Guild Wars 2

Originally we all started out as necromancers with dreams of commanding our own little smelly army. Unfortunately our dreams were crushed as soon as we found out that in GW2 minions were for idiots (really)

Now all is forgiven and we have new hope! I have been mad testing my full MM build sense Tuesday and I am very pleased with the results. Its by no means perfect but the added HP allows my little buggers to stay alive im most situations. I have run every dungeon and almost all paths (still have Sorrows and Arah left to do)

I have a warrior and an engineer and my necromancer has been placed on the shelf for everything but sPvP but now im considering playing him as my main, I easily do more damage than my engineer (and im good lol) My warrior is probably still slightly better at DPS but overall i would place MM necromancer in the #2 DPS spot for most encounters.

Also I usually run with half zerker half soldiers or some other mix so I get to do respectable damage while also maintaining good defense (for speed runs ill run full zerker)

Post your findings and questions here and if anyone has a video that wold be cool

I’ll let you know how it goes without that pve buff

-Zombify

I have reservations. Care to give us your build and educate us on damage numbers?

I actually would be curios to see what people are running for dungeons as a minion master. I personally spend more time pvping but do the occasional dungeon and I usually always bring my mesmer along =/ would be nice to actually run a necro build like a MM though =)

Asche.5362:

I have reservations. Care to give us your build and educate us on damage numbers?

Not saying MMs aren’t viable, they are, always have been, and always will be. However they will never be meta. By their nature, MMs have always been a high-micro, unpopular choice; you rely on high microing and AI to do things. It will never be the main meta though, unless it becomes unbalanced. And they certainly aren’t unbalanced yet.

It still needs a lot of effort to work competitively and with synergy.
The recent buff helped a bit, but didn’t do the real work.

MM is definitely more playable in dungeons than they used to be.

Before the buff, I was thinking of how to make minion masters similar to GW1. It’s probably not possible, though, given the skill structure of GW2. Maybe if a new signet is added and had something like:

Passive: summons a jagged horror every 30 seconds
Active: Summons 5 jagged horrors. (CD90 seconds)

Signet of the Reanimator?

They arent meta. But the improvements are noticeable. My flesh golem survived full melee on bloomhunger in fractal 38 today, no problems. Means its actually worth taking the minion damage trait in spite solely for flesh golem charge. So its a minor buff to anyone that uses flesh golem as an elite. Doesnt change that necros will never be a meta class for dungeons in the games current state. They are purely a situational fractal class.

This op actually does know what he’s talking about… But your entitled to your opinion. PvE Necromancer is a rather poor class (not unviable) just poor. I have been running a power build for quite some time, playing with wells and spectral crap but if you run a lot of dungeons then you know… They could do better lol.

MM provides a much needed “role” to play, something only we can do. And before you go blaming AI why don’t you test it.

For those who are actually interested in contributing to the discussion. My build is currently 30/0/20/20/0 but I have changed it 2 or 3 times so far. It’s only been a few days and I don’t have anything written in stone yet.

Bottom line my MM will outplay your “insert other build” (in dungeons) guaranteed.

tattoohead.3217:

MM provides a much needed “role” to play, something only we can do. And before you go blaming AI why don’t you test it.

I know every minions damage and HP by heart, DPS, how every mechanic they have works now and has worked since launch. I know exactly what I’m talking about when it comes to minions, I’ve spent hours upon hours testing them out.

Minion DPS is nice, and its strong as long as they stay alive. But it will never be meta. Ever. Unless they make them completely OP (if they “dumbfire” them), they will not be the main meta simply because they will always be perceived negatively. They will always be an AI build that relies on you being able to properly micro their aggro and skills, and they will always be a very, very unique build type.

Its just how it is. Keep on trying them out, but it won’t make them meta.

Bhawb.7408:

tattoohead.3217:

MM provides a much needed “role” to play, something only we can do. And before you go blaming AI why don’t you test it.

I know every minions damage and HP by heart, DPS, how every mechanic they have works now and has worked since launch. I know exactly what I’m talking about when it comes to minions, I’ve spent hours upon hours testing them out.

Minion DPS is nice, and its strong as long as they stay alive. But it will never be meta. Ever. Unless they make them completely OP (if they “dumbfire” them), they will not be the main meta simply because they will always be perceived negatively. They will always be an AI build that relies on you being able to properly micro their aggro and skills, and they will always be a very, very unique build type.

Its just how it is. Keep on trying them out, but it won’t make them meta.

This. Bhawb really is obsessed with MM though :P. Also in condi necro defense, it was viable before dhuumfire. It just got a unneeded/wanted buff.

I usually like Bhawbs posts (and i listen to but of corps from rime to time) so no arguments I believe you know your stuff… to say that i don’t is slightly rude but, meh.

