Why can't I be a MASTER "Minion Master"

Ok, this is bugging me. I've heard tons of people on this forum claim that they can maintain around 20 minions, but how come I can only maintain 10 max? And, at 10 I seem to have a problem maintaining them.

My attributes:
Blood - 8 (7+1)
Death - 16 (12+1+3)
Soul Reap - 5 (4+1)
Healing - 9

Skills:
Animate Bonefiend *I'm almost always fiends
Offering of Blood
Heal Area
Verata's Sacrafice
Blood of the Master
Deathly Swarm
Animate Bone Horror *Optional
Ressurect *Optional

Could somebody please help me out, I would be very appreciative. Some builds and tips would help tremendously.

Your Soul Reaping is too low. Are you level 20 with both 15 attribute point quests?

Maybe drop Healing by one and put into SR also.

Put more points into soul reap over blood. I also find heal area a waste of energy. Verata's Sac and BOTM should be enough to keep your minions healed. Your health should regen also between casts, so heal area is a waste imo. Use horrors more often to conserve energy since it costs 15 instead of 25. Just stay on top of Verata's and you should be able to keep your minions alive.

Personally, I think your problem is with Monk as your secondary profession. The only thing you get from Monk secondary is Heal Area, and that's only good in between battles, because the minions tend to spread out during battle.

If you go with ranger as your secondary profession, you get access to several useful skills:

- Serpent's Quickness (which allows you to have Verata's Sacrifice(VS) up 24/7 365 days a year. VS is what will keep your minions up the longest. The top reason for minions dying isn't damage from your enemies, it's VS running out. This skill, at 9 or 10 Wilderness Survival will keep that from ever happening.)

- Healing Spring ( This works just as well as Heal Area, so you're not really losing anything, by dropping the Monk Profession this way)

- Winnowing (All your Minions do 4 extra damage per hit! Awesome!)

- Energizing Wind (Look Mom! I just summoned a Bone Fiend for 10 Energy!)

From my experience, it just works out better this way. I rarely ever get up to 20 minions like you said, (Although it's possible, and I have had it happen before), But I do usually maintain about 15-17 on average with the build I use below:

Skills
Offering of Blood(Elite)
Animate Bonefiend
Taste of Death
Verata's Sacrifice
Resurrection Signet
Deathly Swarm / Rotting Flesh (depends on the area I'm in)
Healing Spring
Serpent's Quickness

Attributes
Blood - 7 (6+1)
Death - 15 (11+1+3)
Soul Reaping - 9 (8+1)
Wilderness Survival - 10 (10)

Another thing to think about before I end my post: Soul Reaping. It is so freaking helpful to a minion master, it's ridiculous. Since Soul Reaping triggers off of the death of anything, be it enemy, ally, or even your minions, it's the best energy management in the game. I wouldn't recommend running Soul Reaping any lower than 9 for this build, ever. The only reason I even have Offering of Blood on my skill bar is to make sure that my VS goes off on time. If I'm waiting for energy to regen because I just cast a minion or something, then my minions are dying. All the major energy management comes from soul reaping.

I hope this helps some.

Bring both horrors and fiends and alternate between the two, you should be trying to animate whenever something dies. Also, get a 20/20 staff, be it the collectors bone staff or Bortaks.

Quote: Originally Posted by merciless

Attributes:
Necromancer/Monk -
Death Magic - 12 + 4 + 1 (16)
Soul Reaping - 8 or 9 + 2 or 1 (10 - I would suggest Minor rune, but you can go with Major, health might be a BIT of an issue, but not too much)
Healing Prayers - Rest of attributes (9 or 10)

Skills:
1) Verata's Sacrifice
2) Blood of the Master
3) Animate Bone Horror
4) Animate Bone Fiend
5) Taste of Death
6) Death Nova
7) Heal Area (optional, may take something else)
8) Rebirth (that's just me, you can take a different resurrecting spell)

Equipment:
Droks Armour, preferably Scar Pattern Armour, but not necessary. As for your weapon possibly a Max. 20/20 with +5 Energy and +30 Health/20% Death Magic OR a req.10+ 1h weapon and focus, preferablly ones with energy, but the 1h weapon with enegry will prob. give you -1 energy regen. so might have a problem there, but I still do fine with it. But i'd suggest go with the 20/20 collectors staff + mods =/

