Guild Wars 2

I am still new, and enjoying my 23 Sylvari Necro a great deal. I’ve gone all power with Dagger/Warhorn and Staff and Wells, and I’m breezing through everything comfortably.

My son and I would really prefer to see the minions out and running around, but I got so sick of them dying so quickly.

If the supposed update is correct, should we expect Minion Master to be more playable in PVE at all levels of the game, since they will supposedly have more health? If so, what is a good MM leveling build?

P.S. Does Minion damage scale with my own Power level, or is the only way to boost it with that one trait?

Thanks for your help.

Only traits effect minions. So you can run whatever gear you want and your minions will always be doing the same damage. Minions have always been fairly decent in openworld. If the change is true then they could be even more desirable in open world. And they could be in a much better place for dungeons. Unfortunately I still dont think they will ever be reliable enough to make a full MM build for dungeons.

What spoj said is right on. Open world leveling with minions is ez-mode, and the elite minion deals some pretty solid damage. And now they regen out of combat.

If the upcoming patch rumors are true then they’re going to get heartier and <gasp> maybe even dungeon worthy?

They’ve been situationally dungeon worthy forever. And it will always remain situational because of dungeon mechanics.

My suggestion, if you’re bringing minions into a dungeon, research the dungeon first to be sure they aren’t going to hamper you, otherwise yeah they can be really nice, especially after this pretty massive HP boost.

For leveling on PvE open world, use the minions without worrying. They may die rather quick, but hey, they were dead from the start. Don’t break a sweat, and call them again.

When you max up your level, or if you start to do some dungs and the like, then you may sit down and think twice about your minions. Until then, enjoy them!

my 80 necro is running a full minion build for pve (20,0,30,20,0) with twin daggers and staff, running full soldiers armor and zerker weapon/ accessories. my minions will help me quickly cut down anything especially with poison nova trait. the only minions that die regularly is the jagged horror and the bone minions, i just sacrifice the latter for a very high burst damage on 15 seconds cool down. the build is practical in wvw vs noob only. zerg and any experienced player can easily out maneuvre you. and yes, it is practical for dungeon. minions will die fairly often, but the poison nova and short cool down from trait make up for it, so you will have at least 2 minions up constantly during any fight.

Rumor is over 70% life boost in PvE. With the 20point trait for 50% life on top… It could work… I’d still dream of a ‘come back’ or any sort of ’don’t stand there in that fire’ button.
They prob won’t be the ‘best’ build for dungy.
But they might not be ‘pointless’.

Could you imagine tho, x/x/20/20/x, with your little guys keeping your life topped up, being able to use combo fields that wasn’t a staff accident. Having enough lifeforce when they die off, to cover there cooldown… Pinch me!

I think the real value of bringing minions in will be x/x/30/20/x with Death Nova spamming poison fields for tons of poison and weakness, and then the solid healing from 20 blood magic, along with how much damage they’re going to soak up.

Btw, do bosses have 5 AoE limits?

Bhawb.7408:

I think the real value of bringing minions in will be x/x/30/20/x with Death Nova spamming poison fields for tons of poison and weakness, and then the solid healing from 20 blood magic, along with how much damage they’re going to soak up.

Btw, do bosses have 5 AoE limits?

Idk about 5, but I do know they have target limits because there are times where there were several necros in the party with minions, possibly an ele summon or two, and the players and at least 1 player would get exempted from some hits (also I think it might be skill- dependent for bosses, as well as the boss itself- Jorlag certainly isn’t going to have target limits, but something like jungle wurm, or even some dungeon bosses will). I know for a fact that lt Kohler in AC has target limits, and not talking about just his harpoon pull, his spin also has it (well until minions start dropping off, but at the beginning of his spin there’s a good 2-3 that will exempt at least 1 person). I see where you’re going with this lol, but idk who viable it would be considering how unreliable and unpredictable boss skills in general are.

I was asking simply because if they did have limits, it would make minions just a bit more viable. With the leaked percentage HP increase, Flesh Golem and Blood Fiend would be over 30k HP each, even Bone Minions, the most pathetic in HP numbers, would have over 13k HP (each). That is a fairly significant amount of AoE damage soaking they could do, and massive single target soaking, in addition to the field spam that they’d give. Also if I remember HP is part of the aggro

Again, still very situational choices, but I could see them being very helpful in certain dungeons with the added life the HP buff will bring.

Im not 100% sure but i believe it varies between bosses/attacks. Alpha’s aoes seem to be capped at 5 from what I can tell (not targeting pets or the npc). But it will still hit you if you dont dodge, i guess the way to test it is to make everyone tank the aoe and see if the pet takes damage aswell. Also noticed when running a dungeon with a guildy who ran mm necro, we werent getting hit as much. Either the minions were acting as meat shields or there was aoe cap preventing us from getting targeted as much.

Yeah it does definitely make a difference, but like Bhawb said, it’s still situational, and I think Subject Alpha is one of those occasions it won’t matter either way due to the sheer massive amount of aoe spam. I don’t ever forsee being able to run minions there, even flesh wurm will get targeted by him (and some of those circles do well over 50k dmg on a crit, no way any kind of summon would survive that). Now something like, say, most of the bosses in HotW, they could last an entire fight (they are already amazing in that dungeon, after the changes they will be the thing to bring there, especially the underwater fights), or maybe even SE (they do well in SE too, except for a few problem spots and it’s one of the few places where necromantic corruption is viable in pve (because dredge use so many boons, and some of the inquest in there do too).

Actually I think minions could help out in Subject Alpha in certain of his paths; specifically that BS one where he puts you in a crystal, assuming he targets minions with it.

I used to run some easy mode stuff with 5 MMs. (Just for the fun of lol) with some extra HP I could see it being rather viable, especially with how strong weakness is now.

I still think that in order to truly fix minions for dungeons they need to have some AoE protection something to the tune of -50% AoE damage taken. MM is one of the best DPS builds we have (if all of your li’ll buddy’s actually attack the right target and don’t run off on there own)

It’s a step I the right direction for necros. To the OP I play MM while leveling and it’s great, go for the 50% HP trait first and keep regeneration on them using your staff and they will live forever.

well waddya know, anet released a useless dragon yet they couldn’t give us our sorely needed buff and LFG tool

Changes are coming 10/15
LFG is currently rolling out

rolling out? yeah right, for like 3 people because of the stupid beta, why release a live feature still in beta? didn’t they have a beta already?, complete BS

Clearly you didn’t read their explanation for why they’re doing it this way. After all the whining on the forums about bugs in live implementation, now we’re going to fault them for rolling out a feature that can’t really be tested effectively with their small alpha sampling? They’re kitten ed if they do, kitten ed if they don’t.

then why release it at all?, just have an extended beta testing and dont release it live yet, the reason why something goes “live” it’s because it was beta before and now is good to be release

…

This is its beta. LFG is being put into live because it needs beta testing from more than 100 people in their office, when a few hundred thousand people could be testing it on live. They could have it on their in-house beta for years and it still wouldn’t get anything close to the testing that it will in a few weeks of beta on live.

Where was it said that they would be buffing minions? And did I hear health regen on minions? That is my second biggest gripe with this entire game so if they start regening I’m sold on it.

All non-sacrifice minions have ooc health regen now.

And it was in their update on where they are going with balance. Leaked notes suggest a 71% HP increase in PvE/WvW.

So the shadow fiend, bone fiend, and flesh golem? Why not the rest?

Afropenguinn.3675:

So the shadow fiend, bone fiend, and flesh golem? Why not the rest?

There’s really no point in having the sacrificial minions regen. If you need them to be full hp again, just sac them away and resummon. The regen is only between fights anyway. Since they changed the otehrs we no longer have to play that silly dance of flipping around utilities to force kill them. The sacrificial ones have low enough recharges it’s not detrimental, except maybe flesh wurm but even then it’s not that terribly long and not like he can follow you to the next fight anyway. Honestly I like it this way, it reminds me to sac out blood fiend (because when I run blood fiend I always use runes with “on heal” effects because you get them to proc 2 times) and to sac out bone minions to make sure I have 2 ready instead of 1.

I guess I always try and keep my minions alive, them being my main source of damage and survivability, so having them all regen would be nice so I didn’t have to sacrafice after every battle and wait to resummon before the next one. It just means I am not at full power going into a fight.

That’s a mistake many people make. Minions are not your main source of damage, they supplement you because they are utilities. Don’t treat them like ranger pets and try to keep them alive 100% of the time. Anyways, blood fiend is only 20 (16 traited), bone minions 20 (16 traited), and wurm 40 (32 traited). None of those except wurm are unreasonable to kill and re-summon before next fight, or at the start of a fight. You honestly won’t miss the dps and with wurm you have to kill him off regardless if you move out of his range anyway. By summoning the sacrificies at the beginning, you kind of stagger the minions in a way that as they’re killed off you always have at least 1 minion up (unless you get hit by massive aoe of course) and are ready to summon another to replace the fallen ones. While having all up and ready to go all the time would be maximum dps for you, it’s not maximum efficiency.

Would be nice if golem lasts longer so i can abuse charge more often.