Guild Wars 2

Over the past couple days I have been running an axe/focux and dagger/warhorn build with pure minions. I have to say I thought minions were crap in spvp. After applying quick vulnerability people just drop like flies. With necromatic corruption, bunker gaurdians are a complete joke. They can’t hold more than 2 boons if they are lucky. Not only that they are great for supporting your team. AOE might be there weakness but it is nothing to worry about, you can waist your skills on a minion only to have it summoned again while the skills you just used are still on cool down. I reached 38 kills in one match, and it is not uncommon to get 20+ either. I was completely wrong about minions. Great for support, great for winning.

They’re alright. Other than the jagged horror which is forced on us I normally use the flesh golem, but that’s mostly because the necromancer is lacking in some areas. No knockdown and fairly terrible getaways (which depend on how bored your opponent gets) which the flesh golem somewhat alleviates. Other than the flesh golem the only other minion I would use is the flesh worm while defending.

You were extremely lucky if you had them attacking that often, I’ve played MM for months and while there are great moments, the majority of the time minions just stand around. It’s frustrating enough the first time, after thousands of instances of the same I’ve moved to a condition spec. Conditions have their own set of issues but nothing will ever be as frustrating as dying again and again for no other reason than your minions JUST kittenING STOOD THERE doing nothing… Don’t think I could bring myself to go back even if they were fixed now, too much hate for them and they will always be useless in WvW…

You shouldn’t use the blood fiend, he’s pretty awful considering with the correct traits each and every one of your minions can just recreate the same effect. Minions aren’t terrible by any means, but their response time is slow, cooldowns are a pain, casting is a pain, and their HP is miniscule. As far as damage goes and the utility of CERTAIN minions, they’re kind of okay. There are just some flaws with how they’re designed. I for one would definitely trade damage for much more survivability or lower-no cast times.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Minions-Shouldn-t-Be-Killed/first#post1358387 <- This is my suggestion for minions. Check it out.

spvp… no staff in pvp… no condition removal… a couple day experience… the final proof that Minion Mancer works as intended and it’s OP. Chill down i’m ironic

I love minions, i jumped in a few games after the patch and owned with them. I think the reason they do so well is because they aren’t a “viable” build, meaning nobody on the forums like them, so nobody knows how to counter it and they just freeze up =)

The closest thing to a viable PvP build with minions involves Well of Blood and blast finishers to grant Retaliation to all of them.
That’s how far you need to go to make a “competitive” minion build anything else can be accomplished with another build and requires less effort or is less dependent on broken AI.
For a build to be viable it doesn’t have to work on occasion it has to offer something that’s better then what you’re currently using or else there’s no point in even trying it.

Minions are really strong in sPvP large zerg-fest situations because they just run around in full-berzerk mode, attacking whatever is nearby; yes sometimes they screw up, but it is generally rare for that to cause any decent difference. You get such high scores because minions end up just attacking everything and therefore you get credit for a lot of kills that you may or may not have really done much about.

But anyway, if you go all toughness/vit/power with minions, using d/wh (or d/d), a/f (or staff), with consume conditions or well of blood for healing (healing minion CAN work, but its hard, isn’t guaranteed, and ups your micro managing by way too much), and then ranged minions, bone minions, and golem, you can act as a very strong node defender/bunker. Switching between both weapon sets and making sure to make use of any/all CC you have, stack as much vulnerability as you can, and MM builds can do really well, unless you run into a hard counter (heavy AoE, some mesmers).

The build isn’t as OP as it was in beta, where you could 3v1 and roflstomp people, but it is still strong if you play it well. Just don’t expect it to be easy.

