Curse

Emik · Nov 14, 2006, 02:47 PM // 14:47

Looks like one impressive build there.
Sure going to test it out.
Been fiddling about with Icy for awhile but couldn't find a real purpose.
Looks like i might now

Dazzler · Nov 14, 2006, 05:24 PM // 17:24

I tried the OP's build and found I did not like it as much as mine. I found that Olias had trouble keeping his minions at capacity during fights b/c they died faster than they could be replaced. I suppose he was doing more damage since he was using Icy but it is hard to tell when you cannot see their damage.

I went back to my original build b/c even during tough battles the minion count always stays at max.

Quote:

Originally Posted by gilgameshx

And when running Jagged Bones, why not use Bone Minions since you can get two minions on one corpse and both are the same level as Jagged Horror I think.

I find that Olias is always at his minion cap as is even during battles. Why switch to [skill=text]Animate Bone Minions[/skill] for no reason? Especially since they are a little weaker than the single minion I raise from [skill=text]Animate Bone Horror[/skill]. Also when Olias is at max minion count and he sees another corpse, he will most likely Animate Bone Minions again which will: kill two of my more powerful and bleeding inducing Jagged Horrors or my more powerful and Jagged Horror producing Shambling Horrors. In short, I will have lowered the average power of my minion army.

Quote:

Originally Posted by XvArchonvX

Umm, why does your build have 3 energy management skills in a MM? I understand the interupts are nice, but if you are going to put 3 energy gain skills on his bar, you should probably put something useful on the bar also since your hero will be constantly flooded with energy that could be put to good use.

Interrupts are *extremely* nice in the hands of the AI heros. I don't really use them for energy management (my Inspiration spec is not that high). They basically have enough points to pay for themselves. Every single one of my heroes has 2-3 mesmer interupts or hex/enchant removals. This is because the AI is so damn good at "seeing" all the potential targets and dropping an interrupt or removal in between doing its regular job. I love going into fights and hearing all the clickity click sounds as the first 4-5 spells the enemy tries to cast are interrupted. Makes fights *real* easy.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zinger314

On that note, Shambling Horror has a 25 second recharge, which makes it even more worthless.

I find it works great. Olias uses the quick recharging Bone Horrors while Shambling Horror recharges. I prefer it over fiends because of the lower energy costs and also because I want all my minions serving as body-blockers to allow the backline to nuke the mobs.

Quote:

Originally Posted by My Green Storage

Have none of you capped Golem ?
And since when does a MM have a mesmer secondary? That's like an SS having a Monk secondary.
Blood Ritual?

Trying to fit an interrupter, MM, SS and BR into 1 .. Have no room for BiP ?
Wait, you also forgot Shivers..

Oh man. Golem ftl. What a waste of an elite spot. My jagged horrors are infinitely renewable just like the golem. So you can have 1 golem while I have 9 jagged horrors. I'll keep my nine that cause bleeding thank you.

Blood Ritual is to help all the casters in my party. As stated, the AI is privy to the energy levels of everyone in the party and knows exactly when to cast. I have found it very useful. I'd love to take BiP but since this is just a tertiary duty of Olias I spent my elite on his primary duty. You seem to think that b/c the build would suck for a real person that it is not suited for a Hero. What you do not grasp is that Heroes have different strengths and weaknesses than humans. Give them simple jobs and they excel. Simple jobs only require a few skills. Suddenly you find yourself with a bunch of empty skill slots after you have setup their simple job. Well guess what else Heroes excel at? Multitasking. You can give them several simple jobs and he will excel at all of them. My Olias is a MM, an interrupter and hex remover, and a low-powered battery. He does an awesome job at all 3 tasks all at the same time.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zinger314

Your preference. I prefer to not force my Heroes to take 2 second to cast it.

I can see that in your build. But since my build is not reliant on Olias constantly casting something it works great.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zinger314

PS: I've been testing Order of Undeath instead of Icy Veins, and I think it's more usefull. (since Olias actually uses OoU often...) More testing will be necessary.

I played with it before I had Jagged Bones but found that Olias was dying alot between all the BotM and OoU spamming it only took 1-2 enemy spells to finish him off then all mayhem would occur when his minions went AWOL. Also again I found his minion count dropping during battles. Since my main purpose is to have a wall of minions to protect my dmg dealers and healers I decided to try Jagged Bones and have been happy since.

I love Olias!

