Guild Wars 2

Ok so im lvling my 5th alt as a Necro and what really bothers me is the hate i read not only here but around the net about similar builds to the one i am planning on doing.

I thought of something like this:
20spite 30death 20blood

Blood Fiend/Bone Minions/Bone Fiend/Flesh Wurm (changed to Plague Signet form time to time)/Flesh Golem.
Also using a staff.

I know people will probably hate on me for running this but this is the only way i really wanna play this class.
I chose the Necro to be just that, a Necro.

Also if you had to throw out a ETA as to when minions will get viable what would you say it would be.
Next patch? The one after that? Never?

I run a similar build from time to time, and I really enjoy it.

I typically run 20 spite, 20 death magic, and 30 Blood Magic. You really have no condition removal if you go with 30 in Death Magic. Fetid Consumption will be needed if you plan to run PvE.

ETA on minions? Maybe never. If they change Reanimator, then they are at least trying.

A necro is many things young padawan, but one must realize one’s own true full potential to become a great master of the art of owning.

The necro isn’t all about the minions. Even though many serious players view the necro thematically as the raiser of the undead, that’s only a fraction of what the class can do.

On top of that, given that minions are NOT tailored/tuned (AI is slow in reaction) for competitive play, many pvpers and players with other highlevel alts can be dissatisfied with what they perceived the class was supposed to be when they rolled one.

K well all of those things considered im still probably gonna play it like this.
Im also aware Sheobix, that there are allot of varied ways to play a necro, but i built up this necro for the very purpose i liked him in the first place.

Im not asking that they make this the ULTIMATE BUILD OF ALL BUILDS.
I just want that when people see me running this they go “oh hey hes running that? oh well its viable and contributes” instead of “omg 3 minion spells, respec or kick!”

They should make it viable imo.
Heck i run a 3 turret engineer and noone seems to mind, i actually get gratz by other people about how i improvise with them.
But thats another subject.

I just wanna have this as a viable option,.

You’ll find out in time once you try them at 80 in a dungeon (sooner really, but especially at 80) that Minions are low damage, low survivability, marginal utility, long cooldown, and occasionally behave in uncontrollable / unexpected ways that result in problems ranging from tiny nuisances to group wipes.

In GW1 minions could function as mindless fodder because the spell to cast them just cost mana, which you got back as things around you (including the minions themselves) died.
Since you can’t spend lifeforce in GW2 to summon minions (and they don’t give you any lifeforce when they die anyway except the Jagged Horror), and their summoning spells have a cooldown, they’re basically crappy Ranger pets that don’t heal out of combat.

I’m personally hoping for minions to get a buff some day too. It still remains my favourite Necromancer build.

In many MMOs, the single best reason for a team leader to say “I believe that’s an effective choice; I forbid it anyway” is when pets are involved.

That’s because of their tendency to draw aggro or otherwise affect NPC behavior.

Spite Death BM sounds like the most horrifying way to die. Death by spiteful deuce…

But, I wouldn’t waste points on minions. You get much more bang for your trait points by using Wells, Marks, and Corruption skills. Minions even when they work (only in PvE has this ever happened to me) are not powerful enough to warrant such small health pools and such long cooldowns that end on termination preventing recast options. If they are to be used as traps they need to be as powerful as Wells are to warrant using points on them and taking up priceless Utility slots.

Necro are heavy dependent on Utilities. Wasting them on Minions that don’t do much of anything for you is not gonna result in your happy fun time hurray being enhanced.

This is before you consider how wildly erratic minion behavior can be in dungeons where pulling adds will result in mounting repair bills.

Sheobix.8796:

On top of that, given that minions are NOT tailored/tuned (AI is slow in reaction) for competitive play, many pvpers and players with other highlevel alts can be dissatisfied with what they perceived the class was supposed to be when they rolled one.

Hey Spinmaster Flex. Save the justification. Number of Traits devoted to Minions determines their priority. Not imagination or player expectations. The simple fact of the matter is Minion functionality does not express the reality of a large pool of trait points dedicated to enhancing them. Neither does their performance justify the method and length of cooldown on them.

However, just to remind you and everyone else, Necro IS minions with additional features. Not the other way around. That is the purpose of Necro. Always. Every Necro in every game ever made. Minions.

Even before you respond. Minions.

Minions.

I GOT A WHOLE BAG OF MINIONS WITH YOUR NAME ON IT.

Djemo.7153:

Ok so im lvling my 5th alt as a Necro and what really bothers me is the hate i read not only here but around the net about similar builds to the one i am planning on doing.

I thought of something like this:
20spite 30death 20blood

Blood Fiend/Bone Minions/Bone Fiend/Flesh Wurm (changed to Plague Signet form time to time)/Flesh Golem.
Also using a staff.

I know people will probably hate on me for running this but this is the only way i really wanna play this class.
I chose the Necro to be just that, a Necro.

Also if you had to throw out a ETA as to when minions will get viable what would you say it would be.
Next patch? The one after that? Never?

Don’t get discouraged my friend, I run identical traits as you do with all the minions (opting for flesh worm instead of shadow fiend) I absolutely love it and use it in pve pvp www. There is no other way I ever want to play necro Ignore the hate and show everyone how insanely good this build actually is when played right!
I hope the AI will get fixed at 14th! (A man can dream can he?)

Catcrafter.3917:

Djemo.7153:

Ok so im lvling my 5th alt as a Necro and what really bothers me is the hate i read not only here but around the net about similar builds to the one i am planning on doing.

