Curse

Calista Blackblood · Dec 27, 2010, 08:56 PM // 20:56

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zodiac Meteor

Add any spirit buff skill to AI and you know what I mean (Soul Twist/Ritual Lord/Signet of Ghostly Might).

Spirits AND Minions armor formula is, 7 + (level x 6) = armor.

A level 20 Bone Horror has 123 armor and 450 health.
A level 13 Spirit of pain has 310 Health and 81 armor.

Spirits Health is as follows, 50+(level x20)
Minions Health is as follows 100+(levelx20)

Want to double check that?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xenomortis

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Bone_Fiend
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Bone_Horror

Xenomortis kindly helped you out

Zodiac Meteor · Dec 27, 2010, 09:15 PM // 21:15

Wow, my source was waaaaay off. I used paw·ned² to check it. Meh, doesn't surprise me that it was wrong, something seemed really wrong to begin with.

Now after that detour...

Calista Blackblood · Dec 27, 2010, 09:17 PM // 21:17

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zodiac Meteor

Wow, my source was waaaaay off. I used paw·ned² to check it. Meh, doesn't surprise me that it was wrong, something seemed really fishy.

It's ok,some people still open the curtains to see if it's raining or not

Chthon · Dec 30, 2010, 05:45 AM // 05:45

This is the second "how do I MM?" thread in recent memory, so you're just going to get a copy/paste from my response to the last thread.

Quote:

Originally Posted by me

Let's start there, then. Generally speaking: Death necros run minions and provide mitigation by way of meat shielding and direct (but unfocused) damage. Curse necros provide mitigation by way of debuffs and damage by way of force multiplication. Blood necros provide damage by way of force multiplication and diffuse healing.

Since you seem to have focused in on death magic already, let's look at that in a little more detail.

You accomplish mitigation largely by having the maximum number of minions up and ready to draw fire. That means 16 Death Magic and Masochsim are "must haves" because they get you to 11 minions. You also need to keep the minions standing. That means striking some balance of tougher minions to start with, quick minion replacement, and spamming Blood of the Master. (Note that minions follow the usual hp formula (80+20*lvl) and have 4AL/lvl, except for Fiends and Bone Minions, which have only 3AL/lvl.)

The second part of mitigation is positioning. Knowing the minion and monster AIs well enough to have your minions where they need to be to take the brunt of the damage for your team.

You accomplish damage by stacking armor-ignoring buffs onto your minions. Quick explanation of the importance of armor-ignoring damage: Sometime between the release of Sorrow's Furnace and PvE Tombs, the devs got lazy and went with a "bigger numbers = more difficulty" design strategy for the monsters that wasn't really reversed until WiK (and even then not entirely, see BLA). As monster level pumps from 20 to 30, the effectiveness of armor-sensitive damage falls ~40% from the supposed balance point based on 20vs20 PvP, while the effectiveness of armor-ignoring damage stays constant. What this means in terms of minions is that the base damage they do will head towards zero pretty quickly as monster levels rise. The remedy for this is to buff them with some armor-ignoring damage. There's basically 2 skills available for this job, and you should use them both: Order of Undeath and Ebon Battle Standard of Honor.

The other component of minion damage is attack speed, which is why Bone Fiends are a must-have, but I'm sure you knew that.

3. Which more or less brings me to a point I've made before, but think I should make again. The last update to Masochism pretty much closed off all room for variety among minion master builds. There's basically one optimal template and everything else is simply not as good.

* 16 Death
* 13 Soul Reaping

* Bone Fiend [why? fast attack speed]
* Vamp Horror [why? horror-class hp and AL for meat shielding, plus heals to offset your life sacrifice costs that synergize very well with the buffs]
* Order of Undeath [why? damage. See above]
* Ebon Battle Standard of Honor [why? damage. See above.]
* Blood of the Master [why? It's the only minion heal skill with adequate heal/sec to deal with natural degen, much less monster damage]
* Masochism [why? 11th minion, plus decent bonus to everything else in the build]
* Signet of Lost Souls OR Consume Corpse [why? build as it stands needs more energy; these are the best two options for getting it]
* Solution to the "Vamp Horror/HM Problem." See below.

And that's it. There's really nothing you can replace any of those skills with and get a better result for doing it. It's the optimal minion master build until we get a balance update that changes something.