TheYellowKid · Nov 15, 2006, 01:56 AM // 01:56

nice builds i must try some but i wanted to post about Death Nova.. if you put it high enough up the bar (mine is in position 1 or 2 because its only used in certain situations) it is used consistently.. ive lost count the amount of times ive been approaching low hp and been death nova'd just in case.. im yet to find a position for Jagged Bones that will let the AI use it properly and still keep nova on aswell because from my last test he only used it occasionally and prefered to raise new minions instead (and turning off minions meant i ended up with a lot less) but ive only tested it a couple times so others may have had more luck?

edit: also how is everyone posting the names of skills so they show up with a description if you hover over them?? only noticed it today!

Carinae · Nov 15, 2006, 02:20 AM // 02:20

All these builds and not one person has mentioned Dark Bond.

Dark Bond!

You don't run a high-sac build without a strong defensive spell.

Zinger314 · Nov 15, 2006, 02:24 AM // 02:24

Quote:

Originally Posted by Carinae Dragonblood

All these builds and not one person has mentioned Dark Bond.

Dark Bond!

You don't run a high-sac build without a strong defensive spell.

Who needs defense when the enemies die in 5 seconds?

Best defense is a strong offense.

Apple · Nov 15, 2006, 03:12 AM // 03:12

Just like to throw this out there, but heroes use tainted flesh *really* well so i'd just like to throw it out there

Contempt · Nov 15, 2006, 03:25 AM // 03:25

I've always used Golem for a portable corpse, but I'll definately try this build out, and probably make my own adjustments.

Emik · Nov 15, 2006, 05:01 AM // 05:01

Tested and Approved...

Teamed up with some mates in Nundy Bay, Vizunah Square, Nahpui Quarter and made Master Reward every first try.
Me as heavy degen blood/Illusion necro and my Olias as MM with the exact same setup. as posted in the OP
It's massive.
Nothing more to add.

Cheers for the build.

Blackhawk · Nov 15, 2006, 05:28 AM // 05:28

Quote:

Originally Posted by Contempt

I've always used Golem for a portable corpse, but I'll definately try this build out, and probably make my own adjustments.

Golems kinda redundant now with Jagged Bones, especially the way Olias handles the skill

HolyHawk · Nov 15, 2006, 07:10 AM // 07:10

Jagged bones + death nove has proven to be really usefull in my mm hero. He always use the skill correctly, and I never run out of minions during battles. Since you want your minions killed, I go half paragon and use motivation support for the entire party, plus blood ritual he will always use in anyone low on energy, myself especially. Hero is rather stupid with blood on the master on the other hand, he wont stop using it unless I say so, and flesh golem ... why do you even need that if you can death nova your minions non stop, rebirthing them?

Alleji · Nov 15, 2006, 07:30 PM // 19:30

I have two builds for my necro hench:

[skill]Animate Flesh Golem[/skill] [skill]Animate Shambling Horror[/skill] [skill]Animate Bone Fiend[/skill] [skill]Blood of the Master[/skill] [skill]Dark Bond[/skill] [skill]Power Drain[/skill] [skill]Leech Signet[/skill] [skill]Resurrection Signet[/skill]
Pretty much self-explanatory. Pdrain+Leech go on any hero's bar automatically if he can have a /me secondary. And I like the golem.

16 death (I actually run 15 because buying a sup death for 6k is just dumb and it doesn't really break the game... )
12 SR
7 Inspiration
3 Blood

OR

[skill]Animate Flesh Golem[/skill] [skill]Animate Shambling Horror[/skill] [skill]Animate Bone Fiend[/skill] [skill]Blood of the Master[/skill] [skill]Dark Bond[/skill] [skill]Ward Against Melee[/skill] [skill]Ward of Stability[/skill] [skill]Resurrection Signet[/skill]

16-12-8, wards on manual. Only for areas where you get annoyed by knockdown >.>

If you're asking "where's the energy management?", you're not killing stuff fast enough. Necros don't need energy management, you just need to kill more stuff. :P

SnipiousMax · Nov 15, 2006, 10:03 PM // 22:03

I like to run Physical Heavy teams... so I usually drop Soul reaping a bit, pump blood and run something like this:

[skill]Animate Bone Fiend[/skill][skill]Blood of the Master[/skill][skill]Order of Pain[/skill][skill]Blood Ritual[/skill][skill]Signet of Lost Souls[/skill][skill]Rotting Flesh[/skill][skill]Power Drain[/skill][skill]Resurrection Signet[/skill]

Gigashadow · Nov 15, 2006, 10:46 PM // 22:46

The OP knows what he's talking about.