The idea of the Minion Master is to create and heal your minions, NOTHING else. I wouldn't suggest taking any spells like Deathly Swarm or Rotting Flesh (or Tainted Flesh as some suggest), you might need those slots for something more important. When you start off, just let your allies kill some for you. Then once you can get a few minions (REMEMBER to alternate between BOTH Bone Horrors and Bone Fiends. Horrors are also good because you can use them as meat shields) caste Verata's Sacrifice, ALWAYS keep that on if you can (just target one of your minions, if their health is degenerating then you know VS isn't on anymore). If VS is still on recharge and minions are dying, just use Blood of the Master or Heal Area, they're always good to keep 'em alive. Another thing you might notice is that I put Death Nova and Taste of Death in that build. The idea of this is to use Death Nova on one of your dying minions (as once that target ally dies, it does around 100 dmg to all adjacent foes) that's next to an enemy, so best to use it on your horrors. Another thing, that minion doesn't have to be dying, you can always put Death Nova then use Taste of Death straight away (also nice for helath bonus too) to kill it and deal some nice damage. And always have Soul Reaping at around 9+ because it really DOES help with your energy managament, there's probably one reason why your not making alot minions - energy. The build I use does have -1 enegy regen (I plan on gettin' a diff, weapon later) so if you have Scar Pattern Armour and a +5 Energy mod on your staff, you should be fine as far as energy goes. And well I see you have Offering of Blood in that build.... I don't really suggest taking it, the build I use works fine without, only a few times i'm needing enegry (if i'm in a Tombs. group I can always get BR from the Order Necro.). Yeah with this build I can often keep up to around 20 (sometimes a bit more) minions at a time =D There may be times when your minions take big hits and you lose alot of them (if not all).
As for ShadowStorm's build.... Well i've never even thought about something like that nor tried. It seems quite useful really, I might try it out something. It does sound pretty good with the Ranger skills, but I would suggest removing Deathly Swarm/Rotting Flesh =/ If your in a Tombs. group however, you won't really need Winnowing as another Ranger would have taken it. So if your looking more for a Tombs build, I would go with the one I posted, as for Shadow's.... well it seems pretty nice really. But it is missing the Death Nova/Taste of Death combo. which I quite like and BotM.

These are really great ideas...I have had trouble maintaining that many minions also...this collector staff u are referring to where do i get it and what do i collect?

Well, have you looked into trying to incorporate other things into your build? Possible different routes?
Right now i'm set at
20 N/Mo (+30 Att points done)
9 - Blood Magic
16 - Death Magic
9 - Soul Reaping
7 - Curses

Animate Bone Fiend (Death)
Animate Bone Horror (Death)
Blood of the Master (Death)
Verata's Sacrifice (Death)
Deathly Swarm (Always Optional) (Death)
Enfeebling Blood (Curses)
Shadow of Fear (Curses)
Offering of Blood (Blood - Elite)

Now you might be curious as to why I use Enfeebling Blood/Shadow of Fear, and it's simply because they help keep my minions alive longer. Enemies attack 50% slower, and suffer weakness, allowing my minons to deal out more damage to them while taking as little damage as possible.

If you read up on the MM thread (http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...d.php?t=128675) you will see a wonderful table by Carinae Dragonblood that states the below

Minions degen at one pip/20 seconds, so Verata's Sacrifice buys you 3m:20s per minion regardless of Glyph of Renewal.

For the first 3 minutes, you can easily heal any degen due to gaps in VS coverage. (stage 1)
From 3:20-6:40, they are degening anyway. (stage 2)
And after 6m:40s they are at full degen even with VS. (stage 3)

Now if you haven't noticed before, after so long your minions stop regening HP w/Verata's Sacrifice and can only be kept alive via/Blood of the Master. So being able to maintain a rather large army becomes taxing because they are no longer regening HP's and your left to continue to use BotM.

Yes, heal area is a good spell to also use, but a MM build is always left up to the player and their prefrences. I'm sure a lot of people looked at my current build and thought, wtf? Your no Master MM, and I don't claim to be, I claim to do my part in a party as an MM and deal damage via minions and contiously raise minions as we progress through area's.

You can step back and take a look at your gear, do you have a suitable weapon/offhand? Right now I just use a Kole's Torment, why, cause I flip flop back and forth between an SS Curse Necro and a MM Necro, and since Kole's is 10% no matter what spell, it just makes sense right now, later on when I acquire the funds I might look into other weapons/offhands to suit their respective skill classes.

Have you picked up a pair of Bloodstained Boots, that extra 25% may seem like a little, but sometimes it might make the difference between animating a fiend and throwing up a quick BotM to keep that 1 or 2 minions alive.

http://guildwars.gameamp.com/guildwa...ectors/171.php
I think that's Max. Death Magic Collector's Staff you can get, not sure. And everything you need to know is in there, including rewards, location and what you need to collect (and how many =P) lol. And as for the Weapon Mods. go with Energy +5 (staff head) and 20% +1 death magic (staff wraping), but it'll cost ya a fair bit =/

Try out a +1 Death item while you're at it. Level 19 undead do show a nice difference over level 18 undead.

Here's an one such item from Maguuma_Stade:
http://www.guildwiki.org/wiki/Ingrid_Larson
Grim Cesta
Energy +10 (Req 8 Death Magic)
Death Magic +1 (20% chance while using skills)
Health +30

and pair it with:
Truncheon (there are a few versions of this in diff places)
Cold damage: 11-22 (req 9 Death Magic)
Halves skill recharge of Death Magic spells (Chance: 20%)

--- versus ---

Bone Staff
Energy +10
Cold damage: 11-22 (req 9 Death Magic)
Halves casting time of Death Magic spells (Chance: 20%)
Halves skill recharge using Death Magic spells (Chance: 20%)
+ Staff head (+5 Energy or +30hp)
+ Staff wrapping (+1 Death/20% chance)

---

So, you can spend gold on the appropriate staff head and wrapping to get the 20% chance of a halved casting time, and have the option to have more energy instead of the +30 hp.

or

Collect drops and have everything but the fast casting for no gold.

Then again, you could really splurge and use this in your off hand:
http://www.guildwiki.org/wiki/Bortak%27s_Bone_Cesta
Bortak's Bone Cesta
Energy +12 (req. 9 Death Magic)
Death Magic +1 (20% chance while using skills)
Halves casting time of Death Magic spells (Chance: 20%)

...and only be missing the 30hp.

Good stuff.

I would suggest combining Bortak's Bone Cesta with that Collector's Death Magic 1h weapon as they'd make a nice combo. But when you really think about it, it's just like getting a Max. 20/20 Death Magic staff and then add the respective +5 Energy mod and +1 Death Magic (20%) to it lol. Which is more expensive? =O

BTW, there are two 20/20 death magic collectors staffs:
http://www.guildwiki.org/wiki/Luven_Underwood
http://www.guildwiki.org/wiki/Merin_Trollsbane

I like the desert one since its (imo) easier to reach and mino horns are farmed like crazy anyway so you can buy for reasonably cheap (or get yourself)

If you need OoB for energy then you need more investment into Soul Reaping.

Actually it depends on how fast things are dying. I don't use OoB very often, but when I *need* to raise another summon and my nrg is sitting low... its perfect. I run with soul reaping at 11. You can't tell me I need to go even higher!

I personally am a Necro/ele. I use the glyphs of lesser energy when getting the army up. Now I have been using this for a while and I don't really see that it is all that effective. I may be switching to necro/ranger soon.

What REALLY annoys me is people who think you should be a necro/monk. I was in a party in the Tombs and this one person started cussing me out because I was not a monk secondary. I mean he was getting down right hostile. Why? Why should I pick a second prof and use just 1 frickin spell? Thats BS. I keep my minions up with BoM and VS. As someone pointed out in this thread, after a certain amount of time, minions health degens no matter what. This mean that they are meant to die! That guy complaining should have spent his time getting me more corpses! I guess the 15 minions I had up weren't good enough for him.

What ever you do, remember this one simple point.....HAVE FUN! Thats the whole reason we play isn't it?

Heh, next time you get a ranger like that... ask him what level his pet is.

When he responds "20!" Inform him that the leet B/Pers all bring level 5 pets as they make for far better corpse creating tools.

Quote: Originally Posted by bobrath

Damn, lots of very useful information here! Thanks for all of the advice. I'm gonna try all of those builds for n/e, n/r, and the alternate n/mo. I really gotta up my soul reap as many people have said already. As for the desert collector death staff, I already have that but I do not have any mods on it. I've also gotta check out that +1 death magic Grim Cesta from Maguuma Stade.

And, ya it's true people always flame minion master that aren't n/mo, but people always flame n/r in general.

I think your build is fine, once you raise your SR. Do you have both attribute point quests?

Try the other builds if you want, but you already have some experience as N/Mo. To be fair, try fixing that build first, then decide if you want to change.