Guild Wars 2

So it seems as though the general consensus is that minions are bad due to AI/reliability. Not trying to be rude but those are both excuses for bad play. It’s really not that hard to get them to attack your target especially when it’s a boss since all you need is to hit it twice. Beyond that, their reliability comes down to the player managing them. We have limited control over them, but it’s enough to keep them alive for them to more than make up for the well you could have had. The only ones you cannot control are the blood fiend and bone fiend, but these are both ranged thus are usually the ones I never see go down. Don’t be bad about placing the wurm, pay attention to where the bone minions are and explode asap, use your golem’s charge to get him out of melee aoe.

And I can confirm with Bas’ numbers in that I did some testing on minion dps vs wells (taking into account the additional personal dps a well spec would give the necro) and, given that the pets are alive, they out dps the well spec by a large margin. In my opinion, the added complexity of pet micromanagement is more fun than placing down a well, you get a LOT more defensive capabilities, they contribute more total damage (if you pay attention to them), and can absorb conditions for the team (my spec includes this).

Lupi P1 all minions stay alive easily. Don’t summon flesh golem or else a grub might spawn on him during the transition
P2 minions die quickly here. Use bone minions explode and only summon the rest immediately after his aoe projectiles
P3 easy to keep them up, just make sure to explode them/use golem charge before he uses his aoe melee leech

I’ve used wells on that fight and often times he is too mobile to get the full duration of them. Either you sit around waiting for the perfect opportunity and waste potential cooldown times or he gets hit by only a few ticks. I will admit that I haven’t tried CoE with the minions yet…that one could be rough. However, there are several fights that wells are not optimal due to constant boss mobility. I’m not saying that I’m 100% sold on minions being the better spec. I’m just sharing what I’ve observed with testing it as a viable PvE dungeon option. On a side note…wells are incredibly boring.

Edit: And like I said in my original post. If the pets are up for the majority of the fight, they out dps my well spec for a single target boss.

spoj.9672:

I would never take minions into most high level dungeons the aoe’s from bosses are gonna cause some serious problems. My guild currently farms cof on a regular basis. We go for proper speedruns with a mesmer and 4 dps classes. Preferably warriors, but I currently only have the necro available and geared for that dungeon. But its no issue for the group because weve found that having a single bezerker necro actually keeps the dps just as high as having that 1 extra warrior. I may not be able to give the group might or other boons but the speed at which i can apply vulnerability and other conditions while doing huge burst is amazing. We can complete runs in 6-7 mins consistantly running 2/3 warrior, 1/2 mesmer and 1 necro.

Ofc when i finish leveling my warrior i will probably be taking that instead. But the necro certainly makes up for lack of auto attack dps with vuln stacking and high damage wells. Most bosses get burst down in around 10-20 seconds so there is no need for cooldown reduction on wells.

I don’t think CoF 1 should be the baseline for determining spec viability. That dungeon is purely about maximizing burst damage at the cost of everything else. As for taking minions into higher level dungeons, I have played every path of arah multiple times this entire week with the updated minions and have not had a problem with keeping them alive.

I’ve been playing my necro as power specced ever since I hit 80. Completed every dungeon in the game for DM (simin pre-nerf) with a 30/30/0/0/10 well/DS build that focused on debilitating conditions for group support (weakness, chilled, vulnerability). With the changes in the last patch I have switched to 20/0/20/30/0 minion spec to test the differences.

The minion spec obviously trades survivability for aoe potential, but single target damage and group support are both debatable. Wells suffer from long cooldowns and the ability for mobs to easily walk out of it (any boss that requires kiting makes them nearly worthless). Minions offer more sustained, dependable damage on shorter cooldowns but then face the problem of dying. From what I’ve seen so far if minions are allowed to dps with minimal deaths they will be at least equal if not better single target damage than the well dps spec. This can be maintained on most bosses with careful placement and cooldown management.

This leaves the issue of group support. While I’m probably out of the norm for running condition duration on a berserker necro, I feel that people pigeonhole the necro as a “condition damage” profession when we’re actually more of master of conditions profession. Our single target condition damage options in PvE are depressing, however our ability to manipulate conditions and apply every non-damaging condition in the game is rarely utilized in PvE. With that in mind my well spec offers boon removal (well+focus), chill, weakness, vulnerability, and poison to the group. The minion spec offers boon removal (focus), condition removal (via pets), the same conditions as above excluding weakness (but lower durations and less access to vulnerability), and general cannon fodder (I’m always happy to see a minion take a single target attack for the team). The minion spec has a wider range of effects to offer, while the other spec is more specialized on vulnerability and weakness.

I’m yet to test these against each other in higher level fractals where the pets might no longer be an option, but so far in the 20’s there hasn’t been an issue.