Agree on the 2 minions skills + blood of the master as being all you need for an effective minion master. Flesh golem is a complete scrub skill -- when you have 10 minions and 8 party members, having one of those minions be a "super minion" is a complete waste of an elite.

I have been using something similar but instead of the interrupts (which I tend to scatter across my other heroes), I have been Offering of Blood, Order of Pain (when I have a lot of physical damagers on the team), and Well of Blood (activated manually if it is needed). The Order of Pain results in a lot of damage output when I have a physical damage team (I'm usually playing a warrior myself, with cyclone axe, triple chip).

However, I am going to switch to Signet of Lost Souls for energy management, rather than OOB, as it is *extremely* efficient for its cost and recharge, and the AI should be able to use it well. While this frees up an elite (as well as much saccing), and probably makes it less worthwhile to spec in blood now, I'm not really sure what I would stick on this guy to replace it, as nothing really seems outstanding. Perhaps some utility elite specific to the area I'm in (Expel Hexes etc.)

ThingsFallApart · Nov 16, 2006, 01:30 AM // 01:30

I like Flesh Golem, I see a lot of people bashing it just because it's popular. Which is very predictable. It can take a lot of damage and does good damage, too. I do prefer Order of Undeath, though. No build is the "best", so everyone should stop trying to say that theirs is.

As for taking Mesmer for energy management... why? At 16 Death/13 SR with Signet of Lost Souls, you should never be having energy problems to begin with.

And yes, I have MMed pretty much anywhere that you can. It's a pretty brainless build to run.

I find it's nice to have a Curse Hero/player packing Barbs, too. With the now sweet 5 second recharge it's really nice with minions.

kade · Nov 16, 2006, 05:51 AM // 05:51

tested out most of the builds here and i have to say that imo the "Jagged Bones" build still owns all for two reasons:

first of all, Icy Veins sounds nice on paper and i jumped at the concept as soon as i saw this however, there are some problems with it. firstly, the heroe rarely seems to use it...only when there are no exploitable corpses and this usually means the battle is already over. i found myself constantly having to micro manage this which for a monk = dead. secondly, i found that mobs were rarely packed tightly enough for it to trigger on more than 2-3.

secondly, and most importantly with Jagged Bones your MM AWAYS HAS 9 minnions..no matter what. with any other build you can count on it dropping below this in the heat of battle....when you need minnions the most.

just my two cents, hope this helped some of you out...

oh also, jagged bones degen seems to compensate in many ways for an AOE spell such as IV.

Zinger314 · Nov 16, 2006, 05:54 AM // 05:54

The thing that annoys me about Jagged Bones: Jagged Horrors are level 16.

Since Minion armor and damage scales exponentially, Jagged Horrors are incredibly inferior to normal minions. The Bleeding doesn't increase the Jagged Horror's DPS to Bone Horror DPS.

TalonTheCat · Nov 16, 2006, 09:36 PM // 21:36

Problem: I used the template screen to create the txt file (yep, know how/where to do that!) and when I got to Olias to load the template it is greyed out. I expected one skill to be greyed out, but not the load itself.

Olias was initially "just" a necro, so I manually changed him to a N/Me - tried again. No luck.

I've searched the forums for all the "how-to" share the strings, - double checked my method, but still - nada. Any suggestions?

Carinae · Nov 16, 2006, 10:26 PM // 22:26

FG bashing is the bash-of-the-month!

Flesh Golem is a decent skill, but it is situational. Use the right tools for the job people! Don't use a hammer when you need a screwdriver.

FG is priceless when you are having a hard time starting your army. At Eternal Grove or on a solo-MM build, it's tremendous. He can take a beating and get recast when he dies, freeing you to get your Fiends going.

However, many people are impressed with a big scarry super-minion and take him all the time, even when they don't NEED him and would be better served by another elite, which is usually the case.

Short story: Choose your skills wisely.

Dr Imperial · Nov 16, 2006, 10:37 PM // 22:37

just wondering...how r u guys putting these cool hover effect skill pics in? cause when i put skill pics in they are just static images that i hosted.

Greygon · Nov 16, 2006, 11:05 PM // 23:05

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dr Imperial

just wondering...how r u guys putting these cool hover effect skill pics in? cause when i put skill pics in they are just static images that i hosted.

Cool aren't they!

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10067189