Guild Wars 2

Figure that topic will grab some attention. And I’m serious. I want to know why this plan of my is going to be epic fail.

First, background on how I play. My first level 80 toon was a thief. I’m really comfortable using dodge and mobility while fighting which is a must for that class. My second level 80 toon (I should also mention I haz no life) is a ranger, so I’m a big fan of pets. My third toon is a turret engineer (only level 55 so far). Actually, let’s just cut this part short.

Hello. My name is Xavori. I’m an altoholic.

Okay, my build. Weapons I’m debating dagger/dagger and something/focus (maybe dagger, maybe axe, maybe scepter). Warhorn is tempting too for speed.

I’m thinking of a minion build necro. The idea being tho that I’m the tank and maybe if my minions decide to attack (yes, I’ve read about necro minion AI bugs) they can do the DPS. This not only makes it a fun reversal for my ranger, but it plays into the traits that buff minions.

So, 30 points into Death Magic and Blood Magic and 10 points into Soul Reaping. Traits are DM: Minion Master, Flesh of the Master, and Death Nova. BM: Dagger Mastery, Vampiric Master, Fetid Consumption.

The net effect is I have maxxed toughness and vitality, very important for being the tank. I get the vampiric attacks for myself and my minions which helps me tank. I get minions that have a bit more health but explode when they finally die, cuz they will. I get free minons when I kill stuff. And the more minions I have, the tougher I am so I want to be able to resummon them as much as possible.

Now my concerns.

First, I’m going to be a tank in a pretty dress which is not exactly going to be helping me shed heartseekers, thousand blades, etc. Second, the obvious bugs with minions leaving me with pretty much no deeps if they decide to afk a fight. Third, I’m counting on using all three health bars to pull of the tanking thing, but haven’t done much to improve my death shroud or downed fighting.

So, has anyone used anything similiar to good effect, or am I just doomed? Are there some tweaks I could make to improve things, or am I just an idiot for dreaming about my little task force of fleshy things?

You ask for opinions on your build, yet there’s no link to it?

Xavori, the reason a build like this won’t work is not your fault at all really. In theory it is quite a solid build you have thought of. You have toughness , vitality and you would be taking talents to ‘vamp’ the life of others thus keeping you as close to tankiness as possible. With having multiple pets up through minion master traits you could also put out a decent amount of dps ( in pve… because pets die very fast in pvp ).
However…
The vampiric traits as far as I remember ar not working quite well, are bugged, and do not give life back to you in amounts even close to being substantial. Also the pets that you would be relying on for dps can and usually will die very quickly either on bosses or veteran mobs + in pve or in the zerg in pvp. Altogether it is a great build idea that is not quite possible at this time with the way necro talents and abilities are.

Happy thirsty Thursday
Madame Moorshade Teknomancer.

Aga, I wrote out my build ideas so you could see not just what I have planned, but also the thinking behind my plans.

Teknomancer, thank you for the reply. I wasn’t aware of the problems with vamping. I don’t think that alone would be build-breaking as I am really good at the mobility part of not getting hit in the first place. If that’s all that’s wrong, I might go for it anyway. I’m also expecting the pets to die which is why I plan on being able to at least sorta tank for them. I guess it’s going to be interesting to see what happens.

I use approximately the same form of build. An extremely strong skirmisher, decent point control, but terrible in Zergs.

Your sustainability is through the roof, and anyone saying otherwise hasn’t tried the build. The biggest downside is two-fold; You have less condition manipulation than most Necros, and the Minion AI. Assuming Minion AI is fixed [eventually], the only real downside is the lack of condition control you have in comparison to other Necromancers.

Make sure you use the Mango Pie consumable for 80 HP/sec and 70 Vitality on top of the rest of your healing, as well as the Consumable Boon of Regeneration if you’d picked any of them up before the vendor got disabled.

Funny enough, the only Profession I’ve found capable of beating me in a legitimate 1v1 are… Condition+Plague Form Necros. Yay for countering yourself, huh.

Edited in: Your AoE damage is abysmal, but your single target damage is actually on parr with a glass cannon, assuming all minions are on the same target (Which tends to be relatively rare due to the atrocious AI, sadly).

