Curse

Tainted Poon · Oct 16, 2005, 09:30 PM // 21:30

I was wondering if you guys could help me with a minion build for sorrow's furnance farmming, I know most of the people here hate it from reading other threads, but my main quesiton is: can it solo? Anyway if it can please tell me strategys and correct my skill list if im off, thank you:

1. Blood Renewal
2. Bone Horror
3. Blood of the Master
4. Verata's sacrifice
5. Verata's Gaze
6. Death Nova
7. Mesmer Skill for Energy Management?
8. Mesmer Skill for Energy Management?

My question is how do you kill something to get a corpse. I chosed varata's gaze because the summit necros like to summon minions too or will I beat them at it? I chosed Blood Renewal Because I need some form of life recovery or I shouldn't bring it? I know Soul Reaping is important. And I qeuss Death Nova when they are about to die obviously.

Serps · Oct 17, 2005, 06:51 AM // 06:51

ditch blood renewal, get taste of death.

octaviancmb · Oct 17, 2005, 07:40 AM // 07:40

I've yet to find a way to let my minion master solo SF. I've come very close with a Bone Fiend/Mark of Pain Death & Curses build, but it causes Energy problems and then causes my death. You'll face the following challenges:

Getting Started: It's hard to have enough space on the bar to both kill things and maintain an army. One slighly shady solution is to bring "free corpses" in the form of Durham and Eve, who will gladly slaughter themselves for your cause. However, it's hardly "soloing" if you're doing it with henchmen, even if they're just there to die for you.
Not Dying: Related to the first problem, it's difficult to bring enough skills to keep both yourself and your army alive. The Blood line is good for this, but it doesn't solve the skill bar real estate problem. One thing I've tried is to go in with as little Health as possible, Life Siphon, and Taste of Death. Low Health helps your sacrificing (to keep your army alive) and also lets you fill up quickly with Health regen and the occational Taste.
Other Necromancers: There are just too many Necromancers down in SF and too few of you and corpses. If you get unlucky or go into a fight with too few minions, then you lose. I've not found a way around this problem.

So mostly I just join a 5 or 6-person crew to clear the place when I'm playing my Necro. Here's the fairly typical, boring build I bring:

The Boring Minion Master Build
Death Magic: 12 +4
Soul Reaping: 12 +1
Protection Prayers: 3

Rotting Flesh: 26 seconds of disease
Deathly Swarm: 84 cold damage, small AoE
Verata's Sacrifice: 21 seconds
Animate Bone Fiend: level 18
Blood of the Master: 122 pnt minion heal
Animate Bone Minions: 2 level 13s (but more importantly, 26 energy for you to use later)
Well of Suffering: 31 sec -6 degen well
Rebirth

I rely on the Monk to keep my Health up and just concentrate on making corpses and my army. In a pinch, I can combat res b/c with 13 soul reaping, I'm back up to full Energy in around 15 seconds. Once I've built a sizeable army of fiends, I start dropping the Well and disease. The enemy drops like flies, and I add to the army. Deathly Swarm is there just so I have something to do to keep me from slumping over in my chair from boredom; sometimes I'll carry Death Nova instead (because, hey, those level 13 bone minions just LOVE to explode), but mostly Death Nova is a pain to keep track of. There's no elite because everything works fine without one.

Good luck with your own minion build.
cmb

Tainted Poon · Oct 17, 2005, 02:26 PM // 14:26

Aw dammit lol, I was hoping a minion build could solo thats why I made a nec and got him to bloodstone fen currently, should have asked this first lol oh well atleast necros looks cool, thanks for your help ill tweak it a little, one question though: Why bring summon bone fiends when you got minions?

smurfhunter · Oct 17, 2005, 02:59 PM // 14:59

octaviancmb, theres no elite in your build >.<

imo offering of blood is a pretty decent energy management skill on a necro, since its already in the necro profession, and if your gonna spend like 10 points in inspiration, why not in blood? (you can add runes to a primary class, the slight advantage you have over mesmer energy skills)

however, you could just use taste of death as your energy management, and increase your soul reaping

(this requires that you have a bunch of minions up already, and it works well with death nova instead of deathly swarm)

Jasso · Oct 18, 2005, 05:32 AM // 05:32

This is what i'm running on SF.

Death 16 - 12+4
Blood 12 - 9+3
SR 10 - 9+1

Veratas Sacrifice
Blood of the Master
Taste of Death
Animate Bone Horror
Animate Bone Fiend
Blood Ritual *
Offering of Blood {E}
Res Sig

* This varies with different groups. You can probably take any skill what suits best. Skills what comes to mind are : Verata's Gaze, Blood Renewal, Well of Blood, Blood Ritual, Vampiric Gaze, Well of Suffering, Dark Bond, Strip Enchantment, Order of Pain, Infuse Condition (nice with Veratas Sacrifice since your minions dont suffer most conditions at all)

Amused Observer · Oct 18, 2005, 06:30 AM // 06:30

Cmb raises an excellent point. The problem w/ GF and SF is the huge number of necro mobs, who will compete w/ you for corpses. Also, it's a challenge to keep minions alive if your secondary isn't Mo.