Guild Wars 2

I tried a minion based neco in Spvp, and was pleasantly surprised. I used a combo of a few builds posted on the boards here, (spite 20, deathmag 30, blood mag 20 staff/ax-focus) used power/tough/healpow equip. all utils and elite where minions.

What I noticed is that when the pets actually attacked my target when I first used ax 1 (maybe a bit under half the time), I completely melted almost every person I focused(combo of pet dmg and my own). If the person did not kill the pets, there was almost no hope for them. The build was also quite survivable as well.

As a note, this is my very first stint at Spvp in this game whatso ever. I played a lot of rift PvP a while back, but a still new in GW2.

My recommendation for people having trouble is to kite people in 1v1 if they dont attack your pets. Use sigils that give energy back on weapon swap and roll when big attacks come your way.

Biggest weakness is condition removal. Died a time or two from a well placed root—>100 blades, or heartseeker combo. I just took this as par for the course as PvP generally has a rock scissors paper deal going on.

My only complaint for my first try at Spvp is the stealth. It seems like it lasts forever, and is up too often. Id survive a thiefs initial onslaught only to get him to 3/4 health and he’d stealth. Then come out like 10 secs later start his combo again, only to have me get him to 1/2 health then he’d stealth and disappear never to return.

Tip to breaking roots and 100b traps carry flesh wurm and not Bone minions. Drop Flesh Wurm while kiting. If you get trapped port/pop and continue killing. Your pets can outheal most conditions, unless you are facing ranger or engineers. They are brutal.

Thieves will always flee just keep doing what you are doing, and don’t worry too much about them. They hate minionmancers. Next time, hit Axe 2 or swap to DS and use Life Tranfer and watch it suck the life out of them a bit more.

tjistoogood.9416:

I tried a minion based neco in Spvp, and was pleasantly surprised. I used a combo of a few builds posted on the boards here, (spite 20, deathmag 30, blood mag 20 staff/ax-focus) used power/tough/healpow equip. all utils and elite where minions.

What I noticed is that when the pets actually attacked my target when I first used ax 1 (maybe a bit under half the time), I completely melted almost every person I focused(combo of pet dmg and my own). If the person did not kill the pets, there was almost no hope for them. The build was also quite survivable as well.

As a note, this is my very first stint at Spvp in this game whatso ever. I played a lot of rift PvP a while back, but a still new in GW2.

My recommendation for people having trouble is to kite people in 1v1 if they dont attack your pets. Use sigils that give energy back on weapon swap and roll when big attacks come your way.

Biggest weakness is condition removal. Died a time or two from a well placed root—>100 blades, or heartseeker combo. I just took this as par for the course as PvP generally has a rock scissors paper deal going on.

My only complaint for my first try at Spvp is the stealth. It seems like it lasts forever, and is up too often. Id survive a thiefs initial onslaught only to get him to 3/4 health and he’d stealth. Then come out like 10 secs later start his combo again, only to have me get him to 1/2 health then he’d stealth and disappear never to return.

actually conditions shouldn’t be too big of an issue if you bring fetid consumption or use staff mark 4 to transfer conditions, and death shroud fear should be a good way to “break” comboes enemies try. If a warrior wastes his HURR immune to cc 100b combo on you you should be able to tank through it. (at least I can with my vit/toughness combo when my cc removal is all off cooldown).

Minion (or zoo) build is actually pretty nice in pvp. Cant tell how many times flesh wurm has saved my life

I tried a build very similar to your own, still using it under some variations.

Some tips:

Use the flesh worm: This is your stun breaker that is also a blast finisher and 10% lifeforce gain, and a teleport. What is so great about this? This is what prevents you from dying to well executed bursts and ccs, such as the roots you mention. When its not doing that It does roughly 1300 damage per hit at a range of 1200 (Projectile finisher), from a place that is highly difficult to access (So it doesn’t get killed and also puts you in that vantage position once you necrotic traverse) You will find the good spots in spvp with practice.0

And the blast finisher bit: Combine this with any well for blindess, or my personal favourite (And a mindsodomization by itself). When in trouble, put down a spectral wall. The first thing that will happen is that you and your minions get protection, and your enemy gets 10 stacks of vulnerability. The second thing is that you will teleport and activate area chaos armor for you and all of your minions. A hundred blades you say? Here, warrior, have some of this.

Try to save the above mentioned for when you can’t fear away the burst, or DS tank it.
The worm is arguably the best minion for all things pvp.

A few more notes of interest:

- If you run focus and staff the chills should suffice to let your minions close distance and engage, if they dont, MH dagger and its root is your friend.

- Grandmaster trait on soul reaping that halves DS cooldown is good, very kittening good, it will increase your survival a lot and it can be nicely synergized with two things, spite 10 trait for permanent retaliation (Nasty kitten) or/and blood magic 20 deathly invigoration to AOE heal roughly 700 with healing gear, every 5 seconds. In addition to the perma regeneration you should have and the health minion this pretty much translates in: Most builds wont even have the dps to bring you down, you can stay there and tank them. * Currently testing if bloodthirst + vampiric master outshine this, it probably does for most situations.

The rest of stuff is secret :X

psssssttt dont tell them minionmaster is beast.. they could nerf it! :P

I Actually did thought about staying silent… But information must flow. The worm surely is kindda OP:

Hits for 1300 at 1200 range
Allows you to teleport
Stunbreak
Projectile Finisher
Blast Finisher
Gives 10% lifeforce
Actually also aoe poisons on traverse.

You want to count all the skills from other classes that try to do half of what the worm does and kindda fail at it?

And let’s not get into terror/mm hybrids, you think a thief can burst? Meh. Meh with the advantage of necro burst being kindda unavoidable if you do it right. It’s pretty kitten hard to pull it right tho.

So yeah you are like a tank that heals itself like a sick kitten (roughly 3500 every 6sec if you wish, more if you are dumb and sacrifice all for healing). You also have probably the best CC in the game and the best defenses against conditions (You turn them into something good for you!)… Dunno, people saying necro is bad need to take a good look at the skills and the traits and start to play smart.

Good engies and rangers will be your bane tho. Anything else on equal skill will die pretty easily up to 1v3. Most warriors/guardians/eles for instance cant dish enough damage to counter your healing if you play well. Good thieves (The rarest thing nowadays) will provide, I think, a fair challenge. Common thieves will be a joke. (Forgot to mention that pure dps warriors will kill you if you let them dps you, wich isnt really a problem as pure dps warriors are pretty kitten bad and easy to kill kite or whatever)

Good mesmers I wouldn’t know as I havent tried pvping non-high-as-I-can-be, and I kindda need to be lucid to fight them. Most mesmers I dont think play very good so they die easily enough. Maybe I’ll get good enough to know wich one is the mesmer when I’m high tho…

Last tip: Worm smart positioning in WvW + Cliff + Melee enemy or group + fear = hilarity ensues. This is not like the spectral walk trick as it doesnt require your enemy to be an imbecile. He will need mad prediction skills to know this will happen and dodge out of harms way, if you give him the time to do so… (Traverse is automatic and so is doom (Albeit bugged atm, doesnt work unless you wait a few miliseconds when you enter DS, but it triggers the CD… pretty lame).

last tip for real this time: Use shadow’s fiend skill as your opener, it being a minion makes it very kitten unreliable so pretty useless as a blind, unless you use it as your opener. Enough people will waste their opener if you do so. The other use it has is as part of a burst, kindda like an “ATTACK!” order or something. Just dont expect to use it as an interrupt or anything too crazy.

There’s plenty more stuff to discover so experiment and try to deviate a little from the standard builds and you might find yourself surprised.

Indeed don’t tell them that every mesmer and his mother will slot Moa as soon as they see you coming and insta kill all of your minions every time :/

Don’t tell them any and DPS will insta gib your minions….Unless of course you are playing random hotjoin in which people run around solo like headless chickens?

Moa is a waste on an MM unless they don’t have soldier amulet. If they do, you aren’t going to get them down, so all you’ve done is taken away about 60% of their damage and a bit of survivability for about 25 seconds. You’re also using an amazing shutdown utility on a build that isn’t worth it, Moa is much better used to shutdown a bunker (especially low HP bunkers) or to shut down glass builds.

So yeah, while Moa shuts down MMs for a while, it is a waste in the majority of situations to use it.

Moa 1v1 hasnt defeated me yet, it is pretty mean in say 2good v1 or 3v1, but I think this is true for all classes and builds. If you really are concerned about it (As in you see mesmers on the enemy team using it constantly) then my advice is to run half minions up and summon the other half after the moa. What Bhawb said is not necesarily true, a proper minion master something hybrid can bunker very well and can take out bunkers very well as well so it can be a pretty high value target.

