Minions, where they fail, and how you could improve them

[Estharon]

There's a plethora of issues regarding minions...
At least they don't look like yellow tic-tacs.

• They just keep dying like flies.
• The healers attack the enemy and draw aggro. I mean, seriously?
• Archers disengage until they reach and aggravate the next group of mobs. Also lures enemies out of a cleave.
• Minions in general tend to drag inactive enemies into the fight.
• Tanks won't survive more than one hit from a boss, despite the fact that bosses are exactly where mages and hunters would profit most from having a tank.
• You can not heal minions, except for those lousy apples, and those are way too weak.
• You can not control their movement. That's great, because robin loves to hug pillars! Multishot, blocked by Artificial Idiocy.
• Minions break stealth lockdown. (thx Rathmon)

Now, here are a few suggestions for improvements that would make minions less annoying.
I'll start with what I consider most feasible and beneficial.

• Enable sharing life gained from LoH, shockwave or other effects with minions. There are several ways to go about this, for example healing minions with a lower health percentage first, or maybe transferring all heals that exceed the player's maximum HP. I'd prefer the latter, as it would allow ranged classes to heal a tanky minion, but still be the last one standing.
• Don't let healers attack. That is just wrong. Really, really wrong.
• Make minions avoid inactive enemies.
• Make healers and archers hide behind the player, especially if that player is a warrior. Ideally, the player should find themselves between enemies and minions whenever possible.
• Introduce a symbol to set a movement target for minions. Maybe a + or x symbol with one side closed. Anything that works.
• The simple swipe is unused, so why not use it to command a battle formation? Swipe up, tanks move north and archers/healers move south. Swipe down for the opposite, and so on for all major directions. "Lines don't work" is not pretty anyways.
• New potions that heal the whole party equal to their maximum life over 5 or so seconds. Yes, I'm aware that potions are a known issue. ^_^
• New abilities for players, placed between lvl 60 and 70:
  - Warriors could get a passive that directs minion damage to them,
  - mages could get a passive that makes immolate heal allies, and
  - bounty hunters could provide cover fire that grants minions dodge, scaled to their own.

So, that's it from my side. I hope this can be of use to the devs, and ultimately, to us players... ^_^

[Schmilo]

Enable sharing life gained from LoH, shockwave or other effects with minions.

It's not much, but they get life regen. Getting that 1k25 helps a tiny bit

[Rathmon]

Add Minions not breaking Stealth lockdown on BH to that list.

[SoulGaming2]

Anything from up there can improve minion's AI, and that is important.