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 then 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 average minion master can keep between 8 and 12 minions at all times. The damage from one minion may seem to be minor, but twelve minions is quite a formidable force. Exceptional masters can keep upwards of 16 minions, and under favorable conditions two or three times that.

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
Minion master is a build of 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 to ease the first few kills.

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. If you spend a lot of time between combats your minions will build up degeneration and you will not have any corpses to animate.

A classic technique of using limited area healing on large armies is the "MM Shuffle". Take a step forward to align minions behind you for travel, then press the reverse key (usually "X") or double tap the backwards step key to spin around. This will cause the minions to clump up very close to you while the rearrange themselves for travel in the new direction. This clumping will pack more minions into the limited area of effect of Blood of the Master and Heal Area.

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 then 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.
 * Maintain Verata's Sacrifice. Verata's Sacrifice affects all friendly minions within your selection range.
 * When using fiends, move as close to the center of the clump as possible, cast Blood of the Master or 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 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. Disengaging any combat 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 emergancy 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.

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 Verata's Sacrifice 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 your minions 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 minions are significantly less useful in high level areas, but can be more 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. 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 then Death Magic or Soul Reaping, Blood Magic has some interesting effects for Minion Masters. Skills such as Offering of Blood and Dark Bond can make or break a Minion Army.

Skills
Discussion and comparison of skills for different uses.

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


 * Animate Bone Fiend [[Image:Animate_Bone_Fiend.png|right]]
 * Advantages to Fiends:
 * Ranged Attack: Fiends attack with a ranged attack, which has approximately the same range as a Short Bow
 * Faster Attack: Fiends attack slightly faster then horrors or minions, approximately once every 2 seconds, giving them a greater damage per second.
 * Disadvantages of Fiends:
 * Lower armor: Fiends have significantly less armor against physical attacks, and thusly take more damage
 * Other notes on Fiends:
 * Clumping: Fiends tend to clump together, making them easier to heal, but also easier to nuke.


 * Animate Bone Horror [[Image:Animate_Bone_Horror.png|right|128px]]
 * Advantages to Horrors:
 * Body Blocking: Large number of Horrors can create an wall in front of foes, preventing them from reaching more valuable targets
 * Higher Armor: Horrors have significantly higher armor against physical attacks, and server better tanking then any other animated creature
 * Less Expensive: Horrors cost only 15 energy, and are the least expensive to create.
 * Disadvantages to Horrors:
 * Melee attack: Horrors must approach a target, making them prime candidates for traps and ranged attacks
 * Slower Attack: Horrors attack at a slightly slower rate, approximately once every 3 seconds, giving them a low damage per second.
 * Get in the Way: Horrors can occasionally body block team members often sandwiching them between foes and cutting off the means of escape.
 * Other notes on Horrors:
 * Horrors are available before any other animated creature in the Prophecies campaign.


 * Animate Bone Minions [[Image:Animate_Bone_Minions.png|right]]
 * Advantages to Minions:
 * Two for one: creates a pair of minions from each corpse
 * Three for one: Since soul reaping returns energy when minions die, parties with a minion army will gain triple benefit from soul reaping
 * Disadvantages of Minions
 * Much lower level: Minions are less effective then other animated creatures, as they are animated at a much lower level
 * Melee attack: Minions must approach a target, making them prime candidates for traps and ranged attacks
 * Slower Attack: Minions attack at a slightly slower rate, approximately once every 3 seconds, giving them a low damage per second.
 * Get in the Way: Minions can occasionally body block team members often sandwhiching them between foes cutting off the means of escape.
 * Other notes on minions
 * Minions are often used as energy reserves for necromancer heavy parties, or as minion bombs with Death Nova.
 * Contrary to the skill icon, minions share the same upright, mostly humanoid model of the horror, scaled down slightly.


 * Malign Intervention, while a minion creation skill, creates a masterless horror, which must then be tamed with either Verata's Aura or Verata's Gaze. Because it has no special properties, and the requirement for additional skills, it is rarely used in PvE. However, Malign Intervention has a powerful use in PvP, as it can create the horror with essentially zero casting time (the horror is spawned as soon as the target dies) meaning the caster cannot be "beaten to the corpse" by an opposing necromancer. It will also reduce the target's health gain from healing by 20%.

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 then -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 nearby friendly animated creatures. 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 an excellent way of extending the life of minions, as the major threat to their existence is the large inherent degeneration. Even at the highest level of Death Magic, Verata's Sacrifice cannot maintain constant regeneration, so other support skills must be used. 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.

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 it's 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 then 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.

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 two reasons; It provides additional energy from soul reaping, and it can select a target, consuming the oldest minion with the highest degeneration.

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 less used then 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.

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 damage 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) provides extra energy, but provides no additional armor of any kind.
 * 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

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 ax 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.''

Basic Army Master
This is an example of a basic army maintenance minion master. With this build it is possible to sustain on average 15 animated creatures.

Examples of more specialized Minion Master builds

 * Premade build N/Me Minion Master
 * N/R Minion Master
 * N/Mo Minion Meister
 * N/E Renewal Minion Master

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