Guild Wars 2

Hey all!

Before I get into my questions, I think it’s pretty important to give a bit of background about myself. I just recently hit 80 on my first character so it’s safe to say that I am a total and complete newbie to this wonderful game.

The second I heard about the Necro class from a friend, I immediately wanted to play it. I’ve always loved using minions in Skyrim and WoW, and I get an evil little thrill using them as pawns to be sacrificed while I beat on my enemy.

So, even though I had heard that MM’s sucked in-game, I HAD to become a minion master. Heck, in many ways that was part of the charm. I’ve always loved playing the “supposedly” underpowered class because I enjoyed the originality and it was fun to see people’s reactions when I wiped the floor with them through what was considered a “crap” class.

Now we come to the class itself. I’ve played MM all the way through 80 and I still feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface on what’s possible. I’ve run staff for the most part, and have just now started trying out axe/focus because I’ve heard good things about from Bas on this forum.

Current Build

Right now I’m running http://www.gw2db.com/skill-builds/2568-minionmancer

This build is pretty much exactly what Bas suggested, and he seems to know what he’s talking about(many thanks for putting it up if you read this.)

Just had 1 or 2 quick questions about it if I could.

-Bone fiend or Bone Minions?

I’ve always felt conflicted on this point. Bone minions may seem weak, but they actually stayed alive pretty well with staff skills and their “bomb” seemed very powerful in taking down enemies. Add that to the short respawn and could keep sending them.

However many people say that Bone fiend is better. I don’t get this alas. I can see how Bone Fiend does great damage, and its root is pretty nice, but the thing has the aggro of one of those blasted yapping dogs and is about as tanky. Every single time I pull that thing out, every mob I even look at is like “Bone Fiend!! Kill it NOAW!” The thing is dead in like 5 seconds flat and I have to wait to summon it again, lowering my dps by a chunk. Is there perhaps something that I can do to keep them from jumping the poor little guy?

-Health Regen

One of the things that I liked about the staff was that my minions suddenly became nearly unkillable. With healing power and staff’s #2, my minions were constantly receiving heals and could tank all day. Now I’m trying out axe/focus and I’m worried that they’ll start dropping like flies. Does the focus #4 provide good regen and should I use the staff as my 2ndary to axe/dagger?

MM in Dungeons

I’ve not really stepped foot in dungeons on my way to 80 as I felt I needed to get used to the game first, plus I heard(and seen) that MM’s don’t get their all important traits until way later down the line. However I am 80 now and recently went into the new and improved AC.

What was depressing is that I felt completely and utterly useless. That blasted spider boss would drop her AoE red rings of death on the ground and I would watch as my minions would literally melt to it right before my eyes. I feel like I spent more time resummoning my minions than actually hitting the boss. All in all, I honestly felt like my group would have been better off with a engineer turret.

I’ve heard that dungeon MM is viable. How?

Is my build the best possible for dungeons? I admit I’m new to using minions correctly in dungeons. I usually try to put up my Flesh Worm(Love that guy) in an out of the way spot while I use my minion skills on the boss. Still encounter the mass minion melting(alliteration is fun!) which makes me feel pretty useless.

Or, for all I know, that spider boss is the ANTI-MM. That would be best case scenario, but I’m doubtful. I have a feeling that a lot of bosses use AoE and I’m worried that means my minions are little more then insta-poison clouds which I don’t want.

Armor
Again to reiterate my newbiness…I have no idea what people mean when they suggest that MM’s get Berzerker armor or knight armor or the like. Is that armor I get from dungeons, or possibly stuff I buy from dungeon quartermasters for thingies like the tears of ascalon. Moving on, what armor is best for MM’s and where can I find it.

2ndly, I’m in the Orr area and I see that really sexy armor that I can get 40k(ouch!) karma. Which of these would be best for me or, perhaps more importantly, should I even use my karma on such items or save it for something else?

Also, any other tips/tricks for playing MM’s in PvE that you felt I’ve missed would be VERY welcome. I’ve always loved dungeons in other MMO’s so I am looking to get more into those, but any other tips would be fantastic!

-Thanks in Advance and sorry for the Wall of Text!