So, about the "Vamp Horror/HM Problem," what is that? That's a phrase I just pulled out of my backend to describe the fact that monsters in a not small number of HM areas can kill your Vamp Horrors faster than the animate skill can recharge. Solutions to this problem come in three general categories: (1) You can try to improve the recharge on Vamp Horror with Air of Superiority or Ebon Battle Standard of Wisdom; (2) You can try to supplement the Vamp Horrors with a third minion type; or (3) You can swap the Vamp Horror for a Bone Horror and try to recover the lost healing with the free slot. (For NM and HM areas where the "Vamp Horror/HM Problem" isn't a factor, shunt some points from SR to run 8 Healing Prayers and Heal Area for a self-heal/minion heal.)

Regarding minion armor. The figures posted on wiki (1) have changed around quite a bit, (2) are (or were) demonstratively false, and (3) are so inelegant it should be obvious that they're wrong. Waaaaay back when (we're talking shortly after Factions release), I did some tests and concluded fiends and bone minions had lvl*3 and horrors and flesh golem had lvl*4. Given the subsequent research into monster armor generally, I have a suspicion that the correct value for horrors and golem may actually be (lvl*3)+20. When I get around to it, I may test it again.

Countess Marie · Jan 01, 2011, 07:21 PM // 19:21

Heroes suck @ spirit builds because they lay them down on top of each other. That's a big no no.

I really gotta see someone who is good doing OoU because I can't imagine how it would be better than AoL... but I don't really use pve skills and all that, either. Or cons.

Not saying for pure dmg, but just saying in terms of keeping minions alive. I hate when people say U GOTTA DO THIS OR ITS A WASTE. No. Anything you can do to keep 11 minions alive no matter what they are doing is going to be very useful to any party. Especially if you have other necros because it will keep them all full of energy. ( Due to the "refresh" of making new minions after kills, in case you were going to say if nothing dies there is no energy gain.)

I really recommend bringing a ST Rit hero when you are doing MM. A lot of people say it's a waste to have minions and spirits, but I disagree. The fact that it makes them nearly invincible (other than fire eles or holy damage) really makes a difference in HM.

Once again, having 11 minions alive all of the time messes w/ the AI and even if they key onto you all you have to do is loop through the minions and they'll get caught on them.

Minions + Spirits = AI confusion = win. Esp if you are using more heroes than people.

-CM

Kunder · Jan 01, 2011, 08:30 PM // 20:30

Use AotL if you want PvE easy mode that doesn't even require you to watch the game while fights play out. Take OoU if you want to kill things as fast as possible. In both cases, another AotL MM is a good idea since stacking BotM healing makes minions invincible.

As far as minion vs spirit survivability goes: it doesn't matter. Horrors, fiends, and spirits at their higher levels are all more then powerful enough to stand against nigh-anything but strong AoE nukers, to which they will all die quickly to. And of course, the more you have of each the more powerful they are, since monster damage is not focused and in both cases the spirit/minion heals affect the entire group and benefit considerably the more well spread out the damage is.

maxxfury · Jan 01, 2011, 08:49 PM // 20:49

Quote:

Originally Posted by Countess Marie

I hate when people say U GOTTA DO THIS OR ITS A WASTE

Just to jump in here ^^

What they (well most of them at least!!) mean is that there are more efficient, more effective and closer to optimal setups and ways to do it... NOT simply do it this way or GTFO...

Its just on a forum ppl generally want and want to give the best info, most uptodate knowledge and the current thinking on the subject due to more gametime exp ect. And want to optimise their play with the best options they can..

And with the game for the most part been, well, pretty low on the difficulty scale..you give information based on best scenario of player skill to run builds and the best possible setups..cos everyone knows that even totally shit bars work! Whether ppl like it or not, their ARE tiers of build "strength" and ppl will give their opinions and reasoning why one is the 'best' over some other.. *shrugs*

People give the options and others can take from whats posted what they wish xD

anyway.... good day :P (and the post was JUST a jumpin off point, not aimed at anyone especially :P)

Voodoo Rage · Jan 09, 2011, 05:45 AM // 05:45

I'm experimenting with playing a minion master for the first time. What combination of heroes will make my role on the team the most rewarding (making ME the hero and centerpiece), not necessarily the most perfect DPS.

Kunder · Jan 09, 2011, 09:25 PM // 21:25

Quote:

Originally Posted by Voodoo Rage

I'm experimenting with playing a minion master for the first time. What combination of heroes will make my role on the team the most rewarding (making ME the hero and centerpiece), not necessarily the most perfect DPS.