I thought of something like this:
20spite 30death 20blood

Blood Fiend/Bone Minions/Bone Fiend/Flesh Wurm (changed to Plague Signet form time to time)/Flesh Golem.
Also using a staff.

I know people will probably hate on me for running this but this is the only way i really wanna play this class.
I chose the Necro to be just that, a Necro.

Also if you had to throw out a ETA as to when minions will get viable what would you say it would be.
Next patch? The one after that? Never?

Don’t get discouraged my friend, I run identical traits as you do with all the minions (opting for flesh worm instead of shadow fiend) I absolutely love it and use it in pve pvp www. There is no other way I ever want to play necro Ignore the hate and show everyone how insanely good this build actually is when played right!
I hope the AI will get fixed at 14th! (A man can dream can he?)

Don’t get me wrong, I use the Worm for the teleport escapes and Flesh Golem for charge all the time. But spending any trait points on minions doesn’t benefit as much as spending those point on say… targeted wells. Wells do more damage than minions and they do it AoE while also stacking conditions and giving a combo field.

If Minion Master wasn’t making the game more difficult for no benefit I would be playing Minion Master myself. But I prefer when Hardmode gives you something back. Like more damage, better survivability, a cool skill that makes me feel rewarded even though it is just aesthetic… You know some kind of reward for the extra effort besides being anti-establishment.

As sheobix pointed out nicely, minions are not everything.
There is a lot more a necro can be terrible at. conditions for example.
Many say you deal a lot of damage with a condi build but don’t worry, if you play in a group your bleeds will be overwritten for sure and your dmg will be abysmal as usual.
then there are well builds with great AoE, that is, if you don’t mind waiting 20sec between fights for your cooldowns. Just play and level your necromancer and you will learn how to get owned on a completely different level that is impossible to acomplish with any other class in the game.

For my build; I like to use 20curses 20death 30soul with minions and bip.
bip + DS gives you a nice barrage with fury and you can swap between staff and scepter+dagger to dish out a lot of conditions.
This way you can deal some damage even when your minions all died in a fire or something .. again.

i leveled to 80 with a minion build somehow, if it the pets would work Minions could be nice..

half of the minions are often just standing around , broken or whatever

parking necro now until minions are fixed.

fix for minios ?

i think not before feb 2013

http://tinyurl.com/b9u8key

The Run down for Minionmancer. The Secret it does all its minion enhancemnets from traits not gear.

Once minion AI is fixed, minions will be viable. Until then, don’t expect to be taken seriously when you use them. It’s not a personal judgement of your worth, it’s a statement that the minion AI is garbage and you’re losing utility slots when it bugs out.

It’s not your fault, but using them is going to make you less effective.

Im of the general opinion you paid for the game so you play the game the way you want and enjoy the most.

If that style is running around with minions then so be it, I don’t hate on anyone for selecting the path they choose to go. Having been through the same path as you, there will be a time when issue’s will start cropping up and you will get frustrated.

I decided it was better for me to take my Necro down another path but you may decide to stick it out. Again its your game, and you shouldn’t have to change your style of play because someone else says so. You change it if its the right thing to do for you, or like me you find them not viable anymore.

I will point out the things that started irritating me and moved me away from minions.

1. Static Health and going in and out of zones etc, means you need to recast them alot.
2. Early doors minions are great, higher up you get the harder the enemy hit the more they die really easily. Taking me back to 1, spend more time casting to get them back out again.
3. Responsiveness is a big issue, one minute they will attack, one minute they will spectate.
4. Flesh Golem attacks randoms, the amount of time my Flesh Golem runs off to either attack an enemy no-where near me or an object is crazy. If you wander into a camp with Flesh Golem prepare for it to draw that Vet ontop of you due to running to hit a spear rack or something like that. From using pet classes in other games where you can manage stances, I would say Flesh Golem is in Aggressive Stance and the rest are meant to be on Defensive Stance.
5. Dungeons, WvW etc I was more detrimental to my group than benefiting them having minions.

That is my reasons for swapping them out ontop of minior issue’s like you cant micro manage them and or have some way to track their health etc. when they are lost in a big group. Its hard to see when I should be timing that bone minion explosion when all those fancy effects are going.

As sometimes they just don’t attack and you think they maybe in the middle of it and they have decided to leg it back to you or are somewhere no where near the enemy. Im sure there is more but off the top of my head I cant think of anything else.

As I said, this is something you will find out by yourself and can decide wither you stick it out or not.

A minionmancer was what I played for most of my time on GW1, but it’s nothing like that in GW2. I hoped there would be more, you could have more. Don’t like most of their looks either. But thats all based on preferences and it doesn’t really matter.

What annoys me the most is the fact that a large enemy can pretty much oneshot all of them with a single attack, afterwhich you have nothing else to do. I’d hate to imagine how fast they go down in whatever dungeon, nevermind the bosses.

They made a big change once on how minnions work in GW1 once, I hope they’ll do it again. Doesn’t need to be like how it was in GW1, but it needs to be different than this…

I played a Minionmancer in GW1 as well, but its far too different in gw2, the minions in gw2 are just so damn bad, they last seconds at most and take forever to re-summon, in fact I don’t even use a single minion 90% of the time these days, I just throw out tons of conditions and keep my distance from mobs while the condition damage does its thing.

Play what you want, keep in mind you will be nothing but a speed bump in wvw

I liked MM necro in GW , these are different and uglier IMO. but im going to play them anyway for now. I can put up with them being squishy and a bit buggy just wished they would recharge quicker to make up for their squishiness.

I dont think i would use them in a lvl 80 dungeon though , if i get there someday :-)