Guild Wars 2

Hey everyone, this post will be looking in depth into the minion master build. Over time I will be editing my saved spots within the posts to show how you can create many great builds using minions. This post will also show the pros and cons of being a minion master, and overall how to make this spec work for the necromancer. The build will build over time and I will post the video of the final results of this research on my channel on youtube. (Goes by my username on here)
I do not want to repeat my last failed attempt at this build, because the build itself is actually very viable, it just takes a different type of thinking. All suggestions and critique will be read that are posted within this post, so please take the time to ask questions and I’ll try to answer them the best that I can.

Part One; Baby Steps.
The first thing you must consider as a Necromancer that uses minions, is that each minion can fill a certain role. Do you want more damage? Take the Bone Minions for the nice explosion. Do you run a condition build? Take Bone Fiend for the cripple to lock down enemies. Learn what your build is lacking, and see if minions can fill that hole.
Minions are unreliable. That is simply a fact that all Minion Masters must deal with. You must keep a constant tab on where the minions are at all times, to ensure that they have the best chance to hit their target. Will the Flesh Golem have his charge blocked by that bit of terrain? Will this wall block the Bone Fiend’s projectiles? Will my Flesh Wurm teleport allow me to pass through this object? Knowing these things is a key factor to being a Master. Use minions in PvE and PvP often, and you will see their patterns, and you can adjust your strategies to them.
Minion Masters rely a lot on confusion. Much like Mesmers and their illusions, we rely on a horde of flesh to confuse the enemy, and make us harder to target. Move around quicky, use your minions as a distraction. Bring Stun Breakers, and movement speed boosters to get away quickly. Stand in the back of minions to ensure that the minion will be hit before you, soaking up a tiny bit of damage.

All Minion Information
Everything you need to know about our little pets.

All statistics were taking over a period of 3 minutes hitting each golem in the heart of the mists. No armor, weapons, traits, or accessories were equipped, level is set to 80

Starter Notes

• The trait Minion Master does not apply it’s 20% recharge to minions for the active skills on the minions. I.E. Charge on the Flesh Golem will always be 40 seconds.

Flesh Golem

Damage to Heavy Armor: 550 – 984 damage on Auto-Attack. Critical dealt 1021 damage.
Damage to Medium Armor: 716-1242 damage on Auto-Attack. Critical for 1240 damage.
Damage to Light Armor: 640-1145 damage on Auto-Attack. Critical for 996 damage.

Charge Damage: Light Armor took 204 damage three times. Medium Armor took 209 damage three times. Heavy Armor took 176 damage three times.

Knock-back is 2 seconds long. Recharge on this is 40 seconds.

Applies 1 second cripple to the target hit for every auto-attack.

Shadow Fiend

Damage to Heavy Armor: 330 – 361 damage on Auto-Attack. 528 on Critical.
Damage to Medium Armor: 433-471 damage on Auto-Attack. 685 on Critical.
Damage to Light Armor: 395-416 damage on Auto-Attack. 691 on Critical.

Teleport Damage: Heavy Golem 509 damage. Medium Golem 631 damage. Light Golem 595 damage.

Teleport is on a 20 second cool-down. It applies a blind to the enemy for 3 seconds. To activate the teleport there is a 4 second channel that the minion must do.

Bone Fiend

Hits twice for every auto-attack it preforms. This means that each individual shot that it fires has the potential to critical. One may hit for a crit, and the other one in the same shot might not. Attacks count as a projectile finisher.

Damage to Heavy Armor: 138 – 370 damage on Auto-Attacks, hits twice. Critical for 549 damage.
Damage to Medium Armor: 175-462 damage on Auto-Attack, hits twice. 292 on Critical Hit.
Damage to Light Armor: 173 – 403 damage on Auto-Attack, hits twice.

Rigor Mortis Damage: 341 damage on Heavy Golem. 468 damage on Medium Golem. 404 damage on Light Golem.

Rigor Mortis immobilizes the target for 2 seconds, and has a 50 second recharge time. Using this skill will make the Bone Fiend immobilized for a short time as well.

Flesh Wurm

Damage to Heavy Armor: 788 – 873 damage on Auto-Attack. Critical Hit for 1273 damage.
Damage to Medium Armor: 1021 – 1105 damage on Auto-Attack. Critical Hit for 1670 damage.
Damage to Light Armor: 940 – 1014 damage on Auto-Attack. Critical hit for 1457 damage.

Necrotic Traversal damage: 165 poison damage tick for 4 seconds on Heavy Golem. 164 poison damage tick for 4 seconds on Medium Golem and Light Golem.

Necrotic Traversal is a teleport that will teleport you to it’s direction for a distance of 1200. This means that it will only move you 1200 in it’s direction if you are out of range. The teleport can move you through some physical objects. The teleport is a blast finisher. The cool-down is 40 seconds.

Bone Minions
Coming soon!

Jagged Horrors
Coming soon!

Minion Damage Per Second
Thanks to Fiesbert.9816
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Autoattack-DPS-and-cast-times/first#post258301

Creating a Build Involving Minions

The first thing to take into consideration, are the skills and stats of the minions. Each one will bring a new skill to the table, and it is extremely important to use minions as a compliment to a build instead of the focus. Even one of the builds that I use utilize every skill slot for a minion, and the minions are still not the focus. I’ll provide an example.

Tanky Minion Master

http://www.gw2db.com/skills/calc/necromancer#11|15|1200|2297|1151|1196|4693|10|1215|0|0|0|0|0|0|30|2243|698|2330|20|686|692|0|10|1242|0|0|0|0|0|28037|28045|49979|49979|49979|49979|49979|21025|48789|48789|48789|21082|21082|

This build primarily focuses on the retaliation boon and survivability, using the minions to remove boons, CC, while providing extra damage, healing, and toughness to the Necromancer. This build utilizes the Axe’s 3rd skill which provides the retaliation buff and a cripple, and the Spiteful Spirit trait to provide retaliation upon exiting Death Shroud. The trait for Transfusion is extremely important for healing your minions, team, and yourself, so it should be used whenever it is not on cool-down. The warhorn is great for staying away, while also having the ability to stop healing/stomps with the skill 4. The Melandru runes and soldier/cleric accessories are all focusing on the goal of surviving. Minions should be maintained, and used to help focus down targets, they are there for providing armor, a bit of healing, and some utility, but they should not be relied on. Use your Axe 2 skill to build life force, and remember to upkeep your retaliation.
Overall…

• This build focuses on retaliation for sustain and damage.
• Minions provide toughness, healing, and damage. The CC requires you to be mindful of minion position to be effective.
• Use Death Shroud and Axe 3 to maintain retaliation.
• Use Death Shroud skill 4 to provide healing to sustain you and your minions.
• Use Flesh Wurm as a stun breaker and an escape. You can replace this with another stun-breaker if desired.
• Use Axe’s auto-attack to stack vulnerability on targets, it helps more than you’d think.
• Maintain distance from the enemy, let them come to you. Reacting to an action is easier than attacking.
• Use the Death Shroud skill 3 to stop stomps or healing, and skill 2 to focus down a target easier.

Remember:
This is a build that focuses on surviving, although you will pick up kills, it is recommended that you support the team, or hold a point. Supporting is viable because of Transfusion and the CC you provide. Do not take the sheer number of minions for granted, it provides confusion and takes time to sort through the minions to click the target, though this isn’t really a true advantage, it can help in a pinch.

This should be enough for the minion master itself, now just to research and find what makes the build actually viable. I’ll be back in a bit, thanks guys!

I wanted to say something this morning but it probably included zergbus and yea the remarks where kidna annoying and degrading yoru oponents a bit i think its good you took the video off and start with a clean slate.

that you dont giveu p that easily shows you have spirit just put a lill more effort in it now show some 1 on 1 1 on 2 1 on 3s you dont have to kill them all just show them you can stand your ground.

good luck !

I’m glad to see someone with an interest in minions. I’m working on refining my own ideas for minion builds in PvE, but I’m very curious to see what you come up with for PvP.

uhm i run necro minion build for spvp and wvw. really love it. i did 20/0/20/30/0 and i usually go for the life transfer that transfers to allies trait or the wells syphon depending on what im doing. if in wvw i usually do life transfer since it helps out my party alot more and its more open spaced compared to spvp

also like to add that i run 2 types of runes 3/3 rune of soldier and the other was forgot the name but gave me vit/heals. and for necks i went with vit/healing/power. other then that it works out pretty well if you are really good with using ds only to life transfer and fear and maybe toss a bleed once in a while

I run a tanky MM necro everywhere. Traits are 0/0/30/30/10. Blood Fiend, Bone Minions, Shadow Fiend, Flesh Wurm, and Flesh Golem. Axe/Focus primarily, Staff for range when I need it (not usually very effective ranged).
With all the crap I see referencing various parts of my build (especially the Axe) I did surprisingly very well in my Rabbit level PvP matches. Surprisingly as I have put 0 effort into ‘perfecting’ my build in any way. I will say I’ve done very well in almost all of my 1v1 matchups as well as many 2v1s.

Minion information looks good. Two things I would add though:

1.) You left out Bone Minions and Jagged Horrors. The Jagged Horrors might not be terribly useful, but they are technically minions and someone going for this playstyle should know what to expect from them. Bone Minions are a valuable part of the build at times for their burst AoE damage and the fact that Putrid Explosion counts as a blast finisher. It probably matters more in PvE than PvP, but just wanted to point that out.

2.) You also forgot to mention that Bone Fiend auto attacks each count as a projectile finisher.

Hey guys, I am sick with a pretty bad ear infection, so I’ll be out until about Monday. Just know that I’ve been doing a ton of testing for minions, and that this post is not abandoned. Thanks

why would someone make a guide trying to get people to play a bad build?

Because we want our Minion Master from guild wars 1 back or at least be useful besides for leveling and that is still out for debate if it is good for leveling a necro since the AI often times finds more mobs for you to kill then kill the mobs you already have.

Also thanks for the minion info but please remember minion stats are not affected by our stats but scale with our level. The only things that can help are in the trait tree itself.

Dabrixmgp.4758:

why would someone make a guide trying to get people to play a bad build?

It isn’t a bad build man, its a broken build. I would play a broken build long before a bad one. It just needs fixing. MM is going to be quite awesome once all the AI, and such are fixed. I plan on going MM Bunker type as soon as I can without worrying about bugs.

Just posted the first build for this post. Yo dawg I heard you like posts so I put a post in your post so you can post while you post. cough anyway… There will be more minion builds coming, this is just the first. Thanks for your patience, I’m feeling better and I’m ready to dive right back into the fray.

I was thinking just buying gear with power, prec and crit dmg and nuke away in pve/dungeons while all my minions are pumping out damage aswell.

This is with a staff.

Nice writeup. You forgot attacks per second of minions though. You can find them here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Autoattack-DPS-and-cast-times/first#post258301

Starting up the guide again guys. Thanks for waiting for so long. I will have to update some things, as the necromancer has changed.