Freyas

All necromancer minions gradually lose life. I've found that it's possible to keep them around for 2-3 battles(in PvE) before it becomes impossible to keep them alive through their degeneration. This does make sense, however, as there are some excellent methods of healing your minions(blood of the master, verata's sacrifice, heal area), and if you could keep around minions indefinately, it would be quite easy to have an army of hundreds of minions(especially when using summon bone minions to get 2 per corpse) by the end of a mission. You wouldn't even have to get too close to the enemies- just get your minions close enough to aggravate the enemies, and let your horde of minions do all the work. An army of 25 Bone Fiends would make quick work of anything....

It's quite possible to keep several minions around at all times, besides for a couple places where there is a long walk between enemies, and when they die, they do give you extra energy you can use to raise more so long as you've got a decent investment in soul reaping. I've been playing a minionator through PvE this weekend, and besides for the lack of good minion skills available in the early game, I've definately enjoyed it. I'm sure it will just get better as I get the skills that I want to finish the build- I just managed to capture Death Nova and Animate Bone Minions while going through Gates of Kryta and D'Alessio Seaboard today. Now I'm mostly looking for Taste of Death and Verata's Sacrifice.

As for Verata's Gaze, I believe that the bond to the minion is permanent, and will last until the minion dies. However, minions raised by enemies also have increasing life degeneration, meaning they'll die eventually. Verata's Aura is similar, and I can definately tell you that there were a couple situations in D'Alessio where I was wishing I had that skill .

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Freyas- Spirits of War
~The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity