Menu
By:
Filters
What's new

GW2 Necro Minion Bomber Build

N

NeverMore

New member
http://gw2skills.net/editor/en/?fQQQRBLRhG2IjWze7mpGDfCQ6R0OP9UBvjeQcxMD;TwAAzCpoIyQkgILROikEtuYcwGhJBA

Trying to a sort of Minion bomber build where the sole purpose of the minions(bone Minions) is to die and add to the DPS. They also serve as condition accumulators, to better your heal if you choose not to have them bomb. All of these are subject to how skills work on release, but this is what I'm going for.

I'm a little sketchy on what I should have as the major trait for Blood Magic... Seems sort of a toss up.

*Utility Skill Reasoning*

~Plague Signet to grab conditions off of allies (I believe minions are included in this)
~Epidemic to when you Activate Plague Signet, spread those conditions among the enemy
~Bone Minions to Act as DPS along with poison spreaders via "Death Nova"(Death magic Major trait)
~Lich as elite for Conditions aplenty, and minions aplenty.

*Major Trait Reasoning*

~Hemophilia because the scepter naturally applies bleed and it'll help keep constant damage on your foe.
~Pitch Black because confusion is just another condition to add on whenever you use #4.
~Lingering Curse for basically the same reason as Hemophilia
~Close to death to really keep the pressure on as soon as they get lower
~Minion Master to keep a greater degree of DPS on target using the bone minions as well as giving you more chances to accumulate conditions for "Consume Conditions"
~Death Nova to add a condition to the Bone Minion Explosion so as to keep damage going while they are indisposed.


*Where I am unsure what to do*

The last 10 points in my trait tree could go effectively in either Spite or Blood Magic. I'm not sure where to put it though. If "Parasitic Bond," the minor trait on the Spite tree effects your minions suiciding + Signest master, that'd be useful. However, I assume that it does not and so I chose "Blood Magic."

However, all of the major traits on "Blood Magic" are useful. I chose Vampiric Precision as a catch all, because if it applies to minions(and I don't know that it does) and their Explode ability(Also unsure) + all of the condition damage chances to get a crit hit, then it is great. Though there are a lot of variables I am unsure of.


Thoughts?
~EDIT~ Changed the link to the site recommended below.
~EDIT~ Updated the link with some changes to skills
 
The first potential issue I see is that a "Minion Bomber" focused build is going to rely on either Power for the direct damage, which is what I would guess it would be, or it could fall under Pet Damage. I don't know which one it is. However, if it's Power, then you are in trouble since you have the bare minimum amount of power a Necro can have. If it's Pet Damage oriented, you're going to want to get Training of the Master for the +30% Pet Damage Trait, which is 20 points into the Spite tree. Clearly, it's important to figure out what impacts Putrid Explosion's damage since a base damage number of 1046 is pretty beastly. So, that would be step one to figure out which direction you need to go and then you can probably plan from there.
 
Well the goal of the build is high Condition damage and in conjunction with minion damage, but the point is to get as many minions up as quick as possible and to let them die as quick as possible. So as to continue the condition damage. It's going to be hard to work out but it'll work out to being mostly jagged horrors and Bone minions. It'll take a lot of figuring. I've currently got it spec'd for condition DURATION. I'm thinking that perhaps I should change that to damage, because I imagine a sustained battle for a Necro of this sort would be much much much more difficult.

EDIT: on second thought.... It's not about minion damage, Expecially when the goal is to repeatedly kill your bone minions asap. So... hrm..... guess I gotta just look at it as a condition damage build with a boost of dps. I also looked up some info, and power actually has no effect on condition damage so I don't need that at all. So now my conditions have duration with the Lich rune, and damage with the items I chose. High crit rate for extra conditions, and extra damage (as I believe it applies to Putrid Explosion). So what really needs to be seen, is if the Putrid Explosion + poisoning from minions tops the normal Condition Damaging. I think that it MIGHT, but I'll never know until I test it.

I'm really hoping that the Minion explosions + their death nova's sustain enough damage, both over time and in burst, in conjuction with the "Close to death" trait that increases damage by 10% to people below 50%, powers people down and does it's job. Testing will tell.

Post EDIT: It should be noted that Putrid Explosion is a Blast combo finisher.
 
Unless you're focused on minions, I don't think this build will work very well, as you are splitting your focus between minions and conditions. If you want to be a minion bomber, you need more minions. If you want to be a conditionmancer, you need to get rid of the minions. You're wasting slots on things that don't DIRECTLY benefit your goal, otherwise - and that's a mistake.
 
imo....minion master does not feel the same....if you liked it in GW1 you will not like it in GW2...that, and i felt that minion, auto-attacking and bombing, wasn't doing enough damage

anet may buff them soon though by the time launch comes around
 
Meh, I'm just going for what I like..... I'm still going to try it. I don't feel like I have direct control over my damage as a MM and as any sort of condition whore without minions I feel like I'm just a dark mage... I want to be a necromancer... Death, undeath, all of the above. And as nice as using dark magic to kill people is, the signature of a necro in my eyes has always been the minions. And without them I feel like I'm playing half of a class.

