Minion PvE question
Some people will tell you to switch to other skills, but if you play necromancer because of the idea of minion mastering (like me), you just need to understand how to use them.
First what you need to know: minions are nothing if you don’t support them. And by supporting I mean healing (2# staff skill and VI Blood Magic trait is great for that) and crowd control skills (3# Death Shroud and 5# staff skills).
For the weapons:
1. Staff – obvious for MMs, marks are just too useful.
2. I use Dagger/Focus. I like the idea of having long range weapon and a melee one.
1# is a great damage dealer,
2# is always cool if you don’t have full hp and don’t want to waste healing skill,
3# may not be that useful in PvE, yet I often use it,
4# CAN HEAL minions, so another supporting skill, why not,
5# removes boons, always cool.
For utilities:
1. Bone Minions: blow them up as soon as you can so you can spawn more for more damage.
2. Bone Fiend: I think it’s terrible and I never use its utility but we have nothing better right now (or forever?)
3. Shadow Fiend: cool damage, blind can sometimes be useful but because of its casting time, you can’t really use it very efficiently.
Healing skill:
I as 80lvl necro use Well of Blood because it heals minions very well with Healing Power gear, but for leveling I was using Blood Fiend. They buffed him recently so it heals better.
I hope it helps. If you have any questions about minions, I’m here to help. You can also whisper me ingame and I’ll show you my traits and stuff, and how I use it in battle.
(edited by Mathog.3157)
I had been experimenting with staff a little bit, but I guess I just couldn’t really figure out where the damage is going to come from, since the staff seemed more utility-ish, and the minions don’t deal much at all, even spamming the bone minion explosions. Maybe Shadow Fiend will change that? I’m one skill point away from being able to unlock it. Hope so – the other three classes I’ve really been playing are Ranger, Guardian, and Elementalist, which I understand to all be fairly popular/easy classes, but they all feel light years ahead.
Flesh Golem, the elite minion, is like 50% of minion auto attack damage. Minions aren’t amazing at low level damage, they are there mainly to tank damage and do a little extra on the side. The 30% damage trait is huge for them as damage sources.
Axe/Focus is generally the best setup. Vulnerability= more damage. Don’t blow up bone minions the second they are up, let them auto attack until they are low them blow them up. Bone Fiend is amazing; he has 2x finishers every few seconds.
Staff is a great second weapon for the regen/AoE.
Hm, I’ll try Axe/Focus – I don’t think I had really experimented with that. You’ve both given me at least a bit of renewed interest, so thanks for that very much – already put a fair amount of time into the character exploring all the human surroundings and whatnot, and I really don’t want to have to repeat that.
So I take it the first thing I should be going for trait-wise is the minion damage trait?
No, get 20 into Death magic for 20% reduced minion CDs and 50% higher HP first.
Bone Fiend is amazing; he has 2x finishers every few seconds.
So I guess I’m the only one that don’t see the power of this minion? We don’t have spammable combo fields so how do these finishers provide any help?
So I take it the first thing I should be going for trait-wise is the minion damage trait?
http://i.imgur.com/UNTXhCz.jpg
Instead of III Death Magic you can use II if you feel it helps.
Instead of VII Blood Magic you can use VIII if you use Well of Blood.
Some people will tell you to switch to other skills, but if you play necromancer because of the idea of minion mastering (like me), you just need to understand how to use them.
First what you need to know: minions are nothing if you don’t support them. And by supporting I mean healing (2# staff skill and VI Blood Magic trait is great for that) and crowd control skills (3# Death Shroud and 5# staff skills).
