I played MM necro to 80 as my first 80. I learned a lot of stuff here, but I also feel you missed a lot. I’ve been thinking of doing a guide myself, to this helped me learn some new information. But my feedback would be:
Spite is a good tree, since it lets you do more damage personally, and with 20 points you can get a trait so minions do 30% more damage. That ups their input a lot. I use a staff/minion build and with Greater Marks I do a lot of damage in a large area on top of what my minions are up to. You also get more condition duration, which if you’re using staff or Death Nova, contributes a lot. So, my build is basically the second one you showed. 20 spite, 30 death, 20 blood.
Bloodthirst DOES NOT work with Vampiric Master. It’s an unfortunate truth, but the wiki says so and I did some testing myself to confirm. I would take something else unless you have some other means of siphoning you’re relying on. It’s possible this will change in a future patch, though. Personally, I use Mark of Evasion since it gives the pets and myself more regen, and spams bleed on enemies.
Flesh Worm isn’t a bad pet, but I tend to use Minions instead. They do a lot of burst from their explosions, and they recharge quickly. They also combine with Death Nova to not only do a poison patch, but combo with themselves and do AoE weakness as well. They’re an on-demand poison field, and you can fill a large area with poison and weakness using them. Also one reason why Spite is a good tree, since it makes both these last longer.
Honestly, I find both Flesh of the Master and Minion Master to be unnecessary. The skills recharge fairly quickly anyway (except Flesh Golem, which is really no better with the trait). The HP isn’t that big a deal if you’re using staff and spamming regen on them, and I try to make things target me anyway. You even said yourself that in PvP nobody’s going to bother with the minions. And honestly, if you’re using Death Nova, it’s perfectly fine if they die from time to time. They would be fine traits if you aren’t using staff, but with staff there are much more important skills to take like Staff Mastery and Greater Marks.
Both of the 30 skills you took, Necromantic Corruption and Fetid Consumption, are probably great for PvP, but I found no real use for them in PvE. I would recommend at least suggesting alternatives to those.
I had been using staff primary with axe/dagger offhand. Mostly so that I could switch over to something that lets me drop a lot of conditions when I’m in trouble. But I may take your advice and try double dagger just so I can siphon and immobilize. Axe seemed nice for retaliation, but that’s really all I was using it for.
It’s also funny you say to be careful in dungeons and go last. I’ve done all the dungeons on my MM and I actually alpha with the flesh golem and go in first. I’m durable enough I don’t have any issues with anything.
My build is right now mostly power/toughness/vitality gear, but some of it’s power/toughness/healing. Once I fiddle into ascended stuff I may drop a little condition damage since it’s not that hard for me to do 5-8 stacks of bleed and constant poison.
I’m gonna go buy another dagger and play around now.
