Smart Minions

I was under the impression the first time I played necromancer that the minions the necro summoned were partially under the control of the summoner.

I found out the hard way that they weren't, when they all ran off to attack everything but what I had selected and subsequently I died.

What I think would be great is to make the minions subject to the focus fire CTRL command like the hench ai, as opposed to the current random attack pattern they exhibit at the moment.

Much as the minion tactics work with zerging the mobs it would be nice to take out key enemies like mages / healers first before randomly hitting everything else.

Minions tick me off because they usually draw another mob that hadn't previously noticed us. We all die shortly after that. Leave the minions at home, Necros!

I agree with this ... minions are of course these mindless abominations we summon from corpses, yet imo they're a bit *too* mindless. Even when used in PvP by a very skilled death necro, they still fall short of their potential benefit / usefulness simply based on the "Hulk (minion) Mad !! Hulk ( minion ) smash !!" model You can try and make time bombs out of them via Death Nova all you want, but all it takes is one person to get their attention while the rest of your team moves a short distance away.

The other, more annoying aspect of minions for me is .... why on earth do they all have to stand TWO INCHES BEHIND ME whenever not attacking anything ? Couldnt they stand off to the side at least ? I know they *really* like me and all, but I suppose I just like the whole freedom of movement thing

lol, i find minions pointless no matter what..

I kill them off so quick its not even funny.. and I'm not even a damage warrior =\

And they don't do any damage, either...

they make good meat shield In PvE....

I don't see how you're having a problem with minions getting the agro of other mobs when you've not gained the agro yourselves, minions are ALWAYS on your ass, and only attack if you're being attacked or if you attack something else. Minions do a fair amount of damage and with enough of them can just kill off many mobs early on in the game, and at later parts of the game can still be useful as meatshields or by using death nova on them followed by taste of death for 100 points of damage and poison on all nearby opponents.

Doing the elona reach mission yesterday with my necro a party member kept insisting that I don't summon the minions, because they'll agro everything and we won't be able to sneak around anything! Yeah, well turns out that blows anyway, since we got royally screwed since we hadn't killed anything. Going through it again WITH the minions and killing everything made it a hell of a lot easier. Lets put it this way, would you rather face a group of mobs with 6 people in a party, or 6 people and 5 minions all with death nova on them for a total of 600 AoE damage and poison on the enemies as soon as they die? My minions attack when I want them to, follow me when they're not attacking, and make great meatshields/kamikaze bombers later on if used properly.

My only beef with them is that they show up in no menu, which makes it hard to select them to cast death nova in battle. Minions are just as smart as pets, plain and simple.

There is no problem with the minions attacking mobs entering my agro radius or mobs I have agro'd. What I want them to do is follow my attack directions. Not run off into the radius of another enemy just because its close agroing another mob and so forth, to disengage when I move out of a battle, etc. It would also be nice to simply direct the entire lot of them to rush a single mob once you have engaged if a mob takes priority.

The minions aren't as smart as the rangers pets, at least the pet will pull out from battle when needed and engage using focus fire method.

I'd think having THAT much control over the minions would almost be insane, to make them attack every monster that you want them to and where to go, that's a little too much IMO. I personally love the way they spread out and keep different mobs occupied while my party members and I can concentrate on one without being tossed back and forth by other mobs, also they're great for missions where you might need to escape or something, the minions will stay back and sacrifice their already doomed lives so you can escape.

Also, my hands are already pretty damn busy in battle trying to use the corspes/hex to our benefit, if I had to control which guy all the minions attacked as well...pretty hectic for me.

Then again, smarter minions is always a good thing I suppose, no worries here.

you need to keep in mind the game view of them basically its a corpse thats bin animated now if you watched the re-animator or something you know that in that movie the people brought back to live remembered the moments before there death and acted like how they did before so this might explain why the minions go off and fight everything seeing as they were fighting before they died

now i would personally also prefer the minions to be more controllable but how much can u expect from a corpse anyway ?

Ya minions in this game are seriously lacking... Both Undead and Pets... Henchies for that matter....