Guild Wars 2

Hmm..forgot to swap the utilities out in that proposed bunker build. Maybe Signet of Undeath and Plague Signet?

Also the conditions question is totally separate. Not connected to that build. In case it wasn’t clear.

I’ve seen numerous references to “bunker” necros. I’m curious if anyone has actually seen such a necro in sPvP. I was thinking something using retaliation and death shroud might be able to pull it off, especially with 30 points in Soul Reaping. Too bad I can’t pick up both 30 point majors in SR though.

Suppose I tried something like this:

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=V18cZ;1kHFJ0F4FJVJ0;9;4T-9-T46B;15;359B6Nk0-N;0OZG5OZG56gq

What sort of results should I expect?

Also, the consensus build is a conditions necro in SPvP. I’m not seeing anywhere near the amount of damage people say it deals. Am I doing something horribly wrong? Is there a reason Carrion gear isn’t used more often, in combination with Feast of Corruption, to add a little more burst?

Basically I’m running around in SPvP trying to figure out what a necro can/should do. I’m struggling to reach a conclusion.

I love the concept of the Necro. I played one in GW1. I’m really struggling at finding a good build though.

What I want:

1.) A PvP build for hot joins and free tournaments. Any build that is useful to a team and can actually survive long enough to bring down enemies works. I’ve tried conditions, power, and hybrid builds. The hybrid was too fragile. The conditions was too slow at killing, and I couldn’t get a good utility setup figured out. The power build never kills anything. I’m clearly doing something wrong.

2.) A PvE build for open world PvE/farming AND dungeons. I don’t want to be spending gold on changing traits around. I haven’t done much of this side of the game for awhile now, so I’m sitting at level 60 or so.

3.) Tips and tricks. I clearly need to “learn to play.” That is if my recent performance has been any indication. So any advice is appreciated.

No.

I like DS. I’ll be very unhappy if they remove it. All they need to do is give conditionmancers a reason to use it. I don’t have any problems with it as is for my power builds. In fact, I’m about to change my build to center around DS the way it is now.

Just because you don’t like a mechanic does not mean it is “stupid” or that it needs replaced.

Some people like it, some people hate it. Why is that such a hard concept to comprehend? Move along people. If you want longer lasting minons play mesmer. If you want a different profession mechanic go find one that you like.

Once the bugged skills and traits are fixed Necro will be perfect to me just how it is. Don’t go asking for a complete overhaul where it isn’t needed.

Any locations yet for the Act 2 scavenger hunt?

Mathog.3157:

Let me link you to my post on guru:
http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/70874-chunxs-minion-mastery-guide/#entry2017581
Dungeon/PvE/WvW
You can delete 10 points in Curses and put them somewhere else if you don’t go WvW.

To everyone who says MM is bad: you’re doing it wrong.

Agreed. When I first came to the forums I got discouraged and started playing a condition build. When I got bored with that I tried a power build. I’m back to minions now and besides the occasional glitch with the ai I’m not having any problems in solo PvE or dungeons.

I thought for sure that the complaints must therefore be PvP focused and went to try SPvP with a minion build. I haven’t died since I switched to it. I got downed a couple times by a glass cannon thief, but rallied and killed him each time. The only time minions are bad in PvP is against a mesmer with the moa skill because it unsummons them. And that’s not worse than any other build because most of them can be resummoned as soon as you get back to normal.

I’ve become convinced that people are just expecting minions to function perfectly fine without using their active skills intelligently or without using death shroud and weapon abilities to support them. That’s just silly. Your minions aren’t going to play the game for you.

brickforlife.1364:

Wulfrim.4793:

brickforlife.1364:

well, if you say that an axe is better than a dagger in terms of a power build, I’ve been doing something wrong in the last 150 hours.

The auto attack on dagger is more powerful than axe but I don’t plan on ever following someone around and auto attacking them. Axe 2 and 3 are infinitely better than dagger 2 and 3. In a power build I utilize my damage from death shroud. Its not a emergency button, its a “I win” button. I usually just engage with staff, 2, 3, 4 combo to build life force, switch to axe, 2, 3, 4, 5 combo for more life force, retaliation, condition transfer, cripple, blind, weakness, bleeding then switch to death shroud for the auto attack and 2 and 3. Then use 4 when I’m at 70% life force.

I agree with you after some messing around in spvp about how you manage to land more hits and more reliably with axes, however the fact that the autoattack is pitiful and the fact that enemies will re-engage you is assured so I’m sitting on the line between dagger and axe. With dagger, DS and wells, if I can pin them with warhorn 4 and then they remove CC then with dagger 3 since they can’t remove it I can land a ton of hurt. I’ll do some more experimenting and come back to you.

I disagree with the general opinion that the auto attack is horrible. Maybe if you only use the auto attack and don’t both using the other skills. In my experience with WvW axe is infinitely better than dagger.

