General minion mastery guide

Overview
This guide discusses the class of Necromancers who specialize in maintaining large armies of animated creatures, generally known as Minion Masters.

Why Bother?
The average minion does slightly less damage than the average ranger or warrior against the same foe, and attacks slightly slower. At first glance this would suggest that a minion master is simply wasting their time. Why bother to maintain minions at all if henchmen like Devona or Aidan can deal more damage faster? The simple answer is quantity.

Whereas only 8 members can join a party at the higher levels of the game, the minion master can control up to 10 minions at all times. The damage from one minion may seem to be minor, but ten minions is quite a formidable force.

An Army of One
A general does not attack. A commander does not wield a weapon. A minion master's life and strength is not in the fight, but in the army.

For the majority of players, this represents a fundamental shift in thought. Whereas an elementalist or ranger will try to find the best set of skills to use directly on a target, the minion master must find a balance of skills to preserve the army and give it the strength to roll over whatever is placed in its path.

Starting up
The minion master is a build based on inertia. A large army makes it easier to kill enemies, which in turn makes it easier to maintain a large army. Overcoming the initial barrier of the first 3-4 minions is the hardest part. Players new to this build will most certainly wish to bring some damage skills, such as Deathly Swarm and/or Rotting Flesh to ease the first few kills.

With the Factions campaign, a modest investment in Blood Magic will allow Rotting Flesh to combine with Life Siphon and Vile Miasma, resulting in -8 or -9 health degeneration on the target, and -4 degeneration on nearby targets. This will greatly increase the speed in getting the first corpse to animate your Flesh Golem, which in turn will usually provide the next corpses in short order.

Corollary to this is the absolute necessity to maintain your army. If your army dies, you'll need to start a new one, which means dealing with the "first corpse" difficulties all over again.

Rolling Thunder
Once a small army is built, your focus should change from building to maintenance. Stop casting damage spells. Your purpose is no longer direct damage, the army will cause sufficient damage on its own.

Maintaining your army should be your only goal at this point. Fresh animated creatures require less healing than aged creatures, so creating new creatures should come first, followed quickly by healing. The army, once rolling, will take care of creating new corpses, which you should animate as soon as possible.

It is important that you spend as little time as possible between engagements. Minions live on a timer, and their inherent degeneration builds with every second alive up to a maximum of 10 degeneration. They can however have hidden degeneration so if they live long enough skills like Verata's Sacrifice or other health regeneration spells will have no effect on maintaining their health. If you spend a lot of time between combats it will become very hard to maintain and you will not have any corpses to animate.

Though Verata's Sacrifice used to be the best way to keep many minions alive for extended periods of time, Anet revamped the entire Minion Master system making Blood of the Master the best way to keep minions alive as long as you can manage the health sacrificing. Most minion masters do not carry Verata's Sacrifice anymore and with the classic N/Mo build a good minion master can keep the 10 minion cap alive indefinitely with Blood of the Master and Healing Prayer Skills. Note, however, that Verata's Sacrifice is still a more efficient heal for the health sacrifice compared to Blood of the Master.

Engaging the Enemy
When approaching an opposing force, the Minion Master should lead, or be one of the first into the area of combat. Minions follow blindly behind their master, and only move forward to attack when their master attacks, is attacked, or a creature comes into their aggro bubble, which is slightly smaller than a standard player aggro bubble.

If you are using horrors or minions it is advisable to attack once, then step back and allow the minions to cluster around the foes. This is traditionally called a minion block or minion wall.

