Guild Wars 2

It is like this way because DS was initially activated when you were downed. Basically they took that aspect out but left the UI and everything else the same.

It may not be the best way to stack it but it frees up all my utility spots for minions, so to me its a fair trade off. With minions I am doing around 3-4k dps a second if all my pets are attacking the same target. Not including bone minions explosions of course. That and I don’t even have good gear yet.

Flesh Golem – 770
Blood Fiend – 239
Shadow Fiend – 350
Bone Fiend – 572
Total – 1935
1935 * 1.4 (vulnerability damage 10 stacks + training of the master) = 2709
Axe – 300-400
Grand total = 3009 DPS

That’s assuming I don’t use any of the minion skills which then increase damage as well. If I pop a bone minion I do another 2235.8 (1597 * 1.4) damage. Mostly single target of course but still it is decent considering I can be 300 feet away if im not stacking vulnerability with the axe. I also run with the focus anyways too.

Axe is good for MM, all those vulnerability stacks mean increased damage for your minions

There are a few things I don’t like about the minions.

The AI – we all know this needs work
No out of combat heal or unsummon – you can change skills but thats just a pain
No increase to minion stats based off traits
Reanimator – totally worthless all around
Rigor Mortis – this works like 10% of the time in pvp since everyone is moving. He needs to be able to move into range and use the attack.
Blood fiend – Should heal on his death. Also should actually give you the correct amount of healing which it does not currently.
Bone minions – activate death nova on death

Saying “most minion traits are in the toughness tree, which is quite unfavorable for those who wish to tank but want nothing to do with minions.” is like saying “most condition traits are in the curse tree, which is quite unfavorable for those who wish to have critical chance but want nothing to do with conditions”.

Minion traits are actually spread in spite death and blood with its main focus being death. There are plenty of good traits in the death line for non minion masters. Why people fail to realize that I don’t understand. The same thing with DS. It seems to work good for any build including conditions, stack your conditions and pop DS while they are doing their damage.

I feel like people want to focus in one aspect as a necromancer and expect all other trait lines to offer them increased damage based on one line throwing out the class mechanic. It’s a class mechanic USE IT. There are DS traits located all over the other trait lines because you should be using DS regardless of your build.

I don’t complain that I have to go into spite to get 30% increased minion damage because it actually helps the 5 other weapon skills I use to do so and my DS damage.

I currently use this: http://www.gw2build.com/builds/simulator.php#1.5.4.7.21.0.0.0.0.0.105.113.114.126.129.0.0.0.306.309.312.0.0.0.333.340.0.0.0.0.366.362.0.30.0.20.0.20

Everything I have synergizes. I use the axe because the vulnerability stacks increase my damage, my teams damage and my pets damage. If you notice I am a pet build that does not go full death magic, mainly because the grand master traits do not appeal to me and I would rather have better axe damage.

I use them and do fine, they are far from worthless.

Tony.2150:

@Ghertu.7096
Soo soo true. The fact that we dont only lack stun breaks, But we also lack boon stacking. Which almost every class has some sort of boonstack.
WE lack Haste
WE lack stability
WE lack Lots of combo finisher:blats/leap/projectile We only have a few
WE lack synergizing traits
WE lack Condition damage to other classes
WE lack the ability to Stack toughness and still do good amounts of damage For ex. Ele/Mes

WE in general as a necro lack a lot of things.
Yes we get stability.
But we get no stability -stomp skills.
WE get DS but cant see what we have on us.
WE get minions that are a joke. *mesmer pets you can atleast blow up to stack confusion
Gosh dern we lack confusion. A great condition spell.
Gap closers is a iffy. Because Dark path isnt so bad.
We lack team healing, Besides a trait in life transfer. But ele’s get aoe healing out the kitty ( hehe a-net did it for u.). Great Burst potential. and we lack Invulnerability, *period of time in takign no damage, You can say DS is But compare to warriors/ thieves smoke stuff/Eles mist form/Engis Elixer S/Mesmers blurried frenzy/Guardans elite.
Theyre many thigns we lack. And we can only hope to fix.
But untill then A-net has trouble responding to us. Like i did in the sticky. IF you want us to follow your “post your guide here bla bla bla” Where are our hotfix patch notes/ Where are our buffs? Fixes to bugged traits. Not one patch has a detailed necro fix.
And on end-note why make a class to be not working to potential when gam erealeses. Eles dont seem to have a problem. But necros do. We have a limted amount of weapons/Limited amount builds that are some-what viable.
The real question is A-net what happend in our process? Seeing they dont respond to our posts is a big sign that they dont know what to do.
Even when things get complicated They hide away. We even MADE A LIST OF THINGS TO FIX. which is still not fixed.
End.

We have 2 hastes, locust swarm, spectral walk, a teleport with the wurm. You have confusion on the horn. You can get stability with the foot in the grave trait although I will say its a high level trait that probably isn’t worth it. I would say you aren’t seeing a lot of the classes skills if you don’t even know what both warhorn skills do.

Minions aren’t as bad as people think but I definitely will admit their AI sucks. When they attack they are great and using their skills (what you should be doing anyways) forces them to attack. I don’t think they benefit from our stats which kinda sucks.

DS is actually pretty good. Anyone who uses it as a health bar is doing it wrong. I don’t know why people have a problem with it, I use it whenever I can. Buff/Debuff display would be nice along with a small increase to skill 1’s attack speed.

I like how trait skills are distributed and yes they actually synergize……minion master traits are spread out across 3 trees. spite synergizes with curses pretty well too.

The only thing that needs to be reworked is probably water skills. Those are absolutely horrible. Also why are you surprised that the “List of things to fix” isn’t fixed yet? There are hundreds of bugs in the game, expecting them to be fixed 4 weeks after the game comes out is a pipe dream at best. That stuff takes a lot of time and effort to resolve, you need to be patient.

If they fix the bugs and do some minor tweaks we should be fine. And what’s this about ele’s as far as I know they have it twice as bad as we do………

We don’t like the idea because you are now forcing us to take major traits to do something that the minors currently give us. Why would I as a MM want that switch? I need those major slots for training of the master and minion master. I would never trade those for protection of the horde.

mangocheesecake.1487:

Nero.3978:

Making it a major talent would then force another talent out. The talents I choose are almost mandatory as it is to make MM viable. The only way I could see them using it as a major is to have it added to one of the others such as training of the master which in turn feels way to powerful of a major.

But that’s…. exactly what I suggested

For example: 5 point minor: Gain 200 toughness while channeling. 10 point major: summon a jagged horror whenever you kill an enemy. But the jagged horror dies slower than the current one. (say -100 per tick instead of -400)

The 200 toughness was a 10point major: 400 toughness while channeling.

So I was saying, we could nerf the major a bit, and switch it with reanimator, which would then be buffed up as a major.

Everyone could use the channeling trait, so by nerfing it and making it a minor, everyone benefits.

For the 15 point and 20 point, we could have maybe “Gain Retaliation for 1.5 seconds when you heal” (was major, at 3 secounds reta) as minor. And then have a major be “Gain +50 toughness for every minion under your control.” (was minor at +20)

This way, we are not losing any traits, but they are switched so that no minors depend on build/skills/utility.

These are the traits I need in death magic:

Flesh of the master
Protection of the horde
Reanimator (provided its fixed at some point)
Minion Master

As a minion master there is almost no flexibility to not have those traits. The only way I would be fine with the change is if protection of the horde was thrown on one of those majors and not nerfed at all. Otherwise to me as a MM it is a direct nerf. A nerf to an already weak build. If you add it to anyone of the majors it makes it almost mandatory to take. I could juggle around and remove one of those majors but the trade off would be hard. For example I sometimes change minion master trait for the increased staff trait just because it increases my minions. 200 toughness is not worth the 50% minion health. I don’t even think 400 toughness is honestly since once my minions die I lose it anyways.
If it was a inherit passive bonus to having a minion out regardless of the trait then I would say its fine.

I agree that DS is great. I can tell you right now your problem is that you spend 10-40% of your time in DS. Spec into the vulnerability, pierce and might traits and you will hit pretty hard. Hit 2 for fleeing enemies. Necro has problems but I don’t feel DS is one of them.

Making it a major talent would then force another talent out. The talents I choose are almost mandatory as it is to make MM viable. The only way I could see them using it as a major is to have it added to one of the others such as training of the master which in turn feels way to powerful of a major.

I can handle a change I just don’t want to lose it or the other viability. It is hard enough to play MM in its current state as it is.

I agree reanimator is a pointless trait as it is but if it was fixed it would benefit everyone.

I disagree with protection of the horde. It is vital for a MM build. It coincides with the path completely as the path is made for MM’s.

I feel the pets are the biggest issue right now. It is one of the main allures for the necromancer and I know rangers suffer from the same issues. It boils down to pet AI in general not just minions. I really think jagged horrors need a fix too. The health degen and already very weak damage makes them worthless. It would be cool if they did not degen health and maxed out at 5. It would give a little more of an army feel to the class.

I would like to see minions/pets actually move toward the mob before using their skills. For example the bone fiend would move in for the immobilize before being immobilized itself.

The tooltip does not change the damage of the skill.

If we spec into pets they should be strong enough just like ranger pets. I would love a pet bar for them but if that’s not going to happen at least make them all in defense mode.

Keikat.1752:

Reaminator is not useless nor a bug, its good for late game minion master with the trait death nova which has your minions explode into a cloud of poison when they die, so this means your jagged horror is there to serve as your kamikaze minion, useful to jump in and die to poison everyone around the place it dies and the trait flesh master which increases minion HP by 50% also makes it more durable allowing it to reach target before it dies…although..it seems more useful for other minions then to Jagged horror..as you want it to die and explode into the poison cloud

If reanimator is specifically requires you to use 2 major traits (dumb for a minor trait in my eyes) then it should be a higher level minor trait. You can get it at level 15 but its worthless until end game? Bad design if you ask me. I wish they didn’t degen at all or had a timer. I would like to be able to spawn a bunch of them. Its not like they do huge amounts of damage.

I think a lot of it has to do with the AI. It seems that the AI is unresponsive and horrible at times negating any damage you might want to do with the pets. This isn’t a issue with just melee pets as it happens to all pets. The wurm for example doesn’t even automatically hit people attacking it, it will just sit there and die. If we could have ranger pet AI I agree that would work fine.

The reanimator trait sucks. It is entirely worthless with the AI and degen it doesn’t do anything at all. I heard that they use to stack up to 5 and didn’t degen. I really wish that was the case still.