Minion

Overview
Minions (a.k.a "Animated Undead" or "Animated Bones") are Undead servants animated by a Necromancer. A necromancer can exploit any nearby corpse to raise from it one or more undead minions. These minions are very handy as they follow their master closely and serve as tanks and cannon fodder. At high levels, they become formidable damage dealers in great numbers. Their biggest drawback is their constant health degeneration.

Minion Properties
There are five kinds of minions in the game:
 * Bone Horrors
 * Bone Fiends
 * Bone Minions
 * Flesh Golems (see Animate Flesh Golem) (Guild Wars Factions)
 * Vampiric Horrors (Guild Wars Factions)

The following are some properties of minions:
 * Like all undead they take double damage from Holy damage.
 * A minion's level is dependant on caster's Death Magic attribute rank and minion type. Higher level minions have more health, greater armor, and stronger attacks.
 * Minions are subject to constant health degeneration, starting at 1 "pip" of degen at summoning, and increasing by 1 pip of degeration every 20 seconds. (One pip of degeneration is -2 health per second.) While their actual health will never experience degeneration greater than -10 pips (20 health per second), they can have hidden degeneration greater than -10, if they have been "alive" long enough, that will counteract any regeneration from such skills as Verata's Sacrifice or Healing Breeze.
 * Minions can be healed not only with necromancer spells like Verata's Sacrifice or Blood of the Master, but also with Monk spells like Heal Other. Contrary to some rumors, healing a minion with a Healing Prayers skill does not increase its degeneration.
 * Friendly minions count as allies and may be the target of single-target and location-based spells that benefit allies.
 * Minions do not count as party members and do not benefit from spells that target the casters entire party. These include Aegis, Heal Party, Order of Pain, and Order of the Vampire.
 * Minions do not use pet AI. They do not neccessarily attack what their master attacks, and will attack any hostile creature that enters their agro circle. Similarly, they do not respond to called targets.
 * There is no limit on the number of minions a necromancer can raise. A necromancer can have as many as he/she can keep alive.
 * Raising minions requires a supply of corpses. An area empty of corpses, or that has creatures that do not leave corpses (like Golems), will greatly trouble a minion master.
 * All minions do physical damage unless under the influence of another skill that alters damage types. See Greater Conflagration, Judge's Insight.
 * When a minion dies, this will trigger the energy bonus from Soul Reaping, giving you part (or even all) of the energy cost as "refund".
 * Beware of rangers spawning Spirits of Extinction, as these will usually kill all minions in the area in a chain reaction very quickly.

Minion Creation

 * Animate Bone Fiend
 * Animate Bone Horror
 * Animate Bone Minions
 * Animate Vampiric Horror
 * Animate Flesh Golem
 * Malign Intervention

Minion As Skill Target

 * Blood of the Master (heal adjacent ally animated undead)
 * Dark Bond (self-enchantment that transfers 75% of incoming damage to nearest ally animated undead)
 * Death Nova (turn ally animated undead or teammates into AoE bombs when they die)
 * Infuse Condition (self-enchantment that transfers incoming conditions to nearest ally animated undead)
 * Taste of Death (steal Health from ally animated undead)
 * Verata's Aura (all hostile animated undead become bound to you for some time)
 * Verata's Gaze (unbind/steal hostile animated undead)
 * Verata's Sacrifice (Health Regeneration of 10 for ally animated undead)


 * Signet of Creation - grants all animated creatures (including animated undead) in the area health regeneration, but destroys them after 30 seconds. (See Disclaimer)

Minion Health Degeneration
The effect of health degeneration is capped at 10, meaning that a minion will at most lose health at a rate of 10 health every 0.5 seconds. However, minion health degeneration will become increasingly difficult to counteract over time. This is because the total (raw, uncapped) degeneration rate can still increase beyond 10, and this is the value that regeneration effects (e.g. from Verata's Sacrifice and Healing Breeze) are calculated against.

If a minion's raw health degeneration has increased to -20 pips over time, the minion will suffer from -10 pips because of the degeneration cap. If Verata's Sacrifice is cast to give the minion +10 pips, the minion will experience -20 + 10 = -10 pips, which is the same as if Verata's Sacrifice had not been cast.

Tips for Minion Masters
An advanced technique for minion masters employs the Monk secondary and the spell Heal Area. With 7 Healing, Heal Area heals the master and all nearby minions for 100 health. This compound effect grants a great deal of resillience to minion masters, as they now have the ability to negate the sacrifices from Blood of the Master and Verata's Sacrifice while healing minions at the same time. Necromancer/Monk minion masters usually can generate and maintain larger armies than most other builds.

An effective way to combat minion degeneration uses Glyph of Renewal combined with Verata's Sacrifice to permanently maintain +10 regeneration.

With 13 soul reaping, normally you would spend a net total of 2 energy (15 to cast, 13 recovered on it's death) to create a bone horror and 12 energy to create a bone fiend. However, with judicious use of Glyph of Lesser Energy, you can actually gain a net 8 energy for creating a horror and reduce the loss from a fiend to a mere 2. And bone minions can become a major source of additional energy, with the cost reduced to 15 for 2 minions, yielding 26 on their deaths for a total of 11 energy gained. Keep in mind, however, that it may not be optimal to equip as many superior runes as is required for these numbers.

With a +15 Energy focus, you are left with 3 pips of energy regen resulting in one energy per second: Verata's Sacrifice lasts 21 seconds with 16 Death Magic, and will cost a total of 15 energy w. Glyph of Renewal. This leaves you with the equivalent of one pip of energy regen and excess energy from Soul Reaping to use Blood of the Master.

Another way to maintain Verata's Sacrifice constantly is to use the ranger skill Serpent's Quickness. With at least nine points in Wilderness Survival, Serpent's Quickness can be used to reduce the recharge time of Verata's Sacrifice to 20 seconds, less than the 21 second duration at level 16 Death Magic. This presents some obvious trade-offs with Glyph of Renewal: the glyph requires an elite skill slot and twice as much energy, five energy on every Verata's Sacrifice cast as opposed to Serpent's Quickness at five energy every other cast, but Serpents Quickness requires an attribute investment.

When managing minions, bear in mind that degeneration grows with time so it is always better to replace a minion than it is to try and maintain an old one.