Luke.4562:

spvp… no staff in pvp… no condition removal… a couple day experience… the final proof that Minion Mancer works as intended and it’s OP. Chill down i’m ironic

I use consume conditions not the crappy blood fiend. Guess what? you don’t need staff. dagger and focus are huge lf generators and great for survivability. You can outlast conditions with out needing so much condition removal. This does not need to be tpvp to make it a good build, tpvp is a different ball game. I don’t have 5 guys talking to each other at once. It is good enough to keep you at the top of the list almost every match, Just because your not good at playing it doesn’t mean it’s completely hopeless.

bbark.7125:

I love minions, i jumped in a few games after the patch and owned with them. I think the reason they do so well is because they aren’t a “viable” build, meaning nobody on the forums like them, so nobody knows how to counter it and they just freeze up =)

If you want to get rid of minions you have to put some skills on cool down, They are pretty disposable so you don’t have to worry about constantly keeping them alive. That puts them at a disadvantage because by the time you kill them it’s not so hard to outlast someone until you can summon them again, even if you run a power/vit build. they are pretty good in 1v1 because of cc, but way better in team fights.

Bhawb.7408:

Minions are really strong in sPvP large zerg-fest situations because they just run around in full-berzerk mode, attacking whatever is nearby; yes sometimes they screw up, but it is generally rare for that to cause any decent difference. You get such high scores because minions end up just attacking everything and therefore you get credit for a lot of kills that you may or may not have really done much about.

But anyway, if you go all toughness/vit/power with minions, using d/wh (or d/d), a/f (or staff), with consume conditions or well of blood for healing (healing minion CAN work, but its hard, isn’t guaranteed, and ups your micro managing by way too much), and then ranged minions, bone minions, and golem, you can act as a very strong node defender/bunker. Switching between both weapon sets and making sure to make use of any/all CC you have, stack as much vulnerability as you can, and MM builds can do really well, unless you run into a hard counter (heavy AoE, some mesmers).

The build isn’t as OP as it was in beta, where you could 3v1 and roflstomp people, but it is still strong if you play it well. Just don’t expect it to be easy.

Only guy here that knows what he is talking about :[

Minions don’t suck [when they attack]. However since the shadow fiend, flesh golem, and bone minions go idle so very often it makes it hard for me to stay true to minion mastering.

Whenever i fight minion masters i just kite around them attacking the necro and the minions dont even hit me… If a minion or the player gets me with a snare i just remove it or stun break. I have also played mm myself and the minions just standing around got to me too. >.<

OMNIBUS.2913:

Whenever i fight minion masters i just kite around them attacking the necro and the minions dont even hit me… If a minion or the player gets me with a snare i just remove it or stun break. I have also played mm myself and the minions just standing around got to me too. >.<

When you play MM, make sure to take full advantage of the large amount of cripples and chills you can apply. If you can keep someone crippled fairly often, then Flesh Golem gets on them, and Flesh Golem’s autos apply cripple, which let him apply more cripples, etc. You just need to get them locked down for a second or two initially and it snowballs from there.

As for them not attacking, the ones with the biggest issues also happen to be ones you want to blow their active skills first (anything that doesn’t die upon skill activation can be reasonably used in a smart burst to lead off, it helps get the enemy on their back foot very quickly, and most will never regain composure enough to win 1v1). Upon skill activation, all non-suicidal minions will attack the target; that should help you out.

I want to like minions, i miss my old gw1 necro so much. I have two issue’s for not liking them right now. The first is if i must fill my bar with utilities that have even a 10% chance to not work they are not good skills because they will fail to work/attack when you need them to. I cannot have my utility slots filled with skills that have a 10% of just not doing the job they should be doing. I am being generous on the 10% part because we have ways to get them to attack but I should not need to use them because it takes time away from using my other skills to a better effect.

The second is they are not exactly expendable or durable. I strongly believe no minion should be longer then 30 seconds cooldown because of how brittle they are even with the 50% more hp trait. Yes we could heal them up with staff 2, ds 4, and the other regan from the off hand that escapes me at this time, but we cant make them dodge aoes from boss mobs, players, or just melee range aoe thus dying in near one hit. We just have no way to always make them tougher so they can take those hits to get the most out of them. General pve they are fine, and boss mobs are slowly being changed targeting players first instead more and more so that is helping i will grant you that much.

I would think that getting mass retaliation on your minions from Well of Blood + blast finisher (Putrid Mark or the bone minion guys) would help a lot against AoE, no?

I’d love to use a power-minion build but it seems that they die so incredibly fast and often(especially if you’re playing against anyone who knows how to aoe them in 2 seconds) they have a big “free kittens” sign hanging on them.

I’ll leave the kitten part up to your imagination.

If someone has a build that realistically works and i’m talking lvl 30+ Fractals and top tier WvW(probably roaming build?) I’d love to see it.

Retaliation does not reduce damage sadly. I did get some nice results against some ele’s and some warriors thanks to all the cleave they do with a well timed WoB and bone explosion. Good results being they removed 1/4 of their life or more for me. The down side though was i was left with just fleshie alive and i had to use my heal to setup the aoe retaliation so i didnt have my good heal up to keep me up or him up. I would love to have more light combos besides my heal, might make it worth trying again.

Edit: I dont think it worked as well as i would hope because alot of the time against other players who observed what buffs i had so they knew when to hold off on attacking with aoes or just focus on me more.

Disastro.4086:

If someone has a build that realistically works and i’m talking lvl 30+ Fractals and top tier WvW(probably roaming build?) I’d love to see it.

Those are the two worst possible areas for minions, so of course no one will have a workable build for that.

I agree that minions are very good, they just aren’t reliable. That’s the frustration most people have. Minion builds (my personal favorite for the necromancer) flow very well, provide decent damage and also help cover a team a bit as it allows enemies something to hit that isn’t your squad.
But sometimes they don’t attack. And for a long time sometimes they attacked something random. Sometimes they aren’t where they do the most good. Sometimes they all die at once to a single AOE putting all but weapons skills on cooldown, completely nullifying the player for decently long period of time.
Most people prefer to have builds that work the way they are meant to at all times, and that just doesn’t happen with a minion build. Minions are great, but you can never expect them to work the way you have built them to.

Make a Mr. Freeze build

Then replace some utility abilities with minion’s and a few MM traits here and there but still try and keep as much freeze as possible.

Then Minions tend to work pretty decent. Lock them down, slow them down and it lets your minions get in a few wacks on top of your dagger dmg.

Where minions have a tendency to go ape XXXX is when you run into more than 2 opponents, and they sort of gawk at the action.

Bhawb.7408:

Disastro.4086:

If someone has a build that realistically works and i’m talking lvl 30+ Fractals and top tier WvW(probably roaming build?) I’d love to see it.

Those are the two worst possible areas for minions, so of course no one will have a workable build for that.

I realize that just underlining some of the problems in a round-a-bout way.

Disastro.4086:

If someone has a build that realistically works and i’m talking lvl 30+ Fractals and top tier WvW(probably roaming build?) I’d love to see it.

A better example instead of fractals would have been a dungeon that was heavily AOE focused. The only fractal minions don’t work is the moletariat one because the mole/ice boss both focus on minions so much (which is supposed to be fixed anyway).

Bhawb.7408:

Disastro.4086:

If someone has a build that realistically works and i’m talking lvl 30+ Fractals and top tier WvW(probably roaming build?) I’d love to see it.

Those are the two worst possible areas for minions, so of course no one will have a workable build for that.

So once the game becomes hardcore (WvW and high end dungeons) minions are useless. So what does that make minion skills? Medicare skills that’s what. Why would you want to use medicore skills when you could have used hardcore skills?

And it is not like minions are great 1v1. Most people can just kite them all day, without speed boost and without snaring your minions. High mobility classes like thieves and eles can pretty much pretend minions do not exist at all.

So minions are useless/underpowered in dungeons, 1v1 and wvw. That’s on top of a broken AI. What good it is for? Sure you can force yourself to use them. But there are always better and more versatile choices.

CHIPS.6018:

So once the game becomes hardcore (WvW and high end dungeons) minions are useless. So what does that make minion skills? Medicare skills that’s what. Why would you want to use medicore skills when you could have used hardcore skills?

And it is not like minions are great 1v1. Most people can just kite them all day, without speed boost and without snaring your minions. High mobility classes like thieves and eles can pretty much pretend minions do not exist at all.

So minions are useless/underpowered in dungeons, 1v1 and wvw. That’s on top of a broken AI. What good it is for? Sure you can force yourself to use them. But there are always better and more versatile choices.

Only in parts of a dungeon that are heavy on AoE, and only in large-scale WvW. Its a big weakness of any similar pet build that has a bunch of pets, as each one needs to have a certain frailty; you couldn’t have each minion have 10k HP. However, outside of boss fights they are great in PvE.

They shine in 1v1. You are close to the tankiest possible build in the game as an MM, you have the highest possible HP, the highest possible toughness (slightly less than max possible armor because of armor class), have decent passive healing via life siphoning, and you should have more than enough cripple/immobilize/chill to lock people down long enough to damage them. This effect is made even stronger in sPvP and tPvP where your main job will always be node defense, and this forces every enemy you fight to come into close quarters, making it even harder to kite effectively.

Are minions perfect? Hell no, they have some stupid bugs right now, and aren’t nearly tuned to what they should be, but they fit in niche situations. But the main point of this thread is that all the huge QQing about how broken and crap minions are is stupid; they are situational, and in those situations they are great.

Bhawb is right. Minions are fine, and are perhaps are best 1v1 build outside of Lich Form. You can build for tank or burst, and even the burst build is extremely survivable. ONly bad MM are kited. I run Axe/Focus and Dagger/WH are amazing in keeping people locked down. I usually run staff for aoe and large group zergs.

I run MM in every single facet of the game and only in Huge AoE situations do they really become weak. But that’s essentially WvWvW and 1 or 2 bosses.

Are you guys serious? The whole herd of minions dies even to story mode trash mob aoes, saying they are fine most of the time just simply isnt true. Hell they even die to ettins and abominations and anything else with a big windup attack, just regular open world randon mob stuff. And lets not even get started on spiders, destroyers or anything else with poison/fire/etc. Yes they are good for soloing, and possibly 1v1 situations. Anything other than that and they go right down the crapper. Any kind of fight with poison or red circles on the ground, boom all dead. Any boss that does a cleave or aoe (virtually ALL bosses). All dead. Any kind of pvp with multiple people casting aoes and cleaves (virtually ALL pvp in other words). They get smoked. I want so badly for them to work and be viable and useful, minions are the only reason I even play the class, but any time the content gets challenging they simply can’t keep up. I’ve tried everything, use every minion trait, even tried a full set of apothecary exotic for max healing power to get mark of blood regen up to over 300 a tic and it’s just not enough to keep them alive against anything tough =/

Bas.7406:

Bhawb is right. Minions are fine, and are perhaps are best 1v1 build outside of Lich Form. You can build for tank or burst, and even the burst build is extremely survivable. ONly bad MM are kited. I run Axe/Focus and Dagger/WH are amazing in keeping people locked down. I usually run staff for aoe and large group zergs.

I run MM in every single facet of the game and only in Huge AoE situations do they really become weak. But that’s essentially WvWvW and 1 or 2 bosses.

Are you seriously trying to claim that only 1 or 2 dungeon bosses has AoE?

So at least we all concluded that minions are useless in large scale wvw zerg vs zerg. So to make up for it minions better be AWESOME in 1v1 right?

Speaking of 1v1, try 1v1ing an elite thief with minions. Here is your typical encounter with elite thieves.

Thief stealths (culling)
Thief attacks you.
Minions just stand there.
You take 4k damage.
You dodged once.
You take 8k damage.
You take 4k damage.
You turn on Death Shroud.
You start attacking thief with you DS skills.
Minion might sometimes start chasing the thief.
Thief stealths (culling)
Minions just stand there.
You take 4k damage.
You dodged once.
You take 8k damage.
You take 4k damage.
Your death Shroud is over.
You start using minion skills and weapon skills.
Minion might sometimes start chasing the thief.
Thief stealths (culling)
Minions just stand there.
You take 4k damage.
You dodged once.
You take 8k damage.
You are downed.
Minions just stand there.
You are dead.
Thief dance over your body.

I very, very rarely die to a thief in 1v1. Even fully specced to burst, they can’t do more than half your HP, and after that you heal a lot of it back just using dagger 2 and the passive siphoning from minions/your own attacks. And even as a bunker necro, if the thief goes full burst to be able to do that kind of damage to you, it gives them such low survivability that you can do the same to them with your own minion bursts. Not to mention you can use DS to absorb their bursts.

The one class/build that will give you a lot of trouble are mesmers that are very good with spamming clones and shattering them before they die (minions tend to kill the clones very quickly, which actually shuts down some of the mesmer’s power if they don’t pay attention). If they pay attention though, you will almost always lose, and that is more so because mesmers are incredibly good 1v1.

one thing i wish is that all your minions would regen health like the flesh golem does when your out of combat.
also it would be nice not to have to recast them all every time you zone or enter and exit the water.

RoadKill.7459:

one thing i wish is that all your minions would regen health like the flesh golem does when your out of combat.
also it would be nice not to have to recast them all every time you zone or enter and exit the water.

The zone one matters so little, it’s not really a big deal. The water one is not correct unless your underwater utilities are different than your above minions.

If you keep them in the same spot you don’t have to resummon them. Except the flesh golem and flesh wurm neither of which can swim.

Bhawb.7408:

I very, very rarely die to a thief in 1v1. Even fully specced to burst, they can’t do more than half your HP, and after that you heal a lot of it back just using dagger 2 and the passive siphoning from minions/your own attacks. And even as a bunker necro, if the thief goes full burst to be able to do that kind of damage to you, it gives them such low survivability that you can do the same to them with your own minion bursts. Not to mention you can use DS to absorb their bursts.

The one class/build that will give you a lot of trouble are mesmers that are very good with spamming clones and shattering them before they die (minions tend to kill the clones very quickly, which actually shuts down some of the mesmer’s power if they don’t pay attention). If they pay attention though, you will almost always lose, and that is more so because mesmers are incredibly good 1v1.

Yes, Bwahb, I am going to add you as a friend in game. It’s great hearing from another MinionMaster who has no issues with Minions in all situations except maybe wvwvw.

I actually have no issues with Mesmers outside of the full glass cannon GS wielding kill or be killed ones. The key to killing mesmers is to make sure you begin the attack, if they catch you first, you are almost always going to die because your minions will be clone chasing. If you begin the attack, they will stay on the mesmer.

I have a world of issues with bunker engineers and trap rangers, especially since they buffed their elite skill to be very painful.

Bas.7406:

I actually have no issues with Mesmers outside of the full glass cannon GS wielding kill or be killed ones. The key to killing mesmers is to make sure you begin the attack, if they catch you first, you are almost always going to die because your minions will be clone chasing. If you begin the attack, they will stay on the mesmer.

I have a world of issues with bunker engineers and trap rangers, especially since they buffed their elite skill to be very painful.

Yeah, its when they get stuck clone chasing that it becomes painful.

I have found that I can generally outlast bunker engi’s, its the ones that run in circles dropping grenades that I have had the most trouble with because of the constant AoE. And I just haven’t run into many trap rangers that I can remember, whenever I am in tPvP they and I generally have the same job, on opposite sides of the map, so we never actually meet.

CHIPS.6018:

Are you seriously trying to claim that only 1 or 2 dungeon bosses has AoE?

So at least we all concluded that minions are useless in large scale wvw zerg vs zerg. So to make up for it minions better be AWESOME in 1v1 right?

Speaking of 1v1, try 1v1ing an elite thief with minions. Here is your typical encounter with elite thieves.

Um, you are completely incorrect in this entire statement. Let me help you out here. Every utility we have is on an extended cooldown. Condition mancers suffer from having to swap utilities based on the pull and the target. There is only one utility that is even of any repeatable value.

Power Necro’s have even more situational utilities especially if they go with Signets or Spectrals. There is almost no reason to use most of the spectrals on a regular basis. This means that a majority of our utilities are situational except……..wait for it……..wait for it…..You got it Minions!!!!!

So if you can guarantee me that you have never reused one of your utilities or even fought an entire boss with epidemic sitting there because you forgot to switch it out than by all means you are correct. Having to resummon a minion on a 24 second cooldown is a totally horrible thing to have us do. I mean outside of Blood of Power it’s brutal having a non-situational utility.

The only minion I almost always end up resummoning countless times against a boss is Shadow Fiend. Bone Fiend would be second followed by Flesh Golem. I almost never resummon Blood fiend or Flesh Wurm. Because they are both ranged. You know what happens 24 seconds after I lose shadow Fiend. HE IS BACK dealing damage. You know that only one or two other utilities have as much uptime without waiting for it to come off CD.

Wait you probably never did the math and calculated that you had really long corruption skill cooldowns, while my minions just keep coming back and killing. If you have a problem with Minion CD’s then you must hate Spectral utilities (situational at best) Corruption (obscene cd’s), and Signets (virtually useless most of the time).

If you are losing to a thief as a minionmaster regularly, you have some serious play issues perhaps you should roll a guardian?

Bhawb.7408:

Yeah, its when they get stuck clone chasing that it becomes painful.

I have found that I can generally outlast bunker engi’s, its the ones that run in circles dropping grenades that I have had the most trouble with because of the constant AoE. And I just haven’t run into many trap rangers that I can remember, whenever I am in tPvP they and I generally have the same job, on opposite sides of the map, so we never actually meet.

You must have laughed with delight when Anet said they were going to take a good look at nerfing the constant aoe builds. They are usually our biggest problems.

I just saw something today in Heart of the Mists that surprised me. Apparently minions can proc on-crit sigils.

To be clear, I was running Flesh Golem as my elite and have a Sigil of Flame on my main-hand dagger. I was just seeing if Shroudstomping became possible again (not with the normal timing, at least. No idea if it is at all) since the last patch. I was testing on the NPC’s of the different professions. While I was stomping one, my flesh golem kept attacking.

I was mid-stomp animation when I saw the flame blast. There were no other players around.

Testing to confirm what I saw will be difficult due to the small crit chance of minions (assuming they have the same base 4% crit chance as most other NPC’s). Has anyone else noticed this?

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

I just saw something today in Heart of the Mists that surprised me. Apparently minions can proc on-crit sigils.

To be clear, I was running Flesh Golem as my elite and have a Sigil of Flame on my main-hand dagger. I was just seeing if Shroudstomping became possible again (not with the normal timing, at least. No idea if it is at all) since the last patch. I was testing on the NPC’s of the different professions. While I was stomping one, my flesh golem kept attacking.

I was mid-stomp animation when I saw the flame blast. There were no other players around.

Testing to confirm what I saw will be difficult due to the small crit chance of minions (assuming they have the same base 4% crit chance as most other NPC’s). Has anyone else noticed this?

Are you sure it didn’t proc on Life Blast?

Bas.7406:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

I just saw something today in Heart of the Mists that surprised me. Apparently minions can proc on-crit sigils.

To be clear, I was running Flesh Golem as my elite and have a Sigil of Flame on my main-hand dagger. I was just seeing if Shroudstomping became possible again (not with the normal timing, at least. No idea if it is at all) since the last patch. I was testing on the NPC’s of the different professions. While I was stomping one, my flesh golem kept attacking.

I was mid-stomp animation when I saw the flame blast. There were no other players around.

Testing to confirm what I saw will be difficult due to the small crit chance of minions (assuming they have the same base 4% crit chance as most other NPC’s). Has anyone else noticed this?

Are you sure it didn’t proc on Life Blast?

Like I said, I was mid-stomp animation when it happened. Life Blast couldn’t have been the culprit. You still go through the entire cast and animation when attempting to shroud stomp, but the actual kill never happens.

If anyone would like to test this, please do. I’m planning on getting one of my friends to help me out on testing this tonight (double sigil to maximize chance per crit of proccing, Fury from my buddy, should see some definites).

First let me start with this: I think the necromancer has the best minion of the game, period. (Flesh golem)

2nd- it has the coolest summons out of every profession.

