Blood is power in might-stacking MM build
forgive me for giving you more critiques on this build then you probably wanted,i tend to do that more than i’d like,but your question is answered in the beginning:
Shadow Fiend over BiP definitly
you are using power,which doesn’t benifit from 10 seconds of 10 stacks of might as much as bleeding would,especially since you aren’t using Dagger/???
Axe is a little low on damage imo,a little bit of might for a few attacks doesn’t seem worth it in most situations
but also,you want the other added procs to your traits based on a minion master build
and Bone Minions would probably be better than Flesh Wurm in a normal situation because of this,aswell,summoning 2 instead of 1,for the traits
reasoning is because:
in general,
if you’re going to go with a Minion Master build
you would want to go with all of the traits for a Minion Master
20/0/(30 or 20)/(20 or 30)/0
this game is supposed to implement alot of Hybrid ideas,but to be honest,it just doesn’t work that way,not yet,anyway,if it’s to be fixed
Minion damage isn’t really why you would want them,but 30% more on them does help
meat shields is a main reason,and the Vampiric Trait which now works with Bloodthirst is another reason you would want them,since it makes Blood Fiend very useful,at somewhere like 1.5k heal every 2seconds from that one minion alone
you want the other minions to give you Fetid Consumption or Death Nova (which is subpar in effect compared to the effectiveness of Fetid Consumption to a group effort)
Minions are just little things you can summon and forget about,while also being able to use their active abilities for a minor boost to a situation,never forget that you will always have to be actively playing,because your minions won’t carry your weight like they did in Original…(sad)
so you may want to rethink going Dagger/??? over Staff or Axe,because Dagger benifits stronger from Vampiric trait (15 blood) because of faster attacks,and more damage in general than Axe,being up-close in a fight is also not much of a problem for this because of all the healing done,Staff is generally not too good compared to Axe with power,aswell
Axe/Focus is the best main-set minion setup. You already have minions doing single target damage, and will have them doing 30% more damage via traits. Auto attacking with Axe will give about another 12-15 stacks of vulnerability, which can be brought up to 20-25 with each Focus 4. That is 12-15% more damage flat out, up to 20-25% more damage with Focus 4. In addition to that, 12-25% extra damage in a team scenario is much better than a little bit more personal damage. Axe also brings cripple, which synergizes with the Flesh Golem and Bone Fiend cripples to kite anything that doesn’t instantly aggro minions.
Fetid Consumption just isn’t worth it in his build. He has staff already for taking conditions, and he is in PvE, where you will rarely get hit with enough conditions to need that much condition removal; especially if you are going to sacrifice poison fields, which are amazing for Weakness stacking.
Which leads to the next point: the only time taking shadow fiend is worthwhile (over the other 3 minion choices) is if you are running around a lot, and thus a stationary minion isn’t good, or if you are brand new, and don’t want to bother with exploding Bone Minions. Using their active makes them far outdamage shadow fiend, especially when they will cause AoE weakness if they are in your poison fields, and drop poison fields themselves, which then synergize with both Bone Minion and Flesh Wurm, both of whom have projectile finishers on their auto attacks.
forgive me for giving you more critiques on this build then you probably wanted,i tend to do that more than i’d like,but your question is answered in the beginning:
Shadow Fiend over BiP definitly
you are using power,which doesn’t benifit from 10 seconds of 10 stacks of might as much as bleeding would,especially since you aren’t using Dagger/???
Axe is a little low on damage imo,a little bit of might for a few attacks doesn’t seem worth it in most situations
but also,you want the other added procs to your traits based on a minion master build
and Bone Minions would probably be better than Flesh Wurm in a normal situation because of this,aswell,summoning 2 instead of 1,for the traits
reasoning is because:
in general,
if you’re going to go with a Minion Master build
you would want to go with all of the traits for a Minion Master
20/0/(30 or 20)/(20 or 30)/0this game is supposed to implement alot of Hybrid ideas,but to be honest,it just doesn’t work that way,not yet,anyway,if it’s to be fixed
Minion damage isn’t really why you would want them,but 30% more on them does help
meat shields is a main reason,and the Vampiric Trait which now works with Bloodthirst is another reason you would want them,since it makes Blood Fiend very useful,at somewhere like 1.5k heal every 2seconds from that one minion alone
you want the other minions to give you Fetid Consumption or Death Nova (which is subpar in effect compared to the effectiveness of Fetid Consumption to a group effort)
Minions are just little things you can summon and forget about,while also being able to use their active abilities for a minor boost to a situation,never forget that you will always have to be actively playing,because your minions won’t carry your weight like they did in Original…(sad)
so you may want to rethink going Dagger/??? over Staff or Axe,because Dagger benifits stronger from Vampiric trait (15 blood) because of faster attacks,and more damage in general than Axe,being up-close in a fight is also not much of a problem for this because of all the healing done,Staff is generally not too good compared to Axe with power,aswell
Alpha, thanks for the prompt reply. I am only level 50 and have but 40 trait points to allocate. I was considering moving 20 points from blood magic to spite to increase damage. Thus, the comments about health siphon traits are not directly relevant to my situation.