After the first attack (preferably with a wand or other ranged weapon) the Minion Master should concentrate on healing and maintenance.
 * Create new minions as soon as possible. It is sometimes helpful to watch for a soul reaping or experience signal rather then watching the field for falling foes.
 * Keep casting Blood of the Master. Blood of the Master affects all of the minions you control, even if they are out of normal casting range, much like Heal Party works on party members. Over sacrificing can kill you fairly easily, as the sacrifice cost increases with each minion you control.
 * When using fiends, move as close to the center of the clump as possible, cast Heal Area, and step back away from any attacks. Large clumps of fiends are usually prime targets for area of effect attacks, such as Meteor Shower, Ignite Arrows, and Cry of Frustration.
 * When using horrors, vampiric horrors, or minions, it is usually safe to step in close to combat, as the animated creatures will prevent the foes from attacking you. Do not use heal area with horrors, as it will heal foes as well as minions.

It is important to remember that animated creatures are ruled by extremely simple laws. They attack everything not friendly to their master, have no ability to differentiate targets for tactical or strategic value, and never disengage. If you or the party decide combat is not worth fighting, your minions cannot be told to escape. Sometimes this can be beneficial, as a minion army will give the foes a target as you and your party escape. Though you can still cast Blood of the Master, disengaging any combat normally means you will lose most, if not all, of your army.

Worst Case Scenario
The most important note on dying: DON'T.

As a minion master, your existence is the only thing keeping your army from the throat of your allies. Should you fall, your army will become masterless, and attack everything in sight, the party, pets and allied heroes, being the closest will be the first targets.

Everyone in the party should know that you are playing a minion master build. Healers playing with an MM on their party should focus on the minion master in an emergency situation. No single party member can cause more trouble with their death than an MM. Many parties have been obliterated because a minion master lost control of the army.

A MM does not have to fully rely on outside healing/protection. Dark Bond is probably the most effective way to deal with large damage spikes. Even with a modest investment in Blood Magic of 3 or 4 (or even 0!), it will last a substantial length of time. For Monk secondaries, Heal Area can be used to heal oneself and the minions in the area efficiently. In areas with excessive corpses like Vizunah Square and Zos Shivros Challenge, consider bringing corpse manipulation heals such as Soul Feast or Consume Corpse.

Should the worst case happen, quickly use Verata's Gaze or Verata's Aura to reclaim some or all of your army. Reclaiming one minion means one less minion your party members need to kill, and one less minion trying to kill your party members.

The same holds true if you need to leave a party. Stop healing your army and wait for the minions to degenerate naturally, or use Taste of Death to destroy them. If you leave a party, your minions will become masterless, and attack the remaining party, possibly causing them to wipe.

Opposing Forces
Should you find yourself facing a Minion Master, either in PvP or in one of the RPG Campaigns, it is important to focus on attacking the army where it is weakest. Simply hacking away at the minions is slow, and gives the minions time to hack away at you. Here are some example tactics to use against Minion Masters.


 * Targeting the army
 * Holy Damage: Minions, like all undead creatures, take double damage from holy and light based damage. Monks equipped with smiting skills can quickly destroy minions.
 * Area of Effect: Minions are not smart enough to flee from area of effect spells such as Fire Storm, Meteor Shower or Balthazar's Aura.
 * Stealing the army: Verata's Aura and Verata's Gaze can quickly turn minions against their creator.
 * Targeting the master
 * Killing the master: Once a minion master dies, the army will become masterless and attack everything. This will level the field with the opposing party.
 * Interrupting: Interrupting key skills such as Blood of the Master can leave a Minion Master with a much weaker army. Skills like Distracting Shot and Power Spike are moderately effective and skills such as Power Block can be devastating. However, skills like Debilitating Shot and Power Leak are less effective, due to Soul Reaping and large numbers of dying minions.
 * Targeting the field
 * Corpse Denial: Minion Masters rely on a steady stream of corpses, and cast slow spells to animate their creatures. Use the corpses before they can with fast spells such as Consume Corpse, or Soul Feast.
 * Spirits: Ranger spirits such as Edge of Extinction can be very destructive. Be wary of spirits that may assist the Minion Master, such as Quickening Zephyr or Predatory Season.

Death Magic
Death Magic directly affects the number of minions you can control, their survivability and damage potential. One of the reasons why there are no Necromancer Secondary Minion Master builds is primarily due to the fact that minions simply cannot be effective with death magic of 12 or less.