Curse Necro hero - use things like Barbs and Mark of Pain to massively amplify minion damage per hit

Otherwise, there really isn't anything heroes can do to support or enhance your minions. You yourself can run AotL or OoU. You can have a 2nd necro hero run AotL if you want real minion madness.

Chthon · Jan 09, 2011, 11:33 PM // 23:33

Quote:

Originally Posted by Voodoo Rage

I'm experimenting with playing a minion master for the first time. What combination of heroes will make my role on the team the most rewarding (making ME the hero and centerpiece), not necessarily the most perfect DPS.

Like Kunder said, there's Barbs and MoP. (Though heroes don't have any way of dealing with MoP's awful recharge, so they use it maybe once per battle, usually on the wrong target.)

Paragons have a couple useful skills. Fall Back works on minions, and really helps with intermob transit. GftE also effects minions. (Though minion crits aren't as good as play crits. As best I can tell, they get the +20 to baseline, but not the auto max weapon roll.)

Kunder · Jan 10, 2011, 12:10 AM // 00:10

Ah yes, the paragon skills. Those definitely make things more awesome (minion army sprinting from target to target just looks cool). Cthon is correct that minion critical hits only seem to count the armor 20 less, so its a 41% damage increase on each attack with x chance.

If you want to make a team based around having lots of stuff in general, you can bring a rit SoS summoner and the paragon can also take Anthem of Envy, which triggers on rit spirits to greatly boost their damage as well.

Also, as Cthon says, heroes can be poor at curse usage (read: if they do well in a battle, its because the random number gods have blessed you). Its not like you can't micro them, but you may want to try playing the curser once while the heroes handle the MM build.

Rushin Roulette · Jan 10, 2011, 08:38 AM // 08:38

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kunder

Use AotL if you want PvE easy mode that doesn't even require you to watch the game while fights play out. Take OoU if you want to kill things as fast as possible. In both cases, another AotL MM is a good idea since stacking BotM healing makes minions invincible.

Never take AotL if you have a second MM in the group... and never take 2 AotL Necros in one party. There are much better elites for a MM if you have more than one.

The problem with AotL is it uses up ALL bodies in the area which means the second MM wont have any left to raise.

Your Heroes will function much better if both have only Raise Bone Minions as the minion army will grow much faster overall.

If you only have one MM in the party, then AotL is quite nice, but Jagged Bones makes for more survivable Minions (At least the amount of minions doesnt drop as fast.

Kunder · Jan 10, 2011, 04:34 PM // 16:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rushin Roulette

Never take AotL if you have a second MM in the group... and never take 2 AotL Necros in one party. There are much better elites for a MM if you have more than one.

The problem with AotL is it uses up ALL bodies in the area which means the second MM wont have any left to raise.

Your Heroes will function much better if both have only Raise Bone Minions as the minion army will grow much faster overall.

If you only have one MM in the party, then AotL is quite nice, but Jagged Bones makes for more survivable Minions (At least the amount of minions doesnt drop as fast.

Have you actually run it? No? Thats what I thought. I've used dual AotL Heroes (+ SoS rit for massive ally spam) and they are at 10-11/11 minions at all times in any area with enough corpses that you would use a MM in the first place. In fact I've tried 3 AotL MMs and the only thing keeping them from working is the hero tendency to not realize that saccing about 75% of their health is a bad idea when under attack.

Jagged Bones is just crap. Even if you never use AotL to raise more than 1 free minion at the time, Jagged Bones gives 1 crappy lower level minion every 15s while AotL gives 1 high level minion every 45s along with +1 level to all minions in the army. That +1 level helps your overall strength far more, especially once you are capped off at 11/11 minions. That's not even taking into consideration the fact that AotL animates all corpses automatically, which means you don't need to sit around for 15s while the MMs cast their spells. The bar compression is just amazing, you can make a top-notch MM with nothing but AotL/Animate Bone Fiend/BotM/Macochism.

Raise Bone Minions is a joke as well for a MM. Sure you have high numbers, but they are so weak they die in one hit. High level minions are strong and can endure multiple battles if you spam BotM enough. Only good use for Bone Minions is a MB build. The point of a MM build is to have as resilient of a minion army as you can to provide tanking and draw fire, Bone Minions do nothing for that.

Necromas · Jan 10, 2011, 06:29 PM // 18:29

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chthon

Like Kunder said, there's Barbs and MoP. (Though heroes don't have any way of dealing with MoP's awful recharge, so they use it maybe once per battle, usually on the wrong target.)