Axe provides greater range than dagger. In my limited experience, this is vital in dungeons. It also stacks vulnerability, which benefits minions and party members.
Using the stated build at my level, I believe the only trait that scales with the number of minions is protection of the horde (20 toughness/minion).
Each minion provides some degree of utility in addition to absorbing and increasing overall damage. The question was, if I move 20 points from blood magic to spite to increase personal and minion damage and allow for might stacking, then would it be worth sacrificing one minion to increase overall damage. Based on crude experiments I performed today, I believe it would be close and largely depend on the power coefficients of the abilities being used.
At your level, with only 20 in two trees, putting that 20 in spite/death magic is best, and dropping a minion won’t be too big. However when you get 30 into Death magic (which you will when you are high enough), the extra utility that that one minion brings will far outweigh the little extra damage you can get from one utility.
At your level, with only 20 in two trees, putting that 20 in spite/death magic is best, and dropping a minion won’t be too big. However when you get 30 into Death magic (which you will when you are high enough), the extra utility that that one minion brings will far outweigh the little extra damage you can get from one utility.
Thanks for the feedback, Bhawb. Based on a limited spreadsheet-based simulation and empirical testing, I am inclined to believe that the extra minion will pull ahead of BiP over a 30s rotation (assuming it stays up). Obviously, a lot rides on the assumptions, including the abilities used in the rotation and their power coefficients. I assumed a priority system of axe 4 > 2 > 1 with abilities being used off CD. In reality, LB would also be used, though it is difficult to simulate due to the varying damage.
Also, based on my testing, shadow fiend was hitting every ~2s, whereas bone fiend hit every ~3s and for less overall damage (including the fact that bone fiend appears to have a higher crit rate). This observation is inconsistent with the tool tip.
(edited by Moonrabbit.1543)
Bone Fiend doesn’t hit quite as hard, but in reality he ends up outpacing Shadow Fiend because of his range and finishers.
In my experience, bone fiend is always the first to go down. He is an aggro magnet. Must have been an engineer in a past life.
Also, somewhere on the wiki it lists an attack speed of 1.86s for bone fiend and ~3.2s for other (melee) minions. I think they may have switched bone fiend and shadow fiend, or perhaps bone fiend is currently bugged.
You can aggro him from 900 range, if you are properly CCing the targets, it shouldn’t be too big of a deal; although yes he is a magnet for aggro.
In my experience, bone fiend is always the first to go down. He is an aggro magnet. Must have been an engineer in a past life.
Also, somewhere on the wiki it lists an attack speed of 1.86s for bone fiend and ~3.2s for other (melee) minions. I think they may have switched bone fiend and shadow fiend, or perhaps bone fiend is currently bugged.
Do you have a link for those minion attack speeds? Been looking for that info to improve my minion build for a while.
OP, as far as your weapons, I used to run with axe/focus in dungeons as well (dagger/focus in general pve). I recently hit 60 and tried using staff in dungeons. I noticed my survivability increased with the range, plus my overall damage increased from the aoe. Axe/focus is still great for vulnerability on bosses that have no adds, but not as effective against the groups typically found in dungeons. Any other particular reasons you run with axe instead of staff?
If you do stick with a/f and blood is power, I’d recommend dropping Reaper’s Touch, then BiP then Ghastly Claws for some nice dmg output.
To my knowledge there is no “link” to minion speeds. You are more than able to take them into heart of the mists and test it yourself against the golems though.
Thank you for the response Bhawb. I’ve done a little self-testing on minion attack rate, but thought there might be some harder data on the numbers out there.