Note that Bone Minions are significantly less useful in high level areas, due to their limited level, but can be very effective in low level areas, due to the larger numbers

Soul Reaping
Since a Minion Master's purpose is to utilize corpses to create an army to support the party, Soul Reaping is the major way in which the MM will be gaining both energy and targets for animation spells. Minion masters should have a decidedly different view of Soul Reaping.

Soul Reaping is the best way to reduce the cost of casting corpse spells, and should be dedicated to keeping the army rolling.

With a Soul Reaping of 10, casting Animate Bone Horror costs only a net 5 energy. At 10 Soul Reaping, one death fuels Verata's Sacrifice, Blood of the Master, or Heal Area, providing enough energy to keep the army alive. This makes creating and keeping an army a much cleaner prospect.

Soul Reaping should be at least 10, though skills such as Offering of Blood and Mantra of Recall can help mitigate a lower soul reaping bonus.

Don't waste Soul Reaping: You get energy for everything that dies. Allies, enemies, pets, minions, creatures, anything with or without a heartbeat, (and spirits, but only 1/2 as much). Try to keep your energy at least one soul reaping bonus beneath your maximum, to ensure no energy is wasted. If you have extra energy, spend it on healing your minions, or healing yourself.

Blood Magic
While less important than Death Magic or Soul Reaping, Blood Magic has some interesting effects for Minion Masters. Skills such as Offering of Blood and Dark Bond can be utilized to enhance a Minion Master's output.

Spawning Power
The Ritualist's unique attribute, Spawning Power affects animated minions as well as spirits, giving each minion an extra 4% health for each point in Spawning Power. In addition, Signet of Creation, Boon of Creation, Explosive Growth, Spirit Channeling, and Reclaim Essence work with minions as well.

Boon of Creation and Explosive Growth will trigger twice upon the creation of Bone Minions. At 14 Spawning Power or more, this will recover 80% of the casting cost of the skill.

Boon of Creation or Reclaim Essence is recommended to compensate for the lack of Soul Reaping.

Skills
Discussion and comparison of skills for different uses.

Minion creation skills
There are eight unlockable minion creation skills: Animate Bone Fiend, Animate Bone Horror, Animate Bone Minions, Animate Flesh Golem, Animate Vampiric Horror, Animate Shambling Horror, Jagged Bones, and Malign Intervention. Each has their own set of pros and cons.

Keeping the minions alive
All animated creatures begin with a -1 degeneration and gain an additional -1 degeneration for every 20 seconds they remain alive. After 3 minutes (180 seconds) they have -10 degeneration. Actual health lost due to degeneration is capped at 20 health per second (i.e. 10 degen), but minions can have much more than -10 degen, eventually to the point where strong regeneration skills like Verata's Sacrifice and Healing Breeze will have no effect on the health lost by the minion.

Several skills are available to counteract this degeneration and to provide battle healing.

Blood of the Master provides a one time spike heal to all friendly animated creatures within target range. This skill has a short cast time, high healing return, and fairly low energy cost. Because of the high sacrifice cost, it is used primarily as a combat heal.

Verata's Sacrifice provides your minions with health regeneration. It's recharge (60 seconds) is long compared to its duration (10 seconds at high death magic), which makes it nearly useless in maintaining an army. However it instantly recharges when you control 3 or less minions, which makes it a very good way to keep your inital 3 minions alive. In addition to providing healing, Verata's sacrifice transfers any conditions from the minion army onto the Minion Master, from whom they can be purged, passed back to the opposing party with Plague Signet, or otherwise handled.

Feast for the Dead provides a one time heal at the cost of one of your minions. It is recommended that you use this with a Flesh Golem that can be reanimated or on minions enchanted with Jagged Bones. Otherwise, you may find your army quickly dissolving while attempting to keep it alive.

