a Minion Master Necromencer needs some help
Okay, minions are mostly affected by your traits and not much by your gear. People sometimes like to use high toughness gears to draw aggro (more on this later), but since you want to do a condition build as well, then I suppose gear that helps with condition damage might be what you want.
You should, however, worry about keeping your minions sustained. Staff #2 skill is the best for this, so staff has always been my prefered weapon for MM builds. It gives a huge regeneration to your minion, so your main source of offense(and defense) is always nicely replenished. The 3, 4, 5 skills are also very powerful to support your team of minions.
Don’t worry about sigils before level 80. Honestly, you level through the low level content so fast that a sigil or the weapon gets outdated way too fast. In fact, do not worry about items while leveling, especially a MM necromancer. MM builds need some required traits to function, however, and this is especially true at level 80.
They are: (from highest to lowest priority)
1) a) Death Magic (X) +50% hp to minions. This allows them to tank aoe bursts while giving you the time to heal them up through Staff skill 2. Remember, your greatest weakness is aoe burst damage. The more minions you have alive at all times, the more powerful you are.
b) Death Maigc (III) Minion skills recharge 20% faster. You really need this. No matter what, there will be times when your minions die, and those fights are the ones where you will need this skill the most. By having your minions on 24 ish cooldowns, you can afford to have minions die. You will be able to solo elites without much problems by summoning out minions faster than they can kill them.
2) Spite (IX) +30% minion damage. Again, very self-explanatory. Your minions can dish out fair amount of damage, and this trait is what allow them to do just that.
3) Blood Magic (VII) Minions Siphon Health to you. This is why you want to have toughness gear. You can tank for your minions when you have 4-6 things attacking them healing you constantly as well as being healed by your Staff #2 skill. With high toughness from Death Magic and your armor, you protect your minions who in turn heal you. Essentially, you are almost invincible so long as your minions are alive.
The rest are kind of up to you. With those traits as the framework, your builds are actually very flexible. Feel free to try different things.
(edited by SnyderHall.7263)
Thank you both for the answers so far!
Can anyone tell me the thing about the scaling of the mentioned abilities/Traits with healing power listed above?
And the thing with Dhuumfire. If it procs on a crit of a minion too.
Thanks!
1. No to all. It does effect regen tho.
2. Minions don’t scale with gear at all so no real specific prefered damage stats.
3. See above.
4. Not really, necros can do well speced for power or conditions or hybrid.
5. Have yet to test it.
One suggestion I would make is to think a little out of the box regarding your minions ie don’t just fill your bar with minions and leave them auto attacking until they die and you recast them. This type is not so helpful in group content.
Heres a different kind of minionmancer i’ve been thinking about today, not really finished tho:
Bone Minion Combo Fielder
http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mcVm9Vomhomomhomxax9MosbVMcq
So each Bone Minion’s Putrid Explosions does 1592 damage, this becomes 2069 with Training of the Master and 2388 with Close to Death. As well as that Death Nova’s explosion and Poison Cloud further increases the damage, especially on the 2nd detonation when you gain a combo poison-blast.
The Bone fiend’s basic attack Cripples and its active ability Immobilizes synergizing with the Bone Minions.
Well of Corruption adds a Dark field to blast with, you could go with another Well, perhaps Suffering for solo PVE – I’m thinking Corruption or Power for the utility they provide.
Well of Blood gets you a light field. Handy in PVP if you want to watch Thieves kill themselves ambushing you.
On PVP Spectral Grasp might be a nice swap for the Well of Corruption.
For weapons Staff is really good regardless of what you spec yourself as, for this type of build it has a physical and blast finisher and a poison field.
Really you want staff regardless, fear, condition swapping, chill, poison, crazy bleed, regen and a 1200 basic attack. I wish the necros other weapons and offhands offered better options.
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Just remember that most of your damage is coming from the necromancer him/herself and the utility skills are more of a way to gain a fuctional advantage rather then your primary source of damage. Even this above bone minion build which has everything aligned to maximise the Putrid Explosions the Bone Fiend will be doing alot more DPS then then Bone Minions will be. Just no where near the burst.
Also if your thinking about trying to do really minmax DPS you might want to look at a build using Well of Suffering, Blood is Power and Bone Fiend. Its got a minion in it!