Curse

miasma · Nov 16, 2006, 11:14 PM // 23:14

Well, i see alot of very good necros have joined in the discussion here, and some not so good. I love a good MM debate so I'll trough my observations into the mix.

First off, N/Mo is old school and will never again be useful unless the minon cap is removed, or your trying solo. It was great when we needed skills to keep a huge army of minons that had max degen alive. Nowadays, its the sign of a necro who hasn't adapted to the changes of the game. I think any experienced necro will agree with this.

Secondly lets talk about energy managment. If your a MM and you are bringing OoB, then I seriously hope you have a real good reason for putting those points into blood instead of 13SR, you better be doing something important with the blood line then just e-managment. If not, then you have just serioulsy failed at being a necro in pve. You soul reaping attribute is the #1 E-management in PvE in this game, this is multiplied by ten when you are a MM. Now, interestingly, the OP has spent some to these SR points in Inspiration instead, in doing so he has added two interrupts to his build that also cover there cost, In the realm of torment, interrpts are nice, so i think the trade-off here is actually a good idea without losing any e-managment in the process. Kudos to OP for this kind of thinking.

Now the real meat of any good MM debate, what elite is best? There are some great choices out there and some terrible ones. The OP hit the nail right on the mark with adding Icy Veins to his build, this is a truely "elite" skill. However, i disagree with the OP in giving it to the MM. We are all necros right? I for one had to admit, reluctanly that MMing was best left to the hero, after seeing how well they did it. So therefore i adapted my build to suit him. I am currently running Icy Veins on my own bar at 16Sr, and 13Curse, using skills like barbs and MoP to do incredible tandium damage with the MM, and gave the MM Jagged just so he never loses his army, even if i have to take a long potty break. If you dont take breaks, then hell, us Undeath to make things even more ridiculously easy.

So to sumarize, you end up with a build of a hero mm, you with Icy Veins and those nice curses, a hero monk, a hero ele(seering flames), a hench monk, a hench derv, Devona, a hench paragon. Then the realm of torment becomes your playground.

These are all just my observations/opinons.

daky · Nov 18, 2006, 08:29 AM // 08:29

If you want an old school MM try this N/x

deathly swarm, horror, fiend, BotM, barbs, weaken armor, death nova, rez.
I used to run that all the time. Really pissed the monks off when your dealing an extra 6 dmg per hit. Tho now that they put a cap on amount of minions its near to useless.

As for hero MM's I have found this combo very effective. N/x

Deathly swarm, horror, fiend, vamp/shambling, BotM, jagged bones, nova, rez.
The AI is remarkable when it comes to casting jagged and nova on a dieing minion. I'll disable swarm once stuff starts dieing. No energy problems, very rarely will he not have 10 minions up.

Zinger314 · Nov 18, 2006, 11:45 PM // 23:45

I have an idea: Put Mantra of Inscriptions instead of Power Drain.

That, most importantly, gives Signet of Lost Souls a whopping 5.12 second recharge. It's tempting.

Any ideas?

Bkobe7 · Nov 20, 2006, 12:41 AM // 00:41

If you have leech signet, I can see mantra of inscriptions working synergistically. Is AI smart enough to use this stance?

I am fairly new to MMs, but from my observations, Blood of the Master is rarely used, especially when my necro hero is renewing his army with every corpse. It seems like a waste of a skill slot. Am I missing something about BotM?

Miss Persephone · Nov 20, 2006, 01:43 AM // 01:43

I really like the OPs build, signet of lost souls is a pretty darn useful skill which I somehow overlooked up to now. I've had Master of Whispers in my team virtually the whole time, and I've been tinkering with him a lot.

Leech sig and power drain are on most of my heroes skill bars. The AI is great at interupts, and if they can net some extra energy while at it, then even better.

zinger - I like the idea of mantra of inscriptions, I'm going to go test it now and see how he manages with it.

bkobe - BotM is most useful for maintaining minions when running from one group to the next. Running into battle with 10 minions or starting out with 0 minions can make a big difference. However the AI won't use it if you are running to your next group, so make sure you pause every few paces to allow him to fire it off.

edit - Ran a test on mantra of inscriptions, necro AI seems to keep it up, doesnt need prompting to use it or anything. I suppose using it or power drain is simply a matter of preference. Leech sig recharge is down to 20 secs from 30 secs, which is semi-useful since you've dropped an interupt slot. I already run plenty of interupts on various heroes though, so for the moment I'm going to stick to mantra instead of power drain.

SpeedyKQ · Nov 21, 2006, 07:34 PM // 19:34

I'm surprised how many people are using bone horrors instead of shamblings. The only disadvantage to shamblings is the recharge time, and if you keep one other minion type on the skillbar it isn't an issue.

My Olias build:

[skill]Reaper's Mark[/skill][skill]Rotting Flesh[/skill][skill]Glyph of Lesser Energy[/skill][skill]Animate Shambling Horror[/skill][skill]Animate Bone Fiend[/skill][skill]Blood of the Master[/skill][skill]Resurrection Signet[/skill]

Reaper's Mark and Glyph give him plenty of energy for a full-size army. Reaper's Mark and Rotting Flesh also cause massive degen at the same time. Man, do I love Reaper's Mark. Olias is by far my MVP and lets me steamroll through so much content. Is almost too good.

Itchy · Nov 21, 2006, 10:12 PM // 22:12

I have this, taking from wiki but it works very very well.
He rarely runs out of energy thanks to my paragorn hero

Thanks to the paragorn my healer hero can heal spam as well

Olias MM

Necromancer/Mesmer
Level: 20

Soul Reaping: 12
Blood Magic: 3
Death Magic: 14 (12+2)

Animate Bone Horror (Death Magic)
Exploit nearest corpse to animate a level 16 bone horror.
Energy:15 Cast:3 Recharge:5

Animate Bone Fiend (Death Magic)
Exploit nearest corpse to animate a level 16 bone fiend. Bone Fiends can attack at range.
Energy:25 Cast:3 Recharge:5

Animate Flesh Golem [Elite] (Death Magic)
Expolit nearest corpse to animate a level 24 Flesh Golem. The Flesh Golem leaves an exploitable corpse. You can have only one Flesh Golem at a Time.
Energy:15 Cast:3 Recharge:30

Blood of the Master (Death Magic)
Sacrifice 5% max Health. All adjacent undead allies are healed for 110. You sacrifice an additional 2% maximum Health per minion healed this way.
Energy:5 Cast:1 Recharge:2

Rotting Flesh (Death Magic)
Target fleshy creature becomes Diseased for 24 seconds and slowly loses Health.
Energy:15 Cast:3 Recharge:3

Taste of Death (Death Magic)
Steal 380 Health from target animated undead ally.
Energy:5 Cast:0.25 Recharge:0

Dark Bond (Blood Magic)
For 36 seconds, whenever you receive damage, your closest minion suffers 75% of that damage for you.
Energy:5 Cast:2 Recharge:20

Resurrection Signet ()
Resurrect target party member. That party member is returned to life with 100% Health and 25% Energy. You may use this Signet only once per mission.
Energy:0 Cast:3 Recharge:0

Former Ruling · Nov 21, 2006, 11:18 PM // 23:18

Mine is very similar to Zinger's.

Different elite though (no, not Flesh Golem, I'm testing Order of Undeath, and can use other stuff), and I bring Death Nova instead of Signet of Lost Souls depending on the Area we are in.

In relation to some skills/spells:
1)Olias will use Death Nova on Minions that have low HP (Thats why the other guy thinks he doesnt use it alot), The bad part is he will use it on fiends that are no where near the battle, and will prioritize using it over just healing the minion with BoTm. SO I reserve it for areas it will be useful in (alot of dying things, and alittle aggro going everywhere so more death novas actually hit stuff) - I also dont combine Jagged Bones with Nova on the same bar since they dont mesh well with his AI together.

2) Dont give Olias any offensive spells, death magic ones tend to have long cast times (Deathly Swarm..Rotting Flesh..) and he for some reason prioritizes using them over caring for his minions (wasting ALOT of time in the process).

3) Repeat after me..Shambling Horrors blow on Olias bar people. Shamblings are fine for what they are good for, but They don't work well in Olias "minion army" concept, they are more in line with Flesh golem, where you dont expect to have many minions.

SpeedyKQ · Nov 22, 2006, 03:00 PM // 15:00

Shamblings + Fiends > Horrors + Fiends

You only need 1 spammable 5-second-recharge minion on your skillbar.

I have always strongly disagreed with the conventional wisdom that MM's shouldn't bring other offense. Rotting Flesh is just too damn good. Good degen with a really long duration, that automatically spreads to multiple targets. In one skill, you get the kind of effect that some people dedicate an entire build to.

Rin · Nov 22, 2006, 03:50 PM // 15:50

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zinger314

Virulance is mostly overkill, IMO. It gives 8 Degen. A Searing Flame Ele can do 7 degen. Therefore, due to the max degen cap of 10, Virulence is overkill.

I run a virulence build on Olias with MM skills, I micromanage his use of signet of agony + plague sending + virulence + epidemic (costs a total of 20 energy for this chain) pretty dang well...while he manages the minion skills being BoM + bone fiend + bone minion/shamblings + whatver.

spreading bleeding/disease/poison/weakness on foes for 16 seconds is golden.

Itchy · Nov 23, 2006, 11:55 PM // 23:55

Rotting flesh and shamblings work great.

My Olias keeps up 9 minnions up at all time and still does offensive with rotting flesh.

Oblivion Odyssey · Nov 25, 2006, 06:08 AM // 06:08

Hey Zinger314, like the build, good to see someone that actually knows something about playing a Necro posting a MM build that actually works.

Personally I have a few attricubte points in Curses just for barbs- probably isn't worth it, but dam barbs works well with an army of the undead, escpecially on bosses. I've tried running Energy Drain as the elite, but it seems to be a bit of an overkill for energy as Olias never seems to run out of energy with it.

I've played around with the elite a bit, I also find Order of Undeath to be the most effective elite, but Tainted Flesh is always another option.

Anyway thanks for the build, its been a lot of help.

Shadowfrost · Nov 25, 2006, 06:37 AM // 06:37

OP certainly seems to know what he/she is doing.

However, I think that the only useful minions in NF are fiends. I reckon that since Dervish enemies (especially bosses) would own the large groups of melee minions, and so I don't use them.

But that's just my two cents.

navymrgoodbar · Nov 25, 2006, 07:15 AM // 07:15

Anyone ever try this out?

[skill]Animate Bone Fiend[/skill][skill]Blood of the Master[/skill][skill]Mark of Pain[/skill][skill]Parasitic Bond[/skill][skill]Icy Veins[/skill][skill]Mantra of Inscriptions[/skill][skill]Signet of Lost Souls[/skill][skill]Resurrection Signet[/skill]

I think I'll use it for my Olias. Even at 1 point of Inspiration magic it'll be up for 30 seconds and bring the Signet of Lost Souls down from 8 to 6 seconds recharge time. That's still a whole 2 seconds left when that Mark of Pain comes into play.

Another note to consider:
Mark of Pain has a 20 second recharge time. That gives Parasitic Bond's 2 second recharge time enough time to spam that all over the enemies so when they all die from Mark of Pain + Icy Veins he'll get a HUGE health boost to cover any health lost from Blood of the Master.

I was also considering switching Icy Veins to [skill]Feast of Corruption[/skill]. It's an immediate AoE attack and adds easier life management to the build the more the enemies are hexed. What do you guys think?

Antheus · Nov 25, 2006, 06:27 PM // 18:27

About minion spam vs. utility.

There are two viable ways to run a MM. One, as listed here, is a MM with mostly utility skills.

The other is one that is used only to raise minions.

They are both situational. With 4 or 5 minion skills you always have at least available to raise them. This works best for mission where corpses are plentiful, and where minions serve as body blockers and complement on damage. Energy in that build isn't even remotely a problem once you reach 10 minions, since each time you go over that cap, each of your minion skills returns 11 or 12 energy back. This build is perfectly viable for fast moving groups. Pros include serving as battery for other necro in the group (going over the 10 minion cap), cons include being a wasted group spot without minions.

The utility MM has much harder time keeping up sufficient number of minions, due to recharge times of spells. The minions they use are also somewhat more diverse in life-span, where the spammer has almost always only fresh minions. Pros are, that they can be useful even without minions. Cons are that their minions are mostly supplementary to their role.

About elites. Golem is overrated. But not even remotely useless. A golem has perhaps a more important role of sucking up the damage, rather than dealing it. Ideally, most of the minion group would comprise out of fiends for added damage (OoU is godly in this case), or mostly melee, where the player group is mostly ranged.

The original MM (4-5 minions skills) is flexible. They can change their minion structure on the fly, to compensate for either lack of tanking, or lack of killing power. This build is still completely viable, and serves as a general purpose build.

Alternate builds may obviously work better for other areas, depending on other group members.

But above all, arguing which MM build is the right one is pointless. Each aproach has advantages and disadvantages. Minion spammer has proven itself, either with or without Golem, and works very well in every situations. Other builds will work much better in certain situations, but not always. Being unable to produce minions fast enough is a huge disadvantage for a MM.

It's a matter of flexibility over specialization. I do however believe that there is only one rule that anyone even thinking about MM should always obey: A MM must have death at 16. There simply is no reason to reduce the damage, hitpoints and defenses of your minions if you do go MM.

Veron · Nov 27, 2006, 01:25 AM // 01:25

Quote:

Originally Posted by Antheus

I do however believe that there is only one rule that anyone even thinking about MM should always obey: A MM must have death at 16. There simply is no reason to reduce the damage, hitpoints and defenses of your minions if you do go MM.

Unless you don't want to front that 7k for a Sup Death every time you deck out your Olias/Master. But even then, your Death should be at 15.