Monk Spells are effective on minions in the same way as they are effective on party members. Contrary to popular belief, healing a minion with a monk spell does not increase its degeneration. Heal Area heals the master and all nearby minions, granting Minion Masters the ability to negate the sacrifices from Blood of the Master and Verata's Sacrifice while healing minions at the same time. Single target spells such as Orison of Healing and Healing Breeze are too expensive to use on minions.

Keeping yourself alive
Staying alive is especially important to a minion master, as a masterless army will turn on the party, and a large masterless army stands a good chance of winning against even the most prepared party while the enemy keeps attacking you.

Dark Bond provides an excellent way to reduce damage to the minion master by redirecting 75% of the damage to a nearby minion. The master can take approximately 4 times as many hits before falling and minions are more expendable than party members.

Infuse Condition counters degeneration by redirecting conditions such as burning and bleeding to the nearest minion while the minion master suffers no ill effects from this. Combined with Verata's Sacrifice, this can move all conditions from the army onto a single minion, who acts as a scapegoat for the rest of the army. Also, minions are immune to some conditions, such as bleeding.

Taste of Death is a very useful emergency heal. It almost always results in a full heal, since minions usually have nearly as high or higher health then the caster (thanks to the superior runes). Additionally, a minion's death due to Taste of Death triggers Death Nova, Soul Reaping, and many other "on death" functions. Taste of Death is preferable to Soul Feast for several reasons; It provides additional energy from soul reaping, it can select a target, consuming the oldest minion with the highest degeneration, it does not consume a corpse, and it has a very fast casting time, making it difficult to interrupt.

Signet of Lost Souls can be used for an occasional heal. However, you must time it such that the activation ends as the target is below half life but before it dies. When managing a large undead army, this may be difficult to time against most mobs as individual foes die quickly when under pressure of the full army. However, since a failed attempt costs no energy, it can still be a viable skill to carry around. It is more useful against tougher foes where your army grows slower and soul reaping returns are less often.

Other skills
Verata's Gaze is used to loose an opposing minion from its master, or tame a masterless minion. Because it is a single target skill and must be cast twice to fully turn a minion from an enemy master, it is used less often than the broader Aura. However, Verata's Gaze creates a permanent bond.

Verata's Aura can be used as a quick way to regain an army after being resurrected, or steal an army from opposing necromancers. It immediately turns all minions in the area to you, but has a drastic downside, in that when it ends, your entire army, regardless of how they were accumulated, will turn against you. Once you cast this spell, you MUST maintain it. Should it be stripped or lost, your faithful army will become masterless.

Death Nova is used to turn weak and inexpensive minions into walking explosives. Most often used with Animate Bone Minions, due to the much lower energy and corpse cost per animated creature. Taste of Death is sometimes used as a trigger, but often minion bombs are allowed to simply detonate taking damage naturally on their own.

Putrid Flesh triggers your minion to explode in disease-ridden glory. Stack it with Death Nova to place a -8 degen on fleshy foes around the minion.

Order of Undeath raises the damage output of your minions at the cost of your own health. Vampiric Horrors can be useful to counter the health sacrifice from each swing of your minions. However, a well-protected minion master should survive the duration of the cast even with a full non-vampiric army due to the short length of the spell.

Energy Recovery Skills such as Offering of Blood, Mantra of Recall, Energy Tap and others are used to balance minion creation when nothing is dying, such as early in or just after combat. Use these skills to create energy to heal or to animate your army.

Recharge Time Skills can be quite beneficial, as recharge time is one of the limiting factors for minion masters. Carrying 20/20 items can reduce this effect, but skills such as Glyph of Renewal, Mantra of Recovery and Serpent's Quickness can allow for more minions, and continual healing from Verata's Sacrifice.

Ranger spirits affect all creatures in the area, including minions. The most useful spirits are Winnowing, which provides additional damage to all minions, and Predatory Season, which heals them.