As for the armor, Berzerker, Rabid, Carrion, etc. are names which refer to the stat combinations on the armor. See this page and table:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Item_Nomenclature#Triple_attribute

Dulfy dot com has a great page on end-game gear. Spend some time reviewing it. The temple of Grenth is a good, solid armor set for a Necromancer. It offers some balance so maybe you will not be singled out (quite as often) by a boss in a dungeon for extra punishment. Do your daily quests for jugs of karma and soon you will be able to afford a set. I use different armor for different builds and tasks. Popular stat types are Rabid, Soldier/Invader, Berserker, and Carrion.

Minions’ weakest point is that they do not dodge and so are susceptible to AoE. Bosses that spam AoE can wipe them out before they can do much for you. Hopefully, you are running with Transfusion in the Blood Magic trait line. When in Death Shroud, Transfusion uses #4, Life Transfer, to heal up to 5 group members or minions so get into the habit of hitting DS early and adding heals to your minions. You already use Mark of Blood. Keep doing that as much as possible but DS’s Life Transfer with Transfusion is better.

Also, do what you can to increase your toughness and vitality so you become the tank for your minions. The Bone Fiend is probably targeted due to its dps and toughness so you need to pull hate from it.

Trait to make your minions explode in a poison cloud. They might as well do something useful when they die and all the extra toughness you get will make you a better tank.

I’m not sure why you ever felt that minions could stay up forever but for anything thats not a regular trash world npcs minions are extremely fragile. Any dungeon aoe will wipe them all in single hit. That goes for all dungeons. There are some aoes that don’t do direct damage but apply dots but end result is the same.
Unlike wow they do not have any protection against aoe, no chance to resist or avoid. They also don’t even regenerate during combat or even out of combat, with the exception of golem that does renerate OC. Underwater…. you have 0 ability in any shape/way/form to heal anything. Also their stats do not scale with yours at all. Only things that affect their damage, survivability are traits. Same as condition damage not benefiting from a bunch of damage stats… this game is terribly biased towards popularity. Simply put… they are horrible for dungeons… can you run dungeons with them yes. But success in explore mode will be 50% luck and 50% group composition.
On your question about minion types bone fiends charm is that its ranged in group scenario they live a lot longer then anything else, while shadow fiend will be dead more often then not due to the fact that everyone and their crippled grandmother cleaves… well except for necromancer but we are more like brain dead monkey in coma.
Flesh wyrm can survive in a lot of situation where rest of your minions would be able to stay alive for 1-2 seconds at best. You can stick him on top of a pillar… or a wall. Same for bone fiend because he is at least ranged he does’t get cleaved. Bone minions charm is that as soon as theres danger of them dying you can blow them up and never loose on damage or blow them if your stats are high enough that your damage from explotion is higher then damage they can dish out in the duration of 1 cooldown.
As far as gear goes its mostly a matter of prioritizing: if you are soloing hard stuff power,tougness,vitality. If you are farming then power,precision,toughness(most rounded set of stats). If you are in a tanky group power,precision,critical damage. If you are dead you can’t dps nor can you summon anything so thats the basic idea. You aren’t a burst class nor are you support class.
Staff does misrable damage its not very good for dungeons but its the most versatile weapon with highest utility in the entire game. It provides aoe healing with dots, chill with poison field that can be comboed for aoe weakness, condition removal and transfer to enemies and interupt in form of fear.
Axe provides vulnerability which both improves your own damage and your minions damage. Focus provides further vulnerabity and ability to stip boons + chill.
Chill is a very good condition due to the fact that it both slows enemy and increases cooldown for abilities by 66% which is nothing to sneeze at as long as there is a cooldown.
Unfortunetly heal on focus is…. wonky like the rest of the class. It may apply regen to 1 minion and ignore rest it may not apply regen to anyone.
Don’t forget to use death shrouds life transfer to heal your noodle squad since you picked that trait. It’s also a high damage aoe.

I’ll try to cover what you asked but I’m not the MM expert like some of the guys. Just throwing in my 2 cents with my experiences:

• Bone fiend or bone minions? That’s always a tough one, but I’ve found that if you actually hit the bone fiend’s skill outside of it’s attack range (or this seems to work for me anyway) he will root himself and stay back from the fight some and avoid getting too much agro. Now you do lose the immobile on the target because it was out of range, but you get a minion that survives longer. He does hit freaking hard, and since you use vampiric master you can benefit a lot from his double hits. That being said, when it comes down to me trying to decide, I look at the finishers each minion has and consider which I would prefer in the given situation. Bone minions are blast finishers, bone fiend has a chance of projectile finisher (even though the tooltip doesn’t state it, I’ve seen it do proj finishers many times through my wells). That’s usually how I decide.

