Minion changes, thoughts

Taste of Death
Soul Feast
Blood Renewal
Aura of the Lich
Well of Blood
Well of Power
Strip Enchantment
Parasitic Bond
Heal Area
Karei's Healing Circle

I can go on....

Healing is NOT a problem.

Verata's Sacrifice and the 10-minion cap are the problem. ArenaNet should either restore VS to it's previous ability or cut minion degen in half. And the 10-minion cap should be raised to AT LEAST 1 minion per level of Death Magic.

Over-reaction of the year award goes to... GUILD WARS COMMUNITY!

Go play WoW if you wanna have a uber leet zomg!! pwnage!! FANBOY character.

You don't know what i'm trying to say? Oh well, i guess i couldn't really expect much from someone who decides that this is the sum of the thread:

You seem to have spent this entire thread whining about how the MM took 'no skill' and 'no effort'. Yet you seem to have missed the part of the MM build where you have to pay full attention to your minions or they simply die off. Not like it matters anymore, all i need to do is cast AotL and use BotM every so often inbetween summoning new ones to replace the old/dead ones, any noob can do this. But are you still whining about the MM now? Why would you, you've 'proved' that MM's take no skill to do and that any old noob can command an army powerful enough to destroy the sun. Its a shame that its bullshit really. Any MM can summon 10 minions, the amount of skill required nowadays was just cut into a tiny fraction of the original value.

Edit: Crimson why even bother posting?

mm'ing is like monking, u cant look away or u loose a helluva lot o peeps. plus, since they suffer natural degen, it creates another problem. mm'ing before nerf took way more talent than other classes. imo, monking is easy, all u gotta do is keep peeps alive, not that hard unless u got spikers. i dun see how anyone who has played a mm who supports a missive army can say that it requires no skill, so sekkira, either ur impossibly skilld at teh game, or ur jus to dumb to realize challenging from easy.........

Call it whining if you want, but you just stated that it is impossible to keep a minion army alive in FoW, so wouldn't caring for the individual animation be, you know. POINTLESS.

No shit you have to pay attention to your minions. In reality, it was spamming Verata's Sacrifice whenever it recharged and healing them up in the down time with BotM. Which iirc, is what I said in my original post explaining it. OH WAIT THAT DOESN'T WORK BECAUSE IT TAKES SKILLZ TO CLICK BUTTONS OMGZ

I'd like to go with stupid not to realise the difference between challanging and easy, but they would make me look like some kind of gaming god... That's also stupid.

I prefer to go with 'not sucking at the game'.

Yeah.. thats probably because it is in most places. About 2-3 groups after you enter the Skeleton area (Battleground or something) your down to 2-5 minions as there is no supply of corpses beyond dead pets. The rest of the areas can kill minions MUCH faster than you can create them, to make the army grow needs attention. Obviously you seem to have played MM so much you can do it blind-folded... As for the rest of that post... i don't even know what your trying to say.

Oh well, i've wasted enough time with you, time to get some sleep.

I'd rather they just remove a 'Death Magic' based cap completely... up the cap to 20 minions at all levels of DM. I hardly see the point in limiting your 'army' to 4 minions just because your at lvl4. Theres just no reason to ever use MM unless your level 20 and a primary Necro. Theres just no flexibility at all beyond whether to use Aura of the Lich or whether to bring a Flesh Golem. I'm sticking to the former, with VS completely useless, spamming BotM really does help.

So what you're basically saying is that the army of minions isn't an unstoppable force? And arguing with me over this fact regardless of me not event implying the case or even covering the topic at all?

ie, you agree with me but don't realise it.

To sum it up though, the MM build was overpowered in PvE due to it being a slow moving machine of genocide in most areas fueled by the corpses it created. In PvP, it was overpowered for the 12v12 arenas due to the massive availability of corpses to fuel it.

A MM build can be outplayed, but it cannot be entirely countered without dedicating your build entirely to that purpose, which is why it is overpowered.

Excellent point!

I'm sure it's been put there for a reason. Just because "you don't see it" doesn't mean it's not there...

The idea behind it (obviously) is to prevent low level characters with large amounts of minions.

Or.....

It was overpowered because ArenaNet didn't bother to add counters to their PvE mobs.

You don't run minions in places with no exploitable corpses.

You don't run minions against mobs with Verata's Aura/Gaze. (Nah, VA isn't overpowered... a .75s minion equivalent of Rend, which is DM level independant is fine...surrrreeee)

You don't run minions against mobs with smiting. (Nah, Double damage against undead isn't overpowered. I mean lots of damage does double-damage situationally, doesn't it?...surrrreeee)

Level 5 Verata's Aura. - There, I can shutdown any MM with this alone.

Mark of Protection/Healing Hands/Healing Seed - If you've farmed SF, then tell me what happens when a targeted priest or boss get off a MoP when attacked by minions? What's his health do?

It was defensible, very. They never gave the community time to learn how to FIGHT a MM.

Awesome post dude.