For the weapons:
1. Staff – obvious for MMs, marks are just too useful.
2. I use Dagger/Focus. I like the idea of having long range weapon and a melee one.
1# is a great damage dealer,
2# is always cool if you don’t have full hp and don’t want to waste healing skill,
3# may not be that useful in PvE, yet I often use it,
4# CAN HEAL minions, so another supporting skill, why not,
5# removes boons, always cool.For utilities:
1. Bone Minions: blow them up as soon as you can so you can spawn more for more damage.
2. Bone Fiend: I think it’s terrible and I never use its utility but we have nothing better right now (or forever?)
3. Shadow Fiend: cool damage, blind can sometimes be useful but because of its casting time, you can’t really use it very efficiently.Healing skill:
I as 80lvl necro use Well of Blood because it heals minions very well with Healing Power gear, but for leveling I was using Blood Fiend. They buffed him recently so it heals better.I hope it helps. If you have any questions about minions, I’m here to help. You can also whisper me ingame and I’ll show you my traits and stuff, and how I use it in battle.
Way too much either wrong statements or disinformation.
Focus doesn’t heal minions. Despite what it says.
Trying to heal minions with well… what… their ai is horrendous enough as it is. And who exactly are you healing with that well? Bone minions do the most damage if you use active that blows them up…. Another minion should always be ranged. Golem heals out of combat… that leaves shadow fiend for roaming or worm for dungeons and pvp… so… again elaborate this whole healing them with a well.
Where do you get enough healing to even make a dent with minion spec. Blood fiends on hit heal outstrips any healing source out there because almost everything doesn’t scale with healing. Not to mention there are quiet a few benefits from them dying. And in dungeon 1 aoe>all your minions so your healing attempts are useless.
Melee…. so let me get this straight you trade vulnerability which increases damage for you+your minions in favor of marginally better auto attack? Really?…. Not to mention worthless #3 unless you pvp or spec wells. On the other hand retaliation is faceroll mechanic in pve… as long as you don’t get boonstripped its fairly decent in pvp too.
Bone fiend terrible… I laughed at that. I’m sorry… you swap from sf to fw depending on situation. Bone fiend is 1 minion that is always there… other beeing blood fiend. And since its ranged its the only minion that doesn’t spend most of the time sight seeing.
Back to focus….
focus 5 isn’t great for boon strip which is useless in pve almost entirely. And half kitten at best in pvp because classes that stack boons will stack them 10 times faster at least… then you can strip them with focus+corrupt boon+well. The good part of that skill is chill.
focus 4 again… doesn’t heal minions, never did. The good part of it is that it can bounce on same target stacking 20 vulnerability which translates into 20% damage buff for you+minions so you can get some good burst out.
Yeah sure it can all be argued preferences but some of the stuff you said is just simply wrong and not debatable like focus fairytales.
Also… just heads up about shadow fiends “cool” attack. That thing has the lowest dps from minions bar nothing. Only reason to use it is because flesh wurm is stationary and when roamin in pve its not worth bothering with.
(edited by HiSaZuL.2843)
Yeah, 4# doesn’t heal minions, my bad. Btw. doesn’t it give 12 stacks?
Laugh any time you want, but you didn’t explain why Bone Fiend is that good, I asked about it. If any minion dies because of a mob, it’s always Bone Fiend so I see him as a bad minion. Maybe you just have another experience with it.
Btw. what’s “sf to fw”?
We’re talking about PvE, so I don’t understand PvP references.
If 5# removes boons, why isn’t it great at removing boons…? I didn’t say it can be used very often in PvE, but it’s good in what it does.
I can feel contempt in your post, we’re not here to fight, so be kind or just leave.
Also, it’s quite hard to read a wall of text like this.
The only misinformation there was that Focus 4 heals minions. It does not, though its description implies that it does and is pretty misleading. If you’re running healing power & dungeons though, bouncing regen to your allies is worthwhile. Also, if the vulnerability from Axe’s auto is enough to get you to recommend it, the stacks of vulnerability from focus 4 should be good enough as well.
Edit: Hey guess what I found out? Focus 4 can actually hit minions now! It will never target them though, even if nothing else is in range. The minions have to bodyblock / intercept it.
One thing about shadow fiend: it out damages bone fiend rather significantly, considering their relative attack speeds, so it might be worth trying to keep alive. Over time the damage can be pretty comparable to that of bone minions, if you don’t have Death Nova.
Oh, and Haunt (Shadow Fiend’s active) is a small AoE, so you can use it to group-hug clumped up enemies.
