Curse

Ensign · Sep 06, 2006, 10:10 AM // 10:10

I've been filling in master's bonuses on my necro the last couple days, and as always I ended up experimenting quite a bit. This guy largely has his roots in PvP discussions but really is a PvE character:

Offering of Blood*
Order of Pain
Blood Renewal / Blood Ritual
Rotting Flesh
Animate Bone Horror
Animate Bone Fiend
Blood of the Master
Resurrection Signet / Hardres of choice

12+4 Death Magic
9+2 Blood Magic
9+1 Soul Reaping

Weapon with an enchanting part, armor of choice + Bloodstained Boots.

I'll get this out of the way now - if you are the type of player who likes the 'gather all the aggro on a tank, then carefully kill things with Spiteful Spirit / AoE' then you will hate this character. I'm absolutely from the school of thought that believes that you should just blast through everything with as many physicals as you can fit, because there isn't any physical hate in PvE. Alongside 4+ physicals, this is straight-up the most powerful necro I've played.

The general ideas that went into this build:

* (PvP concept) - when building a support caster, take as many strong, problematic skills as you possibly can, and figure out how to make the attributes work. Leave the cute stuff to the physicals, who have the room on their bars for narrow skills - as a caster, you want as much raw power from money skills as possible. If it doesn't cause a problem for the other team to deal with, you probably shouldn't be running it.

* A minion master is really just Animate Bone Fiend + Blood of the Master. The rest of the skills on your bar are fluff, they can be useful but are hardly key functionality. Once you get going you're just a pack of Fiends with BotM keeping 'em up anyway.

* You can run Order of Pain on a guy who is heavily specced into death magic. 11 spec Order of Pain is still great, and 12 is a dead level.

* Flesh Golem, while I must admit is pretty fun (who doesn't like huge level 28 dudes?) is honestly a pretty blah elite. Once you get your minions going, I really don't care if the 10th guy is a golem or another fiend. The golem is only really good when you don't have many minions because he doesn't go away, but when you don't have minions Order of Pain is a whole lot better than some silly golem.

* If disease is good enough to use straight up in PvP, where it bounces back, then it's downright awesome in PvE where it doesn't a lot of the time.

So really, the drive here was to do something about all those empty slots on a typical minion bar by condensing it to the minimum and working in more money from other lines.

From my experience (heavily with PUGs and henchies, even) the character has a lot of synergies that might not be intuitive. The first is that the energy engine that is minions + soul reaping does wonderful things for your Order. Once you've established a base of minions, you end up getting this great, smooth mana from every new minion as an old one is killed in the process. Running at full steam, it felt like I was keeping Order of Pain up around 2/3 to 3/4 of the time. You absolutely have the mana to support the skill on a bar with minions.

Your minionless game is really strong. Usually I pump Order -> Rotting -> Order, and with even a poor (henchie) physical team things start to blow up, getting the minion ball rolling. Bone Horror is pretty big in the buildup phase, since those feed you energy instead of costing it like Fiends do. I generally just hit Horror whenever I can't afford Fiend, or if it's recharging. Minions are expendable anyway, I just want more bodies between Orders.

Offering smooths mana as much as it gives it out. It's great when building up minions, or for smoothing it out after pumping a lot of mana quickly - oh, hell, I just love elite emanagement.

Blood Ritual should go in for Blood Renewal if you have monks that don't complain about having to heal you from all of the health sacrificing. They should be able to easily, because the minions end up soaking up a lot of damage. If they're whiney just take Renewal though.

I've found that I'm usually capped on casting time playing this guy - things just die so quickly that my energy is great from Soul Reaping. Chain casting really strong stuff like minions and orders is amazing.

Ok, so I'm rambling. I guess the point I'm making is that Order of Pain is awesome, and that minion bars can run it too, and that it really isn't a burden - it makes you better in situations where you're poor, and things just die so much faster in general with it around. You should run it, it's so good that I felt the need to make a post about it at 3 AM.

Peace,
-CxE

holden · Sep 06, 2006, 12:33 PM // 12:33

it looks like a ball. and with no shame in my game i will try it out immediately.

does order of pain trigger for your bone horrors?

Ensign · Sep 06, 2006, 07:30 PM // 19:30

If Order of Pain affected minions it would be nuts. It doesn't, but it really doesn't matter. Warriors and rangers salivate at the mouth when Orders start flashing, and even random pug W/Mos can't help but smash things with they have Order of Pain up. Percentage-wise, it helps them even more =)

Again, just to be clear - avoid dumb 'nukers' and get barragers or more warriors if you want to run an order.

