Un-fiddling the (Necromancer) minion management?

[Stormfox]

I typically avoid any classes with minions because they always tend to behave in super annoying ways, stifling their use and needing far too much micromanagement. On some classes, they can work decently - the Temporal Hounds are a known staple because they deal very high damage, re-summon automatically and can teleport. Most other long-term minions have neither of these qualities and the things those do best is getting in your way, making any kind of escort into a nightmare and filling up the screen.

Now with the Necromancer v2, the issue is pretty egregious. I suggest a few tweaks to make them less frustrating to use:

- Less is more. For example, reduce the amount of skeleton minions the Necromancer can have with skill rank, but make them more consistently useful. In that particular case, the solution lies in my next suggestion. Less but individually stronger minions get in each other's (and any escort's) way less often and can traverse the map better. They are also not quite as susceptible to aoe attacks.

- All long-term minions need to either be able to teleport or be ranged. In the skeletal case, this means the upgrades to archers and mages should simply affect all of them. Since they should not be quite as many, this would not make them overpowered (and let's be honest, the minions are NOT what is straddling OP territory with that class anyways right now). This would serve to unclutter them since they are now more likely to actually contribute even when stacked behind you in a corridor and reduce the ridiculous amount of fiddling with their upgrades (trying to get a mage to upgrade can take multiple casts and because of limited souls quite some time, not to mention the amount of clicks for dismissing, resting and recasting).

- Minions should not wander around aggroing stuff when resting. The Dread is especially problematic with this (and feels very underwhelming most of the time it does not teleport into a random death anyways). Theoretically it can pass walls, but for some reason it rarely does so - perhaps something can be done so it tries to stay next to you "in the walls" to free up space for your minion conga line? This would of course make it aggro stuff across narrow walls more... no idea how to solve this. At least the teleporting should be restricted to enemies that are attacking the player or in their actual line of sight (not through the wall special sight methods). Besides this, I have seen skeletons aggro stuff, and worst of all, resting goes on while they fight unless I personally take damage.

- Minions (and escorts) need to regenerate life at a decent pace. I saw you added a bit of life regen to the Master Necromancer tree, but the amount is low and it forces you into that skill, while not helping during the first half of the game. Minions should just have a flat 5% regeneration in general. This would not make them tougher in basically any circumstance but would mean resting will top them off. Currently a Necromancer has to rest multiple hundred turns to fill up their skeletons (and for some reason, the mages do not even regen). This would be a good QOL buff for all minion using classes that really can not hurt game balance.

- Re-summoning is annoying. Minions should work in one of three ways. The permanent buddy type minion (Golem, for example) which at most needs a one-time rez spell to be cast or has a cooldown to re-assemble themselves. The short-term combat minions like Ghouls or some of the Summoner ones that are basically DOT spells in disguise. And all the rest needs to be more like Temporal Hounds, i.e. easy on the micro, re-filling their numbers mostly by itself or stuff that happens anyways. The new Necromancer is especially annoying in this case with the Bone Golem and Lord of Skulls upgrades. There must be a better solution for those. Even just summoning them from thin air but counting them against the limit would make them immediately more usable without really changing anything about their power level.

[whitelion]

I played through an insane/RL minon Necro build, and I think that overall it's a pretty good vision for what a minion class could look like. There's some stuff that could be improved around the edges, but I disagree that necro minions should be more like temp hounds where you click the sustain and mostly forget about them. If I choose to play a minion build (and other builds are viable if you don't like the minions) then I want options to actively manage my minions.

- Less is more. For example, reduce the amount of skeleton minions the Necromancer can have with skill rank, but make them more consistently useful. In that particular case, the solution lies in my next suggestion. Less but individually stronger minions get in each other's (and any escort's) way less often and can traverse the map better. They are also not quite as susceptible to aoe attacks.

I think 5 skeletons is a reasonable number. That's what you get at TL 6.5. Ghouls are fodder and disappear after a few turns, so I think it's fine that they have higher numbers. Necrotic minions are supposed to feel expendable flavor wise, and if you have 1-2 really tough skeletons, that's not the feel it evokes.