Downside; Power/Toughness/Vitality gear is absurdly more difficult to obtain than other similar-stat crafted gear to the point where it is extremely, -extremely- disheartening to obtain, unless you have a very good dungeon group that can and will farm SE and HotW. Even then, obtaining Exotic accessories is yet another massive grind you’ll have to go through.

I’d also like to ask; What are you planning on doing? PvE, WvW, SPvP, TPvP?

exploding minions is fun but minions that add to your vamp or your condition management is alittle more important, you say you want to be a tank/support.

support/tank doesnt need x-ploding minions. These traits are easily changeable

- Im running a wvw blood/death/SR build and it works just as well as conditionmancer. Very different though

- if you were to go 30 pt Death (minion)
– Toughness for every minion (very good)
– Minion CD reduction (its good if u wanna spam minions and yes it reduces the cd on minion not just abilities)
– minions remove boons from enemies
– Minions get more hp
– more toughness just for speccing into this line

- if we go 30 pt blood (vamp) [still focus on minions]
- You get a lot of traits to manage HP (just always good)
- minions draw conditions from allies (10 sec / 1 condition per minion)
- vitality -(jus for speccing into blood)

- Both Death Magic and Blood Magic have minion traits and provide tanky/support and both can become a good wells build

- Soul reaping synergizes well with these 2 traits (better than curse / spite [imho])\

i used to run conditionmancer (straight condition dmg) and it was fun but i like support / surviving rather than dps

Arianna ,
I do believe Power/Toughness/Vitality is the same stats as the pvp armor you can get with badges. Which moreso makes it just a time grind in WvWvW to get appropriate gear, not really all that hard. I think its much tougher to get the prized rabid type gear. I myself tried this type of build out for a good week. I found it to be very fun, but ultimately lacking in WvWvW and in Pve also. Reason being, that pet AI , like you said, is not up to par. Pets also when they do decide to attack your target take aggro often enough or get hit by aoe often enough that they were dead most of the time for me. Just very sad really.

Much love,
Madame Moorshade Teknomancer

@Teknomancer
Correct, the Power/Toughness/Vitality is available from WvW. It’s actually the -only- way to obtain the Earrings and Rings, as far as I’m aware. However, I found the easiest way to get the actual gear was from farming dungeons for the Tokens and then just transmuting them to whatever looks I wanted. Butcher in HotW is easily farmable, and Inquest as well as Military are also very farmable in SE.

I do agree with the Rabid gear though. I feel as if Necros got jipped extremely hard in terms of gear, considering all my Guardian friends were fully Exotic’d in two or three days.

As far as Minions go, if they take aggro, that is a good thing; That is a hit that no one from your party is taking. Minions are expendable. Each one of them (Outside of the Golem) is on less than a 30 second cooldown with the 20% reduced CD trait. Outside of a few exceptional boss fights (Which feels as if Arenanet just failed miserably at coding; There is no reason to literally punish players for the spec they’re running), the more bodies you have in a dungeon, the higher your chance of surviving is. Especially in melee. My normal dungeon group finds dungeons exponentially easier when I run with them because of the 6 additional bodies. You’re essentially doubling the party size.

The only time it’s really a liability is on massive AoE fights, in which case I agree entirely; Lupicus phase 2 and 3? Minion Master is worthless. I actually run out of the room, get out of combat and swap my set around. Luckily, however, Death+Blood is extremely viable as a Wells and/or support spec.

Thats actually a bunker minion spec you’re aiming for if for sPvP. I would actually not do 30 points in blood and instead go 20 points, and then 20 in soul reaping for the marks give life force.

Death line go greater marks, staff cd, and minion health. The boon removal is pathetic. The condition removal that it does from allies is horrendously bad its not even worth using. You got like 11 stacks of bleeds on you right? It removes ONE stack down to 10 stacks per minion per 10 seconds. Its so bad. It’s just better to use the Staff 4 or Consume conditions.

This is if you’re going sPvP, if going for PvE I would actually consider doing your 30/30/10. But instead of minions removing conditions I would pick the 20% well reduction and Run Well of Blood instead of Consume Conditions. If you’re stacking +healing and you should if you’re a bunker spec or PvE minion, that well is your biggest heal and really good at team support. And with all the +healing you’ll have 100% uptime on Regeneration on your minions and teammates.