Armor
Any necromancer armor may be used, and opinions vary significantly as to which armor is preferable.
 * Necrotic (15k) and Tormentor's (15k) armor provides extra armor against all attacks, giving extra resilience to the Minion master. This extra armor comes at the cost of extra holy damage.
 * Bonelace (15k), Fanatic's and Cultist's Armor provides extra protection against piercing, which an MM is more likely to encounter given the fact that a large army will keep warriors outside arms reach.
 * Scar Pattern Armor (15k) and Cabalist's Armor provide extra energy, but provide no additional armor of any kind.
 * Revenant's Armor provides extra health, to help offset the health cost of the Superior Rune. However, it should be noted that extra health means a larger sacrifice from skills such as Blood of the Master and Verata's Sacrifice.
 * Minion Master's Armor provides extra armor against all attacks when you control 1 (+5), 3 (+10) or 5 (+15) minions. While providing no benefit during the painful starting phase, the extra armor will help you survive when you (and your party!) need it the most - when you control many minions.
 * Necromancer's and Initiate's armor is largely unsuited to general use, providing no additional energy or defense, and should not be used if other armors are available.

In addition the base armor, the following equipment is considered necessary for a Minion Master:
 * Bloodstained Boots provide additional speed to corpse exploiting spells, including animation spells. Approximately 12.5% of all attacks hit the boots and they provide only 1 additional energy, so the decrease in casting times outweights the advantages of the other armor classes.
 * A Vile Scar Pattern imbued with a Superior Rune of Death Magic

Weapons and Focus items
Weapons are of less use to Minion Masters in damage output than for other profession and build types. Sacrifices in direct damage in favor of higher casting speeds or faster recharge times are worthwile.

The ideal weapon set for a Minion master should have as many of the following characteristics as possible:
 * Halves skill recharge time of death magic spells (very important)
 * Halves casting time of death magic spells (somewhat important)
 * +1 to Death Magic (20% chance) (somewhat important)
 * Additional Energy (important)
 * Additional armor or health (slightly important)

Here are some example Death Magic weapon sets:
 * The Bone Staff from Luven Underwood, combined with a perfect Staff Wrapping of Death Magic and a perfect Insightful Staff Head.
 * The Death Magic Truncheon from Arliss Vaughn and Death Magic Focus item from Sir Pohl Sanbert
 * Bortak's Bone Claw and Bortak's Bone Cesta
 * Bortak's Bone Staff
 * Ghial's Staff
 * The Bone Spiral Rod from either Gertrud or Telamon and a Bleached Skull from Dai Waeng.

Note on bomber builds: In builds that specialize in using Death Nova the hierarchy of useful mods changes somewhat from those of a traditional minion master.
 * Halves casting time of death magic spells (very important)
 * +1 to Death Magic (20% chance) (very important)
 * Enchantments last 20% longer (very important)
 * Lengthens poison duration on foes by 33% (important)
 * Additional Energy (important)
 * Halves skill recharge time of death magic spells (somewhat important)
 * Additional armor or health (slightly important)

An example of an ideal minion bomber weapon set would be a Poisonous sword or axe of Enchanting paired with Bortak's Bone Cesta. Improves skill recharge is almost entirely unnecessary for a minion bomber, fast recharging Verata's sacrifice is not nearly as useful to a minion bomber as enchantment extensions or fast cast as these mods will help keep Death Nova up on as many minion as possible.

''Note: Items which provide 15 energy at the cost of an energy pip, such as the ones provided by Kraviec the Cursed and Isabaeux Navarre, are very useful, but can carry significant drawbacks. When using these items, have high Soul Reaping, and carry a second set without the regeneration effects for traveling or when deaths are sparse.''

Non-Necromancer Minion Masters
Minion Masters have traditionally been primary Necromancers because they enjoy many benefits.
 * The ability to utilize scar patterns and runes allows the Necromancer to increase Death Magic to a base of 16. This means:
 * A primary Necromancy can control up to ten minions, as opposed to eight for a secondary.
 * Minions are 20-33% higher level than those created at a secondary Necromancer with 12 Death Magic. This results in higher minion health and armor levels as well as higher minion damage.
 * Typical minion master support skills such as Blood of the Master are more effective.
 * Soul Reaping is the Necromancer's primary attribute. Without the constant source of energy flowing from dying minions, a secondary Necromancer may quickly find it difficult to cast the high-cost minion creation skills.
 * Specialized Necromancer armor like Bloodstained Boots or Minion Master's Armor give unique and highly useful bonuses.

For these reasons, some groups will not take a secondary Necromancer Minion Master seriously.

Ritualist
In spite of the drawbacks, the Ritualist may take on the role of minion master with some success. In short, the Ritualist will have fewer and weaker minions compared to a Necromancer, but they will have more health and a few specialized skills are opened up.
 * For each point in Spawning Power, minions gain 4% max health, allowing a minion created at 12 Death Magic and 16 Spawning Power to have more health than a minion created at 16 Death Magic. However, the lower level still means it will deal less and take more (due to lower armor) damage in combat.
 * A level 21 Flesh Golem created by this Ritualist would have 820 Health, while a level 26 Flesh Golem will normally have 600 Health.
 * A level 14 minion created by this Ritualist would have 590 Health, while a level 18 minion will have 440 Health.
 * In addition, a few Spawning Power related skills work with animated minions. Many of these skills make a Minion Bomber variation an attractive choice.
 * Boon of Creation grants health and energy from each animated creature, acting as a substitute for the lack of Soul Reaping. It's main problem is enchantment removal.
 * Explosive Growth deals damage as minions are created.
 * Signet of Creation works well with Death Nova to time a simultaneous explosion of all minions.
 * Spirit Channeling will heal quite a bit when sustaining a full sized army and can help alleviate the degeneration from itself as well as the sacrifice cost of support skills such as Blood of the Master.
 * Reclaim Essence will kill off a minion and return energy to you.
 * Nightfall also added a pair of Signets under the Communing attribute that may work with animated minions. However, it may be difficult to form an effective minion master build with points spread out into this attribute.
 * Signet of Ghostly Might will increase the damage output of a minion but result in it dying soon after.
 * Signet of Binding will grant a minion increased health for half a minute before killing it.

Basic Army Master
These three core skills form the basis of a general purpose Minion Master build. The idea is simple - create minions as soon as you can, use Blood of the Master to keep them alive and use Dark Bond to keep yourself alive (don't forget that if you die any minions you are controlling will become aggressive towards everything, including your team mates). Bone Horrors, Vampiric Horrors and a Flesh Golem can be used instead of or as well as Bone Fiends.

Specific Builds: N/Mo Minion Master N/any Vampiric Equilibrium

Minion Bomber
A Minion Bomber is slightly different from a normal Minion Master in that the aim is not so much to keep minions alive for a long time while they do their own thing, but rather to raise them quickly then explode them in the middle of enemy mobs. At 16 Death Magic a minion enchanted with Death Nova, when killed either by enemies or Taste of Death, will cause over 100 damage to all adjacent foes as well as poisoning them for 15 seconds.

Specific Builds: Rt/N Explosive Creation

Nightfall Hybrid
Nightfall specific skills allow a hybrid between the traditional minion master position of maintaining an army and the minion bomber goal of deal damage when the minions die. Using Jagged Bones to ensure bombs are reborn, the army can be maintained while killing off some in Death Nova/Putrid Flesh explosions.

Other Sources
For additional information on...
 * animated creatures, see Minion
 * the bestiary, see Bone Minion, Vampiric Horror, Flesh Golem, Celestial Horror, Bone Horror, Bone Fiend, Shambling Horror, and Jagged Horror.
 * PvP Builds utilizing Minions, see Team - Minion Factory
 * factions, and its impacts for Minion Masters, see Animate Flesh Golem, Animate Vampiric Horror and Signet of Creation