Guild Wars 2

Are minion master necros actually a viable/respected way to play a necro right now? I would be mainly running dungeons and DEs, no PvP would be played at all with it.
Also how are they for fractals?
Thanks guys.

Viable, yes!
Respected No!

PVE – Great
Dungeons – Solid
Fractals – Fine until rank 10

Dungeons solid? If by solid you mean they die nearly instantly even to random trash, let alone bosses, then I suppose so. I want so much for them to be good in dungeons but right now they aren’t. Anything with an aoe or cleave, so…75% of most dungeons…is going to wipe them out, even if you take every minion trait and have full healing gear and keep mark of blood on them constantly. And be prepared for lots of people to complain about them in groups too, accusing them of pulling adds (even if it wasn’t them), of messing up boss abilities to the group’s detriment(which you have no control over), being a waste of space, etc. I just wish an mmo could design some pet classes to not be the red headed step child for once. Sigh.

What would you guys say is the best minion master gear? I’m looking to make another set of Armor. Right now I have all rabid and mainly go conditions but I wanna try a minion army of 10+ just for kicks.

Just ran a 5 man necro with Bas using minions, they did perfectly fine the entire time. CoF too, not like there was a lack of AoE.

Bhawb.7408:

Just ran a 5 man necro with Bas using minions, they did perfectly fine the entire time. CoF too, not like there was a lack of AoE.

They did, though the bone fiend and shadow fiend were always being resummoned. However they mostly stayed alive until the very end regardless of pull.

Drainbamaged.1062:

What would you guys say is the best minion master gear? I’m looking to make another set of Armor. Right now I have all rabid and mainly go conditions but I wanna try a minion army of 10+ just for kicks.

Knight or Zerker depending on your goal

I run Berzerker gear full on, and it’s a blast.

I use soldier’s. Because dieing is for noobs.

Bhawb.7408:

I use soldier’s. Because dieing is for noobs.

haha, I prefer to give you soldier’s guys something to do and rezzing me is what you are good for haha!

Once and for all… Are minions still stupid as brick wall?

And how does it go for WvW?

Drachshyish.2319:

Once and for all… Are minions still stupid as brick wall?

And how does it go for WvW?

For WvWvW it depends on what you are doing.
large zerg vs. large zerg – too much aoe they will die before they do anything
Wall defense – nope, almost useless
Small 5-10 man strike teams – Very strong

As for are minions stupid? The easy answer is no, they think for themselves at times which is annoying. The rate at which they go afk on you is significantly less than before. In my last dungeon run, I had the flesh golem follow me around on a boss fight for a good 30 percent of the fight. Eventually he went over and started attacking. That’s the only one that I see any noticeable issues with.

Bone Fiend – Always attacks, and always gets focused on.

Shadow fiend – Attacks 90 percent of the time without worry, the rest of the time will begin attacking if ability is used.

Bone Minions – 60 percent of the time work great – 40 percent of the time they get stuck where they were summoned.

Flesh Wurm – 100 percent Awesome!

Flesh Golem – 60 percent of the time fantastic – 20 percent of the time slight delay in attacking – 20 percent of the time he will avoid all damage and stand behind you until he dies.

Just to give you an idea of how strong MMs can be, this is an experiment I just ran in the Mists:

It was just me and Fleshy (the flesh golem). The only skills I used were my axe 1/2/3 (I had my other weapon de-equipped), heal (needed it once), and obviously my elite: Flesh Golem (used his active once). I never popped DS. Fleshy had all the minion traits (+damage, + HP, strips boons). We killed Chieftain, just us two.

Lead with Fleshy’s active (I actually was just trying to use Chieftain to kill him since I was trying something else out, and then I decided why the heck not), then ran around a little since I didn’t originally plan to actually fight. Eventually I turned around and started auto attack chieftain, and just spammed the axe abilities whenever they were up. I needed heal once because I lost about half my HP before I actually started fighting.

But really, minions are incredible. Just the elite minion will nearly perma cripple opponents with his autos, which do approximately 1k DPS (against medium armor he hits 850-900, 850-900, then 1400ish on his third hit).

Also, to get flesh golem to attack, remember that you cannot use his active. He will charge through people, then walk straight back to you if you just use it, using the axe auto however, gets him to attack very easily.

Trollfest post….
@ Fernling.1729: atm they’re in some way available but not competitive (Ai problems, Pathing problem, design problem, get oneshotted, aren’t reliable, you can’t switch utilities to fit the situation, underwater are a mess). You can play them, but getting a full gear just to play MinionMancer atm it’s a waste of moneys and time.

Might actually give minion necro a shot, once I finally gather my soldier set…
Might take awhile, after lasts weeks rush to get full rabid after having a hybrid build im kinda tired of dungeons. (Not to mention spending 50g+ on cultural armor to make my charr look even decently kitten, is a pic in the thread up in the stickies.)

I recently picked up using berzerker stats on my MM in PvP, it does great when you need more damage output and already have bunkers.

MM is definitely viable. I frequently run minions when farming trash mobs for crafting materials – not all the time or even most of the time but I do run minions for doling out speedy damage.

I will also run one minion in dungeons or in regular PvE for particular boss fights. Flesh Golem has a useful knock-down and Bone Fiend provides good support against Tequatl and in underwater battles with its ranged damage.

