First off, thanks for listening to the player base who posted here and at Central about the Death Minions. Removing D&G from the top level minions made them better minions by a landslide.
Secondly, if I may be so bold as to suggest further improvement if possible to Minions in general.
The Minions seem to have very very bad AI. Sometimes, the Minion seen to do smart things like Poison instead of Vampire when opponent is shielded but sometimes I have seen things like Minions choosing to Kraken over a tower shield instead of Poison'ing over it (both spells are in the Minion's spell-list). I guess maybe the Minion didn't "draw the Poison card"? I am not sure.
Do Minions actually have AIs? (they do seem to make good decisions at times but I am not sure if it's chance or if it's good AI programming)
I understand that they cast spells at certain sequences but are they "interactive"? By that I mean do they adjust their spells based on the situation? For example, if an opponent is Storm-Shielded and not Death Shielded, the Minion will Kraken instead of Vampire and vice versa. Similarly, if the Opponent is Tower'd, then the Minion will Blade-Poison.
Other then spell choice, some Minion's basic spell sequence need an update. the 9 Pip Minion from Animate tend to cast a WHOLE lot of Death Blade even when she already have like 3 of them circling above her. An improved AI would tell the Minion to Tower Shield herself instead.
To save time with complicated event/input/situation based AI, it's probably better to limit the spell list of the Minions. I know it sounds like a good idea to give high level Minions a lot of spells, but it's actually counter-productive as it makes them less consistent. The lower level (4-6 pips) Minions are actually more powerful (damage wise) then the higher level Minions. This goes double for the 13-14 Pips Minion who rarely attacks and always Taunts... The average dpr (Damage per round) is the highest with the 4-6 pips Minion at the moment, followed by the 7-9 pips Minions.
The solution would be to add a clause that prevents the Minions from "over-blading" or "over-shielding" themselves - a maximum of 2 Blades/Shields. Once the limit is reached, the Minion will only cast offensive spells or Weakness type debuffs.
I believe that Minions were deliberately programmed to play reasonably well, but not as well as Henchmen. The idea, of course, is to have people spend Crowns. In game-play, it does make some sense, since a creature who will follow you around and be at your call for free isn't going to be as intelligent as a human being who you have to hire to help you.
