The Last Skill Ever Needed For A Minion Master!

Please modify accordingly as needed as I am by far no expert in creating skills. I just love the Necromancer, and I have put a lot of thought into creating an elite skill that does the Necromancer justice in what the profession specializes at, calling upon the undead to do their bidding. I wanted to share my thoughts, and would like some feedback, mainly from fellow Necromancers, on the skill. If anyone from ArenaNet should view this and would like to chime in on the skill, then by all means do so.

(Elite Skill Name Here) Attribute: Soul Reaping
Energy: 25
Cast: 3
Recharge: 0

Animate a level 0...10 (new minion name here) at your location and you lose all energy. You suffer -1 energy regeneration for each (new minion name here) you control. Whenever a (new minion name here) you control deals damage, you gain 1 energy.

I feel i must apologize for the thread topic. This skill alone will not replace the traditional minion master. If anything, it will only compliment them, which is why I chose the soul reaping attribute. Once created, you will still need death magic to maintain them just like any other minion.

Now for the really fun part. This elite does not require a corpse to exploit. Today, a minion master is only useful when something or someone with a corpse dies. I wanted to give the minion master a viable means to be productive, even when there are no corpses around.

So there you have it. Look it over, think about it, post your comments. Constructive criticizism only please, if any.

So, up to a -6 energy regen for a minion master.

I don't think 10 minions could keep up with that unless they were fast attackers. Sure, the first one or two might help a little, but 6 gen(up or down, down in this case) is pretty dam fast on the energy bar.
You have to leave a reserve for healing minions, and other skills, such as a needed damage boost(deathly swarm), or healing yourself(blood magic/monk spells)

With the low level, they'd die before they get anything done, and you end up with stunted/zero energy for your efforts.

Points in soul reaping alone, atleast in PvE, and a full party, I'm never out of energy, infact, I'm usually back up to 54 or so(depending on weaponry) by the time any summoners recharge. If you can manage to keep 10 going, and have Soul Reaping points stacked right, the expensive ones cost 15e or less(I think I run 11points in SR, 12 and up is wasteful cause i can't use it fast enough), instead of a full 25.

I would like something I could replace the whiptail Bone Fiends, as they get old, but 9 of them + Flesh golem can't be beat. ( pseudo 9 rangers + 1 really good tank + full party)
I'm very content with that.

I like the direction you're going however. I would like to see some more options, as the lvl 18's really don't last long at all without a meat shield or other distraction.

I'll keep this post in mind If I come up with something.

I'll make another much better and balanced:

Create corpse (Death Magic)
E: 15 C:2 R:15
You lose 75..50% of your max health, and a corpse appears at your location. Next 20...8 seconds, you have -40 armor.
You have -40 armor while using this skill.

Notes:
- The corpse will look exactly as the caster's corpse, but without armor or weapons equiped.
- There the corpse will not trigger Soul Reaping.
- The corpse will not be considered 'ally', and will not count towards any skill that consider 'ally corpses', like "I Will Avenge You!".

The best way to create an first wave vefore facing no-corpse giving creatures.

have a cohort use jagged on the buggers, taste of death, you have your army fairly quickly, no corpses required

You always need a first corpse.

Won't say is broken or that bad (some balance issue might still need to be fix.. but need to be play-tested befoe I can say what). But I think MithranArkanere have the better skill. (but might want to up the recharge up to 20 to 25 second). The armor reduction is a nice touch.

Not played a MM enough to know what a MM need...but don't think it would be the last skill they need.

YUp, the recharge may increase.

I fisrt put 4 recharge, since it has a critical Health sacrifice, but I remember then Grenth's Balance (10 seconds recharge). Yay... This skill recharge MUST be greater than Grenth's Balance. 15, 20, 25...60... whater it is, it must be greater than Grenth Balance.

i understand what you mean here. i wanted to start out small, and make adjustments as needed. 1 energy per attack from these minions just seemed doable, while 2 energy per damage seemed like too much. but i do see the concern for energy management in relation to the rest of your skill bar. thats on something that can be solve if tested. 1 lump or 2

the level of these minion i know is small too. i just didn't want to jump straight to level 18 from scratch. but the level choosen would have to be high enough for the minions to last long enough to build from. i had figure you could create two of these minions before you would have to commit to attacking just to ensure you can benefit from them, and keep them alive long enough to kill a enemy with a corpse so that your other minion skills can pick up the slack.