DPS doesnt not instagibb your minions, this is a misconception from PvE and early builds of the game (Do check the patch notes!) Only pretty high dps aoe will kill your minions (This is why rangers and engies are the weak point of this kindda build) and certainly not all of them. The worm should be in a place your enemy can’t easily access, the golem can use the charge to interrupt and escape an aoe even if you aim it well enough, the health guy has 20k hp traited… And I don’t have to tell you what will happen to you if you focus your damage on the minions instead of the necro.

Oh and did you missed the part where I explained how to give area chaos armor to all of your minions? This is good against AoE.

Between death shroud, cc and insane healing you can expect to be able to hold pretty easily without minions until they are off CD, btw.

And dont forget the possibility of practically permanent retaliation… that’s pretty good too.

If you are really concerned add well of blood to the spectral wall and blast for area retaliation and chaos armor and watch them kill themselves. You can produce 4 blast finishers= Putrid Mark, Bone Minions x2, Worm.

Cristobal.8640:

Moa 1v1 hasnt defeated me yet, it is pretty mean in say 2good v1 or 3v1, but I think this is true for all classes and builds. If you really are concerned about it (As in you see mesmers on the enemy team using it constantly) then my advice is to run half minions up and summon the other half after the moa. What Bhawb said is not necesarily true, a proper minion master something hybrid can bunker very well and can take out bunkers very well as well so it can be a pretty high value target.

Problem being that the majority of MM builds, even hybrid ones, have high HP and toughness. You aren’t going to burst down a 22k+ almost 3k armor target very easily, at best you are shutting down an MM for 25-30 seconds (and even then, more like 15 seconds for hybrids), and you aren’t going to get a down. On the other hand, any glass cannon is a guaranteed down, and Guardian/Ele bunkers are most likely going down.

I did put in the caveat; glass MMs, which are rare. Otherwise, you’re priority is behind any glass the mesmer can get (because they go down easier) and guardian/ele bunkers (who get totally shut down). They just are far more viable targets to use in a team situation.

Bhawb.7408:

Cristobal.8640:

Moa 1v1 hasnt defeated me yet, it is pretty mean in say 2good v1 or 3v1, but I think this is true for all classes and builds. If you really are concerned about it (As in you see mesmers on the enemy team using it constantly) then my advice is to run half minions up and summon the other half after the moa. What Bhawb said is not necesarily true, a proper minion master something hybrid can bunker very well and can take out bunkers very well as well so it can be a pretty high value target.

Problem being that the majority of MM builds, even hybrid ones, have high HP and toughness. You aren’t going to burst down a 22k+ almost 3k armor target very easily, at best you are shutting down an MM for 25-30 seconds (and even then, more like 15 seconds for hybrids), and you aren’t going to get a down. On the other hand, any glass cannon is a guaranteed down, and Guardian/Ele bunkers are most likely going down.

I did put in the caveat; glass MMs, which are rare. Otherwise, you’re priority is behind any glass the mesmer can get (because they go down easier) and guardian/ele bunkers (who get totally shut down). They just are far more viable targets to use in a team situation.

I’ll take your word for it, I certainly dont have any experience on pvp as a mesmer.

Also, for condition removal try bringing Lyssa runes. Combines really well with the short golem charge cooldown.

yski.7642:

Also, for condition removal try bringing Lyssa runes. Combines really well with the short golem charge cooldown.

Yes, it also provides all buffs such as stability and aegis for 5sec and allows you to reach 100% fear duration without giver’s weapon, using only food and the trait. No food in pvp tho.

Mad King Runes are like the glassy version of this, providing good aoe damage (That procs 16 times per enemy for purposes of bleed and siphon on hit, deranged stuff… Charge also for some reason deals its damage in like kittens). Siphon and bleed on hit might make it more interesting than Lyssa, especially if you use both staff and oh dagger (2 methos of condi transfer). Beware of retaliation tho, you will kitten yourself badly if you hit something with it.

yski.7642:

Also, for condition removal try bringing Lyssa runes. Combines really well with the short golem charge cooldown.

Last time I tested it it only works with the summon not the charge.

Cristobal.8640:

yski.7642:

Also, for condition removal try bringing Lyssa runes. Combines really well with the short golem charge cooldown.

Yes, it also provides all buffs such as stability and aegis for 5sec and allows you to reach 100% fear duration without giver’s weapon, using only food and the trait. No food in pvp tho.

