Guild Wars 2

My son really wants to use minions. He plays mostly PVE and can hold his own in dungeon runs with the family. He also does a little WvW with us.

I’m trying to find a build that will have a really nice punch to it but still use minions. I’m wondering if a build like this one is possible.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fRQQNAW3YjM00UbbNe1webinhS6IIASAoCSq/hdIUB-TVSGABA8AAMS53hqUkwFBgMdDEquiBHBAU2foPlgBAQAu5NzmtZwRP6RP6RPaH9oH9oH9olBoaBA-w

It uses minions, but it has almost no minion traits. The basic idea is build up some might stacks and life force and just spam life blast.

I don’t have a good feel for how quickly life force builds up, but I could imagine a rotation like this if he was starting from empty.
– start in staff and drop mark of blood (try to get a proc on sigil of strength)
– trigger all the minion skills (except blood fiend) – get life force from haunt
– dodge a couple of times (for might from the food and for defense)
- switch to axe for the might stacks from the battle sigil
- use ghastly claws, dodge
- use the dagger skills as desired
- swap back to staff (more might stacks) and hopefully be close to full life force.
- drop a marks as needed to get to full life force
- death shroud and life blast

Death nova is basically just there for fun (in WvW, it would punish people for killing the minions)

It feels like this should be able to get up to 10+ might stacks really easily. There’s very little here for condi defense. In a lot of the fights I see him in, it’s not the thing that’s going to decide the outcome. He has a removal skill on each weapon, and the hoelbrak runes cut down the duration somewhat. It will encourage him to dodge a lot, and I think that’s a really good skill to learn.

Couple of questions:
- Overall, is it just a really bad idea? This isn’t for extremely serious play, but I want it to be effective.
- Do death shroud attacks proc sigils? It would be ideal if life blast could proc the strength sigil since it would create a really nice chance of getting 2 might stacks every second.

Thx!

It isn’t a bad idea, as long as your son enjoys it (and don’t die a lot!). Of course that it looks weird, but don’t hesitate and test it.

Only thing I should change, in lieu with your idea, is DM11 to DM13.

I assume that you know the traditional MM-build, but just in case… For my son, I set up a minion-build on his necro too, but I set it up as a traditional minion mancer. Something like this one, but pve-based:

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fRAQNAoYWjM00VbbNO1webiohSyA4Am+C+gQAyecAA-TJRBwAD3focZAQnCAAPBAA

And he is doing just fine.

Thanks for the feedback

I’m slowly going through and testing the minions. So far my conclusion is that they don’t do that much damage and they don’t attack that reliably.

So basically I’m wondering about a build that has them but pretty much ignores the minions.

On one hand, it’s really painful to think of having a bunch of utility slots that are not really optimized. On the other hand, if you think about being in death shroud as much as possible, maybe you can make a build where the utility slots just aren’t that important?

eldenbri.1059:

Thanks for the feedback

I’m slowly going through and testing the minions. So far my conclusion is that they don’t do that much damage and they don’t attack that reliably.

So basically I’m wondering about a build that has them but pretty much ignores the minions.

On one hand, it’s really painful to think of having a bunch of utility slots that are not really optimized. On the other hand, if you think about being in death shroud as much as possible, maybe you can make a build where the utility slots just aren’t that important?

That is basically it… if you want to do damage you do not bring minions as utilities – the minions do not get any of your stats so that is why people normally build tanky

Either go all in on minions or only use the exploding ones and fleshie – wells are good in large scale fights like WvW

Take some points out of Death Magic throw it in Spite for more dmg and grab well of suffering and maybe blood is power

If he enjoys it then it doesn’t particularly matter how good it is or not. But in general might stacking for MMs is pretty irrelevant, the only time I use it is in PvE when I’m running a DS build with minions tacked on because some pug groups are awful.

As far as being unreliable, it should be noted that the last feature patch broke minions. While they’ve never been fully reliable, since then their AI has been a disaster that leaves them standing around more often than not. Until that’s fixed, it’s obviously not the best time for testing them, let alone using them full time.

To answer the question, yes, sigils still work in Death Shroud, assuming they still apply (weapon swapping doesn’t work inside since naturally you can’t swap weapons, etc). The on-criticals are fine.

As a “non-serious” build, it seems fine. It’s a little unusual, but since most necromancer utilities aren’t very wrapped up in your attributes, the focus on the necromancers own damage output means the non-traited minions shouldn’t matter much.