Ultimate MM Hero Build

Mine is very similar to Zinger's.

Different elite though (no, not Flesh Golem, I'm testing Order of Undeath, and can use other stuff), and I bring Death Nova instead of Signet of Lost Souls depending on the Area we are in.

In relation to some skills/spells:
1)Olias will use Death Nova on Minions that have low HP (Thats why the other guy thinks he doesnt use it alot), The bad part is he will use it on fiends that are no where near the battle, and will prioritize using it over just healing the minion with BoTm. SO I reserve it for areas it will be useful in (alot of dying things, and alittle aggro going everywhere so more death novas actually hit stuff) - I also dont combine Jagged Bones with Nova on the same bar since they dont mesh well with his AI together.

2) Dont give Olias any offensive spells, death magic ones tend to have long cast times (Deathly Swarm..Rotting Flesh..) and he for some reason prioritizes using them over caring for his minions (wasting ALOT of time in the process).

3) Repeat after me..Shambling Horrors blow on Olias bar people. Shamblings are fine for what they are good for, but They don't work well in Olias "minion army" concept, they are more in line with Flesh golem, where you dont expect to have many minions.

Shamblings + Fiends > Horrors + Fiends

You only need 1 spammable 5-second-recharge minion on your skillbar.

I have always strongly disagreed with the conventional wisdom that MM's shouldn't bring other offense. Rotting Flesh is just too damn good. Good degen with a really long duration, that automatically spreads to multiple targets. In one skill, you get the kind of effect that some people dedicate an entire build to.

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Rotting flesh and shamblings work great.

My Olias keeps up 9 minnions up at all time and still does offensive with rotting flesh.

Hey Zinger314, like the build, good to see someone that actually knows something about playing a Necro posting a MM build that actually works.

Personally I have a few attricubte points in Curses just for barbs- probably isn't worth it, but dam barbs works well with an army of the undead, escpecially on bosses. I've tried running Energy Drain as the elite, but it seems to be a bit of an overkill for energy as Olias never seems to run out of energy with it.

I've played around with the elite a bit, I also find Order of Undeath to be the most effective elite, but Tainted Flesh is always another option.

Anyway thanks for the build, its been a lot of help.

OP certainly seems to know what he/she is doing.

However, I think that the only useful minions in NF are fiends. I reckon that since Dervish enemies (especially bosses) would own the large groups of melee minions, and so I don't use them.

But that's just my two cents.

Anyone ever try this out?

[skill]Animate Bone Fiend[/skill][skill]Blood of the Master[/skill][skill]Mark of Pain[/skill][skill]Parasitic Bond[/skill][skill]Icy Veins[/skill][skill]Mantra of Inscriptions[/skill][skill]Signet of Lost Souls[/skill][skill]Resurrection Signet[/skill]

I think I'll use it for my Olias. Even at 1 point of Inspiration magic it'll be up for 30 seconds and bring the Signet of Lost Souls down from 8 to 6 seconds recharge time. That's still a whole 2 seconds left when that Mark of Pain comes into play.

Another note to consider:
Mark of Pain has a 20 second recharge time. That gives Parasitic Bond's 2 second recharge time enough time to spam that all over the enemies so when they all die from Mark of Pain + Icy Veins he'll get a HUGE health boost to cover any health lost from Blood of the Master.

I was also considering switching Icy Veins to [skill]Feast of Corruption[/skill]. It's an immediate AoE attack and adds easier life management to the build the more the enemies are hexed. What do you guys think?

About minion spam vs. utility.

There are two viable ways to run a MM. One, as listed here, is a MM with mostly utility skills.

The other is one that is used only to raise minions.

They are both situational. With 4 or 5 minion skills you always have at least available to raise them. This works best for mission where corpses are plentiful, and where minions serve as body blockers and complement on damage. Energy in that build isn't even remotely a problem once you reach 10 minions, since each time you go over that cap, each of your minion skills returns 11 or 12 energy back. This build is perfectly viable for fast moving groups. Pros include serving as battery for other necro in the group (going over the 10 minion cap), cons include being a wasted group spot without minions.

The utility MM has much harder time keeping up sufficient number of minions, due to recharge times of spells. The minions they use are also somewhat more diverse in life-span, where the spammer has almost always only fresh minions. Pros are, that they can be useful even without minions. Cons are that their minions are mostly supplementary to their role.

About elites. Golem is overrated. But not even remotely useless. A golem has perhaps a more important role of sucking up the damage, rather than dealing it. Ideally, most of the minion group would comprise out of fiends for added damage (OoU is godly in this case), or mostly melee, where the player group is mostly ranged.

The original MM (4-5 minions skills) is flexible. They can change their minion structure on the fly, to compensate for either lack of tanking, or lack of killing power. This build is still completely viable, and serves as a general purpose build.

Alternate builds may obviously work better for other areas, depending on other group members.

But above all, arguing which MM build is the right one is pointless. Each aproach has advantages and disadvantages. Minion spammer has proven itself, either with or without Golem, and works very well in every situations. Other builds will work much better in certain situations, but not always. Being unable to produce minions fast enough is a huge disadvantage for a MM.

It's a matter of flexibility over specialization. I do however believe that there is only one rule that anyone even thinking about MM should always obey: A MM must have death at 16. There simply is no reason to reduce the damage, hitpoints and defenses of your minions if you do go MM.

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