Mad King Runes are like the glassy version of this, providing good aoe damage (That procs 16 times per enemy for purposes of bleed and siphon on hit, deranged stuff… Charge also for some reason deals its damage in like kittens). Siphon and bleed on hit might make it more interesting than Lyssa, especially if you use both staff and oh dagger (2 methos of condi transfer). Beware of retaliation tho, you will kitten yourself badly if you hit something with it.

Could you share your build?

Cempa.5619:

Last time I tested it it only works with the summon not the charge.

Nope, it also works with the charge, but the runes have a cooldown, I think around 45 seconds.

Just wait a couple of seconds after the charge comes off cooldown and it should work nicely – I actually used it in some of our all necro tournaments. I’ve been ridiculously slow, but the footage should be up soon now that I’ve finally figured out why my video editor kept crashing. Anyway, if you don’t feel like waiting it’s easy enough to test in the mists

I run condition build and I enjoy fighting MM builds sometimes.

I tend to load golem down conditions (along with everything else as most are AE) and then Pandemic them to death. Afterwards the enemy necro is free reign. Just keep swapping conditions with them and every time they bring up pets, Pandemic.

Otherwise I lose. That pet damage is no joke. Plus those glass cannon dagger MM’s hurt if you can’t bring those pets down fast.

I’ve never run the MM build myself though. Glad to hear it works!

Just leaving this here to see what others think:

Cristobal.8640:

last tip for real this time: Use shadow’s fiend skill as your opener, it being a minion makes it very kitten unreliable so pretty useless as a blind, unless you use it as your opener. Enough people will waste their opener if you do so. The other use it has is as part of a burst, kindda like an “ATTACK!” order or something. Just dont expect to use it as an interrupt or anything too crazy.

This could be nothing more than coincidence, but: wandering around in random PvE, it seemed to me that if I tried to use SF’s blind as I moved toward something and it said it was in range, often the fiend just puffs up on the spot and wastes the skill without teleporting. So I have a theory that perhaps the skill’s ‘out of range’ bar is based on the character location, but the skill itself has a range based on the SF, which of course tends to trail behind you as you run.

@Cempa

I’m afraid I wont share my build, I think sharing pre-made builds only serves to stale the meta and, well, stop creativity and new builds from flourishing. I’m more than happy to discuss synergies, strategies and whatnot

@LameFox

You are correct, the same is true for the golem charge. If your golem is chasing something on the other side of the map and you have that something targeted, you can have your golem charge it regardless of your own range and LoS. Useful for chasing.

@All

If you use Lyssa runes don’t forge that you get valuable buffs by using a healing skill, this mean it’s convenient to run with the health minion unsummoned and summon it at the begining of a fight to get the buff.

EDIT= I forgot a pretty important deal of info = Popping in and out of DS does not empty any lifefor e and can be done for ever… You get it now? We do have out of combat healing for our minions and we’ve had it since release.

^I just tried that to see if it had changed or something, but that heal is so awful I’d be better off refreshing them instead. Does it scale really well with healing power gear or something?

The only semi-useful thing I’ve found for them is staff #2, but I don’t use it with minions due to the staff traits conflicting with theirs.

Heals roughly 650 with a cleric jewel on sPvP. That’s 650 every 5sec if traited that get added on top of Blood Mark’s regeneration. Should get to 800~ or so with full healing gear on WvW and PvE.

Nothing spectacular but it does help. I think with 1400~ healing power and both Deathly Invigoration and perma regeneration… You could offset Jagged Horror’s degradation…

Perhaps… but then you’d have a jagged horror.

LameFox.6349:

Perhaps… but then you’d have a jagged horror.

And then another, and another… and another…

Useless for pvp but could be kindda broken for pve x)…
Say you start with the lich, that’s 5 horrors, one more, summon the other minions and begin to farm or whatever… Still nothing really that useful but I want to try it mainly for the fun of it x)

I think you’d find the heals limit them to 5 (or 4 if the area heal necessarily ‘hits’ you). Maybe with a bunch of engineers or something helping you could amass an army of them, idk.

LameFox.6349:

I think you’d find the heals limit them to 5 (or 4 if the area heal necessarily ‘hits’ you). Maybe with a bunch of engineers or something helping you could amass an army of them, idk.

You are correct…

I want to do tourny with a five necro team and summon 25 jagged horrors onto someone tho… haha