What you need to consider is that not only did minion DPS gain a slight buff Vampiric Master but also they stay active (the new HP is the heal buff) while wells ect are held back by a CD. Over a 3 min fight my Minions will out DPS any other skill i could place on my bar, accepts maybe epidemic but only on heavy trash bosses.

The argument againced MM is that the AI is bad and they die easily. TBH I don’t feel the AI is all that bad, sure i would love some more control but my minions attack what im attacking and they seem to do it right away 98% of the time. As far as them just being SIF fodder (die easily) this is exactly what i have spent the last 3 days testing and atm i have no issues keeping my minions alive in most situations. I still want ANET to either lower the CD on some of them (could be OP) or just give all pets a defense mechanic for AoE situations.

OFC there are some bosses that MM will be at a disadvantage and for those i will either just suck it up and do the best i can, or ill switch up my traits for that boss my 30/0/20/20/0 build is somewhat flexible if im in a terabad party and they “need” me to kick butt that fight lol.

I get that people are not a fan of MM but that’s why I post to begin with…

Sorry if it came off wrong (and I see it probably looked off and I deleted the part that imo looked way too insulting): I don’t disagree with you that minions are great. What I disagree with is the idea that they will ever become meta. I really get everything you’re saying, I’ve tried to argue it all before, the problem is just that I don’t see the negative stigma that MMs have going away.

I’d be interested to see DPS numbers for other classes to compare though. This could be a really high DPS setup, and it is similar to what I was going to swap over to in PvE (but I wasn’t going blood magic).

Bhawb.7408:

Sorry if it came off wrong (and I see it probably looked off and I deleted the part that imo looked way too insulting): I don’t disagree with you that minions are great. What I disagree with is the idea that they will ever become meta. I really get everything you’re saying, I’ve tried to argue it all before, the problem is just that I don’t see the negative stigma that MMs have going away.

I’d be interested to see DPS numbers for other classes to compare though. This could be a really high DPS setup, and it is similar to what I was going to swap over to in PvE (but I wasn’t going blood magic).

lol we just gotta keep kicking kitten till people cant deny the greatness of our minions insert evil laugh

Im working on a video guide atm… not all that motivated though so it may take a while. I would like to break down each Minion to there average DPS/DPM and compare them to other skills for other classes. I hate math but ill putt some work into it later.

For the meta necro build in pve you would have to refer to my build. But the class isnt meta in pve so there is no meta build.

I can get the DPS numbers for you, I wanted to make a better sheet for it anyway (my old DPS “chart” was scribbled on the back of a grocery list >.>).

If I recall correctly though, it was somewhere around 2-3k DPS averaged out.

What the hell is “meta”?

fen.3102:

What the hell is “meta”?

Most popular/strongest build for a given state of the game. ex terror builds in pvp

I will never run MM because they are not undead, they are cthuloids.

danbuter.2314:

I will never run MM because they are not undead, they are cthuloids.

kitten?

This new patch made every necro Dive into MM bunker..
Can this kitten get more boring?

danbuter.2314:

I will never run MM because they are not undead, they are cthuloids.

Think perhaps you have your lore mixed up. I just don’t see it. There is a plethora of lore to choose from, however the go-to for me is D&D. Our undead are basically flesh golems (which are constructs from pieces of the dead), or a lesser version of Zhaitan’s Abominations.

Per wiki on cthuloids:
“In “The Call of Cthulhu”, H. P. Lovecraft describes Cthulhu as “A monster of vaguely anthropoid outline, but with an octopus-like head whose face was a mass of feelers, a scaly, rubbery-looking body, prodigious claws on hind and fore feet, and long, narrow wings behind.”⁵ Cthulhu has been described as a mix between a giant human, an octopus, and a dragon, and is depicted as being hundreds of meters tall, with human-looking arms and legs and a pair of rudimentary wings on its back.⁵ Cthulhu’s head is depicted as similar to the entirety of a giant octopus, with an unknown number of tentacles surrounding its supposed mouth. Cthulhu is described as being able to change the shape of its body at will, extending and retracting limbs and tentacles as it sees fit."

tattoohead.3217:

I have a warrior and an engineer and my necromancer has been placed on the shelf for everything but sPvP but now im considering playing him as my main, I easily do more damage than my engineer (and im good lol) My warrior is probably still slightly better at DPS but overall i would place MM necromancer in the #2 DPS spot for most encounters.

Also I usually run with half zerker half soldiers or some other mix so I get to do respectable damage while also maintaining good defense (for speed runs ill run full zerker)

Post your findings and questions here and if anyone has a video that wold be cool

I also looked into the Minion Master yesterday, and it surprised me. I have yet to try it in a dungeon, though.

I would also be interested in seeing a build example.

