Guild Wars 2

Just hit 60 and I really wish I would have had this build from the start. I’ve tried to do bleed builds but they just suck for damage. Even when not geared for power (I was geared to make my bleeds last longer up to 9 stacks soloing), a 2h staff could still kill a mob faster. I’ve tried a cripple build to keep them at bay but it was just terrible as well (although good practice for PVP it just was a little annoying to watch health and run all the time). With this build I feel a bit like an energizer bunny tank—which is quite fun!

Caveat:

• This is not a PVP build.
• This is probably not a Dungeon Build given there is so much AOE (but untested, need to improve pets heal).
• This is a soloing build.

Wow:

• 6 mobs, same level or above, at the same time ending with 100% health.
• Veteran with thee mobs ending with 85% health
• Veteran Mob solo ending with 100% health.
• Chain kill 50 mobs 2-3 at a time. Will never end just have to rez pets on occasion.
• I have not tried a champion yet.
• Not once have I had to sacrifice my blood fiend (taste of death)

Build:

• 30 in Death Magic (Minion master, Flesh Mastery, Staff Mastery)
• 20 in Blood (Blood thirst, Vampiric precicision)

Weapons:

• Dagger/Dagger (Open with Enfeeble, then Deathly Swarm)
• Staff (Dumb all AOEs, then go back to dagger)

Upgrades:

• Armor: Major Rune of Vampirism: 4 pieces (+power, steal life, steal life after heal)
• Weapons: Sigil of Water (heals nearby pets)

Stats:

• Power > Crit > Precision (I’m guessing here)

Techniques / Rotations:

Single Mob

• Enfeeble.
• Deathly Swarm
• Swap to Staff
• Dump all AOEs (Mark of Blood, Chilbrains, Putrid Mark, Repairs Mark)
• Swap to Dagger (repeat above; life siphon as needed).

Multiple Mobs

• Enfeeble.
• Death Shroud ? Life Transfer ? Exit. ( Only do Life Transfer, saving Shroud for tough spots or escape)
• Swap to Staff
• Dump all AOEs (Mark of Blood, Chilbrains, Putrid Mark, Repairs Mark)
• Swap to Dagger (repeat above; life siphon as needed)

Outstanding Questions / Issues

1) If you have played something similar, how would you improve?

2) I feel like I’d like to keep my pets alive longer but I don’t know how. They don’t die with 5 mobs but will start dropping off with higher numbers or long chains. Reapers Touch with a focus is the only thing I can think of. Once per 18 seconds is a bit painful.

3) I’m not sure about the heal bonuses (rune of water). The Sigil of water seems awesome though it is only every 10 seconds or so. Rune of Dwayna looks interesting but I’d have to use my blood fiend (Taste of Death) to trigger it. Not sure if there are other triggers.

4) I thought about blowing up my pets when they die for the poison effect but generally speaking I find poison very lackluster, especially since it does not stack. I also want my pets to live so killing mobs faster or healing them would be a better approach.

I run a similar build but I focus on toughness instead of power. I use a lot of bone minion sacrifices and flesh worm in certain situations, so I tend to get hit a lot more.

There is a trait in the Soul Reaping trait line that lets you heal nearby allies when you use life transfer (Death Shroud 4). This helps, but its cooldown is ridiculously long.

At level 80 the mobs eat your minions for breakfast, plus the AI just makes them aggro as much as possible (especially on Orr). I used minions leveling, but they really start to wear off in effectiveness as you approach 80 and the mobs start 2 or 3 hitting them.

I run a condition build and can get 20 stacks on however many enemies fit within my AoEs, plus using Well of Darkness you can solo 5 Veterans if needed with ease, you just need to kite (which is extremely easy using cripple and chill to keep them at bay).

I’m not saying your build is bad, I’m just trying to warn you that I found minions get weaker as you approach level cap and that condition builds get stronger because higher mob health means more time for the stacks to tick. Most of your problems seem to come from your minions dying too quickly, there isn’t much to help that besides healing allies with life transfer as Solesaver said.

Transfusion is Blood Magic VI Trait, not Soul Reaping.

been using the same build… but instead im using rune of lich. never had any problem with this build. cheers.

