Guild Wars 2

I can see a minion build being effective in soloing and maybe some WvW/PvP. My concern is our limited ability to control minions. As such I fear in an Instance such as AC or Fractals, they will draw more mobs than a party can handle or die too fast, making my DPS fall terribly as I wait to resummon them. Can anyone confirm or deny these concerns as valid?

They don’t pull any more mobs than normal. The issue is they die immediately to any form of aoe. MM is not viable in dungeons or fractals ever.

Ah, thank you very much.

In It To Win It.2315:

They don’t pull any more mobs than normal. The issue is they die immediately to any form of aoe. MM is not viable in dungeons or fractals ever.

Ignore this completely, as it was written by a player with no concept of reality. Minions are not only viable in every dungeon they are extremely powerful, fun, and your survival goes way up. Carry the bone fiend, bone minions, flesh wurm, and Flesh Golem. Check out the all minion videos on my signature connecting to YouTube.

The only place minions are not viable are high end tournament play and wvwvw zergs. Minions do not die to every single aoe in the game unless you are dumb enough to not take the necessary traits and/or stack all your minions right next to the boss. Also your bone minions should be used as fodder to blow things up.

There are three different main ways to run minions, staff support, soldier bunker, and my personal favorite berzerker axe, all are viable in dungeons and are a world of fun. I have numerous videos, and there are at least 5 to 6 Necros I can name off hand that run minions in dungeons regularly, and at least one or two who run them in Fractals.

Any claim as to their viability due to early deaths in dungeons are shortsighted and made by players with no experience or proof of the matter.

In It To Win It.2315:

They don’t pull any more mobs than normal. The issue is they die immediately to any form of aoe. MM is not viable in dungeons or fractals ever.

They have a decent amount of hitpoints and very short cooldowns. They’re designed to die frequently and be constantly replaced. If you’re in fights with lots and lots of AoE you should probably swap to wells, since a wells build and a minion build use a very similar trait distribution.

The problem with wells is that the cooldowns are more excessive, and wells don’t bodyblock for you or grab aggro for you. Every time a minion dies to a melee attack it’s a time you didn’t have to dodge. Meatshield = Ghetto Vigor.

Either make sure you aren’t the one pulling, or turn off your auto attack and just attack the mob you want once, minions have a built in delay, which will let the mob come closer before they go in; its more than enough time.

And yeah, I’m sure there are a few dungeon bosses where minions are a liability (some CoE bosses come to mind), but overall you are fine running minions. WvW I wouldn’t suggest using them if you anticipate to run into more than 5 people (they’ll get confused and die to AoE), and I wouldn’t use them in tournaments unless you are going to be doing a lot of small fights on points.

Bhawb.7408:

I wouldn’t use them in tournaments unless you are going to be doing a lot of small fights on points.

This is where they are the most powerful in my opinion. I play one in tournaments and no one can kill me 1v1 and I hold points like it’s cool but against players with aoe my pets do die pretty quickly(read: instantly) and that is a shame.

That is my biggest complaint about minions: if I dodge to avoid aoe or a big attack my pets just take the hit and die. Simplest fix is to make them invuln while I am evading. Another fix would be to reduce indirect damage to pets by 90% so you have to target them if you wanted to kill them quickly.

I wouldn’t reduce it that much, minions have an average of around 10k HP if I remember, which isn’t exactly low, and attacking them is going to get you killed 11/10 times.

Bas.7406:

In It To Win It.2315:

They don’t pull any more mobs than normal. The issue is they die immediately to any form of aoe. MM is not viable in dungeons or fractals ever.

Ignore this completely, as it was written by a player with no concept of reality. Minions are not only viable in every dungeon they are extremely powerful, fun, and your survival goes way up. Carry the bone fiend, bone minions, flesh wurm, and Flesh Golem. Check out the all minion videos on my signature connecting to YouTube.

The only place minions are not viable are high end tournament play and wvwvw zergs. Minions do not die to every single aoe in the game unless you are dumb enough to not take the necessary traits and/or stack all your minions right next to the boss. Also your bone minions should be used as fodder to blow things up.

There are three different main ways to run minions, staff support, soldier bunker, and my personal favorite berzerker axe, all are viable in dungeons and are a world of fun. I have numerous videos, and there are at least 5 to 6 Necros I can name off hand that run minions in dungeons regularly, and at least one or two who run them in Fractals.

Any claim as to their viability due to early deaths in dungeons are shortsighted and made by players with no experience or proof of the matter.

So just being able to name a handfull of people who agree with you is proof ?
Well I can name 7 people who disagree. So I guess you are wrong, right ?

I’m just wondering .. do you happen to work for fox news ? Your post strongly reminds me of their style of argumentation..
“You disagree with us ? You’re a liberal communist unicorn who hates america !”