Of course I also think condition Necros are silly for building entirely around condition damage and expecting it to work really well all the time, so maybe I’m just crazy.

Minion information looks good. Two things I would add though:

1.) You left out Bone Minions and Jagged Horrors. The Jagged Horrors might not be terribly useful, but they are technically minions and someone going for this playstyle should know what to expect from them. Bone Minions are a valuable part of the build at times for their burst AoE damage and the fact that Putrid Explosion counts as a blast finisher. It probably matters more in PvE than PvP, but just wanted to point that out.

2.) You also forgot to mention that Bone Fiend auto attacks each count as a projectile finisher.

I’m glad to see someone with an interest in minions. I’m working on refining my own ideas for minion builds in PvE, but I’m very curious to see what you come up with for PvP.

@possante

Would you care to explain your argument in a logical and thought out method – preferably one that does not include the “lolnecrosux” attitude? Such an obvious disdain for the class devalues your argument and takes away any power it may have had otherwise.

I don’t see how you think Necro isn’t one of the best classes to turn into a bunker. We are in the highest tier for base health, have a heal that removes our conditions and heals extra for each one (which also happens to have a small cd of 25 sec), have a number of ways to transfer conditions our enemy puts on us back to them, AoE blinds, a trait that lets our already powerful wells give us 15 seconds of protection, a second life bar (which comes with a free interrupt), and lots of chill and weakness. That all comes together to make a pretty good bunker, and doesn’t even consider Lich Form or Plague form which both have good bunker abilities. What profession are you suggesting is universally better than that?

I tend to agree with you Wulfrim, but I also agree with those who find the minions disappointing. GW2 was, after all, supposed to be the next generation of MMO. Why couldn’t minions be useful in the next generation? Really I don’t even think they are even all that bad. They just need some AoE resistance and/or an attack and move button. If I can move them out of AoE and focus them on a target then minions suddenly survive a lot more and deal good damage in PvP. Also the Shadow Fiend bugs me. I don’t understand the use of Haunt. It’s too slow to be an interrupt on most things, so why block a single random attack? Just as a gap closer? So it gets there alone and dies. Great.

But anyway, I do agree that the main issue isn’t the class but the forum community. Fortunately, the forums represent only a small collection of the playerbase. I don’t think the majority of players see a problem with the Necromancer because I keep seeing more and more Necromancers every day. I’m also not surprised that we weren’t high on the priority list for bug fixes. All the broken events probably took a lot of time to fix, and we had at least one working PvP build. It was probably decided we could deal with it until bug fixes came along and I don’t disagree with that opinion.

Yeah I haven’t bought any gems and if I ever do it will be the minimum amount needed to pay for a certain item and that’s it.

I agree that it’s loud. I don’t often have to deal with it though because I’m usually switching weapons and going in and out of DS so much that I’m never using an auto attack. It’s only when a champion or veteran comes along and survives my initial wave of AoE abilities that I have to resort to auto attacking. At which point I press the volume down key several times and wait for skills to come off cd

I thought of doing the same, but I won’t be until the minion bugs and the “Affects allies” bug are fixed. Also until the minions get a balance pass because right now the Bone Fiend and Shadow Fiend particularly are underperforming. A single target blind does not a good utility skill make. The Bone Fiend active skill seems like it’s still balanced around having two of them. Except we only get one now. So we need to get two again or the cooldown needs lowered. But yeah, a full minion skillbar is a distant dream for me.

1.) All games are bugged always. Not even just at launch.

2.) Bugfixes always take forever. Most of the time nobody has any idea why something isn’t working. You’d be surprised how right the code can look until it doesn’t work.

3.) Are you people 3? It’s a game. Have fun. End of story.

I don’t bother with Warhorn. The only OH weapon I use is Dagger. I’m a power necro and it’s still better than the focus or the warhorn.

I don’t get why it increases life force to begin with. It shouldn’t ever be free. It’s one of our best AoE abilities. I don’t understand what people expect sometimes.

The reduction to Bone Minions and Bone Fiends annoys me though because with more minions an MM build might actually be effective. The same can be said for the Jagged Horrors.

I want more interesting animations for the staff in general. All we do with a staff is hold it. Other weapons get cool animations. I mean look at the axe. It goes spinning off after an enemy all by itself and comes back. Why can’t we twirl the staff around, slam it on the ground, and point it at stuff? Something.

The minions in the game aren’t demons at all. My Necromancer uses phrases like:

“No rest for you yet sweet soul!”

“Another minion gone, I’ll have to make another.” (Approx. Can’t remember the exact phrasing but this is very close.)

This clearly indicates he is using the soul of a recently defeated enemy to animate the flesh and bone creations. The first quote is triggered by the Reanimator trait. The second triggers when a minion is defeated but not when they are sacrificed.

