Guild Wars 2

Or is summoning a must to do well in both PvE/P?

Honestly, I am not sure that they can be played effectively WITH minions.

The short answer is yes, there are at least 2 legit builds that involve no minions.

Is one of them conditions?

Yes, the other being power wells.

minions currently are only good for levelingin pve, cuz in pvp 1 good ae kills them all, and the 3sec poision cloud they leave is a joke at best in pvp

oh and lets not forget thev dismal pet ai for a necro they’ll never all focus on 1 target in pvp unless its a 1on1 fight and NOTHING else is around

so the 20 extra tough per pet isnt worth the dps loss you’ll get using them in pvp

but in pve a pet build is great for survivability to level

No you don’t need minions at all…they’re mostly just agro magnets in PVE, except for worm. He’s useful in DEs when placed correctly. Minions need a revamp badly. They’re not bad, but they’re not as good as they should be considering how class defining they are.

I can take on up to 7 easily without minions running a power dagger/warhorn build. I confess to sometimes using the elite one as a punching bag while healing though.

I’m currently leveling with scepter/dagger as my main set, and either dagger/focus or axe/focus in my off set. I use well of corruption, blood is power, and epidemic. Haven’t even gotten my elite yet, but once I do I’ll use the golem. I have no problems handling vets or groups of enemies and I even managed to work down a champion solo. Just have to get clever and be mindful of what does what. Don’t waste OH dagger 4 without using BiP or Epidemic first to spread that condition.

Minions can be fun in PvP if you use that AoE retaliation buff combo. Everyone runs in GRR IMA AOE THOSE WEAK MINIONS, and promptly explodes.

I can take on and survive huge mobs running all minions and traited into them for health siphoning and life transfer healing. They also give me toughness per minion. Pair that with the healing well and I can sit back and do damage with my staff while they dps and act as meat shields for me. It doesn’t work very well in pvp unless I’m on a good team. If so, I dominate as I can act as support like I’m supposed to.

Running with minion only in beta. Understood that they were not good enought.
Avoided at the launch.

I just used the golem (which is quite good alone) before buyng more powerfull elite skills (aka lich form)

DS build staff/dagger.

I think you have that question backwards. It should be, Can the Necro be Played WITH Minions Effectively?

The answer is no, not really, unless you like having all your dps and utility killed by aoe and put on cooldown for the rest of the fight.

No, you don’t need them. I dropped my minions in my mid-20’s and am now at 69. Much happier without having to babysit minions.

In pve, i sometimes prefer minions because they’re such a good support for solo with minion traits..but recently on pvp, and wvw i been messing stuff up with my power build. the traits are 30/0/20/20/0. I use staff/dual daggers, heal i use consume conditions(feast on ALL your conditions and initial heal plus heal per conditon you consumed..no reason not to use this during pvp and wvw) And for utilities replace your minions with wells wells are freakin awesome. WELL OF SUFFERING cause good damage and vulnerability. WELL OF CORRUPTION to convert enemy boons into conditions!! and cause decent damage. WELL OF POWER convert you and your alies conditions into boons!! using all three of these at the same time is pwnage to me..especially during moments where you have to hold down a control point during pvp. You having a hard time keeping ppl still while using your wells? thats why you got the chill from staff, immobility on your dagger. For elite im sure you could agree plague form is the most useful..i know im not a condition build but i dont use plague form for conditions, i use it for the BLIND!!!! Its a very good support skill…you can enter plague form, then your HP will jump to around 40 k, rush in the group of 3-5 lol and just spam the blind button over and over while your team mates going in for the damage. If you dont want to play with minions you should try giving this build a chance and you’ll see what im talking about.

Ergo Proxy.6219:

Minions can be fun in PvP if you use that AoE retaliation buff combo. Everyone runs in GRR IMA AOE THOSE WEAK MINIONS, and promptly explodes.

The retaliation buff combo? What do you mean with that? /looks puzzled

To chime in with the rest, you are generally better off running without minions in their current state. The closest thing to an exception is the Flesh Golem, which is actually somewhat useful when its AI isn’t having a “special ED” fit.

Honestly, I’d be more inclined to use them if they regenerated HP out of combat like basically every other summonable in the game. They’re fragile enough that this change wouldn’t have a huge impact beyond making minion builds more fun… and minions are aggressive enough that you probably wouldn’t end up with cases where a necro runs away from combat in pvp and their army regenerates.

Zabatakis.3571:

Honestly, I am not sure that they can be played effectively WITH minions.

My sentiments exactly. I gave up trying to use any necro pets, they’re terrible. Any number of other utilities work much better.

Well of Blood = Light Field

Blast Finisher + Light Field = AoE Retaliation.

Putrid Mark trigger + Bone Horror Detonate = Blast Finishers.

Add in Chillblains for poison field and your exploding minions will give you area weakness. Necrotic grasp will also proc condition removal for as long as the well on blood light field is active.
Finally drop a well for a dark field and minon explosions will proc blindness, whilst necrotic grasp will do some life stealing.

Combos are awesome! Just wish we had fields on our other weapons, not just staff.

minions at the moment is one of the least powerful builds for a necro

They really need to rework minions to be like GW1 minions: Highly disposable, but able to be resummoned really easily. I can’t think of any other class (except possibly Illusion mesmers, but even then…) who can have their entire spec made useless by one AoE, and then unavailable for a further 20+ seconds.

Never used minions before recently, when I started running a tanky build for point holding in PVP. I use the Bone Minions as blast finishers to combo with the Wells, and the Flesh Golem because I feel useless as either a Lich or a Dark Fart.

For everything else, I usually run a Scepter/Dagger – Staff build with mostly Corruptions as utilities. Never cared about minions, and tbh I find the “Minion Master” Necro build rather annoying.