Curse

papaschtroumpf · Mar 31, 2009, 05:55 PM // 17:55

I'm pretty new to the game, but made a Necro in Prophecies which I am currently running as a minion master (may change later in the game).
I liked the concept of a minion bomber, but I find it really hard to keep track of what minion is doing what to keep spells on them and target the right one. I feel that bombing would work much better if you could have your minions in a minion window similar to the party or hero control panel (just simplified), or awt least have a shortcut key to select a particular minion.

Anyway, long story short, I am doing the minion master thing instead of the minion bombing.

At lvl14, I am about to acquire Olias through nightfalls, and I was thinking about making him a minion bomber, since I hear the hero AI is good at keeping track of minions. The other reason is that I don't have many necro skills unlocked yet, without access to some of the trainers to get more, or the gold to pay for them. A minion bomber and a minion master have many overlapping skills making it really cheap.

My concern is that I don't want Olias to blow up my "expensive" minions (he's free to put Death Nova on them as long as they die a natural/fighting death). does the AI keep track of its own minions vs mine? it looks like some skills apply to all minions in range.

Xenomortis · Mar 31, 2009, 06:12 PM // 18:12

Generally, a minion bomber will be running cheap, weak minions (namely [Animate Bone Minions]) and casting death nova on them. They will get killed by the enemy, blowing up.
You don't need to bother with a minion destruction skill. Those sort of skills tend to only work on minions that the caster summoned himself anyway.
Heroes manage this build better than humans.

Basically, Olias can only cast Death Nova on your minions, he can't blow them up.

Running both a MM and a MB is fairly pointless. You probably won't have enough corpses to keep both going at max and you don't usually need two sets of minions.
Take one minion necro per team - if it's human, run a MM, if it's a hero, run a MB.

ac1inferno · Mar 31, 2009, 06:30 PM // 18:30

Having a Minions Window would be nice and have been suggested before. I don't know if Anet is considering it though.

I would suggest going curse support with skills like [[barbs] and [[mark of pain] if you make Olias a minion bomber because there might not be enough bodies to go around for two mm's.

You could always have it the other way around and have Olias go curse support while you stay MM. If not, you could always make Olias /Rt or /Mo with [[Signet of Lost Souls] and take advantage of Soul Reaping for a healer or prot that almost never runs out of energy.

papaschtroumpf · Mar 31, 2009, 07:12 PM // 19:12

Interesting, I expected Olias to use [Feast for the Dead] or [taste of death] to strategically blow up the right minion and heal others (or the caster) in the process. Since that skill specifically calls out "undead ally", I was worried about him killing my own minions.

In fact I was planning on giving him [Animate Bone Horror] minions because they are cheaper in energy than [animate Bone Minion], a little more resilient and do more damage while they wait for their turn to get blown up.

If it's better to let them die from "natural" death, then [animate Bone Minion] is a better choice, and the energy for this skill is the same as the energy for [Animate Bone Horror] + [Feast for the Dead]

I use [Blood of the Master] quite extensively on my own minions, so I'm going to interfere with Olias since I would be healing his minions too anfd they would tend not to die as easily from combat. Note that since I'm /Mo I'm not too worried about the extra sacrifice due to his minions, although it is another valid argument for not having two minion dependent builds.

Eragon Zarroc · Mar 31, 2009, 08:08 PM // 20:08

u get two minions from [animate bone minions] and one from [animate bone horror], therefore more minions per energy. not to mention bone minions are lower level and will die sooner to explode sooner. [blood of the master] shouldn't be much of a problem. the bone minions will be taking more dmg than u can heal for when under pressure so they will still die. just be careful not to sac ur self when there are 15+ minions up. u shouldn't worry about forcing minion deaths. when they die natural deaths, it's more likely they will be adjacent to an enemy and also, the dmg they take will be dmg that's not being applied to ur party members. they make for good buffers to reduce party wide pressure. having two people with minions may be hard to maintain unless the area is full of exploitable corpse. or u could just move along at a quick pace so that ur killing more often. but when in missions that have relatively few enemies or enemies with un-exploitable corpses, i would take one minion master out. can become redundant

awry · Mar 31, 2009, 08:46 PM // 20:46

It really depends on the area, despite what some people think, some areas can support more than one minion bomber/master. In my case when I vanquish large areas with clustered enemies, I use 1 mm [me], 1 necro minion bomber and one rit bomber. Sometimes I swear I could get away with a 4th minon master, there's nothing quite like marching through mobs w/ 30 minions and SLAUGHTERING THEM ALL in seconds. As a mm, w/ blood of the master i can keep alive the weak minions from the mb in between battles so they blow up in battle and not out of battle. There is good synergy especially with the two mbs carrying jagged bones, because it's very very good minon management.

Xenomortis · Mar 31, 2009, 10:28 PM // 22:28

There are some occasions when yes, 2 or even 3 MMs are possible.
Although with 4 MM/MBs, you have a potential of 40 minions at any one time, resulting in a 85% Sac with Blood of the Master - 48 minions will kill you at a 101% sac. Although it's unlikely you'll maintain that number of minions.

To be fair though, there's little reason to have more than 2 MMs, even in those corpse filled areas. 20 weak targets running around is more than enough and they already provide excellent synergy for Soul Reaping and skills like Mark of Pain and Barbs.

papaschtroumpf · Mar 31, 2009, 11:20 PM // 23:20

great, thanks for the answers. I can't believe I didn't notice that [animate bone minions] made 2 of them instead of 1. Makes a lot more sense now.
I'll give it a try tonight.