Also in all editions of DnD past 2E, Necromancers have been a specialist wizard that deals with the rather loose concept of death. This includes, but is not limited to, undead. In 3.5 there was also a separate class which had weapon proficiencies including an axe and focused exclusively on death related magic. That class was, iirc, incredibly similar to the version of the class we have now.

I will concede that I preferred the GW1 minions to the current ones. Not only did they have better models IMO, but they also were more fun. The level cap for players was 20. I was able to run around with 11 level 21 Bone Horrors and a level 34 (I think) Flesh Golem. All I needed was corpses, which did become a problem in some areas. I’m hoping they introduce new minion types and make some of our current ones more useful. I think Bone Minions and Flesh Wurms work perfectly or near perfectly in GW2 right now. Flesh Golem is a little buggy but otherwise works well. But that’s all a discussion for another thread.

If you are going for a power build, which isn’t a bad idea for a dungeon build, I’d suggest something like this.

Weapons: Axe/Focus and Staff. Primarily, you’ll use axe/focus. However, if a boss has the maximum number of vulnerability stacks then it may be helpful to switch to staff and give regeneration to your party with Mark of Blood.

Skills: You’ll want to bring Well of Blood for your healing skill. The powerful healing it provides to the whole group is far too valuable to not bring. For utilities Well of Suffering and Spectral Wall are two I’d strongly suggest. Both provide you with a source of vulnerability, which will increase everyone’s damage. The last utility can be either Well of Darkness for those dangerous moments or the new Blood is Power to increase your own damage. For your elite, I’d suggest Lich Form. It will allow you to deal much more damage in boss fights, and give another AoE vulnerability. Plague is an option, however, for blind spam. Understand that the conditions won’t be worth much for damage in Plague on this build.

Traits: 30 in Spite is a must for power builds. On a dungeon build I suggest taking Death’s Embrace, Chill of Death, and Close to Death. With your other points, I suggest 30 in Blood Magic. You can take Ritual of Life, Ritual Mastery, and Vampiric Rituals. For the last 10 Death Magic is an attractive option for Ritual of Protection.

Gear: Precision and Critical Damage are attractive stats on this build to give you better burst damage. To that end, I point you toward the Rune of the Eagle. Sigils are your choice. I suggest the Sigil of Accuracy and Sigil of Frailty on your axe/focus set. Your jewels should be Berserker’s or Valkyrie, depending on how good you want to be at healing.

I hope you find this post helpful for you.

Well, the quote button disappeared for me again. I don’t know what forum system this is, but I don’t like it.

Anyway, I’ll grant that minions are a much bigger liability in PvP right now. I don’t really play PvP, so I tend to forget that it exists. But what I said holds true in PvE.

Asmodean.5820:

Mesmer’s minion AI is far superior. Why?
1. It works
2. The buggers are like heatseeking missiles
3. They even spawn near you despite the mesner is e.g. far below you (and that alone would make their whole minion mechanic superior to any MM spec. The pathfinding is soooo hilariously bad that it isn’t funny anymore)

As has already been stated that AI is functioning more correctly because it is so much simpler to implement. They are locked onto one target and disappear when that target dies. That’s perfectly fine for illusions like the Mesmer has, but would be terribly unsatisfying for the Necromancer minions.

The AI is bugged, but it’s workable. If you can’t play a MM effectively right now then you are lazy and unwilling to learn the workarounds. I’m not saying it doesn’t need fixed, just to be clear. I’m just saying that I’m playing an MM and having fun while minimizing the effects of the bugs.

Flesh Golem AI, and minion AI in general, seems to place a high priority on targets that have been hit by a minion’s active skill. Strangely, they seem to place no priority on the fact that you or any of them are being attacked. I did a test two days ago with my shadow fiend where I allowed it to sit in aggro range of a group of enemies. I ran far enough away that only one enemy followed me and I killed it. The shadow fiend, however, sat idle until it died. On the next group I used the minion’s “Haunt” skill on a target. The shadow fiend attacked that target and stayed on that target until it died.

I won’t deny that the Flesh Golem sometimes decides to attack an enemy for no apparent reason. Usually it’s an object-type opponent and it’s always something within a relatively close range to me, but definitely longer than the aggro range of hostile NPCs. I’m inclined to believe that reports of it running off to the other side of the map and drawing a large group of enemies back to the player are exaggerated or entirely false. Especially because when the golem does this it sticks to its target until that target is dead. Something that might explain stories of the golem running off across a long distance is that it may be returning to a target it already locked onto after respawning from being too far away. In any case, there does appear to be a bug specifically in the Flesh Golem’s AI that causes it to select targets that aren’t currently in combat with the player.