Here is what I am playing around with. Currently my equipment is rares, not Exotics while I see how things work out.

I am going to try to use this in a dungeon, it works well in open world PVE in Orr so far.

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=;00;3sH-D0v3FJ-K0;9;4T-JJ-18B;129-16;26NV-W;1IDOX8ecXMGGSkFo0S;1V1-60B1G2LZR_8N-5V0N-9cV19c;9;9;9;9;9;56-6x

I took the traits that affect Minion health and damage, and with the increase of Toughness based on the Minions out I will get into Melee range with the mob with the daggers. When my DS is full I swap over as needed and use Torment, the AOE life drain, The number 2 skill with the chill, and fear. I might swap into Death Shroud just to put on the number 2 chill skill.

Another way to do this would be to have a Staff so you have access to the more frequent chill from that.

The Choice of runes extends the Chill effect, which is quite useful when running solo.

I’m going to play around with this, and see how or if it works with Rares. Then if it works really well I may consider investing in Exotics.

Astewart my build is very similar to yours, 30/0/20/20/0 however instead of d/d and d/f I run a/f and staff. Instead of close to death I run axe mastery (but for daggers CtD is certainly awesome) also I run transfusion.

The idea is that with Staff and Transfusion I can support my minions through a boss fight so I’m sommoning them less often (in most fights I don’t need to re summon at all)

Glad to see people testing it, my OP may have been a bit zelous lol MM will probably never be meta, but in PvE it out preforms IMO every other build in 80% of situations. (Minions still die on certain bosses too fast to be useful, but only a handful)

My main concern is how the minions fare against a dungeon’s boss and its aoes. Anybody had tested it already? Comments?

Traited HP values:
Blood/Flesh Golem – 33k HP
Bone Minions – 13k each
All others – 26k

So, although they obviously don’t have the real tankiness of players since they have no innate damage mitigation, they have really high HP values, and should be able to tank through a good amount of damage depending on boss.

I can confirm this, I just competed my testing of all dungeons (fractals next yay) and minions survive just fine through most boss fights even AoE situations. The biggest issues are with instant death mechanics and only a few bosses use them.

Overall if I’m really playing hard I’ll swap out my minions on 3 or 4 bosses to wells (untraited) and it works fine. But tbh I just re-sommon when I can and deal with it because in most encounters I kick major butt.

Oh and I’m learning that minions (espeshaly golem charge) take out objects super fast, I can take out the gate in CoF path 1 in like 2-3sec. Most of the pug runs I do I get people saying WTF!?

Flesh Golem’s charge has always been broken against structures. I still troll people by using my MM on Battle of Khylo, where even getting 3v1d I can easily take out a treb. It’s just too much fun.

Just because I couldn’t find one.

Even with the MM in full zerker with all his minions attacking the same target, it doesn’t compare to a great sword warrior’s DPS on a single target, let alone when you factor in cleave. As long as the PvE meta is stacking and corner pulling nothing will be able to compete with the great sword warrior.

Outside of the stack and smack meta, minions are fantastic in PvE. The MM excels in any situation where he only needs to rely on himself. This makes him very good for things like bunkering, taking small camps and fighting small skirmishes, or fighting a boss after the rest of the party wiped.

striker.3704:

Even with the MM in full zerker with all his minions attacking the same target, it doesn’t compare to a great sword warrior’s DPS on a single target, let alone when you factor in cleave. As long as the PvE meta is stacking and corner pulling nothing will be able to compete with the great sword warrior.

Outside of the stack and smack meta, minions are fantastic in PvE. The MM excels in any situation where he only needs to rely on himself. This makes him very good for things like bunkering, taking small camps and fighting small skirmishes, or fighting a boss after the rest of the party wiped.

Well… Yeah, but that’s kind of an overall issue with pve atm. 1v1 the DPS is not that far apart.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Just because I couldn’t find one.

Best

Yes, I had a ton of time in the original GW game.

i don’t recall it having any semblance of micro beyond death nova application

for me its the Meta.

the fun part when you solo WvW and there comes an enemy or 2 and runs away bicous they see allot of red nameplates XD

also minion health siphon heals ALLOT and adds some nice extra dmg.

It is the ‘new’ meta for necros looking for easy mode PvE. In WvW hardly easy mode and those that run away cause of all the ‘red nameplates’ are weak to begin with. Focus you, not the minions and you are toast with your minions following right behind your spiking, bet.

