I love playing a Minion Master Necro even with the issues it has. I don’t think I’ll ever give it up lol so I have some questions about gear. I’m a little confused in that department
I’m currently using the 20/0/30/20/0 but have tried playing around with the 0/10/30/30/0 some and like it to.
Should I even bother trying to do support? Maybe aquire a Cleric set? With the extra healing to keep minions up maybe it would do some good in groups?
If I do go after Cleric set, should I also go for a dps set like Rampager, in case more dps is needed instead of healing? Maybe don’t worry about the healing and focus purely on dps?
Or would it be easier to just go with a set like the Shaman and mix both healing power and condition dmg?
My intentions with playing MM are mostly PvE and dungeons. I rarely do PvP so I wouldn’t be worried about changing things up for that. I can’t think of any other information to give or what else to ask right now. Let me know what you all think.
For my MM necro, the stat priority is condition damage>healing>toughness. I am sporting a full carrion exotic set with runes of undead. All my jewels are sapphire and the weapon is mystic staff.
I would lean towards DPS support if anything.
The problem with healing I feel is its rather hard to practically keep your minions hp up in contrast to the damage their likely to take. For example, If they were in AOE range ( Dungeon,WvW,etc.. ), chances are they’ll die long before you can reasonably heal them for.
That being said, Some sort of DPS would maybe be more practical to supplement offensively your minions over trying to keep them alive ( their cooldowns are not too bad, and chances are your gonna spend a lot of time re-summoning them anyways.. ).
I Run conditions, But Crit % and a power build wouldn’t hurt either by any means.
The core traits your minions usually need is just the 30% damage increase and 20% cooldown reduction, The HP buff is optional in most cases as their hp is crap to begin with. So you have some wiggle room to hybrid spec in something to supplement your own offense.
For my MM necro, the stat priority is condition damage>healing>toughness. I am sporting a full carrion exotic set with runes of undead. All my jewels are sapphire and the weapon is mystic staff.
That depends entirely on the weapons he has. If he’s going scepter/dagger and staff then yes. However I personally prefer power>toughness>vitality as a minion master with axe/focus and staff.
The thing about minion master is that your only heals that scale off of healing power are mark of blood and blood fiend sacrifice. (if you use focus the #4 as well). Meaning you won’t gain much at all from healing power.
Since you only have 2 skills for healing, it’s a good idea to stack toughness and vitality (assuming you use axe/focus and staff) as it lets you survive longer and summon minions more/reflect more over time with retaliation.
Crit would be wasted on this build as you won’t be running any chance per crit traits. Even if you did, you won’t be getting critical % from your trees so that would be a poor investment.
I use the staff pretty much all the time. I have a dagger/warhorn for my secondary. Dagger for the times I need melee dmg in a dungeon like AC (can’t remember which path but it had those mounds) and I use the warhorn for the speed boost to quickly get back to my group if I go down on a fight.
I thought healing power also scaled Transfusion (BM #6 Major) and Deathly Invigoration (BM #9 Major)? So maybe the Cleric set isn’t really worth it then.
I have been switching between Cleric and a Rampager (rare only atm) set recently. So what I’m seeing so far is that its really only worth it to go with gear that has Vit/Toughness/Power/ and maybe Con. Dmg? That would leave the Carrion set and a few of the dungeon armor sets.
Any other thoughts? Thank you for the replies so far!
No edit Forgot to add in there that I normally use the Crests instead of runes just because I think the direct stat increase is better then the rune bonuses.
No edit Forgot to add in there that I normally use the Crests instead of runes just because I think the direct stat increase is better then the rune bonuses.
no no no no no no runes are leagues better. You just need to find the runes best for you. Personally I like runes of the lich for the vitality and condition duration (longer cripples and weakness) and the chance to spawn a bone minion. However if you like to run a staff you might like per say rune of the necromancer more.
Id say forget healing personally… I heard people scream get well of blood and transfusion heal… and spam mark of blood and be minions heal bot… frankly… I’m not sure if I’m playing the same game as those people. Even with 50% hp buff there’s a large number of things OUTSIDE of dungeons that will 1 shot your noodle party. Ever seen plague carriers? That’s like instant bai bai entire minion squad right there. Plenty of mobs that on death make a proper poison cloud that will chew all your lovable appendages and then some. In dungeons one aoe is guaranteed all your minions are dead. Why undead things care about poison is beyond me.. or bleeding for that matter but thats just common sense talking.
For stats I would say go for what makes you last long enough to resummon your noodles… toughness and vitality being the only ones that really help. For last… power or condition damage. Depends on if you decide to run scepter or axe/dagger personally if you are running mm… you should have more then enough cripples so scepter is somewhat lacking… it doesnt generate jack for LF and you can’t spend any trait points/skills for other LF generators and you will need that shroud. So its a choice between axe and dagger. Axe gives you weakness and retaliation and moderate range. Dagger gives more LF and extra heal… But you loose on weakness and retaliation. Second weapon isn’t debatable its staff. I can’t think of any spec where your second weapon wouldn’t be a staff. Its a requirement and I actually like it… more or less its still welfare compared to staff on other classes… and projectile is dreadfully slow but its piercing and generates LF with proper positioning it can do some really nice damage in crowds.
Anyway back to gear. Since in most cases where it matters your job is to dps… you can’t really drop some traits. 20 in spite for 30% dmg is a pretty much must… so is 10 points in death for 20% cd and another 10 in death for 50% hp… so thats 40 points which you either take or you are wasting time with minions. The last 30… will probably end up in blood… because while those heals are in general trashy… when its combined with vampiric master… it heals for a fairly good amount over all(lots of tiny heals do add up). The rest of what you take there… is up to you honestly. I’m still debating myself if there is a point in taking death nova for extra weakness stacks… or more in blood for extra heals. But all those heals are too small for healing gear… and considering transfusion and other taited stuff doesn’t use healing(or it didn’t last i bothered to look) healing stat becomes a complete waste of time. Yeah… your blood fiend will actually heal you for some reasonable amount but lets be honest… taking 1 out of 3 stats just for that is silly.
Feel like I should add to my rant about death nova.
If you don’t take 30 points in blood to transfer conditions to minions you are more or less stuck with dagger offhand. Now here what you get in pve with death nova:
Staff 3 followed by 4 – weakness.
Dagger offhand 5 – weakness.
Jagged horrors + what ever else combo by bone minions – weakness
All this translates to permanent weakness… it helps… if ever so slightly. I thought I should at least clear why I rambled about that trait.
Forgot to add in there that I normally use the Crests instead of runes just because I think the direct stat increase is better then the rune bonuses.