Talking about being short sighted while splurting such nonsense is kinda ironic don’t you think.

As for the viability of minions I think it doesn’t matter what build you run as long as you don’t want to do speed runs or stuff like that, because face it. Nothing can beat
3 warriors + guardian and mesmer.

nolop.8095:

Bas.7406:

In It To Win It.2315:

They don’t pull any more mobs than normal. The issue is they die immediately to any form of aoe. MM is not viable in dungeons or fractals ever.

Ignore this completely, as it was written by a player with no concept of reality. Minions are not only viable in every dungeon they are extremely powerful, fun, and your survival goes way up. Carry the bone fiend, bone minions, flesh wurm, and Flesh Golem. Check out the all minion videos on my signature connecting to YouTube.

The only place minions are not viable are high end tournament play and wvwvw zergs. Minions do not die to every single aoe in the game unless you are dumb enough to not take the necessary traits and/or stack all your minions right next to the boss. Also your bone minions should be used as fodder to blow things up.

There are three different main ways to run minions, staff support, soldier bunker, and my personal favorite berzerker axe, all are viable in dungeons and are a world of fun. I have numerous videos, and there are at least 5 to 6 Necros I can name off hand that run minions in dungeons regularly, and at least one or two who run them in Fractals.

Any claim as to their viability due to early deaths in dungeons are shortsighted and made by players with no experience or proof of the matter.

So just being able to name a handfull of people who agree with you is proof ?
Well I can name 7 people who disagree. So I guess you are wrong, right ?

I’m just wondering .. do you happen to work for fox news ? Your post strongly reminds me of their style of argumentation..
“You disagree with us ? You’re a liberal communist unicorn who hates america !”

Talking about being short sighted while splurting such nonsense is kinda ironic don’t you think.

As for the viability of minions I think it doesn’t matter what build you run as long as you don’t want to do speed runs or stuff like that, because face it. Nothing can beat
3 warriors + guardian and mesmer.

4 warrior 1 mesmer and 3 warrior 1 ele 1 mesmer beat 3 warrior 1 guardian 1 mesmer setup for speedruns and despite how much i hate minions in GW2, i have to say that unless you are talking about some “hardcore” stuff cough arah; 20+ fractals or doing CoE/TA with people that never did it minions do work.
He is technically right, but just as his middle name, Bas is kinda trolling the point by putting the word Powerful (they are just above generic/medicore at their best, Wells>Lich being the only true powerful burst necros have) and the words play Minions+Fractals together (its like saying Phantasams+ Fractals, Turrets+Fractals or Spirits+Fractals) thus either being a troll for the group or… well the friends doing fractals without agony.

Also about the nonsense, do check some of the BoC (all necro guild) videos/podcasts and you will notice some all minion runs or at least one person with them and they do kitten.

Minion can be compared to guardians spirit weapons. Only 1 of them worth using. Spirit shield and flesh wurm. But only for certain situations. They are unreliable and there are better choices for utility slots. If you want tankyness you can just trait into wells and and life siphoning which is much more reliable.

I inadvertantly appear to have started a debate, lol. Thank you for the sincere responses, I appreciate them all. If I were to do a MM build, would I slot all the minions and run with an army, or slot them all and run one at a time?

Flesh Wurm is the only minion that shouldn’t be out every single second that he can be (since you want him to be placed in the right area).

PinCushion.7390:

In It To Win It.2315:

They don’t pull any more mobs than normal. The issue is they die immediately to any form of aoe. MM is not viable in dungeons or fractals ever.

…
Meatshield = Ghetto Vigor.

I laughed out loud to an empty office.

Minions have the advantage of not being affected by gear. So you can ware tuf & vit on gear and it wont affect there damage. Or ware power/pre/crit dam & it wont affect there life/mitigation.

There are however problems with them. They are dumb, and will require extra management on your behalf, from being buggy on floor and needing you to ‘twich’ to a spot where they will attack, or move out of ick on ground. You’ll want to constantly drop mark of blood under them with staff to keep regen on them. Or 30 Points Death Magic – Death Nova so they die with a bang.
There is, also quite a few situations where they will hinder the group. An example is down the mine, where fire jumps to anyone in the fire circle, unless they stand on a water jet. Ya’ll just spread fire thru the group, until they all die of it.

Bweaty.9187:

Minions have the advantage of not being affected by gear. So you can ware tuf & vit on gear and it wont affect there damage. Or ware power/pre/crit dam & it wont affect there life/mitigation.

….

As Bweaty says, minions are not affected by stats whatsoever. So you could essentially build any favorite flavor of necromancer and use as many minions in your hotbar as you wish and consider yourself a “minion master”.

If you’re worried about balance in dungeons, I would be tasteful in my choice of how many points i flush into death/blood tree to accommodate the minions.

But it’s viable, and it’s useful.