• Regen on the minions? Well…tbh the focus regen would be awesome if it actually worked on minions. It does not except occasionally on the flesh golem. If you do decide to go axe/focus (which is an excellent choice, minus the reaper’s touch bug) at least keep the staff as a 2nd weapon and use the mark of blood to keep them healed up. Your transfusion heals them for far more than anything else anyway.

• Dungeons for an MM usually aren’t too bad. You picked one of the worst ones to try it out on lol. Since the new AC update it is VERY MM unfriendly but it can be done. In the spider queen fight you know the minions go down fast right? So bring ones you can afford to sacrifice easily and get back out, which would be the bone minions. I think you might be able to use flesh wurm if you put him up on a wall somewhere or on top of the statue maybe, just somewhere that her wells won’t hit. The rest of your utilities should be for survival like well of power, ect. For the Kohler fight minions are a lifesaver since he now endlessly spawns adds. They help with target control very effectively. Yeah they might get taken out in his spin, but w/e just pop them back out again. As for the end bosses, like most 1 shot wonder bosses the minions aren’t so great, at least on the rumblus and howling king. Theya re more useable on the howling than rumblus though. The ghost eater is another story. While he’s not a 1 shot wonder, the minions will keep attacking him which makes him continue to vomit up oozes, which can become too much to handle for your party. So to make an overly long story short, MM can still work in dungeons and many other dungeons are much more MM friendly than AC, but it’s all situational. Just be prepared to have a backup plan for certain fights.

• Someone already covered the armor thing for you, so I’ll leave this one alone. Just wanted to say you can pretty much run whatever armor you prefer for yourself when running MM because your personal stats have no effect on the minions.

Bone minions are the 2nd best minion skill in the game in MM builds, on the condition that you blow them up. If you don’t, they are the worst minion skill we have.

For gear, do not use condition damage stats. You will always have better damage using an Axe/Focus and using some kind of combination of power/prec/toughness/vit/crit damage. The problem with condition damage is that in staff builds, the damage increase is terrible, it just isn’t worth the loss in power (which will still give staff damage). If you use a scepter, you are still losing out big time on damage overall because of the loss of vulnerability stacking.

Bravo Nay and Hisazul, great perspective and level headed answers on minions. I don’t even need to comment except to say, read them, and don’t worry about them dying. It’s what they do.

Btw, here is a alternate setup with traits and utilites if you are in a dungeon where the minions just cant do anything except die or even hinder progress *cough jade maw cough*, remember Life Blast is your main spam attack.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNAW3djMat7pbObM8JCpHP7aWbSx36Gki3rLA

Many thanks for all the answers all!

Nay, that seems like a fantastic way to deal with Bone Fiend. While I love his damage and his ranged abilities, it honestly seemed like his sole purpose in life was to get himself killed as quickly and horrifically as possible. Locking him down like that is an easy way to keep the moron alive.

Another newb question would be the use of “power.” I’m still working out how all the traits and the like work and nearly every MM build talks about the importance of power. Does that affect the damage of minions or something else that’s important to an MM?

Also, talked to another Necro MM in my guild. He suggested a very unique build.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNAW3djEat61aGb07JAJFNT9kCuBH6RuSXLA

I honestly think I see the draw of such a build. With the higher axe damage, I’m still helping out in the team through said damage even if my minions bite the dust. I also can see the draw of the Signet of Spite. While I love my Flesh Wurm, I can see how the signet will increase power(which means, I think, increased minion damage.) So I find this build very credible for dungeons.

However, again, as I’m new I tend to take things at face value. Does this seem like a viable build for dungeons and PvE or not? Any thoughts/suggestions would be most appreciated.

And again, thanks for all the earlier answers!

Nay of the Ether.8913:

• Bone fiend or bone minions? That’s always a tough one, but I’ve found that if you actually hit the bone fiend’s skill outside of it’s attack range (or this seems to work for me anyway) he will root himself and stay back from the fight some and avoid getting too much agro. Now you do lose the immobile on the target because it was out of range, but you get a minion that survives longer. He does hit freaking hard, and since you use vampiric master you can benefit a lot from his double hits. That being said, when it comes down to me trying to decide, I look at the finishers each minion has and consider which I would prefer in the given situation. Bone minions are blast finishers, bone fiend has a chance of projectile finisher (even though the tooltip doesn’t state it, I’ve seen it do proj finishers many times through my wells). That’s usually how I decide.

I felt the deep urge to quote this specific paragraph. The immobilize trick is actually something I used but not once even realized I did it.
And as Bhawb said bone minions is either the highest damage dealing minion or utterly useless. Depending on if you blow them up or not.

I always use bone minions and bone fiend and swap between shadow fiend and flesh wurm depending on situation. WvW your little worm friend is one the most abusive skills past epidemic and spectral walk jumping off a very high cliff lol. Even with horrible gear and lacking any insensitive in participating in WvW due to me generally not really having as much fun as I would like with MM I can tell you wurm provides most of the fun. Throw it on the side… doesn’t matter where. Rush past the zerg you with axe and your golem towards catapults/treb get to it use #2 and golem charge then use ur wurm teleport and ds to like like a little girl through the woods at night. The ensuring enraged zerg determined to chase you down will go to extremes chasing you. I jumped off a cliff just to… well.. not give the satisfaction… I counted ~14-17 people who splattered next to me.

And for Dread.
Your stats do not affect minions/pets/clones/etc in any way. Only traits think I did say that but I’m too lazy to read my own walls of text. Reason why everyone says power is pretty much required is the fact that its your 1 and only source of damage. You can’t really go conditions with full MM because you will never reach any kind of meaningful level of damage due to traits and utility slots not being available. Most condition specs rely on having 100% bleed duration increase to take full advantage of barbed precision.. bleeds on crit and so forth. So power = your own damage. Minions damage isn’t horrible but its not really all that amazing either if you do not suppliment it you will be struggling with issues like your minions dying more often due to losing golem to prolonged fights and so forth.
After power general idea is to make sure you are alive to both resummon your noodles and dps. So either toughness or vitality or both for extra durable approach. Precision increases your critical chance so it increases your own damage by a lot and rather easily however true benefit from criticals are only seen once you beef up critical strike damage. So just play around with power+tough/vit+prec with power+prec+critdmg and power+tough+vit. See which one makes you happier.
Anyway again I feel obligated to say it rats do the most damage if use their utility it also provides combo finisher so lets say you have death nova. You blow up your rat it does a lot of damage and leaves a poison cloud now your bone fiend will use cloud for some projectile poison stacking your next rat blow up will provide aoe weakness and leave another poison pool which you can once again combo with staff for instance for even more weakness and longer poison stack on enemy.

Dreadstep.6973:

Also, talked to another Necro MM in my guild. He suggested a very unique build.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNAW3djEat61aGb07JAJFNT9kCuBH6RuSXLA

I honestly think I see the draw of such a build. With the higher axe damage, I’m still helping out in the team through said damage even if my minions bite the dust. I also can see the draw of the Signet of Spite. While I love my Flesh Wurm, I can see how the signet will increase power(which means, I think, increased minion damage.) So I find this build very credible for dungeons.

The traits are variable in terms of Minions since only 20 into DM is actually required for the 50% hp increase (or they plain melt) sadly the benefits of being a minion master dont make much use of Signet of Spite (what is also our worst signet), Dark armor (you really aint supposed to tank with MM zerker or rabid setups) and the reanimator trait if you dont get Death Nova.
It is probably a good WvWvW solo setup.

I honestly can’t see myself using MM w/o minion cd reduction, hp and dmg and siphon traits. Its just not viable. W/o 20 spite they don’t do any damage… 50% less hp and they die before they can do anything even with it they still die and due to how cd on summoning works not having cd reduction increases downtime exponentially. Healing… well… personal choice I guess if I go mm I go full MM and w/o it healing is a bit lacking.

There’s a build I’ve been working on that actually does utilize condition damage for yourself and the use of minions for direct damage. It’s still in test phases but it seems promising so far. It utilizes the vampiric healing from the minons too so you can do a little mild tanking with it. The whole idea is to let the minions do the direct damage and your conditions on top of it synergize with the minions. Your conditions alone are not as powerful as a straight condimancer, and your minions alone are not as powerful as a straight MM, but together it actually works pretty well. Once I iron it out some more I’ll get it posted in our section. It’s meant mainly for dungeons, but it might be adaptable for wvw.