- All long-term minions need to either be able to teleport or be ranged. In the skeletal case, this means the upgrades to archers and mages should simply affect all of them. Since they should not be quite as many, this would not make them overpowered (and let's be honest, the minions are NOT what is straddling OP territory with that class anyways right now). This would serve to unclutter them since they are now more likely to actually contribute even when stacked behind you in a corridor and reduce the ridiculous amount of fiddling with their upgrades (trying to get a mage to upgrade can take multiple casts and because of limited souls quite some time, not to mention the amount of clicks for dismissing, resting and recasting).

Skeleton Warriors spawn with a phase door rune, and they use it regularly. There's also value to having them get in the enemy's face to draw attacks. If minions were all archers and mages, they would have much less defensive value. Every hit they take is one you don't. I've found the bigger issue is that sometimes it can be hard to get them into LoS of the enemy in corridors, but once they are they are pretty good at engaging. I also found the minions were surprisingly resilient even in the east, though I did take blighted summoning at 42. A Skeleton won't solo a rare, but your entire army also doesn't die in 3 turns in Vor, which I had been concerned about.

- Minions should not wander around aggroing stuff when resting. The Dread is especially problematic with this (and feels very underwhelming most of the time it does not teleport into a random death anyways). Theoretically it can pass walls, but for some reason it rarely does so - perhaps something can be done so it tries to stay next to you "in the walls" to free up space for your minion conga line? This would of course make it aggro stuff across narrow walls more... no idea how to solve this. At least the teleporting should be restricted to enemies that are attacking the player or in their actual line of sight (not through the wall special sight methods). Besides this, I have seen skeletons aggro stuff, and worst of all, resting goes on while they fight unless I personally take damage.

I agree the dread draws a lot of aggro and is good at going off somewhere irrelevant and getting itself killed. Could be improved, but I don't have any good ideas how. Agree resting should also stop if your minion takes damage.

- Minions (and escorts) need to regenerate life at a decent pace. I saw you added a bit of life regen to the Master Necromancer tree, but the amount is low and it forces you into that skill, while not helping during the first half of the game. Minions should just have a flat 5% regeneration in general. This would not make them tougher in basically any circumstance but would mean resting will top them off. Currently a Necromancer has to rest multiple hundred turns to fill up their skeletons (and for some reason, the mages do not even regen). This would be a good QOL buff for all minion using classes that really can not hurt game balance.

I would like minions to have base regen too. If it's really desirable that they not be able to heal without Master Necromancer, then put it as a passive on that skill, but I think it would be fine if they had regen by default. The skill will still have value for mid-combat heal and speed. Another alternative could be to just have it so that after 20 (or whatever number) turns out of combat, they all instantly heal to max.

- Re-summoning is annoying. Minions should work in one of three ways. The permanent buddy type minion (Golem, for example) which at most needs a one-time rez spell to be cast or has a cooldown to re-assemble themselves. The short-term combat minions like Ghouls or some of the Summoner ones that are basically DOT spells in disguise. And all the rest needs to be more like Temporal Hounds, i.e. easy on the micro, re-filling their numbers mostly by itself or stuff that happens anyways. The new Necromancer is especially annoying in this case with the Bone Golem and Lord of Skulls upgrades. There must be a better solution for those. Even just summoning them from thin air but counting them against the limit would make them immediately more usable without really changing anything about their power level.

I think there's a difference between minions and pets (I would consider golem, WtW, and maybe temporal hounds to be pets). For me, a pet is more about the setup and planning ahead of time, and minions are about tactical utilization in the moment. Like I said if I decide to play a minion build, I want options to manage my minions. Moving them around, using the Boneyard, exploding ghouls and such fills this space nicely. I agree the bone giant is a little tedious, but I like the having the Lord of Skulls and base summoning of skeletons be actives that I can use on demand. Changing your Lord of Skulls mid-combat or deciding whether to resummon immediately when your minions suffer losses vs wait so you can use souls for other things or get more from one cast after others die are interesting decision.

One other thing that I found annoying with the minions was their interactions with traps. Multiple minions could trigger the same trap, and you can get 10 stacked acid baths melting your whole army. They also make no attempt to avoid traps and you can't precisely control where they stand. I think they should either not be able to trigger traps, or else address the issue of trigger the same trap multiple times or triggering many traps in a high trap density area.