Rigel.3092:

It is the ‘new’ meta for necros looking for easy mode PvE. In WvW hardly easy mode and those that run away cause of all the ‘red nameplates’ are weak to begin with. Focus you, not the minions and you are toast with your minions following right behind your spiking, bet.

the ONLY person that was able to beat me in WvW was a stealth spammer thief after a good 10 min long fight I almost had him. stealth means my minions don’t attack lol.

focus me ? pfff try it on my 30K hp while my minions chop your health down and heal me dagger heal constant chills etc etc. I eat bunker warriors and guardians mesmers usualy run away after like 15 sec elementalists hunters even other necros are usualy free kill Enginers I don’t know I never meet one where are they ? lol. Soldier gear in my opinion the best gear for this build and bicous the Soilder amulet I can use this build in Spvp too and its HELL allot of fun you have crazy sustain and dmg from minions.

those that say its bad

1. cant use it
2. don’t like it
or using the wrong gear with the wrong stats for this build. or only meet BAD MM necros who were free kills.

We have a guild in our wvw that is mostly necro minion builds. They honestly melt tower gates near as fast as 2 rams.

Eles would be faster :P

So I realize that using the word meta is strong in this context, atm terror necros are still the pvp meta. But it’s been almost 15 days of testing different builds and gear and MM is the clear and cut best single target dps necromancer has available. Some well builds preform quite “well” (lol) in AoE situations, but overall minion dps is far greater over time.

I have not run a single dungeon where my minions were just dead all the time and the AI is doing fine for me.

Oh and to the bit about GW1 necros, I played the crap out of. GW1 and it’s well known that minions were among the strongest/best builds for Necromancers. (Just weighing in)

Chuck Zitto.2367:

We have a guild in our wvw that is mostly necro minion builds. They honestly melt tower gates near as fast as 2 rams.

What server/guild that sounds like fun and atm I can’t find any guilds on dragonbrand that do this.

tattoohead.3217:

Oh and to the bit about GW1 necros, I played the crap out of. GW1 and it’s well known that minions were among the strongest/best builds for Necromancers. (Just weighing in)

Strongest when they worked which is important to note. When they worked they were arguably the best build we had, right up there with BiP. Problem was they were even more niche than current MM builds, and you needed pretty amazing mechanics to properly utilize them (otherwise SS generally outperformed them DPS wise, and you became a flesh-wall factory and not much else). But if you wanted an easy-lazy build to use in any PvE/PvP situation with enough corpses yeah it was great.

tattoohead.3217:

Chuck Zitto.2367:

We have a guild in our wvw that is mostly necro minion builds. They honestly melt tower gates near as fast as 2 rams.

What server/guild that sounds like fun and atm I can’t find any guilds on dragonbrand that do this.

Don’t even think about leaving :p

I know Maguuma did a MM zerg at one point. Ran from spawn to capturing Stonemist (admittedly, unupgraded gates) using no siege in less than 4:30.

Zoltreez.6435:

Rigel.3092:

It is the ‘new’ meta for necros looking for easy mode PvE. In WvW hardly easy mode and those that run away cause of all the ‘red nameplates’ are weak to begin with. Focus you, not the minions and you are toast with your minions following right behind your spiking, bet.

the ONLY person that was able to beat me in WvW was a stealth spammer thief after a good 10 min long fight I almost had him. stealth means my minions don’t attack lol.

focus me ? pfff try it on my 30K hp while my minions chop your health down and heal me dagger heal constant chills etc etc. I eat bunker warriors and guardians mesmers usualy run away after like 15 sec elementalists hunters even other necros are usualy free kill Enginers I don’t know I never meet one where are they ? lol. Soldier gear in my opinion the best gear for this build and bicous the Soilder amulet I can use this build in Spvp too and its HELL allot of fun you have crazy sustain and dmg from minions.

those that say its bad

1. cant use it
2. don’t like it
or using the wrong gear with the wrong stats for this build. or only meet BAD MM necros who were free kills.

So you claim, got a video of you “eating” such?
Btw, I have a tank necro that can sustain better than your minion 30K necro. I believe I have a wvw roaming warrior build that would put foot in ya too, especially with it 16-20K+ evicerate. But yeah, /salute. WvW is the bomb, I love it, whether zerging or solo roaming.

While it’s much better than it was…

Elite still go’s on full CD if you get wet. (Still full CD on respawn, up to 1 min in sPvP seems forever)

Minions still have times when they stand around not attacking. They follow different ‘focus’ rules. As in, there’s times I’ll swap to staff for a little AOE when new monsters join the fight. I’ll target the mob in the back, and shoot thru a line of them. Some minions will follow my focus and move the the back one, some will just stay on the mobs they were already attacking.

Guildys cracked up laughing when my minions all ran off around the corner and started attacking the next group in a dungeon. As if to say ‘hurry up’.

Chill/Cripple get transferred from minions to you, even if they are far away.

sPvP people exploit ‘invisible walls’ making them run around not doing anything.

Minions count as ‘extra players’ with scaling up events/champs life.

Still die to 1shot mechanics. (Hear GW1 they ‘returned power’ on death.)