Paragons have a couple useful skills. Fall Back works on minions, and really helps with intermob transit. GftE also effects minions. (Though minion crits aren't as good as play crits. As best I can tell, they get the +20 to baseline, but not the auto max weapon roll.)

There's also dwayna's sorrow (AoE enchantment, heals entire party each time a minion dies) and judge's intervention (deals massive holy damage when a minion takes a hit that would kill it) from monks.

Rits can help a lot too with ancestor's rage (AoE damage centered on a minion) and splinter weapon (makes minion attacks do AoE damage).

And while we're at it, there's blood bond (heals anyone who attacks the enemy, big AoE heal for horrors when enemy dies) too from necros.

Rushin Roulette · Jan 10, 2011, 07:36 PM // 19:36

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kunder

Have you actually run it? No? Thats what I thought.

Have you tried anything Else? No? Thats what I thought.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kunder

I've used dual AotL Heroes (+ SoS rit for massive ally spam) and they are at 10-11/11 minions at all times in any area with enough corpses that you would use a MM in the first place.

Good for you. Im so proud of you.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kunder

In fact I've tried 3 AotL MMs and the only thing keeping them from working is the hero tendency to not realize that saccing about 75% of their health is a bad idea when under attack.

Bet that revelation took a while?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kunder

Jagged Bones is just crap. Even if you never use AotL to raise more than 1 free minion at the time, Jagged Bones gives 1 crappy lower level minion every 15s while AotL gives 1 high level minion every 45s along with +1 level to all minions in the army. That +1 level helps your overall strength far more, especially once you are capped off at 11/11 minions.

I never stated that Jagged was the Über skill... but it still beats AotL Hands down in the hands of a Hero. AotL uses up EVERY corpse in the area adn turnes every corpse into a Minion plus one more. Now. Lets say your 2 Minions are standing in the middle of a gigantic pile of corpses with maybe 50 of them. MM 1 casts his amazing AotL skill... raises 50 Minions (+1 from AotL... hes thinking;

Quote:

MM 1: "OMG, Im amazing. I can raise 51 Minions at once. Eat your heart out Chuck Noris!!!ONE"

only to see 38 Minions die imediately because the Minion Limit has been reached.

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MM1: "Ooops!"

Meanwhile. shortly afterwards MM2 finally gets his act together after rolling on the floor laughing his behind off at the great show that just happened;

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MM2: "Let me show you how its done!"

MM2 Proceeds and casts Bone Feind and realizes there are no further bodies left because chump number 1 just wasted 38 bodies for a gigantic spectactular show of team fail.

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MM2: "Oops, maybe I should try AotL as well as theres nothing left to raise."

Meanwhile MM2 is feeling a bit stupid as well and decides to cast his;

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kunder

amazing

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kunder

bar compression

Skill and ends up with one whole Minion.... and is thinking to himself;

Quote:

MM2: "If this is bar compression, then Im the Queen of Vaabi."

Now to the next point:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kunder

Animate Bone Fiend

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kunder

The point of a MM build is to have as resilient of a minion army as you can to provide tanking and draw fire, Bone Minions do nothing for that.

Bone Fiends are ranged and therefore are useless for either tanking or drawing fire. All they are good at is to provide ranged damage and to draw foes towards you and apart for a slightly more controlled fight through foe overextension.
You say that Bone Minions are useless tanks even though AotL raises only Bone minions 0.o . Bone Minions as opposed to their ranged counterparts, the Bone fiends, move in close and personal to the foes and therefore have a great chance of bodyblocking them if the pre-fight positioning is done corectly. They therefore fully fulfill your Tanking and fire drawing hopes (If your lucky, but no Hero, NPC or Minion can tank propperly anyways)

Now lets review the MB bar. Please also note at this point, dead foes dont need to be tanked and are fuel for more bodies which can in turn be used to create new Minions.

The Bone Minions are low level bombing bait. They rush in close to the foes, get hit a bit and die exploding which causes more damage. The dying Bone Minions trigger Jagged Bones and out comes a fresh Jagged horror which causes bleeding, is of a higher level than the late and lamented Bone minion and can be in turn enchanted with Jagged Bones and Death Nova again.

All the while the foes are targeting the low armor and low HP minions as the AI in the game tells them that low armor and low HP is a priority target (Much like a 55HP Monk is great at Tanking if done correctly and no counter skills are in play).

In summary:

While AotL is a great skill on a MM and has good bar compression it is a complete waste if you have 2 MMs competing for the same corpses.
Low Level Minions plus Jagged bones leaves you with better and more usefull minions after the initial Minion has been killed.

And Finally:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kunder

I've used dual AotL Heroes (+ SoS rit for massive ally spam) and they are at 10-11/11 minions at all times in any area with enough corpses that you would use a MM in the first place. In fact I've tried 3 AotL MMs and the only thing keeping them from working is the hero tendency to not realize that saccing about 75% of their health is a bad idea when under attack.

If I completed all games with H/H on my Warrior only using RoJ as my Elite... does that make it a good skill for a Warrior? Just because something works doesnt mean that it is particularily good.

Voodoo Rage · Jan 10, 2011, 07:59 PM // 19:59

I guess my ultimate question is:

All things being equal, am I better serving my team as the MM, with the hero offering curses/whatever support or can the hero provide a better MM service (via use of Death Nova) with me providing better support (better selection of foe for the hex)?

FoxBat · Jan 10, 2011, 08:23 PM // 20:23

AotL on a hero provides much better "survivability" in my experience than Jagged Bones. While the AotL things don't spawn babies, they're all much higher level than bone minions, and near always in larger quantities than the 2 respawning minions you'll have with Jagged at any time. The ability to raise an army in a second after battle is also not to be underestimated, instead of waiting around for 15 seconds while bone minions is spammed (since they spent most of the battle spamming death nova and not necessarily ressing bodies) In fact the only real argument against AotL is that the minions might be *too* sturdy and aren't triggering as many death novas as self-replacing jaggeds might. Bottom line is my hero spends much more time at the minion cap with AotL than jagged in your average mission/vanquish.

If you want to get real technical than the AP build that can spam ebon vanguard sins and the like with a hero MM is going to be much stronger than OoU with SS support. If you aren't abusing AP and hero skills then SS nuking or random barbs is not as impressive, and you'd be better off getting mileage from OoU player. Either setup is ridiculously strong in most situations though so just play what you like.

Rushin Roulette · Jan 10, 2011, 08:41 PM // 20:41

Im not saying AotL is a bad skill Foxbat. Its a great skill if you only have 1 MM in the party. What is really a waste is if you have 2 Heroes who both have AotL as their Elite. It is even bad if you have 2 MMs and only one has AotL. This MM will be stealing all the bodies for the other MMs in the group every 45 seconds (not counting fast recharges).

EDIT:

@Voodoo Rage You are better off with running curses yourself for the start while gettign the hang of playing a Necro and leaving running a MM / Minionbomber for your Heroes. If you find youd rather go play MM, then all the more power to you. Finding good Minionmaster /Minionbombers ingame is difficult and they are relatively rare.

Kunder · Jan 10, 2011, 08:48 PM // 20:48

Quote:

I never stated that Jagged was the Über skill... but it still beats AotL Hands down in the hands of a Hero. AotL uses up EVERY corpse in the area adn turnes every corpse into a Minion plus one more. Now. Lets say your 2 Minions are standing in the middle of a gigantic pile of corpses with maybe 50 of them. MM 1 casts his amazing AotL skill... raises 50 Minions (+1 from AotL... hes thinking;

Have the hero stagger their casts. lol so hard amirite? Since you are running MMs you aren't balling and AoE nuking everything to pieces instantly, so half way through the battle when half the enemies are dead 1 necro uses AotL and the other uses it to clean up the battle. If you have 50 dead bodies with Jagged Bones you end up taking 15s to have your MM casting spells over and over while you wait. Thats fun to do after every other battle.

Quote:

1. Bone Fiends are ranged and therefore are useless for either tanking or drawing fire. All they are good at is to provide ranged damage and to draw foes towards you and apart for a slightly more controlled fight through foe overextension.

No, they are excellent at drawing fire. Slightly less armor hurts, but for the most part minions never stayed alive through higher armor, they stay alive because BotM is like Heal Party for minions on uber-steroids, and you have two people casting it. If melee gets past your front line, all your casters have to do to lose aggro is run straight through a bone fiend. They don't body block allies but they do block enemies, and since the bone fiend is the same base armor level as a caster they hold aggro just as well. Considering the randomness of minion movements, enemies often are running around the front line smacking your monks. Bone fiends are the easiest way to lose aggro in that situation.

Quote:

2. You say that Bone Minions are useless tanks even though AotL raises only Bone minions 0.o . Bone Minions as opposed to their ranged counterparts, the Bone fiends, move in close and personal to the foes and therefore have a great chance of bodyblocking them if the pre-fight positioning is done corectly. They therefore fully fulfill your Tanking and fire drawing hopes (If your lucky, but no Hero, NPC or Minion can tank propperly anyways)

No. AotL raises Bone Horrors. Those are good. Bone minions suck ass. Here is a list of what each skill gives you:

AotL @ 19 death: lvl 21, 500 health, 82 armor
Animate Bone Fiend @ 19 death: lvl 21, 500 health, 62 armor
Animate Bone Minions @ 18 death: lvl 14, 360, 42 armor

So 2 bone minions have 720 total health, but 20 less armor than bone fiends. Accounting for armor, both bone minions together are about as strong as 1 bone fiend, and a single bone horror is 40% stronger than TWO bone minions. So not only are bone minions as weak as fiends as far as tanking, they die faster individually and reach the minion cap earlier, both of which means your long-term tanking ability is much less than even using ONLY fiends. And I'm being generous, not even taking into account the fact that the much lower level means the enemies have an extra chance to critical with physical attacks.

As far as tanking with minions goes, the point is that you don't need things like bone fiends to stand in the right place to tank. You just run past them and the enemies auto lock on to the minion. All the minion has to do is stand still.

Quote:

If I completed all games with H/H on my Warrior only using RoJ as my Elite... does that make it a good skill for a Warrior? Just because something works doesnt mean that it is particularily good.

Where did I imply it was good (even though it is)? You said that AotL would mess up the MMs and they wouldn't share corpses well enough. As a matter of fact, they share corpses just fine and their minions armies have 2x-3x more staying power than crappy bone minions.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rushin Roulette

Now lets review the MB bar. Please also note at this point, dead foes dont need to be tanked and are fuel for more bodies which can in turn be used to create new Minions.

The Bone Minions are low level bombing bait. They rush in close to the foes, get hit a bit and die exploding which causes more damage. The dying Bone Minions trigger Jagged Bones and out comes a fresh Jagged horror which causes bleeding, is of a higher level than the late and lamented Bone minion and can be in turn enchanted with Jagged Bones and Death Nova again.

All the while the foes are targeting the low armor and low HP minions as the AI in the game tells them that low armor and low HP is a priority target (Much like a 55HP Monk is great at Tanking if done correctly and no counter skills are in play).

MBing wasn't being discussed. MMing was. That said, while MBing can be impressive under controlled circumstances, in real PvE where you aren't going to take the time to perfectly pull and tank mobs to abuse Death Nova's AoE, MMing is much more useful. It provides comparable or greater damage while also providing significantly better staying power, tanking ability, and being more reliable. You can only cast Death Nova so fast, and if a hero is doing it they are going to fail to put it on something useful 50% of the time. OTOH, MMing provides much superior tanking and you can give your entire minion army buffs that improve their damage by an order of magnitude. Furthermore, MMing scales better the more minions you have (i.e. adding a 2nd MM actually helps), while MBing actually scales worse the more MBers you have. This is because MBers literally DO have to fight each other for corpses. MMers, on the other hand, support each other through BotM so that each has to use LESS corpses because they keep their army up better, while at the same time taking greater advantage of aforementioned skills that buff minion damage.

Chthon · Jan 10, 2011, 11:05 PM // 23:05

Quote:

Originally Posted by Necromas

There's also dwayna's sorrow (AoE enchantment, heals entire party each time a minion dies)

Very suitable for a bomber, but a master shouldn't be losing minions often enough to get a good payout from it.

Quote:

and judge's intervention (deals massive holy damage when a minion takes a hit that would kill it) from monks.

This is downright clever. I'll have to see how the hero AI behaves with it, but it sounds very promising.

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Rits can help a lot too with ancestor's rage (AoE damage centered on a minion)

Pretty sure the hero AI won't hardly even cast ARage on players, much less minions.

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and splinter weapon (makes minion attacks do AoE damage).

They said the AI was fixed to cast Splinter on minions, though I have to admit I haven't watched closely to see if that's the case.

Quote:

And while we're at it, there's blood bond (heals anyone who attacks the enemy, big AoE heal for horrors when enemy dies) too from necros.

Yeah, that's a nice skill too.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Voodoo Rage

I guess my ultimate question is:

All things being equal, am I better serving my team as the MM, with the hero offering curses/whatever support or can the hero provide a better MM service (via use of Death Nova) with me providing better support (better selection of foe for the hex)?

On a H+H team, there's almost no question that you add more as AP+MoP than as a MM.