Peace,
-CxE

*lemming* · Sep 07, 2006, 06:28 AM // 06:28

Less PvE for Ensign imo.

Ole Man Bourbon · Sep 07, 2006, 06:35 AM // 06:35

I'm no MM-"Master," but from my experience MM means MM first, and foremost. If you want to help your team additionally, something like Dwayna's Sorrow is probably the way to go.

I haven't really tried this, but Blood + MM doesn't seem like an automatic walk-off homerun.

Golem is probably better than PvP people tend to think. That extra 6-8 levels is pretty significant, and I think Golem has a KD. But it is certainly expendable for a really good elite. The Martyr + Skill that xfers conditions to minions would be nice, for instance. Maybe something from Inspiration line if corpses are slim.

I know I'm getting away from the damage side, but more healing in one place means opportunity for more damage in another.

BTW, if you are just using minions for mana, you can put crap into Death, load up on Blood, Healing, and SR, and have an Orders/Dwayna Sorrow party (not tested :P ).

Ensign · Sep 07, 2006, 08:00 AM // 08:00

Tell them to open the freaking ladder then already. There's nothing to do when the ladder is locked. =(

Flesh Golem is trash, sorry. It looks cool, and makes a big number every 3 seconds. The difference between it and a fiend once you have a mob of guys is negligible. I've run it, because on a straight MM build with no frills there's nothing useful to put in your elite slot, but when you really start maximizing things it's not something I miss having at all.

Peace,
-CxE

holden · Sep 07, 2006, 06:03 PM // 18:03

i agree. imo golem is just short of worthless. a present from anet for the 15 year olds. i like always having the body there but if you're that tight on bodies you shouldn't bring a MM in the first place.

golem is slow to the target and slow to attack. a novelty. what's messed up is many MM's would still bring him even if he didn't leave an exploitable corpse. just cause it's cooool.

i really like the build. it's not the usual spam blood of the master build. you're still a genuine MM but you have a little more to contribute and with 4 sac skills, a lot more to worry about. when things got hairy and I got a little overzealous I found myself being one hell of a burden to the monk. But i managed to keep order of pain up most of the time.

i eventually switched out Offering of Blood for AotL. I feel more solid and stable but the flow isn't as good. but man using offering of blood felt freakin good. just like old times.

i've always carried Rotting Flesh on my MM's bar. it's a fantastic skill for pve.

Carinae · Sep 07, 2006, 07:47 PM // 19:47

@Ensign - Hmmm, OoP and Rotting Flesh. Well that's a different direction, I may try that out. Too bad OoP doesn't affect the minions as well....

I tried running Tainted Flesh on my MM build and really didn't notice it being that great. I mean it's true that the mobs don't typically remove it, but they also are level 24-30 monsters, so they have a lot of hp to burn through. I just didn't notice that it contributed all that much, perhaps I'll try that again as well.

You're dead-on concerning Flesh Golem and a MM being Fiends+BotM. I have been running ONLY fiends and think it works great. I have also seen a LOT of other players, especially in Factions, who are downright insulting about me not running FG, until they see me roll everything with just Fiends. Opens people's eyes.

FG needs to have it's attack rate doubled to be a decent elite. It hits hard, just not often enough.

re: Offering - Oh, how our positions have reversed.

Six months ago, pre-nerf, it was absolutely crucial....for raising huge armies. With the cap, I haven't needed it at all. Once you hit 10 minions, energy issues evaporate. I'm usually maxed, or near max at all times.

You may want to look into 'Konruu's Fervor'. I switch from Bortak's Cesta to this offhand when I hit 10 minions. I've found it provides me with noticeably more energy and turns a good situation into a great one. Switch back if you fall under 10 minions

Lemme post my new build tomorrow, I think you'll like it.

Jetdoc · Sep 07, 2006, 08:29 PM // 20:29

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

Blood Ritual should go in for Blood Renewal if you have monks that don't complain about having to heal you from all of the health sacrificing. They should be able to easily, because the minions end up soaking up a lot of damage. If they're whiney just take Renewal though.

I think that this is the only downside to this build - four of your primary skills involve sacrificing, which makes utilizing them constantly a very high drain on your health and your monks.

17% Order of Pain sacrifice - worth every penny of it.

25% Blood of the Master sacrifice - unless you're completely planning on reserving this for non-combat situations, you basically will be taxing yourself heavily by combining this with Order of Pain mid-battle.

25% or 17% Blood Renewal/Blood Ritual sacrifice - yes, you get the healing benefits later on, but that initial sacrifice is pretty heavy given the other sacrificing you're going to be doing mid-battle.

20% OoB sacrifice - granted, you should only be using this in non-combat situations.

In order to alleviate this problem, why not replace OoB with Aura of the Lich? That would allow you to sacrifice to your hearts' content. The only problem with this, obviously, is energy management in non-combat (minion making) situations, but most minion masters are able to get by once they get rolling.

To modify your build using this concept (using 455 health max health):

Aura of The Lich (E)
Blood Renewal - with AotL up, you're sacrificing only 28 health for a 12 second +5 regen and a 150 health gain.
Order of Pain - only a 19 health sacrifice makes this completely spammable as long as your Soul Reaping keeps pumping you energy.
Rotting Flesh
Animate Bone Fiend
Animate Bone Minions - these are nice energy management tools to fill in your fiend ranks as you build up your army.
Blood of the Master - that massive sacrifice is now only costing you 28 health per sac - much more manageable with Blood Renewal healing you
Ressurrection Signet

I'd love some comments on this...

Master Fuhon · Sep 07, 2006, 09:21 PM // 21:21

At times like this I wish I had a PvE necro slot instead of saving my last slot for PvP and testing. I just created one, and I feel like this build can easily give most PvE groups what they need.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jetdoc

I think that this is the only downside to this build - four of your primary skills involve sacrificing, which makes utilizing them constantly a very high drain on your health and your monks.

Health sacrificing is only a problem if you are getting hit. The build does many things, but there is such a free flow of energy with the minon reaping and OoB. Truth is, I'd only use the Bone Fiends, and drop 1 point in both Blood and Soul Reaping, and I'd be able to spec up to 7 points for another attribute in place of Bone Horrors. My own Winnowing... or in your case, a bonus self heal that can be used on your teammates as well as yourself. In the case of my idea, the ranged minions wouldn't be able to provide a defensive wall so I wouldn't be so worried about healing them.

The base synergies of this build are very strong with Blood Renewal, Order of Pain, Blood of the Master, and Bone Fiends. I found that the OoB makes this build far more flexible than the ability to sacrifice more, allowing you to do whatver you want with the last 3 spots.

Edit: Fixed bad advice on lowering Death Attribute instead of Blood. Better to keep 10 minions than 9.

Ensign · Sep 07, 2006, 09:45 PM // 21:45

Quote:

Originally Posted by holden

you're still a genuine MM but you have a little more to contribute and with 4 sac skills, a lot more to worry about.

<guilty look>
When I run this style of character in reality, I may or many not be running with trip-supers.
</guilty look>

Quote:

Originally Posted by holden

when things got hairy and I got a little overzealous I found myself being one hell of a burden to the monk.

Yeah, you do that.

I'm willing to do that because I've played a *lot* of PvE on my monk, and one conclusion I've reached is that if you have a pack of fiends running at full steam, you get *bored*. Any aggro that breaks off of the warrior who should be running in first goes straight onto the minions (they're softer than players and hence aggro magnets), and when that's going on you're sitting there at full energy waiting for someone to take some damage to heal.

So in practice, yes, you're probably soaking up half the healing on the team when you're running at full steam. But that's because your minions are taking half of the damage and you're pumping that healing straight into BotM. I know players like to worry about being self sufficient and bring self heals and all that...but c'mon, if you're not soloing, you can build a bit of dependency in, and if your monks have a pulse you're going to be getting that healed.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Carinae Dragonblood

I tried running Tainted Flesh on my MM build and really didn't notice it being that great.

My feeling is that Tainted isn't a source of disease, as much as another layer on top of Rotting Flesh that keeps it from bouncing back at you. Against mobs that aren't human, I consider Tainted to be completely useless.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Carinae Dragonblood

re: Offering - Oh, how our positions have reversed.

Six months ago, pre-nerf, it was absolutely crucial....for raising huge armies. With the cap, I haven't needed it at all. Once you hit 10 minions, energy issues evaporate. I'm usually maxed, or near max at all times.

I chalk it up to playstyle. I am, shall we say...a very aggressive player in PvE. While a lot of MMs will carefully groom their armies, exploit every corpse, and tend to lag behind healing everything up before getting to the next mob, I simply do not care. I see the next mob, and I slam my mob of dudes into it just after the melee gets in there. They probably won't be at full health, and they'll take a good deal of aggro - hell, I *want* them to get some aggro. A wall of Fiends has 4,400 HP and gets healed very efficiently by BotM, I want to milk that defensive property. Some of them die. Hell, a lot of them die. Who cares, they're minions. You call them minions because they're expendable. Ordered warriors will kill things, fiends will kill things, you can make more.