Mixing insults with your post is like pooping in a salad.
It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.
It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.
(edited by Softspoken.2410)
Thank you everyone. I actually figured out that Focus 4 wasn’t healing my minions on my own, so that was ok. I still like Axe/Focus way more than anything else I tried. Right now I’m Axe/Focus with Bloodpet, Shadow Fiend, and Bone Fiend out and my survivability and damage for single targets is much much better. The only thing it really can’t do is AoE, but I can switch to staff to at least somewhat mitigate that. I do miss the explosions of Bone Minions, but so far it’s been outweighed by the durability of Bone Fiend. It’s not like it’s suddenly become the most powerful setup, but at least it can do some stuff well now and that’s enough for me to enjoy the class again.
It’s fun switching between classes now that I feel like I can sort of figure out their niches. Even without having to build them perfectly my Guardian plays very differently than my Necromancer plays very differently than my Ele, even at very low levels. Keeps things fresh.
No need for PvP advice since I never do that. WvW sounds interesting and I might try it out eventually, but it sounds like a sub-optimal build there isn’t the end of the world, and I might just use one of my other characters anyway.
Thank you for everybody’s assistance.
Bone Fiend is amazing; he has 2x finishers every few seconds.
So I guess I’m the only one that don’t see the power of this minion? We don’t have spammable combo fields so how do these finishers provide any help?
So I take it the first thing I should be going for trait-wise is the minion damage trait?
http://i.imgur.com/UNTXhCz.jpg
Instead of III Death Magic you can use II if you feel it helps.
Instead of VII Blood Magic you can use VIII if you use Well of Blood.
We have combo fields coming out our ears, and if you ever play in a group, you should have TONS of combo fields. That means with a single fire field he’s going to apply 2 applications of burning (I think 2 seconds), which more than doubles his damage. Poison fields (which we have plenty of with Death Nova), means poison, again dealing quite a bit of damage. Water/Dark fields are going to heal him. The presensce of combo fields will instantly make Bone Fiend out damage shadow fiend.
Yeah, 4# doesn’t heal minions, my bad. Btw. doesn’t it give 12 stacks?
Laugh any time you want, but you didn’t explain why Bone Fiend is that good, I asked about it. If any minion dies because of a mob, it’s always Bone Fiend so I see him as a bad minion. Maybe you just have another experience with it.
Btw. what’s “sf to fw”?We’re talking about PvE, so I don’t understand PvP references.
If 5# removes boons, why isn’t it great at removing boons…? I didn’t say it can be used very often in PvE, but it’s good in what it does.
I can feel contempt in your post, we’re not here to fight, so be kind or just leave.
Also, it’s quite hard to read a wall of text like this.
No contempt so you are free to take it or leave it. Explain wall of text… people do love throwing that one out when they have no argument.
To explain 20 stacks of vuln from focus its 5 possible bounces, with no other targets nearby it will bounce 5 times on the same target stacking 4 vuln each time. So you get 10 seconds of 20 vul stack at base cond duration.
Sf and fw -> shadow fiend and flesh wurm… I would have imagined if we are talking about them it would be obvious.
About pvp and pve… PvP is integral part of the game to exclude it bluntly from conversation serves no purpose because original poster asked for advice.
I’ll explain why your bone fiend dies. You said you like dagger, that means you run into melee range with all your minions so they all get hammered. If you simply use his active before you reach your target you can always make sure he stays max range.
Back to OP, for aoe once you level a bit and start getting gear with actual stats and so forth you will be able to aoe just fine. If you are running full minion spec you still have 2 bone minions aoe, life transfer and staff. Also if you get death nova you will have close to constant supply poison fields which provide aoe weakness and poison projectiles from bone fiend, flesh wurm and staff and under water you will get a… um… sort of poison spinning aoe projectiles for your whirl finishers.
I highly recomend replacing shadow fiend with flesh wurm whenever you are fighting a tough enemy such as champions, events, dungeons and in pvp that thing truly shines.