My untested hypothesis is that minions have a combat mode and a noncombat mode similar to players. I believe that the minions are supposed to enter and exit combat mode when the player does. There appears to currently be a bug with that process though, as evidenced with minions sitting idle. I think those minions simply are not triggering into combat mode and therefore are not selecting a target. Active skills likely trigger combat mode, and it seems that my minions always enter combat if I initiate the battle myself – as opposed to if I get attacked by an NPC. A stranger bug that may be related to this is that MM Necromancers very rarely get stuck in combat mode. They run at combat speed, their health doesn’t regenerate, they keep their weapon out, and they cannot map travel. This situation is only resolved, in my experience, by logging the character out and logging back in. I’ve never had that happen on any other character, and it has only happened to my Necro while using minions.

Off topic, but what Baldur’s Gate mods did you work on? I love that game and have played through with various mods, including some AI mods. I’m curious if I may have played with your mods installed.

I have been playing as an MM, but I don’t think I can tolerate it anymore. I mixed in some condition skills yesterday and found it much faster and more exciting than my pure minions build. Now I face the dilemma of whether to go hybrid power/conditions or pure conditions.

I like the idea of Lich Form, and for that I know I’d need some power. Not wanting to go with a full power build, that leaves me with hybrid. I also like using lifeblast while in DS, which is also a plus for including power in my build.

However, I’m not sure I like the “glass cannon” sort of approach that a hybrid Necro takes. It seems like such a build would be incredibly vulnerable in dungeons and WvW, which are the primary environments that I hope to have success with this build. If I need more survivability in those environments, I’ll have to build for Vitality, Toughness, and Condition Damage.

Which of those two paths is the better choice, and how would I gear for it? My current theory of a hybrid build looks like this, with minor variations (but no reallocation of points) for WvW:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/en/?fQUQRArY3djMat7VaiaM8JCoHvHXOL6BxKWyoKsOA;T8AZVCqkUpqSRFVUmoE4YjyFlMqlIjK2QMXA

This forum likes to break links, you may have to copy/paste the above to see my theoretical hybrid build.

I use Axe/Focus and Staff on my MM build. But I’m starting to feel the burn, so to speak. I feel less useful than I could be in a lot of content. And that sucks because I loved Necro and MM in GW1. Hopefully some fixes come along for MMs. In the meantime, I’ll keep hoping that my minions accomplish something.

Hmm, strange that it doesn’t show the link. I’ll just write stuff up here then:

Skills – Staff with Blood Fiend, Bone Fiend, Shadow Fiend, Flesh Wurm, and Flesh Golem

Traits -

30 Death (+300 Toughness and +30% Boon Duration) selecting Minion Master, Flesh of the Master, and Death Nova

30 Blood (+300 Vitality and +300 Healing Power) selecting Bloodthirst, Vampiric Master, and Fetid Consumption

The last 10 points I was thinking of putting into Spite so that I could grab Reaper’s Might. Not sure if that’s a good idea though.

Gear -
Full set of Superior Rune of the Undead (not sure what armor to get to put it on)
Shaman’s Jewels (Condition Damage, Toughness, and Healing Power)
Sigil of Major Corruption (+10 Condition Damage per kill, end on down)

Great videos! I was wondering if you might give a little more advice about stats/gear for a minion build. I’m learning quite well how to use my skills, but having difficultly with what stats I’ll actually want. Would something like this work?

http://gw2skills.net/editor/en/?fQUQNBmWDbkQrXvVzWjePRI9IaUbaTP4G4CHUh3D;T0A5VSrUXpsiqJTTimsN5aS20KgxCbRA

I will be extremely upset if they completely rework the Necro like some people here suggest. I’m playing a Necro, and I’m having a blast. I have minions, I use DS all the time. I can see how the bugs are a problem, but I don’t understand why people think the class is boring. Some minor tweaks and a lot of bugfixes will fix the class. After that, play something else if you think it’s boring. Not everyone will like the same thing. I like Necro how it (theoretically, as in once bugs get fixed) is.

If you are condition damage, then Plague is what you are looking for. Generally Lich is best on power builds (though it’s still good on other builds) and Plague is best on condition builds. Of course, before you can unlock Lich you have to have 2 (I think) other elites. But yeah, I’d go Plague. Flesh Golem is good for builds that bring other minions, but not as useful if you have no minion traits. The racial elites aren’t very good IMO. Except for the druid spirit thing, but that has such a long cool down it’s not even worth bringing.

This build would be for general PvE, and is the result mostly of theory since I’m currently only level 30. I’ve had the good fortune of generally responsive minions and a mostly bug free experience so far, so I’m looking to incorporate minions into a sort of holistic build with a little condition damage and power to go with them. I think this build would achieve that goal, but feedback would be extremely helpful.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/en/?fQUQNBmWDbESrUvVzWjeTRI9IaUbawHef8BiRVYdA;T0A5TSnUPpciqJTTimsN5aS20ahBEbRA