It is probably best not to settle on only one build for your Necromancer. Some fights, you will want to use the staff and marks along with Epidemic, Blood is Power, and wells of various types. I wish I could quickly re-equip, re-trait, and re-skill for each and every battle instead of running blindly behind the group with my skill menue up.

Assuming the AI functions (which is a major obstacle):

• Open world PvE – excellent
• Dungeons – poor
• sPvP – excellent ?v1/?v2
• WvW – terrible

Essentially, if you expect to encounter much AoE, don’t use minions.

Brew Pinch.5731:

Assuming the AI functions (which is a major obstacle):

• Open world PvE – excellent
• Dungeons – poor
• sPvP – excellent ?v1/?v2
• WvW – terrible

Essentially, if you expect to encounter much AoE, don’t use minions.

You are underestimating our value ind dungeons. We are good to great depending on fight. We are much better in open world and tournament play because our skills excel in 1v1. In dungeons, we are very strong depending on fight.

I am tired of the comment that when the minions die we are weak. You know what dagger well guys are weak when they don’t have wells. Ds centric builds are weak outside of ds, and condimancers are weak when they can’t use epidemic. Guess what, we are as strong as all of you when the minions are dead. To top it off the likelihood of them all dieting at the same time is hilariously high. Plus my cooldowns are shorter than yours so while you are waiting 60 seconds or 45, I am ready to resume on in 24 . If you don’t believe me, I will run a dungeon with you. Flesh warm hits like a truck and rarely dies. Shadow and bone fiend are alway tanking npcs so you can deal damage, and flesh golem regents health and hits like a truck. How is that poor?

Bas.7406:

Brew Pinch.5731:

Assuming the AI functions (which is a major obstacle):

• Open world PvE – excellent
• Dungeons – poor
• sPvP – excellent ?v1/?v2
• WvW – terrible

Essentially, if you expect to encounter much AoE, don’t use minions.

You are underestimating our value ind dungeons. We are good to great depending on fight. We are much better in open world and tournament play because our skills excel in 1v1. In dungeons, we are very strong depending on fight.

I am tired of the comment that when the minions die we are weak. You know what dagger well guys are weak when they don’t have wells. Ds centric builds are weak outside of ds, and condimancers are weak when they can’t use epidemic. Guess what, we are as strong as all of you when the minions are dead. To top it off the likelihood of them all dieting at the same time is hilariously high. Plus my cooldowns are shorter than yours so while you are waiting 60 seconds or 45, I am ready to resume on in 24 . If you don’t believe me, I will run a dungeon with you. Flesh warm hits like a truck and rarely dies. Shadow and bone fiend are alway tanking npcs so you can deal damage, and flesh golem regents health and hits like a truck. How is that poor?

Because when a boss does a massive aoe and it one shots all your pets as soon as you summoned them…. well just pointing out the obvious.

Lets not talk about high level fractals where agony alone will kill them.

Namu.5712:

Because when a boss does a massive aoe and it one shots all your pets as soon as you summoned them…. well just pointing out the obvious.

Lets not talk about high level fractals where agony alone will kill them.

Except the obvious never happens. We have 3 ranged and 3 melee. I never lose all of them at once. Agony is bad on everything that isn’t able to dodge. So it limits just about every profession to certain builds.

Easy solution is make pets immune to pve monster AOE but that makes too much sense.

Viable now. I run balthazar ppt armor.
Use bloodbag, wurm/spectral walk, both bones, and fleshie. Lots of cc, retal on DS and axe 3.

I’m a small group roamer in wvw.

I also use them in WvW when going solo for camp/dolyak, along with 6x Rune of Lyssa, PVT gear, trinket with Emerald and berzerker weapons. Using Locust signet, I switch it for Wurm near camp, and if i dont need the teleport, I switch back to signet after combat so I dont suffer the cooldown.

We have a 16 sec heal that gives us a random boon for 10 sec, and a 48 sec elite that remove all condition and gives us all boons (still has a 60 sec internal cooldown for the charge though). I find that for full usage of Lyssa this is one of the best build.

They are not the best choice, dont attack/sucks at time (bone minions staying far away from target), but like Bas said, a well user on cooldown is only a necro and his weapons. With low cooldowns, minions will be back up in no time. 2 bones minions each 16 seconds do far more dps (if they connect) that a well of suffering each 36 sec (which they have to stay in full duration to provide similar damage/debuff)

It can also be confusing for the enemy to see all those red names and trying to find exactly how many of your force there is stealing their camp.

I use a 20/0/20/30 build and I can quickly switch to a dungeon well build if needed, less money wasted on respec

Bas.7406:

Fractals – Fine until rank 10

Yeah, they really need to either give them your agony resist or something. Cliffside opening boss is a pain when he starts spamming agony wells everywhere; they don’t stand a chance. :’(

I know you mentioned no PvP… but thought I’d chime in! A couple of nights ago my guild did a 10 person round robin pvp tournament (everyone played everyone else, 9 matches each) and with a full minion specced necro (Toughness/Vit runes I think) I won 7 of the 9… the two I lost were to Ele’s. It’s also a great spec for WvW (imo) as I’m able to solo cap camps and stand a good chance against anyone 1v1.

For dungeons/fractals I’m currently using a lot of wells, I found it was more beneficial to my team. I don’t do much damage, but I’m extremely tanky. The minions didn’t seem to benefit the team at the time… so I got rid of them. I’d not go back to minions for dungeons/fractals…