Also softspoken you are a bit wrong about shadow fiends out damaging bone fiend. Bone fiend has finisher with constant poison fields and dual projectiles poison adds quiet a bit of damage also unlike shadow fiend over time he never looses on effective dps, for all the times terrain forces most minions to stand about doing nothing and for all the time sf gets 1 shoted by aoes. True it isn’t that much of a difference early on but on later maps and especially dungeons and dragon events difference is like earth and sky. One is dead more often then not the other is ranged and if you play your placing game properly will stay put of the way. Heck in dungeon there is hardly even any point in having sf out instead of running bf,bm,bf,fw,golem. There are some events and dungeon spots where is aoe blind is pretty nice to have around but if you really need aoe blind there are better alternatives granted they are not minion related sadly.
Edit: For minion healing purposes transfusion is the best way to go about. Yes it doesn’t scale, yes it requires 1 trait slot but it doesn’t take utility slot and its moving aoe heal with heavy aoe damage on top.
Edit2: Since nobody explained this part. Let take base minion master pve build http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNAndWjEal6ta2a07JApHRT90TK4GcIF5KNA-T0Ag0CnIWStkbJzSylsLNwYFxBjpIvIA once you have your minions healing you with every hit you will generate over 1k health on every attack round from minions at 80(its less noticeable on lower levels). And them acting as a meat shields. So you get a lore of survivability as long as they are alive. Even against karkas you have a lot of leeway and they hit HARD. In other scenarios lets say you are in Fireheart Rise map… all the flame legion shamans have a cone fire aoe which does quiet a bit of damage due to how fast it hits, lets say you run into one throw your shadow fiend with his active way ahead of the pack while rest are following to your sides he gets hit with that aoe, you pop axe #3, you are getting hit with that rapid aoe while rest of minions on the side, shadow fiend dies almost instantly but retaliation against that attack will lop ~40% of enemies hp while minions that didn’t walk into that aoe will make sure you stay topped off. Minions make running berserker gear with no defenses actually bearable.
(edited by HiSaZuL.2843)
No contempt so you are free to take it or leave it. Explain wall of text… people do love throwing that one out when they have no argument.
If you say no contempt, I’ll believe you. It just sounded like that.
By wall of text I mean no formatting that makes the text hard to read, not the length of the text. A few enters would make it better in my opinion.
To explain 20 stacks of vuln from focus its 5 possible bounces, with no other targets nearby it will bounce 5 times on the same target stacking 4 vuln each time. So you get 10 seconds of 20 vul stack at base cond duration.
Sf and fw -> shadow fiend and flesh wurm… I would have imagined if we are talking about them it would be obvious.
About pvp and pve… PvP is integral part of the game to exclude it bluntly from conversation serves no purpose because original poster asked for advice.
I’ll explain why your bone fiend dies. You said you like dagger, that means you run into melee range with all your minions so they all get hammered. If you simply use his active before you reach your target you can always make sure he stays max range.
It can’t bounce 5 times on the same target, or I am doing something wrong. I can make one target get 12 stacks and some regeneration for me or 12 stacks on one enemy and 8 on another.
I was never using abbreviations like sf and fw, that’s why I asked about it.
My minions don’t get hammered because I heal them. If Bone Fiend dies, it’s because some mobs completely ignore me and other minions and start attacking bf, even when it’s on max range.
No contempt so you are free to take it or leave it. Explain wall of text… people do love throwing that one out when they have no argument.
To explain 20 stacks of vuln from focus its 5 possible bounces, with no other targets nearby it will bounce 5 times on the same target stacking 4 vuln each time. So you get 10 seconds of 20 vul stack at base cond duration.
About pvp and pve… PvP is integral part of the game to exclude it bluntly from conversation serves no purpose because original poster asked for advice.
Also softspoken you are a bit wrong about shadow fiends out damaging bone fiend. Bone fiend has finisher with constant poison fields and dual projectiles poison adds quiet a bit of damage also unlike shadow fiend over time he never looses on effective dps, for all the times terrain forces most minions to stand about doing nothing and for all the time sf gets 1 shoted by aoes. True it isn’t that much of a difference early on but on later maps and especially dungeons and dragon events difference is like earth and sky. One is dead more often then not the other is ranged and if you play your placing game properly will stay put of the way. Heck in dungeon there is hardly even any point in having sf out instead of running bf,bm,bf,fw,golem. There are some events and dungeon spots where is aoe blind is pretty nice to have around but if you really need aoe blind there are better alternatives granted they are not minion related sadly.
Edit: For minion healing purposes transfusion is the best way to go about. Yes it doesn’t scale, yes it requires 1 trait slot but it doesn’t take utility slot and its moving aoe heal with heavy aoe damage on top.
Edit2: Since nobody explained this part. Let take base minion master pve build http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNAndWjEal6ta2a07JApHRT90TK4GcIF5KNA-T0Ag0CnIWStkbJzSylsLNwYFxBjpIvIA once you have your minions healing you with every hit you will generate over 1k health on every attack round from minions at 80(its less noticeable on lower levels). And them acting as a meat shields. So you get a lore of survivability as long as they are alive. Even against karkas you have a lot of leeway and they hit HARD. In other scenarios lets say you are in Fireheart Rise map… all the flame legion shamans have a cone fire aoe which does quiet a bit of damage due to how fast it hits, lets say you run into one throw your shadow fiend with his active way ahead of the pack while rest are following to your sides he gets hit with that aoe, you pop axe #3, you are getting hit with that rapid aoe while rest of minions on the side, shadow fiend dies almost instantly but retaliation against that attack will lop ~40% of enemies hp while minions that didn’t walk into that aoe will make sure you stay topped off. Minions make running berserker gear with no defenses actually bearable.
With all due respect HiSaZuL, your posts could do with some formatting / breaking up. Double line breaks make a post more digestible, and your abuse of the ellipsis can be frustrating.
Also, reaper’s touch doesn’t bounce on a sole target. If you have a completely isolated target and you’re out of range, it’ll just hit once for 4 stacks of vulnerability. Since it has to go from one target to another, at most 3 of its 5 hits will be on a single enemy, for 12 stacks of vulnerability.
The title of the thread is “Minion PvE question”. Excluding PvP oriented advice is rather understandable.
As for combo finishers on Bone Minions: I’ll admit, I didn’t take that into account, and given a few comments about dungeons and groups from earlier, combo fields are likely to be present. Although I’d like to note that if we’re talking about early PvE, you won’t have Death Nova.
Your scenario is sort of an odd one: against an enemy that you know applies a lot of rapid damage directly in front of it, you’re going to make sure to send the shadow fiend in early? That seems like trying to use it as a tank, which doesn’t really fit its strengths. Wouldn’t you just let it run up and attack after you pull aggro with Axe 1, then use the aggro to turn the shaman so his flame thrower is only pointed at you instead of spraying across the crowd?
I mean sure, maybe the shadow fiend is more likely to die, but if the bone fiend is standing at your heel when you’re taking a flame bath, isn’t it in sort of a danger zone as well? You can take efforts to position both of them.
Even with its smaller health pool, It’s probably much easier to keep the bone fiend alive due to its range, but you still need to do some positioning with it, similar to shadow fiend.
Mixing insults with your post is like pooping in a salad.
It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.
It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.
(edited by Softspoken.2410)
Mhm formatting is over rated. I’ll take the jab about pvp aspect since I kind of skimmed the topic name, only read minion questions. Happens.
