon cap and just be done more often than not. Mean while in pvp the traits are functionally too weak to boost you or the minions properly for taking a whole trait line dedicated to them.

[Thornwolf.9721]

Well why not simply change at least one of the minions to be more viable than the current crap-fest they are now? For example make it so **Bone Fiend** is a summon that passively happens every 5s due to a specific trait. Lets call this trait "Lord of Undeath" And so long fights you basically summon one of these little rat monsters to go and attack your enemy? They should be faster and due a good amount of poke damage. Think for example the Diablo 3 Witch doctor and their fetish's, So you constantly are summoning these little freaks to go attack your enemy while you remain in combat, they can still die but they swarm quickly and if left unattended I feel like they could cause some problems. Perhaps make them cause bleeding for each strike passively and when they die they explode, Pair this with jagged horrors who can be traited to come out of dead minions (Similar to guild wars 1) and you have a little mini army of annoying beasts who are quick and while easy to kill only provide more problems especially in group fights.

 

If they rework staff so that it synergizes with this trait then we could tie the trait itself to the staff skills and thus make it reliable, For example the trait could proc or have a 70% to proc at an increased rate if you are using staff skills ( That is if we would want staff to be the weapon of choice.) Rework the staff to function similarly to the revenant trident, with the same kind of skills (Throwing bone spikes would be pretty cool and imagine how cool the legendary staff's would look changing those aesthetics. )

 

Replace the current Bone fiend skill with Summon skeletons, These skeletons are closer to the guild wars 1 minions and are much more powerful than what we currently have. Give them a summon and then an activation similar to the glint skills on revenant; You summon them and the activation skill is a change target of sorts. You use the activation variant of the skill and it sends all your lovely spooks to swarm a specific enemy; Of your choosing. This breaks them out of cc, gives them movements speed and attacks speed while also stunning the enemy if they don't dodge. You summon oh lets say five of these lovely creatures and give us a trait "Blood of the master" which heals us AND them for a percentage of the damage they deal.

 

Replace the heal with a new minion who is harder to find, and harder to kill something Akin to a Wraith. It's only visible when its attacking and it only attacks when told to attack; Otherwise it merely follows the caster as a invisible little buddy at least to the enemy. Give it three uses before it goes on cooldown but it does not despawn; The charges are energy for the wraith and attacking enemies reduces the cooldown as it steals some of your life-force to sustain itself.

 

Get rid of the little undead Scorpion who is usesless as hell and give us some undead mages; Or perhaps give us those weird dog things from guild wars 1 who shot spikes from their tails. Let us summon more than one and make them great at cleave, and aoe but because they are ranged they are easy to dispatch.

 

Flesh golem is fine as is me thinks.

[Rym.1469]

Priority with minions right now is reducing the amount of traits related to them from 3 to 1 - preferably Death Nova. There's just no need for an entire line of traits to be dedicated to one type of utility, end of story. Dedicated minion builds work only in open world pve where everything works, they're far from the Necro's signature skills in all other game environments.

 

Second is moving away from "long-lasting meatshields that do nothing" to "short-lived powerful utilities/attacks bound to NPC bodies". Everlasting AI can't and shouldn't be good in the game. AI can't cope with GW2's dynamic combat, Z axis movement and doesn't react to enemy actions, meaning it eats every bit of damage trying to run in a straight line towards target. And dies halfway because of that. Death Nova is a trait that supports the short-lived minion direction perfectly.

 

For these reasons, I can't agree with OP's suggestions. While I'm in support of putting many minions on charge system, I don't like the implementation. The suggested "charging up" the minions themselves or their numbers only highlights the existing issues with the system, flooding the enemy with weaksauce fodder that can't live long enough to have a significant effect. The only superlative of such design is that it has good synergy with Death Nova.

 

 

[Bhawb.7408]

The problem with these suggestions and most I've seen for minions is that they go completely counter to what ANet is doing with GW2. GW2 isn't about specializing into one tiny thing, and it isn't about having this big army of passive minions. The whole point of GW2 is a very active role in what your character does, which is why any suggestion about minions needs to focus on their active skills. By all means, go ahead and reduce the amount of traits to I'd say 2, one in Death Magic and Blood Magic each. Enable the Necromancer to have strong builds, and then enable Minion skills to actually be useful to those builds. Sure, we can enable full Minion builds, that is cool and I want that, but any strong support build that has support skills that affect minions will do that.

 

Basically, don't focus on the minions themselves, minions are just a fancy Signet. Treat them as a unique way to play with skills, but like any other skill focus on the skill, not just the unique targeting/activation.

[Lily.1935]

> @"Bhawb.7408" said:

> The problem with these suggestions and most I've seen for minions is that they go completely counter to what ANet is doing with GW2. GW2 isn't about specializing into one tiny thing, and it isn't about having this big army of passive minions. The whole point of GW2 is a very active role in what your character does, which is why any suggestion about minions needs to focus on their active skills. By all means, go ahead and reduce the amount of traits to I'd say 2, one in Death Magic and Blood Magic each. Enable the Necromancer to have strong builds, and then enable Minion skills to actually be useful to those builds. Sure, we can enable full Minion builds, that is cool and I want that, but any strong support build that has support skills that affect minions will do that.

>

> Basically, don't focus on the minions themselves, minions are just a fancy Signet. Treat them as a unique way to play with skills, but like any other skill focus on the skill, not just the unique targeting/activation.

 

Hey, Bawb. Long time no see.

 

Back on topic. I'm still of the opinion that the minion skills themselves need some major changes. What those changes are could be debated. But the charge system is a decent solution. Especially for bone minions which have historically been lacking in gw2. If that was the only skill to get it I'd feel the suggestion was a success. And yeah. All the traits in death need to be Compressed into one grandmaster trait. There really isn't a reason minions need to take up that much identity in death.

[Lahmia.2193]

First problem with minion traits is that the best one isn't even in Death Magic aka the minion traitline. Vampiric is far and away the best minion trait.

[Lily.1935]

> @"Lahmia.2193" said:

> First problem with minion traits is that the best one isn't even in Death Magic aka the minion traitline. Vampiric is far and away the best minion trait.

 

This is absolutely false. Necromantic Corruption is absolutely the best minion trait. Its not even close after that. a 25% DPS boost plus condition transfer per minion. IF the minion master build had stronger teeth to it this trait would be the first and possibly only one to be nerfed. It is a remnant of early GW2 design and is a rare case that it would be way way too good if we were to ever get a dedicated Minion master elite spec.

[SunTzu.4513]

Imo the best solution or rework would something like commanding skills like in the enemy of my enemy quest where you commanding the mummys. This has great potential for a decent amount of control on our minions. Also it would turn the whole thing into a way more active way to play.