Curse

Mercury Angel · Mar 01, 2006, 01:45 PM // 13:45

After some extensive testing regarding minions, something came up that I found very interesting, and disturbing. I won't go into exact details, as it's a potentially deadly exploit that one can use to kill one's teammates with relative ease (and no, it's not just amassing an army and comitting suicide to turn them against everyone, though that works too [Edit: Just as an extra note, this is only partially related to the exploit. It actually relates to a bug]). I submitted the support ticket, and depending on how it goes, I may or may not explain the methodology in detail.

But the statement in parenthesis is another half of the issue. There are three profession with skills that can be used against your allies the way minions can. If any other profession gets disgruntled, or in the mood to grief, the only things they can manage are to go AFK/Disconnect/speed up their death by stripping naked or using defence debuffs. Basically, they can only hurt themselves.
The exceptions are Edge of Extinction, which is a bit more difficult to weild, has the obvious warning of an icon, and has a very difficult time killing anyone on your own team with much less damage than you can hope to achieve with Minions, and Disease, which is fairly self-explanatory. The final is Unyielding Aura, and almost always, the reason it's used is just for this - so that a monk can kill off his/her teammate at will.

The first part of my suggestion is that Minions be made non-enchantable, and non-hexable, as per the way Spirits are. This is because there're a number of almost certainly unintended possibilities which I do not feel at liberty to explain that can occur, both of highly exploitable and very minor varieties.

The second part of my suggestion is that upon the death of a Necromancer, all of the minions bound to them die as well. There're almost no ways to cause injury to allies, and it seems to be intentional, as 2 of the other ways that can do very minor damage. But Minions can wreak massive havoc on a party, either intentionally or not (saccing yourself to death, or dying by the hands of a foe). This is very open to griefing, and potential alienation of the Necromancer profession, as a few people decide to hold a party ransom, threatening to turn their minions on the party if they don't meet their demands. If you run the risk of having someone in your team be able to betray you as thus, with the possibility of actually wiping your party out with damage, you're going to be a lot more wary of inviting that person.
Having the minions go masterless seems to be a balancing aspect of them. If you can't keep your Minion Master alive, then you may just pay the price for having those minions around. However, this affects both teams equally, as the minions will attack either side using minion aggro AI, without preference.
Thus, if minions were all simply killed, the end result would still be a net equal effect.
The 'RP' explanation for this could be that without the Necromancer's binding magic active on them, they lose animation, if that's even needed.

I know this game doesn't have experience loss for deaths, and it's usually not a huge deal if someone causes your death anyway. But even so, the trends of the game seem to indicate that this method of griefing was not meant to be this way. There're no Elementalist spells that inflict friendly fire, etc. etc. And yes, this means I support changing Unyielding Aura too. Both because it's an awful skill for any other use but griefing, and because the reason most monks bring it is to grief their teammates (whether they deserve it or not, though that's subjective).

Neither the unlisted exploit, nor the situations I've described have become major issues... Yet. But waiting for something to actually be abused and having to do a rush job rather than proactively working on it in a thorough way is a bit foolish and irresponsible.

As a side note- Do not PM me asking for the details on it, as you will simply face possible disciplinary action for it. The guru forums are not a place to disseminate hacks and exploits through. Besides, it's not THAT much better than amassing a large undead army and turning them on your allies, anyway.

Edit: Bah, typos.

Also, a good point was brought to my attention. A determined person can already grief their teammates, at least in a PvE situation, in a way that can not really be countered, by aggroing additional mobs to an unprepared team.
So, I'm aware of it, but even so, I still believe that opportunities to grief teammates should be as few and far between as possible.

2nd Edit: The exploit itself, after further testing in a consentual environment, is not as dangerous as I'd initially thought, though it still is annoying. I can take out unsuspecting henchmen easily, at least. How effective it is in actual use probably depends on the determination of the griefer.

Update: Ok, I've found one actually beneficial use to this aside from griefing you can use it for. Teammate PKing aside, you can manipulate it to fairly easily kill your own pets for use as either more corpses, or, perhaps more likely, IWAY, without relying on enemies killing them. Yes, it's true that you need a corpse to exploit the minion, but you don't need anything special to generate a corpse. 1 character with Infuse Health and a vampiric weapon would go down with ease, and Infuse is a common spike heal [Not an exploit - minion factories do things like that all of the time].

Which is the whole reason problems like this should be addressed ASAP. People don't find less ways to exploit bugs, they find MORE.

Ilythia · Mar 01, 2006, 04:20 PM // 16:20

On another note I would like to keep my minions after going through a portal. Its a lot of work gathering minions and keeping them alive just to lose them when you go through a portal.

shardfenix · Mar 01, 2006, 07:03 PM // 19:03

I don't think guild wars guru condones keeping exploits to yourself either. Better /bug it ASAP.
You only see unyeilding aura griefers because you only play with noobs. My guild has made monks with UA. Who doesn't like a res to full.
Oh, BTW, i /bug 'ged UA, so hopefully the death-res exploit will be fixed soon.
As for the minion exploit, better report it.

Mercury Angel · Mar 01, 2006, 07:27 PM // 19:27

Quote:

Originally Posted by shardfenix

I don't think guild wars guru condones keeping exploits to yourself either. Better /bug it ASAP.
You only see unyeilding aura griefers because you only play with noobs. My guild has made monks with UA. Who doesn't like a res to full.
Oh, BTW, i /bug 'ged UA, so hopefully the death-res exploit will be fixed soon.
As for the minion exploit, better report it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mercury Angel

I submitted the support ticket

Bit late for that.

Quote:

Date Created: 03/01/2006 05:25 AM
Last Updated: 03/01/2006 05:25 AM
Status: Unresolved
Department: Bug Report

As for the release of details publicly, ie, the mention of discussing methodology, I meant that a full explanation on the boards if it was fixed, or declared a 'feature'.

Epinephrine · Mar 01, 2006, 09:54 PM // 21:54

Umm, making minions unenchantable would make it very difficult to use them as death bombs. Death Nova is designed pretty much for use with minions.

And /bug doesn't work anymore, you have to go to gw.com and file it there.

Mercury Angel · Mar 01, 2006, 11:29 PM // 23:29

Quote:

Originally Posted by Epinephrine

Umm, making minions unenchantable would make it very difficult to use them as death bombs. Death Nova is designed pretty much for use with minions.

And /bug doesn't work anymore, you have to go to gw.com and file it there.

Bah, it's been a while since I've run minions seriously, I'd forgotten about that =\ Alternatively, they could simply fix all of the skills so that they don't act so weirdly under the conditions that break a lot of them, creating the exploit. That would work too.

draxynnic · Mar 02, 2006, 01:24 AM // 01:24

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ilythia

On another note I would like to keep my minions after going through a portal. Its a lot of work gathering minions and keeping them alive just to lose them when you go through a portal.

It would be nice to have their health degen paused during cutscenes, as well. It may be a slight reduction in realism, but it would stop the person who hasn't played the mission before and the minion master from being at odds.

(Incidentally, I think the original poster did report it to ANet - he's just not explaining it on the forum to avoid people who haven't found it yet using it before it gets fixed. Or at least that's my impression.)

There is another balance issue as well, apart from the 'death bomb' effect: At present, one of the uses that Verata's Gaze can be employed is to steal another Necromancer's minions after their defeat rather than having to slaughter them. You can still use two castings to steal them while the controller is still alive, of course, but reducing the number of ways a minion can be uncontrolled before the first casting does reduce the value of the skill.