Doing the math, it pans out pretty well damage wise. I feel like it'll do better than expected.

Arena Net said:
Minions

Necromancers summon undead minions to attack foes and do their bidding. Whenever they wish, necromancers can sacrifice their minions for a powerful spell effect. F
Click to expand...

This gives me hope. It's just frustrating that at the moment it is so damned cookie cutter. Something perhaps for the guys to talk about on the next podcast.
 
I like the idea, I just feel you don't have ENOUGH minions. I think you need more, is all.

I would make the following changes: My Minion Bomber. Its more focused on minions, while conditions still remain a cornerstone of the build. Plague Signet is AMAZING, which is why it is still on the bar. Flesh Golem is superior for several reasons: short cooldown, regular application of a condition, melee disruption, gives you more toughness (through death magic passive), and will trigger a nova on death. And its another target for your enemy to deal with.

The reasons I've made these choices was to improve your damage through better crit chance, more focused selections, and taking advantage of minion combos. The dagger/warhorn combo is your main dps set, with one condition for good measure, while scepter/dagger is your condition stacker. Your minions become a 'damned if you do, damned if you don't' issue. If they kill your minions, they suffer poison bombs. If they don't, your minions cause serious problems for them. Win-win for you!

We can give it a shot at launch and see how it goes.

Now that I've spent some time with it, I quite like it! :)
 
See, now I would disagree with Fox a little bit on this, mainly because I don't think you are interested in running a Minion Master type build, you just want to explode the Bone Minions via Putrid Explosion because you like it. The thing to understand here is that Putrid Explosion is one of the Necro's better burst damage abilities. It has nothing to do with a minion build at all, it's all about the 1100 damage base insta nuke per Bone Minion exploded. You summon two of these suckers every 20 seconds, 16 if spec'd via Death Magic's Tier 1 Minion Master trait, and you intentionally explode them via clicking the opton one at a time.

The poison effect from Death Nova is 2 seconds. Poison stacks in duration instead of intensity, so you're probably looking at 4 seconds of poison per round of pets. That's not a lot. With your current condition duration improvements, you get it to 5 seconds. With your current build, 5 seconds of poison equals 1000 damage. This is the only aspect that having more minions would improve, and only in duration. You can't create a build centered around Death Nova or mass minion bombing, but I do think you can create a build around blowing up Bone Minions intentionally.

A possible drawback is that bone minions will die almost immediately if single targeted or if they run into AoE, which will proc Death Nova, but that's not overly exciting. So, there is some risk to designing a build around them as a core ability.

So, per Bone Minion, in this build, your damage will be roughly 1600 every 16 seconds or so, which gives you a theoretical burst of 3200 every 16 seconds. That includes the poison effect. With a 50% crit rate, you can expect one of the two minions to crit, which will provide an additional 330 damage. So, lets just say overall, 3500 damage every 16 seconds. That's pretty nice. You could almost double that if you spec'd into power. Keep that in mind, I'll come back to it.

Your biggest problem right now, Modden, is that you don't have enough bleed or poison creators. Spamming Scepter sounds great in theory, but it doesn't really work in practice because it's such low direct damage. Other classes will burst you and you'll have to adapt strategy to survive, which usually means no spamming scepter because you're in Deathshroud, healing, or trying to create seperation. I anticipate you'll be able to consistently keep up 5-6 bleeds with this build. Your bleed condition damage is going to be roughly 100 per bleed per second with this build as it stacks in intensity. So, lets assume 600 damage per second in bleeds. With your bleed/condition improvements, your scepter bleeds will last 9 seconds. You can spam generate two bleeds and a two second poison roughly every 4 seconds. So, at most, you're looking at 4 bleeds from the scepter at any given time, and since Enfeebling Blood has a cast time, it's not going to add to the overall total. I'm adding 1-2 bleeds from your Earth runes and crit proc. But, you're looking at 5-6 bleeds at a time if you can focus on spamming Scepter, which only works if you're hiding on the back lines and not focused upon. If you tinker with the dagger, your conditions will fall off almost completely.

So, in that sense, I do agree with Fox that this isn't a very complimentary build as is. You've got too much invested in Condition Damage for the actual degree of focus you can even provide on a condition type build because of a lack of condition creating abilities. It's also a bit concerning about the lack of Vitality. Vitality is very important to Necros specifically because it directly impacts our Life Force pool as well as our hps while in Lich or Plague form. It also is very important for Necros tinkering with Plague Signet because it gives you more hps to buffer all the conditions while you're saving them up to unleash. Toughness does nothing at all for conditions, and it doesn't help our abilities. It's nice for direct damage mitigation, but it's a bad choice for Necros at the expense of Vitality.