Reason I gave example with shadow fiend and cone aoe is due to the unique nature of that specific aoe type I sacrifice 1 minion to be able to position rest of them outside of the cone zone, only works if you have a lot of minions. They are spread around you and maintain some space. So you can position blood fiend, bone fiend behind, charge golem to position him behind target and use sb to trigger initial attack. Its a matter of sacrificing the least in a given situation. And as far as using yourself as a dump zone there is the whole problem of not having any reliable threat mechanic, I simply can’t switch threat around when I feel like and know exactly what happens. Don’t get me wrong I have shadow fiend on my bar in most situation and only swap to flesh wurm for dungeons and pvp. Doesn’t mean I value it more then any other minions :P
And back to reapers touch due to buggy handling of minions any minion will work to cause bounce but it will not stick to it or use up bounces, if you are close you will waste it on yourself and break the bouncing chain. It is possible to cause 20 stacks, yes it is by no means guaranteed since we are working with a bugged? skill but you will at least get 2-3 bounces almost guaranteed as long as there are no targets that are affected by it besides the primary.
Back to minion positioning golem, bone fiend and flesh wurm are the 3 minions that you can sort of position with some semblance of control. Flesh wurm can be position where ever you want, you can root bone fiend to make him stay and use that direction while you circle and flesh golem can always be repositioned on opposite side of the target. Blood fiend, bone minions, shadow fiend and jagged horrors on the other hand are wild cards. That’s the reason why I tend to throw shadow fiend in the fray as opener and use his blind to buy me some time to at least spread out the rest of minions so they don’t all get trashed together by cleaves and aoe while having enough time for bone minions to get close so I can use their active.
Also good point about early pve and death nova… I admit once I entered queens dale in early access I got to 75 or so before I bothered to leave so my personal experience with early pve is somewhat skewed. But you still have other people to use and you should never shy from it.
Also forgot to mention another reason why I root bone fiend on start is to make sure my golem or shadow fiend are the first on the hit list and target isn’t running off to chase blood fiend or bone fiend. Another thing to use is golem charge but its a bit less reliable because if he gets stuck during charge and never hits target you can be sure he wont be the punching bag.
(edited by HiSaZuL.2843)
Hmm I looked at my first post and meh… I does sound douchy. I’m not a morning person sorry.
Mhm formatting is over rated.
It’s not. It’s really .. REALLY not.
@OP – I didn’t go into minions from the start, swapped over to them at 15 or so. I was never really into pet stuff (hated the ranger’s pet) but Necro pets are fun. I use staff almost exclusively and staff 2 tends to keep the little guys alive enough.
Honestly though.. I almost never look at their health. I use them and their abilities (really just the shadow’s blind and the little guy’s self detonation) when they’re off cooldown, re-summon as needed. I’m currently running with 5 minions and it is fun to command an army of them. Just watch the skill bar. Red = minion is summoned, not red = re-summon! Maybe it’s not the ideal way to play, but I enjoy not worrying myself about it.
Some heavy AoE’s will wipe out all my minions, sure.. but staff is such a great weapon I can often deal with them even if all my minions are gone.
I never planned on using minions on necro, but now that I’m using them I’m not sure I’ll ever look back.
Short version of that ^^^: “I reached enlightenment.”
Focus 4# now heals minions :P
My friends and I prefer a mesmer. Watch some YouTube
In my experience, Focus #4 CAN heal minions, but it’s extremely tricky to get the projectile bounce onto the minion that needs the healing. I use it mainly to stack Vuln on targets, and little else.
I go with a full minion complement on my Sylvari Necromancer: Blood Fiend, Bone Fiend, Bone Minions, Flesh Wurm and Flesh Golem. You can swap out the Flesh Wurm for the Shadow Fiend if you prefer a 6th minion that can follow you around everywhere, but I take the Wurm because it’s incredibly tough, does decent damage, and it doesn’t look like the odd one out among all the flesh/bone guys running around. :P
Blood Fiend has been buffed tremendously since release. It heals for a lot per attack now, and can actually rival the Flesh Golem for tankiness. If you find that your minions are working exceedingly well as damage soaks (the Flesh of the Master trait helps a lot with that), and you can replenish your minions faster than enemies can take them down, try going with the Blood Fiend instead of Well of Blood.
I went for a different approach with my minions, using them mainly as meat shields and as a source of lifesteals with Vampiric Master + Bloodthirst. I then use a Scepter/Focus to add conditions to their DPS (Scepter/Dagger probably works well too). It’s proven remarkably effective at tearing down anything in my path.