3rd- in this other topic I list the many pros/cons of summons/minions for the many professions in GW2 while giving a possible solution to the problems, if you want to contribute please second this
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Summoned-units-discussion/first#post1304965

Rfreak.6591:

First let me start with this: I think the necromancer has the best minion of the game, period. (Flesh golem)

2nd- it has the coolest summons out of every profession.

3rd- in this other topic I list the many pros/cons of summons/minions for the many professions in GW2 while giving a possible solution to the problems, if you want to contribute please second this
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Summoned-units-discussion/first#post1304965

I must admit that while I can usually follow many topics. I have trouble with yours. You need to be much cleaner in your presentation to get a topic rolling. Your too general and not specific enough in your descriptions.

@Bas.7406

Sorry I meant “coolest” as very-good-looking and by “best minion” the golem is strong, follows you without interruption, it works just like a ranger’s pet and its skill is the best control necros can get that differs from fear.

Bas.7406:

You must have laughed with delight when Anet said they were going to take a good look at nerfing the constant aoe builds. They are usually our biggest problems.

They did? Oh lawdy that will be great. Those are the only builds that can constantly shut me down as an MM. Otherwise its usually ridiculously long fights (I had a few 1v1s with a necro that lasted a few minutes every time), with whoever winning usually depending on who gets team help first or if someone seriously outplays the other.

After further testing in the Mists on the golems, it appears that what I saw earlier was a fluke or bug. Since my buddy came in with Banner of Discipline (increased precisions) and For Great Justice, I was getting an okay stream of crits on the Flesh Golem. Despite testing both double Sigils of Earth and Fire, neither one procced.

Bhawb.7408:

Bas.7406:

You must have laughed with delight when Anet said they were going to take a good look at nerfing the constant aoe builds. They are usually our biggest problems.

They did? Oh lawdy that will be great. Those are the only builds that can constantly shut me down as an MM. Otherwise its usually ridiculously long fights (I had a few 1v1s with a necro that lasted a few minutes every time), with whoever winning usually depending on who gets team help first or if someone seriously outplays the other.

I play glass cannon MM but I have tried the bunker MM. I find glass cannon much better for my ability to do some damage. Bunker MM is so tough to kill. I ran Bunker MM for 4 or 5 tournaments, and in one tournament I fought 3 people before they eventually killed me off. Granted it was bunker ele, 100b warrior, and I think a GS Guardian. I downed the warrior about 10 times in the fight, the bunker ele was nearly impossible to kill, and eventually the guardian locked me down with Scepter 3 while the warrior dropped 100b on my and my Flesh Wurm was on Cd so I eventually died.

Longest fight I ever fought.

I went back to Glass Cannon MM after that because fighitng a Bunker ele for 3 minutes is just so brutal. Haha, I actually tried bunker MM because a buddy of mine was begging me to try it. However, with a bunker Guardian and a non-glass cannon ele on the team already running a 3rd bunker player was a no-go.

Yeah, its definitely dependent on the team. I played bunker necro with a team that had really strong and responsive roamers, it wasn’t a “real” team in that we had about 3 core members and just grabbed the rest on the go. You definitely only want a bunker necro when you only have one other bunker and then have two other people on your team with high damage to come in when you eventually get hit with the 2-3v1 (either they double/triple team you, or the one person designated to your node will just give up and screw around somewhere else).

How do you build a more damage based MM, btw? I have really never even considered it.

I run axe/focus and either pickup Axe training or boon removal. Run Rune of the Eagle or rune of the Pack depending on feel. If I want to really go boon removal crazy I go 60 percent removal of boon on crit and run Berzerker amulet with rune of the Eagle, and then Run 20/0/30/20/0 with Boon removal. Otherwise I will run 30/0/20/20/0 swapping axe training and close to death, in my opinion they are pretty even.

3200 power 32 percent crit with 25k health ad 2100 armor is pretty awesome. Minions will return more health than I get taken off normally, add in axe training and minion damage, you can wreck someone. You do have to get used to occassionally going down really fast when your endurance is up and your minions don’t respond well when you get jumped.