Anyway, in regards to the build you're trying to make, I think it can work and be bad ass, just needs some tweeking. I see some potential options for you to consider, on top of your current option, I'll present those suggestions to you either tonight or tomorrow. Want to take a break for now.
 
I think the important thing to note about any Minion Bomber, or any other build, for that matter, is if you want 'trick x' to be part of your playstyle, you need to be sure that this trick is available to you more than 50% of the time. Having additional minions will have that effect in regards to Minion Bombing.

That's my 10 cents.
 
PsionicFox said:
I think the important thing to note about any Minion Bomber, or any other build, for that matter, is if you want 'trick x' to be part of your playstyle, you need to be sure that this trick is available to you more than 50% of the time. Having additional minions will have that effect in regards to Minion Bombing.

That's my 10 cents.
Click to expand...

Fox, the only minion that gets access to Putrid Explosion, the massive Direct Damage ability, is the Bone Minion. Having more minions is not minion bombing because only the Bone Minion can be blown up for 1200 damage. It's a Bone Minion specific ability that becomes triggerable on your bar after you summon them. You can only ever have two Bone Minions at a time. The other minions have no impact or relation to the minion bombing he's talking about.
 
They are valid options for the important fact that on death, they will still proc Death Nova. That, and with such a heavy investment in Death Magic, I feel more minions are needed to justify maxing out that trait line. Spending 30 points on a Trait line for a secondary trick in your build is a HORRIBLE mistake. My counter is an attempt to fix that.
 
PsionicFox said:
They are valid options for the important fact that on death, they will still proc Death Nova. That, and with such a heavy investment in Death Magic, I feel more minions are needed to justify maxing out that trait line. Spending 30 points on a Trait line for a secondary trick in your build is a HORRIBLE mistake. My counter is an attempt to fix that.
Click to expand...

Oh, I agree on that. As it stands, Death Nova is not worth it for 2 seconds of poison regardless. He needs to leave 10 points in Death Magic for the 20% minion cooldown reduction, and the rest need to go into another line. At least until they get around to fixing the traits a little more.
 
PsionicFox said:
I like the idea, I just feel you don't have ENOUGH minions. I think you need more, is all.

I would make the following changes: My Minion Bomber. Its more focused on minions, while conditions still remain a cornerstone of the build.
Click to expand...

I um, tried to look at your link and it kept taking me back to my original one. *shrugs* The issue with power is that it doesn't effect either minion damage(that I've seen) or putrid explosion, OR condition damage. Power only effects my direct attack damage. Power isn't going to help me whatsoever, for this sort of build, and even as a condition-mancer It'd be MORE useful, but still not the prime usefulness I could have. It'd be one of the top skills, but it's not the most important. Nothing effects the damage of Putrid Explosion.

I do believe that it needs more vitality, and perhaps I don't need deathnova, but that is a throw on it. Maybe if we can figure out why I couldn't see your build I can see what the deal is. (Make sure to hit "get quick link")
 
MoDSec said:
I um, tried to look at your link and it kept taking me back to my original one. *shrugs* The issue with power is that it doesn't effect either minion damage(that I've seen) or putrid explosion, OR condition damage. Power only effects my direct attack damage. Power isn't going to help me whatsoever, for this sort of build, and even as a condition-mancer It'd be MORE useful, but still not the prime usefulness I could have. It'd be one of the top skills, but it's not the most important. Nothing effects the damage of Putrid Explosion.

I do believe that it needs more vitality, and perhaps I don't need deathnova, but that is a throw on it. Maybe if we can figure out why I couldn't see your build I can see what the deal is. (Make sure to hit "get quick link")
Click to expand...

This is incorrect. I promise you, that since it's a direct damage attack that you trigger, it's most likely going to be impacted by Power. There is a minor chance that the +30% pet damage trait in the Spite tree may apply instead. But, one of those two will increase it and I'm almost certain it will be power.


These are the builds I would consider that seem to fit what you want to do to a degree:

For Build 1, I'm going to keep your Utility skills the same because clearly those are the ones you are interested in. I'm going to rearrange the traits though to see if we can make it more efficient and diverse.

First, your condition creating bleeds remain the same, though I did add another AoE 10 second bleed/weakness any time you pop into Death Shroud. You also have a auto AoE bleed any time you switch your weapon to the Scepter, and I kept one of your Sigil of Earth runes up as well. So, the bleeds are more numerous. The only condition loss is the 2 second poison from Death Nova.