I run MM fine, however some points that lack any “wow” factor:
-solo a veteran mob
most classes can do this, pretty easily actually. The only class that I think would have an issue would be elementalist.
-kill multiple normal mobs solo
once again, relatively easy on most classes. Even the ele would probably be better due to massive AOE.

6 mobs, same level or above, at the same time ending with 100% health.
Veteran with thee mobs ending with 85% health
Veteran Mob solo ending with 100% health.
Chain kill 50 mobs 2-3 at a time. Will never end just have to rez pets on occasion.

Number of builds can do that :/

the main Con I have with PVE MM builds, is that the minions wander off and attack other mobs. If only there was an “active” / “passive” pet button for necros…

MM was great for levelling up, even with the various bugs, when they all get on one target the damage is sick, make sure your using the exploding one on combo fields too.
I didn’t bother switching weapons, liked the staff too much and staff 1 still does good aoe damage when the others are on cd.
Makes all the other classes/specs I’ve tried feel kittened when levelling.

I haven’t really tried it since hitting 80, switched to an AoE/Well’s build for WvW, but I know minions don’t gain any benefit from your gear so once you start gearing up MM builds will get worse.

I run MM when I’m on my necro anymore. Yes, even in Orr it remains quite effective and resilient. Using Mark of Blood, Well of Blood, and traited Life Transfer my minions don’t often die; when they do it’s usually just a Bone Fiend getting stomped on by an AoE.

Your personal damage is nothing to write home about, but add minion damage on top of that and you’re not hurting for killing power.

The best part, though, is that you’re just not going to die to anything unless you try to solo a champion or something. Your minions are great distractions alone, you’ve got regen running constantly from Mark of Blood, and respectable toughness plus a 24k health bar (plus Life Shroud) is just not going to get eaten through in any reasonable amount of time.

The biggest issue with MM is, of course, the awful minion AI and your innately larger aggro radius. It seems like walking within 1500 range of anything means one of your minions somewhere is going to wander a little to close and face pull the mob. Also, the stupid Flesh Golem, who is otherwise awesome (except for its aversion to water) will tend exacerbate the problem by running after anything within 1500 range or more entirely unprompted sigh.

Anyways, long story short: I agree, right now MM performs great at any level of outdoor PvE.

I tried running minions at around 25 and found bleeds and kiting better. Perhaps I’ll look more into it using the tips you’ve given.

Yeah MM is great on pve (except in places with heavy aoe damage) I have no problem soloing with my 80 MM necro on level 80 areas and its easy to solo melee champions with veteran adds like champion troll on 70-80 ice area cant remember the name for now, in labyrinth near dragon event.

Sure minions die fast when they get targeted but you can summon most fast again. and if you are targeted then just kite while minions leech hp for you and use ranged attacks.

but still wish that minions wouldnt spend so much time staring around or attacking wrong targets. that would surely be huge boost for the build. (and maybe something to make minions withstand damaging areas bit better. )

Eviator.9746:

I tried running minions at around 25 and found bleeds and kiting better. Perhaps I’ll look more into it using the tips you’ve given.

Except you can do both? Minions do not scale with ur own power etc, they fit into a condition spec pretty easily.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQQQNAW4YjEal61aua07JApHRT91TK4GcIF3KNA;TAB5WCtkap2SpFlNGbE2YtxZj0mFEjGOQsh4BB
I’m a pure MM necro ( their skills and traits )
Many players complain that minions are weak and bugged, however I see them powerful.
80% of necros say that well master is better than minion master , while I see the opposite.
My minions ( they die rarely thanks to Mark of Blood ) have saved my life too many times as I rarely die even in dungeons.
I’m level 60 necro with 16.5k HP( rarely to drop to 10K , thanks to my undead army XD ) and a lot of toughness .

http://tinyurl.com/8dm3q49 >> my build

The Demonic Spirit.3157:

I’m a pure MM necro ( their skills and traits )
Many players complain that minions are weak and bugged, however I see them powerful.
80% of necros say that well master is better than minion master , while I see the opposite.
My minions ( they die rarely thanks to Mark of Blood ) have saved my life too many times as I rarely die even in dungeons.
I’m level 60 necro with 16.5k HP( rarely to drop to 10K , thanks to my undead army XD ) and a lot of toughness .

as other have pointed out, the biggest problem with mm necros is that minions wont scale with gear – so yeah, at lvl 60 with mostly blue and some green equipment you’ll feel a lot more powerfull with mm builds than power or condition builds, once you get at 80 and start actually gearing yourself your minions will fall behind farther and farther.