The upshot of that is that I'm not exactly riding 10 minions like the dedicated MMs are. Hence my energy is a good deal rockier, and Offering smooths it out nicely. I don't worry as much about the healing burden on the monks...because if fiends are dying, players aren't, and they can heal me.

This also plays into the AotL decision.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jetdoc

I think that this is the only downside to this build - four of your primary skills involve sacrificing, which makes utilizing them constantly a very high drain on your health and your monks.

Yeah, you can look at how things are set up and think that. I looked at my bar and thought that. But it really isn't how it plays out.

Order of Pain, yes, you're mashing on that and chewing through health. No question. Blood of the Master is a 25% sac only when times are good. When times are good, players aren't taking a lot of damage generally, and any danger that breaks off of warriors is going onto that 4400 point wall of meat, so you aren't really in any danger. Also, you're not going to be using Offering of Blood much, if at all, if you have all of those minions. Energy is great just from replacing everything with new Fiends. Similarly, if times are good, you're not going to be using Blood Ritual. If I need to be Blood Ritualing the monks, I'm not going to be spamming Order of Pain, because we're in stabilization mode because something is screwed up and more damage is not what you need.

So in practice, yes, you have four sac skills, but it plays like two - because you aren't spamming all of them, you're selectively using the ones that are needed.

Aside - Blood Renewal is terrible. I thought about using is from looking at the self-inflicted damage, and it's fine when testing on Isle of the Nameless, but in practice it's garbage because the monks *always* heal up the sac and the extra health boost doesn't matter. The only thing nice about it is that it gives you a 'free' Offering - fire it off just before it expires and you're healed instantly - but that's not nearly enough to justify a slot. Blood Ritual is much better for stabilizing and for running to the next mob as fast as possible. If you absolutely need a self heal, bring Taste of Pain...but that requires more micro than I'm willing to do.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jetdoc

20% OoB sacrifice - granted, you should only be using this in non-combat situations.

Oh hell no. I'm mashing on that SOB during combat to chaincast half the time. Who needs energy between battles? Running is energy management.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jetdoc

In order to alleviate this problem, why not replace OoB with Aura of the Lich?

I like Aura of the Lich. I think it's better than Offering of Blood if you play conservatively. You probably aren't as interested in just mashing on skills like I am, and the safety of the lower sacs is nice. If I played with a regular, careful PvE team, I would probably agree with you.

In practice, I don't think that AotL is that sweet, because I don't really care about the extra durability, and because monks are going to be overhealing you anyway. They see the missing health and fire off a heal, and it's always going to be too big because your health is so low. Maybe this isn't as big of a deal with Blood Renewal running. It's certainly more stable. As far as advising the build to other people goes, in fact, I should probably have AotL in there.

Ok, I admit it. I'm just addicted to Offering of Blood.

I like the bar you posted. Except I think that Minions are shit unless you're Death Novaing them. They don't deal any damage, and explode instantly when hit because of low armor. Horrors are perfectly functional packets of meat that do something before dying.

Thanks for the feedback guys. =)

Peace,
-CxE

Numa Pompilius · Sep 07, 2006, 10:01 PM // 22:01

I completely agree that Golem is a far less useful elite than OoB, but I'm just curious - why Fiends instead of Vampiric Horrors? Health is an issue with this build, especially if an enemy war decides he wants you dead, and having 3-4 vampiric horrors really helps... Also I'd replace Rotting Flesh with Death Nova...

holden · Sep 07, 2006, 11:53 PM // 23:53

Quote:

Originally Posted by Numa Pompilius

I completely agree that Golem is a far less useful elite than OoB, but I'm just curious - why Fiends instead of Vampiric Horrors? Health is an issue with this build, especially if an enemy war decides he wants you dead, and having 3-4 vampiric horrors really helps... Also I'd replace Rotting Flesh with Death Nova...

fiends are just better than vamp horrors. vamps are high priced and the cooldown wont allow you to have the amount of minions you would otherwise have if you take horrors. imo you need that wall of defense for this build.

but fiends are just the BEST. sure they're fragile and if they get nuked they all blow up at once but who cares, they attack fast fast fast.

death nova is just too much to worry about. this build wants you to spam the hell out of order of pain and blood of the master. you'll have no time to pick and choose minions to load up nova on. and to put nova on your expensive vamps is crazy imo.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

So in practice, yes, you're probably soaking up half the healing on the team when you're running at full steam. But that's because your minions are taking half of the damage and you're pumping that healing straight into BotM. I know players like to worry about being self sufficient and bring self heals and all that...but c'mon, if you're not soloing, you can build a bit of dependency in, and if your monks have a pulse you're going to be getting that healed.

oh i agree. i should have added, play this with a monk you know or at least give the monk a heads up. but i suppose that should be common practice.
the ordinary breeze monk may be disappointed in all the hours he's putting in.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

Aside - Blood Renewal is terrible.

YES!

Hella Good · Sep 08, 2006, 01:33 AM // 01:33

I would definitely ditch the Bone Horrors for Vamp Horrors. The healing that those guys give you, help with spamming sac skills. And 2 25nrg summons is fine if you use OoB. I run Vamps/Fiends/BotM/OoB a lot. I generally find Dark Pact a nice addition to this build.

I'm not sure about Order of Pain tho... I think it doesn't quite fit. I've run Curses and Orders (great for Fissure), Minions and Spites (in the old days when MoPain was awesome, I'd toss in Spites and MoPain on my MM), Wells and OoP, Minions and Wells, and all kinds of mix and match builds but I truly don't see the use of OoP on a MM. As people already pointed out, it's too much sac, and keeping OoP up all the while summoning minions becomes a bit straining on the nrg even with OoB as an elite.

I think Death and Curses is nice for PvE. Minions pump up damage while Curses can be used to weaken the enemy. Barbing single targets is fun with Fiends pumping up loads of physical from behind. And MoPain can still sometimes be useful. But other than that you can dish out damage with stuff like Defile/Desecrate Chants or hex with Shadow of Fear/Reckless Haste, etc., etc.

holden · Sep 08, 2006, 02:09 PM // 14:09

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hella Good

'm not sure about Order of Pain tho... I think it doesn't quite fit.

that was the whole idea. spam the hell out of order of pain, keep it up at all cost. really i'd say minions are just a by product of this build.

i ran it again last night but again tried it with AotL. it's just not as good. you're more stable for sure but it's clumsy and slow and the energy just isn't there for your fiends like you need it to be. so if all you were goin to bring is horrors it would be great.

if you want fiends and horrors you'll need offering of blood. really, imo, you'll just want offering of blood. it's sort of a crazed, suicidal build but shit it's fun as hell. and you need offering to gain more minions, eventually gaining more energy back from soul reaping. it's a fine line you're on and you are a burden to the monk but as ensign said the monk will have nothing better to do. my group had 2 wammos and 2 rangers, the monk never took aggro and things dropped like flies. with 3 warriors and 3 rangers it would be nasty.

Carinae · Sep 08, 2006, 07:57 PM // 19:57

Drop Horrors for Dark Aura. You are saccing like mad, might as well deal damage as well.

MelechRic · Sep 08, 2006, 11:06 PM // 23:06

Quote:

Originally Posted by Carinae Dragonblood

Drop Horrors for Dark Aura. You are saccing like mad, might as well deal damage as well.

Except I wouldn't want to be anywhere near foes with this build. With all the saccing it's susceptible to spiking. To deal damage with DA you're almost certainly taking melee damage, AND you're doing more damage to yourself via DA.

Seems very risky to me.

When I MM I'm either behind or kiting through/around my minion cloud. I don't want any added attention, and I'm certainly not up front sacrificing.

I guess for PvE DA might be okay, but in PvP I'd drop it for something better like a self heal.

Hella Good · Sep 10, 2006, 09:32 PM // 21:32

Oh, I remember now, Ive done Minions and OoPain before. It's what I used to do for THK. Minions for the 1st part and then OoP/Pult for defending the keep. Minions arent any good for defending the keep in my opinion, neither is SS. Orders with Barrage Rs tho works very well. But I didn't use OoBlood as elite, cant remember which one...

WiLdFiRe111 · Sep 10, 2006, 09:41 PM // 21:41

If you're really looking for a sweet energy-making machine, have 0 DM and 16 Soul Reaping. Then, when you cast Bone Minions for the first time, it does nothing, but any casts of it after that nets you large amounts of energy. The trick would be keeping them from dying.

Soldat · Sep 13, 2006, 02:48 AM // 02:48

^^so how would the rest of ur build go?