Curse

Legendary Necromancer · Jul 01, 2006, 11:00 PM // 23:00

The way I see it, the feature where minions lose health over time at rapidly increasing rates was implemented when MM's had no cap, to prevent them from steamrolling everything with 100's of minions...

But.. now that it has been capped at 10.. Why not remove it? It's purpose has been served, minions will still die to damage.. Maybe to remove it, you have to do a quest involving Verata or something.

And uh.. can we do something about Verata's Sacrifice? Change the recharge to 30-40 seconds or something.. 60 is way too long for 10 seconds of hp regen.

Now, I want constructive criticism, no flaming! I posted this so we could discuss this and maybe get some good results.. not jump and scream at each other..

That's all.. Thanks.

Evilsod · Jul 01, 2006, 11:46 PM // 23:46

The degen is there to stop you getting an army and keeping it through BotM alone. If you don't have enough corpses to deal with the steady degen, you don't deserve to have an 'army'.

anonymous · Jul 01, 2006, 11:51 PM // 23:51

Yes the degen was there to stop you from getting an army, not 10 minions. 10 is hardly an army, the degen was there to put a cap on the minions, the cap being how much healing you can provide and eventually veratas would do nothing. Without the degen you could have as many minions as stuff that died. Now that there is a cap the degen isnt really needed imo.

unholy guardian · Jul 02, 2006, 12:03 AM // 00:03

hmm i feel kidna half on both sides, yes the cap was reduced.. so i guess it would be fair to remove the degen.. not sure actually

BahamutKaiser · Jul 02, 2006, 12:05 AM // 00:05

Animated Undead have degen as part of the weakness of the skill, not just a limitation to how many you can summon and how hard it is to maintain them. If you increase their survivability then you increase their power, increasing their power also goes hand in hand with more cost, this isn't just about how many you can potentially summon, it is about how much each one can do, and surviving is significant.

Beside that, dying minions is part of more advanced Minion builds, the use of energy gained from a dead unit and the added return of energy from a dying minion allows Necromancer to ensure future energy. Even more so, the primary use of Death Nova revolves around the certainty that a necromancers minions will die. If the degen is taken away, or even reduced, a Necromancer cannot ensure that his minions will die on que without another skill to kill them, you would almost need to bring Taste of Death to trigger your Undeads death without the current degen.

The reduction of Minion Masters undead army doesn't mean that it should be improved otherwise, this isn't a trade off, it is a straight reduction in power due to balance issues.

I can agree that minion survival techniques should be improved since you can only use about 10 at a time now, but that doesn't mean they should just go on living forever, the use of another skill would be reason enough to allow your minions to survive, even if they added a new necromancer skill which stopped degen on all your undead minions for 30 seconds, it would be acceptable, but taking away their default degen isn't.

TheLordOfBlah · Jul 02, 2006, 12:31 AM // 00:31

I say get rid of the degen and have a certain ammount of time they last until they die with no penalty against them until then. maybe 3 minutes or something.

Aki Soyokaze · Jul 02, 2006, 12:52 AM // 00:52

It would seem only natural that the loosely held together rearranged parts of a dead person, monster, and/or pet/animal would lose health over time. I think it's fitting that minions lose health over time, as if they're slowly degenerating and falling apart as time wears on.

Besides, if you're having trouble being a MM with the cap and the degen you should find a way to deal with it. That is afterall just one of the challenges of being a MM. Perhaps you should also rethink your stand on what kind of role a MM should play and change your build accordingly.

As for Verata's Sacrifice it's fine the way it is and if you know how to use it properly it serves it's purpose just fine.

/notsigned

TheLordOfBlah · Jul 02, 2006, 01:01 AM // 01:01

The only problem with veratas sacrifice is that minions degen gets to -20 (however the effect caps at 10). So with veratas sacrifice up... they still have -10 degen

It becomes useless after a certain point

shadowfell · Jul 02, 2006, 02:17 AM // 02:17

I actually stopped using veratas.. became completely useless after the nerfbat. I use BotM alone. Fix veratas so it becomes useful again, or fix the rapid degen pace of the minions.. either way

/signed

Legendary Necromancer · Jul 02, 2006, 02:41 AM // 02:41

Quote:

Originally Posted by Aki Soyokaze

It would seem only natural that the loosely held together rearranged parts of a dead person, monster, and/or pet/animal would lose health over time. I think it's fitting that minions lose health over time, as if they're slowly degenerating and falling apart as time wears on.

Besides, if you're having trouble being a MM with the cap and the degen you should find a way to deal with it. That is afterall just one of the challenges of being a MM. Perhaps you should also rethink your stand on what kind of role a MM should play and change your build accordingly.

As for Verata's Sacrifice it's fine the way it is and if you know how to use it properly it serves it's purpose just fine.

/notsigned

I MM in tombs... Perfectly fine, dont criticize me.

Generally while I'm being an MM, I use BotM so much on my minions that by the time I release them to a group of enemies, they have -20 degen and I go from 10 minions to 3. Sure, I can raise more, but it's a problem when your team doesn't seem to want to wait up.

Also, one thing about the storyline.. Verata in the Shiverpeaks found out how to keep his minions alive forever.. Seeing as your this super hero character who ascended into a higher being twice, (weh no su and the crystal desert) still has slipshod minions while this lvl 10 outa-nowhere necromancer found a way to make them last.

Though it does make sense that they would fall apart.. at least cap the degeneration to -10. Or, to the very least, kill the degeneration off the Flesh Golem.

EndoftheSyringe · Jul 02, 2006, 03:14 AM // 03:14

I think since they lessened the minion cap (or rather, made one), they should lessen the degen. Don't completely remove it, just make it not so fatal.

But, then again, I also think it is fine right now.

Arkantos · Jul 02, 2006, 03:24 AM // 03:24

I think they should make the degen less.

arcanemacabre · Jul 02, 2006, 04:15 AM // 04:15

I like the idea of lessening the degen... but I'm thinking what makes sense is have a constant -4, as if they are constantly bleeding to death.

art_ · Jul 02, 2006, 05:49 AM // 05:49

lyk yeh

thay shud gev minions +10 regen and should mak it so evry 5 seconds they split in half and double in lvl imo

/tirpel singed

Hockster · Jul 02, 2006, 06:01 AM // 06:01

/not signed

If you can't maintain 10 minions then just quit trying. It's not terribly hard to replace them.

Aki Soyokaze · Jul 02, 2006, 11:49 AM // 11:49

Quote:

Originally Posted by Legendary Necromancer

I MM in tombs... Perfectly fine, dont criticize me.

Generally while I'm being an MM, I use BotM so much on my minions that by the time I release them to a group of enemies, they have -20 degen and I go from 10 minions to 3. Sure, I can raise more, but it's a problem when your team doesn't seem to want to wait up.

Also, one thing about the storyline.. Verata in the Shiverpeaks found out how to keep his minions alive forever.. Seeing as your this super hero character who ascended into a higher being twice, (weh no su and the crystal desert) still has slipshod minions while this lvl 10 outa-nowhere necromancer found a way to make them last.

Though it does make sense that they would fall apart.. at least cap the degeneration to -10. Or, to the very least, kill the degeneration off the Flesh Golem.

And I can MM really well in Tombs or anywhere else aswell. And while you say you don't want to be criticized the issues that you bring up should atleast bring into question what the real problem is.

You bring up the fact that you use BotM so much that when you release your minions they instantly die. And while I'm not going to share how I deal with such things all I can say is that's just a part of being a MM. Learning how to deal with such things is all part of being able to manage your minions, energy, and health effectively.

You also bring up the fact that people don't always wait around for you to raise a new set of minions. But does the problem lay with the fact that people don't wait or with the fact that minions degen over time? Personally, I don't see how this could relate to minions degening over time. This is a problem that is either related to your own energy management or the people in your team not being respectful of the role that you play.

My problem with your suggestion is the fact that you can spam BotM, as you have pointed out, so easily that if you removed a minions degen you'd be able to keep them up indefinately. And before you laugh at this and state that minions would/could be killed by enemies keep in mind that while I don't know your specific build, you also don't know mine. And from my experience and knowledge base it wouldn't be all that hard or unreasonable to get a set of 10 minions, gain a full bar of energy, and just plow through enemies(if the minions didn't have degen).

Having minions degen allows for a balance to be struck that keeps MMs in check. Just think of what it would be like if MMs didn't have to raise new minions every 10-30 seconds(or whatever the interval might be) and didn't have to heal their minions between groups? That's a lot of energy that can be redirected at pure healing when the minions are attacking.

With that said, I don't really see why the degen needs to be removed considering how it plays an important role in balancing MMs. Nor do I see the harm in you re-evaluating the role that you place your MM in or the way that you think of it. You wanted constuctive criticism and I gave it to you, but your response to me would seem to say the opposite. Beyond that I really don't know what else to say if you think that I'm trying to criticize you as a person/player.

prism2525 · Jul 02, 2006, 09:06 PM // 21:06

-20 degen??

Geez make it -10 max!

samifly · Jul 02, 2006, 10:15 PM // 22:15

lessen the degen or make verata's more useful. They hit MM's too hard with the nerf bat.

TRUEgamer · Jul 02, 2006, 11:40 PM // 23:40

REmoving minion degen is a bad idea, and this is coming from a minion master.

My main reason behind this is the necro NPCs that create minions... they will kill you, and get a minion. That's one more thing for you to fight as the DP stacks up.

And it would get worse, obviously.

ID_Roto · Jul 02, 2006, 11:53 PM // 23:53

-10 Degen IS THE MAX, using VETERAS SACRAFICE will add +10 regen to your minions however their degen will drop to -10 at a max no matter how good of a MM you are. That said and done :

I agree with Aki Soyokaze, takeing away the degen will make groups just take like 2-4 MMs with no degen penalty on the minions. Also if this happens for US then think about the monsters haveing 10 minions waiting for you because you died so many times trying to kill them. This is a OK idea but not something I would take serriously. It's just not ballanced for people to do this.

Also... who in the WORLD made 100 minions?! C'mon... Most minions I had up IF LUCKY was probably 20-30. Then the first 8 would die because I can't heal fast enough. So there must be balance for the MMs in any kind of way and the degen is good enough for a balance.