This is a soloing build.

Build:
30 in Death Magic (Minion master, Flesh Mastery, Staff Mastery)
20 in Blood (Blood thirst, Vampiric precicision)

Weapons:
Dagger/Dagger (Open with Enfeeble, then Deathly Swarm)
Staff (Dumb all AOEs, then go back to dagger)

Upgrades:
Armor: Major Rune of Vampirism: 4 pieces (+power, steal life, steal life after heal)
Weapons: Sigil of Water (heals nearby pets)

Stats:
Power > Crit > Precision (I’m guessing here)

Techniques / Rotations:
Single Mob
Enfeeble.
Deathly Swarm
Swap to Staff
Dump all AOEs (Mark of Blood, Chilbrains, Putrid Mark, Repairs Mark)
Swap to Dagger (repeat above; life siphon as needed).

Multiple Mobs
Enfeeble.
Death Shroud ? Life Transfer ? Exit. ( Only do Life Transfer, saving Shroud for tough spots or escape)
Swap to Staff
Dump all AOEs (Mark of Blood, Chilbrains, Putrid Mark, Repairs Mark)
Swap to Dagger (repeat above; life siphon as needed)

1) If you have played something similar, how would you improve?

First of, a full minion lineup while funny at first, is not very efficient. Especially Blood Fiend, Bone Fiend and Shadow Fiend aren’t very good for solo play. They lack in damage and survivability and if Blood Fiend dies you are without a heal.

Also by swapping to dagger during the fight, you miss out on 100% uptime on Regeneration, which enables the minions you do utilize, as well as your self, to tank a lot more damage than you otherwise would. Not to mention considerable AoE damage which the dagger doesn’t match. Mobs shouldn’t be alive long enough for you to have time to swap weapon in fact, except versus Veteran/Champion mobs.

Statwise you could stack Toughness, Power and Precision.

As for Runes/Sigils they are open as you desire, however I would steer clear of the Vampirism ones, they are underwhelming. As for Sigils I’d suggest Fire, for AoE on crit.

20/0/30/20/0 Build

Bone Minions needs to be utilized as often as they are available for AoE damage and as Blast Finishers. The wells can be swapped as the situation demands, but their primary purpose is AoE damage.

Currently 0/10/30/30/0 and it’s a freaking tank, with 6 pets out you gain lots of toughness from the +20 per minion but that isn’t as important as using some good utility skills in the slots over minions. I rely more on the flesh golem over the rest of the minions. I use the scepter/dagger and staff, never liked the axe or mainhand dagger and consume conditions for the heal (oh yes, feed me your conditions!)- besides, the blood fiend is garbage.

I ran a minion-heavy build most of the way through the game but once I hit Malchor’s Leap I began to tear my hair out and after 30 minutes in Cursed Shore I had to stop and completely retrait.

Why? The minions’ AI and utter lack of any control abilities for them. You can’t tell your minion(s) to attack a target, and the more complex/bumpy/cluttered the landscape, the more often your melee minions will just stand there doing nothing while you’re fighting for your life. You can’t tell them not to attack something, so when your minion (flesh golem in particular) decides it wants to kill that mob half way across the zone, there’s no way to stop him. Minions have no out of ocmbat regeneration and no “unsummon”, so if they’re low on health you either have to stop and heal them (well of blood a couple of times which takes a while due to cooldown) or log to character select screen and back, or swap that minion’s utility slot to something else and then back again, or plunge into your next battle with a minion at near-death health (none of these options is good in the high level zones where mob spawns are dense and rapid).

I suppose if they ever manage to inject a tiny iota of intelligence into the minion AI (or give us some way to control them, even if it’s only mass a control that affects all of them) I’ll revisit a MM build. Until then, I’d only ever use it in lowbie zones where the mob density is much lower (and even when down-leveled they’re much easier because they lack many of the skills of the end-game mobs).

I’ve killed a mesmer and a thief afk with minions in wvw. I was browsing a website and switched over to find them nearly dead just from minion attacks.