Everything I say will be about PvP only, as I do not PvE much at all. Part of the fantasy of for some necromancers is controlling the undead, having armies of undead to follow you into combat. The amount of minions we have up 100% of the time (assuming they never died from being attacked by players) is 4-6 max, only a small amount more than a mesmer and his/her illusions. The minions I assume you are talking about are from “Rise!” and a passive that some MMs use (myself included) that summon a minion when we kill a player. Both last no more than 30s assuming they aren’t killed sooner, and “Rise!” is a 40s cd (36 with one spec we can take). The advantage of having all those minions is that we can mess with our opponents minds and help keep ourselves alive by letting absorb damage for us by transfering it to themselves (like “Rise!”). Honestly, if those got cut down but our other more permanent pets were buffed, I can guarantee you would be even more upset. Currently my shadow fiend does about 500 per hit, my bone fiend about 800 per attack, my blood fiend about 400 per attack, and my flesh golem about 1.2k per attack. If we got rid of “Rise!”, I would also use bone minions, so about 400 per attack (combined). In total that is a little over 3k every 2-3 seconds assuming I don’t detonate my bone minions, and are not using a flesh worm instead. Now let’s say we got rid of all those minions and buffed my damage by 20% to compensate for lost survivability, pet numbers, and pet damage. That is now nearly 4k per 2-3 seconds from my minions alone, not even counting the special abilities each one can use, which means the detonation from bone minions would be about 4k (every 16s if used on cd), my flesh golem would do about 2.4k on charge’s final hit, my shadow fiend would do nearly 1k on it’s teleport blind, and my bone fiend would do almost 1.3k with its ranged immobilize. Now imagine you put my damage into the equation assuming it was untouched. That is a massive amount of damage in just a 2-3 second time frame, I would be like a super tanky thief on steroids stacking might from a nearby rev, before I even gain any boons. I would basically down anyone I so much as looked at unless they react before I even engage or pop some major defensives, which wouldn’t matter because I can just rinse and repeat within 20s anyway while staying alive via shroud or other abilities. I think the minions are fine where they are at, especially considering those minions you’re complaining about don’t last forever and some require me to kill (not down) someone to summon it.
TL;DR: buffing the minions enough to compensate for the lost numbers and survivability would make us extremely OP.
EDIT: Also, those summoned from Rise! and kills are SUPER easy to kill with small aoes, albeit a few at a time.