For sPvP the set is shaman i think, it has condition, tougness, and healing perfect for bunker minion.

Now heres the flaw in this for sPvP. AoE wrecks minion masters so bad. Just like how mesmers get wrecked by AoE. Once your minions are down you have no life siphon, no utilities, and your toughness drops 20 per minion. Mesmers elite Moa also will completely destroy all your minions. Also in group fights you’re pretty bad as your minions start attacking random people and not focusing on anyone, your minions are also more likely to die in the group fights with the ton of AoE’s flying around.

Also you suck vs thieves that are decent. Your minions dont attack them if they keep stealthing, meaning they stand around doing nothing.

Arianna, I plan on doing all of the above with every class. It’s pretty wild to see just how different things work out. I’m hoping by the time I get my necro to 80, the worst of the necro bugs will be sorted out.

I’ve already tried the build in sPvP and as expected, the AI not fighting and the lack of life force early in fights is a huge, huge problem. But even with that, my experience playing a thief taught me GW2 mobility, and so, I’m still fairly hard to kill.

Berullos, interesting thoughts on 30/20/20 instead of 30/30/10. Also, thank you for the info on consumption. Maybe stick with 30/30 and take the wells health siphon instead and switch to the well of blood? This would also mean losing the healing minion, but he pretty much sucks anyway.

Oh, and my thief is a condition damage thief. He steals which procs poison, puts him immediately in stealth (for a backstab), and gives him might. He then follows up with a pair of death blossoms for 6 bleeds, then pops back into stealth with the last of that first burst of initiative. I then pause a moment to gain back a bit of initiative and get into position for another backstab followed by a few autoattacks which refresh the poison. At this point, most squishy builds are dead.

The fact I have a condition thief is pretty much what drove me away from being a condition necro. Don’t like duplicating playstyles (what’s the point of having two toons that do the same thing?)

Xavori I’ve not got any useful tips for you but I’ve put your skills in a builder like the one Aga was asking for (I used Guildhead because the company behind it runs my favourite search engine for… another game I no longer play).

I did this not as a kind of “OMG ur noob wai no link” criticism but just in case you’re not aware these sites exist, they’re very handy for planning and visualising builds.

http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#cMVMzzMzMMmoNmMmoNM9Mxxacaqzkq

(Edit: Oh yeah, I just shoved five random minions into the skill bar).

Its a fun build against mediocre players.
I’ve been playing Minionmancer for quite some time, even before the fix to +50% health siphon ( http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bloodthirst ).
The problem is, you can’t kill something with it. Your damage is almost outhealed by competent players. In addition you are very prone to CC and dependant on your minions.
With the exception of Bone Minions and Blood Fiend you can’t de- and resummon damaged minions (in combat), which can lead to quite difficult situations, entering combat and having all your minions wiped. Without them you are basically defenseless since your condition removal relies on http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fetid_Consumption .
Another problem is how dps and “effective health” scale. Once you drop below 50% health a lot of damage increasing traits kick in like: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Executioner .
Additionally there is Quickness which increases dps by 100%, handed out generously to Thief, Warrior, Engineer and Ranger, additionally some traits and sigils can proc Quickness, which happens rather frequent. There is nothing even close to the power of Quickness in the Necromancers tool box for tanking.
In short: you can’t tank and kill without Retaliation, which you can’t really get as a Necromancer.

In PVE, Vampire Precision is very effective. It represents more than enough heals when you are fitting a dagger. Dagger/Warhorn and Dagger/Focus are very strong.

The PVE AI tends to target your pets first. I’ve found that pets work best with a Staff build because you can drop Blood Marks on them. If you look, the tree that buffs staves also buffs minions. Design?

I have started experimenting with pets in my dagger/warhorn build, again. The Flesh Wurm survives multiple hits and attacks at 1200 range, so I have a better chance to keep mobs off of him. The Flesh Wurm and the dogs are best if you are quick to sacrifice them before they go down. The elite pet also is pretty hardy.

Pulling aggro from your pets is easier, though, if you are healing. Vampiric Precision seems to help me keep aggro.

Overall, I’ve found that the Spirit skills are best for tanking, and my hotbar is dominated by those, but there is room for a couple pets.

Oh, yes it works wonders for PvE, especially alone.