Unfortunately, PvP was not and never will be the problem with minion armies. PvE was far too easy with them, seeing as once they got started the entire rest of the party was unnecessary. 1 player > 8 players is just bad.

The low level minions will already be lower level and thus weaker, having the scaling cap is just insult to injury.

You know what the worse part is...I find MM even easier and more powerful now...

Thanks to the BotM change once I have 9 Fiends up and my golem I can sit back and spam BotM over and over and over and over...and gl with the other team being able to kill my minnions...they have to come kill me...well I don't have to be anywhere near the battle any longer.

I don't find the vampiric minnions all that influential with their casting cost. Their returns to life are also pretty pointless excepting maybe pvp. Golem is useful I admit, especially with the 10 minnion limit up but with most of the mobs in Tyria I can't see that being a huge problem...the thing is people just haven't adjusted yet to how they need to play MM now.

A resonable change if somewhat overdone...I'd really like to see that cap at 15 or 20 but a MM can do just fine with only 10, I henched my way through almost the entire Factions campaing mostly the last 4 missions as no one was there to party at 4am here and I had no problem getting Mastery in most missions.

agreed I liked the change for the most part, though I feel it is now more powerful then VS ever was which makes me wonder wtf A.net was thinking

a.net dropped the ball here...just put it back A.net, please

I dissagree as I find it much easier...there are no energy management problems at ALL...you only have to worry about 10 minnions. Thanks to BotM I can now heal my minnions DURING BATTLE...that is such a huge benefit. Spam a combo of HA and BotM and they don't die for the most part. I maybe lose 1 minnion to 5 enemies...and this is late game in Factions. I admit Factions MMs are stronger but I don't feel Prophecies MMs can't function.

nope, interesting read

strongly agree

BotM sac isn't a huge deal even with two fully loaded MMs...you just have to actually have self heal now...go /mo and give BotM a good look during battle...keep in mind once you have 10 minnons up and have theym engaged you dont' have to do anything but spam BotM.

/signed

don't even try to compare the two the AoE nerf was a change to STUPID AI where as the MM change was because of STUPID AI/players...just to begin, there really was no reason as there are soooo many counters to the MM build.
beyond that I agree with the rest

How about given the enemy AI some damn brains then...and with the book trick gone it's not really the steam rolling action it used to be.

dude...yeah

go back to your A/Mo

MM was only over powered because of:

1.) Broken GW mehcanics in the form of the gear trick and other such stupid mob AI
2.) GW player's by and large inability to think beyond running in and hacking away

20 lvl 8 minnions don't do you very much when the mobs around you are lvl 12. It isn't the numbers alone that make a MM useful he has to have minnions near to the monster lvl.

One necro is all you need...I don't see how having one Blood Necro in your party makes for ruining your entire build. Or a Ranger with EoE...or a Death NEcro with corpse explosin...or a Smite Monk...there are so many options how can you not find one that overlaps with what you build needs anyway.

Let's agree on this:
AI should always be stupider than human but it should have the chance to beat stupid humans. AI here refers to monster AI in GW.

We all know the AI shit heads could eat us for breakfast if they would be allowed to be at full potential so this ain't the question. Monster AI is deliberatly made stupid.

The problem, as I see it is that the PvP part of this game shows how skills/builds are/can be used/countered.

Till the 12v12 matches, MM were just fine. Although some people ran MM builds, like MF, countering MM in HA wasn't a problem. there were very few stupid one who tried to run MM in RA and TA, but we wont mention them anymore.

The 12v12 battles presented a problem. Let's say one team is pushed back to their base with one startegic point caputred. A MM could stand in front of the base or resurection/teleport point with his minions and r*pe everyone who was stupid enough to come close. Suppose the MM has a monk in his party with heal area who runs around and heal minions thet are out of the MM's range.

Now, without the cap (wich might be considered a bit low) the above scenario would result in an unfair fight. Of course, you say there are skills to consume corpse or EoE and hell knows what else.

True, you can counter it and make it less effective. But since it's a 4+4+4 buildup it would make almost every 4 man team bring either a MM or an anti-MM. And that is an unexpectable compromise.


In conclusion, sorry for the PvE MMs. You just got a big stab in the back from ANET. It's not your fault, it's how the game works. Cuz let's face it. If it wasn't for the cap than a each 4 man team would be a mini MF with resmers and f*ck knows what.


Edit: note on the 12v12 battles
--------------------------------

Since you get the other teams random, you can't realy rely on EoE or whatever because the other two 4 man teams maybe wont be prepared and you will wipe your side insted of the enemy (puting up EoE just seconds before 4-5 people in the area of EoE kick the bucket).

Corpse control is a far better idea since you will make people with MM builds useless also do alot of damage with putrid, gain energy health with cc or do alot of dot with well of suffering.

I personaly prefer a degen, anti-MM build in Ab. Just because only the MM will see me as working against him since I eat the bodies(wich many MM think are a birth right and they will send their armada againt you as soo as they find out about your dirty little secret).
In any other cases i will just be a curse/death necro spreading wtf not to all who come in range.