i designed this skill so that it would in a sense be very difficult to create an army without the supplies necessary to build an army in the first place. at best you will always have 1 or 2 minions avaliable anytime you choose. any more than that, it becomes extremely difficult to keep them up because of energy management.

the entire point of this skill is not to be restricted by having to rely on a corpse. i also think that the armor and especially health loss is entirly too expensive. i know that there should be some kind of penelty for using this skill. that is why i started off the the high energy requirement, loss of all energy after using this skill, and also the -1 energy regen for each minion of this type. with your balance suggestion, no one would ever use this skill while in the middle of a fight. its bad enough, that after using this skill, you lose all your energy. i dont know any caster that can stay alive very long without any energy. perhaps tweak your armor penality a little and tweak your health loss a lot more than your armor.


the reason i opted for 0 recharge is because once you use this skill, you are going to loose all your energy. dont forget that for each of these minions you control, you suffer -1 energy regen. so after you create the first minion, it would take a full 25 seconds before you can create another one, provided that the minion does not attack anything and provided that you do not receive any help with regen (i.e. blood ritual). if you keep creating these minions, and again with no targets to attack, it will take longer than 25 seconds just to create a third one.

think of it this way, after you spawn 9 or 10 of these types of minions you will be facing -5 to -6 energy regen. are you sure that you would want to put up with a recharge time?

I don't think energy management is an issue for for a good MM, I guess is the one line version of my other post.

However, a Unearth corpse skill would be nice, though kind of pointless no matter what it costs or makes you suffer.

In PvE, anyways, cast right when you zone, poof, instant flesh golem with no cost.(You can always stand there and wait, aside from the very few time sensitive mission parts, then create flesh golem and go out to fight) You could make it lose 99% health and it wouldn't matter.
There is such a thing as too easy.


I would like to see a sacifice spell maybe, similar to the snowball fight. Actual death.

Ultimate Sacrifice.
30e 3 sec cast 120sec recharge.
Player dies, all minions are healed, and minion degeration is reset to zero. When death happens in this way Minions stay loyal to allies. Player cannot be resurected/respawned for 45 seconds.

I'm not one for balancing costs of E recharge, and cast time. so you all can give it a stab if you like, including the 45 seconds part.

Hm... any 'suicidal' skill should not add to death count, or not many people would like to use it.

What I would like is a minion for each Attribute, just one, kinda like a pet minion, just for a little diversity. One thing missing from the Necro line would be the Apostate as it is called in other games, it would be only a few skills based around summoning demons, these would be bound to you (perhaps only one at a time) and wouldn't degen, but cause energy degen for yourself, either, it would follow you around, or it would superimpose itself on you, changing how you character works, like Melee attack, extra armour, different skills, but -4energy degen and ends when you run out of energy.

Hm... that is Nigromancy, not necromancy, it's a bit different. Nigromancy (black magic) is about demons and dark energies and stuff, but necromancy is about death and corpses.

In this game demons are evil and the enemy... I don't think they could be 'allies' in any way, XD.

But it is true that a Degen for you instead for the creature is a really interesting addition... something really to be considered... but... who would stay alive with a permanent 10 degen?

There should be a way to 'kill' the summoned creature when it is no necessary.

Ultimate Sacrifice.
30e 3 sec cast 120sec recharge.
Player dies, all minions are healed, and minion degeration is reset to zero. When death happens in this way Minions stay loyal to allies. Player cannot be resurected/respawned for 45 seconds.

I didn't think about the survivor title.
Possible solutions:
1 Hell with the title
2 Sacrifice 15% max Health and Energy, untill death or rezone.(dupilicating deaths effects.
3 Simply do not count this death against Survivor track(change coding for this one skill)

1 or 3 would be my favored options, as # 2 replicates, but doesn't have the same impact. Unless you were to up the %.


Darq
I'd rather see this as a new class, sort of a spin on the Ritualist.
There are alot of possibilities for demon summoning.

-MithranArkanere
It gets tricky when you start telling people they can't do this or that in a video game because it's evil and the enemy. You have to factor in varying religions of players and such(and if it really aplies to a game with such violence), not to mention alot of necromancy skills deal with questionable morality.
What is demonic flesh but embodying some aspect of demons?
A favorite thing for necromancers to do is suck life straight out of an enemy, it doesn't get more evil than that, expecially considering they do it to other humans.

Each game maker has the ability to take liberty with some things and their definitions.
If they can create races out of thin air, they can include demonic spells with Necromancy. The Nigromancers in todays world will probably not press charges.