Guild Wars 2

My main necro is a reaper, forgoing my old necro who was a tough/condi/crit well user. I felt the latter didn’t get really much useful in PvE and is pretty much wasting a character slot. So am going to re-do her as a power-minion which from what I hear is an enjoyable style in PvE.

What’s an ideal weapon for it though?

When you say PvE, what do you mean specifically? Fractals? Raids? Open world? Dragon events? I think the answer depends on what you’re trying to accomplish.

I’ve only done open world PvE so far, and I’ve yet to have any reason to switch from my greatsword. Great cleave, excellent sustain against both single target and groups of mobs. If something is out of range, auto-attacking it will send your minions their way – and Grasping Darkness also helps out.

I do keep a staff in the second slot, if the zerg is too strong and I want to tag as many things as possible.

Ah right, open world. I won’t be giving her Elite so GS is out of the question.

If you arent using elite spec on necro, play another class.

I would recommend Axe or staff, the damage is decent and free invul for axe and marks are decent for staff. as an off hand either dagger or focus for axe, 2nd weapon mainhand dagger with warhorn/focus.

Don’t listen to the person who said you should play a different class if you don’t want to use reaper. You get plenty from reaper mostly in damage, but excluding it, standard necro or in your case “Power Minion” Master is perfectly fine to use in PVE.

Here are just some things you can do with it( reaper can do most of this with varying levels of difficulty).
- Solo Dungeons relatively easily(which can be fun if you’re into that kind of thing like me)
- Deal with champs by yourself or provide stability(not the boon) to a group of people being that minions will often save lives by taking aggro and dealing decent consistent damage
- It’s fun and kind of cheap, you can send minions to kill things and they won’t even notice you
– Range shroud

Depending on what you’re fighting or where, you can switch up minion combinations with other utility skills for some interesting gameplay. For example, you can use flesh wurm to save you with it’s teleport and provide long range damage, bone minions coupled with death nova can provide you much needed help depending on your encounter. From my experience there are a few trait combinations I’d call good but you can work with all of them.

Good luck

I suggest axe/dagger and dagger/focus. Trait all three weapons. Use shroud to heal minions in Blood Magic.

Spite, Death Magic, Blood Magic.

Swap axe/dagger for staff and minions for wells in tagging events and swap Death Magic for Soul Reaping to reduce cool down on shroud.

Power doesn’t go well with minions as far as I know. Minions condi scale with condi so condi is better with minions.
Staff is good in theory but since minion don’t die easily in PvE so you don’t really need staff. Staff is not good in pve
In addition, running minions in open world may get you in unnecessary combat (they are undead minions, they have no brain)
I would suggest to run less toughness. Viper (for condi) or zerker (power) then switch dead magic in if ypu still want minions
For weapons, if no gs then just axe/wh and dagger… It should be fine

nintama.9436:

Power doesn’t go well with minions as far as I know. Minions condi scale with condi so condi is better with minions.
Staff is good in theory but since minion don’t die easily in PvE so you don’t really need staff. Staff is not good in pve
In addition, running minions in open world may get you in unnecessary combat (they are undead minions, they have no brain)
I would suggest to run less toughness. Viper (for condi) or zerker (power) then switch dead magic in if ypu still want minions
For weapons, if no gs then just axe/wh and dagger… It should be fine

It can, its just half the people in this thread honestly have zero clue about how.

You run blood magic on a Minionbuild for life leach with spite or soul reaping and reaper.

You have the option of replacing blood magic with death magic, but spite and reaper i consider mandatory for damage, and overall quality of life reasons.

Imo anyone that says core necro shroud is just as good as reaper shroud, honestly can’t be trusted to make any statements about necromancer. There is a reason you don’t see necromancers not running reaper, and there is a reason almost every build that is even slightly popular uses it.

There are plenty of ways to make it work, as i used to run it myself for the lols, and soloed fractals regularly with it. But when i play minion-mancer, i go full minion build.

As for the people constantly recommending dagger ….I have no words. I am disappoint.