In terms of condition duration, specifically bleeds, since that's all that matters really. You had a Bleed Condition length of +40% (10% from Spite, 20% from Hemophillia, 10% from Armor Runes). The new build has a Bleed Condition length of 75% (30% from Spite, 45% from Armor Runes). This will allow you the time to stack a LOT more bleeds. The 7 second Scepter bleeds now last 13.25 seconds, almost double. It's a minimum of another two sets from Scepter. I think if you wanted, you could maintain roughly 10-12 bleeds now along with the auto weapon and deathshroud bleeds.

Now, as far as condition damage. In your build, you had a condition damage of 1223. This build is down to 775. But lets see how that actually measures out since the only condition of concern in either build is bleed. Bleed damage in your build was exactly 96.15 per stack, per tick. I rounded that previous to 600 per tick based on the bleeds you'll be able to maintain. Bleed damage in the new build is 78.75 per stack, per tick. That amount should net you roughly 800-1000 per tick based on the amount of bleeds you can now maintain.

So, in terms of just condition dealing, you're ahead on every level.

In regards to Putrid Explosion, you lose the 1000 damage from Death Nova. However, you should pick up drastically more damage from the explosions themselves due to the large power increase from 1016 to 1650, a roughly 65% increase. If Putrid Explosion becomes 65% more damaging, it will now do 1815 damage per Bone Minion. For a duo of 3650 as compared to your build's number of 3200 with the poison included. But, we're not done here. In the new build, your critical rate actually increased to 49% to 53%. I'll call that a wash. But, because we invested into Soul Reaping, along with a Berserker Gem on your Amulet, your critical multiplier has now increased from 130% to 150%. So, still assuming you will crit at least one of the Bone Minions, the additional damage is 545. That gives a total damage of 4195 every 16 seconds, up from the 3500 in your build.

We're still not done though because you're no longer a one trick pony. Now, if someone shuts down your conditions, you can rely on your power to burn them down. Life Blast in Death Shroud is going to crit for about 1500, and because of the trait Unyielding Blast, it now pierces, meaning it will hit every enemy within 900 yard in a straight line, going through your original target. With a little position, it's a very powerful Cone AoE attack. Also, that ability, which you can chain cast, grants a 15 sec Might buff (35 power per stack) and it's massively easy to get 10+ stacks. You've also drastically increased the damage that Lich form will do, you should easily approach 3000 crits. Finally, nobody seems to know this, but Ghastly Claws was changed last stress test. It's our largest damage ability and crit around 4-5k. Because you went full power and unlocked the axe damage boost and cool down increase. You can ass rape people with this every 6.8 seconds.

The drawback to this build is survivability. In some ways, you're better off as you now have over 1k more hit points and your Death Shroud bonus hit points have been increased 15%, which is a significant number since that's multiplied by 80% of your vitality. The main loss is Toughness. You lose a ton of armor, making you much more glass cannonish against direct damage attacks, so the importance of being skilled and dodging at the right time, especially against Warriors and Thieves, is now increased.


Build 1:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/en/?fQAQRBLRdG2IjWze7mpGDniQqQ0ge8 eVr4DHj w6A;TwAg1CnogxMjYGrPOYk sKY4xugZFA


Build 2 will be much more condition heavy, and I'll get to that after another break.
 
The 15 points in Soul Reaping are for several reasons:


1. On a damage/crit type build, which this qualifies for as well, it increases your crit damage. Here by 15%. On heavy hitting abilities like Putrid Explosion, Lich Form, Ghastly Claws, and Life Blast, that is significant damage uptick.

2. It increases your survivability while in Death Shroud. Death Shroud hit points are now 80% of your total hit points. The additional 15% now makes that 95% of current hitpoints. When were talking about 22k hit points, that's another 3300 hit points tacked on to Death Shroud.

3. The 15 point Last Gasp minor trait is considered the strongest minor trait available.

4. Life Blast, with the piercing trait, is one of the best abilities a Necro can have. Period. The fact they further buffed it by putting vulnerability on it is gravy. The damage you can chain cast out, especially with the Might buff stacking, with just Life Blast is staggering and it hits everyone lined up in front of you. It's basically a replica of the Lich ability Deathly Claws now that it pierces.


Now, the reason I didn't go more points in Curses is because you lose all of the above. You're already over 50% crit and the diminishing returns started at 25%, so there's an efficiency issue there. Through the use of Armor Runes and the Spite line, I've already got the bleeds up to +75% duration, which is monstrous. And the critical effect bleed lasts 1 second, now 2 seconds with the +75% duration bonus. There was just no point as it's not needed. It's much more important at this point to improve survivability and burst damage in the event you're facing a class or group that shuts down your conditions, which people are getting better and better at doing.
 
I actually am enjoying the different perspectives on this greatly.

~Edit~ I'll add more when my brain starts working.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom