Olias as MM?

I have tried making Olias a MM, but he seems to be terrible at it. He hardly ever animates anything unless I tell him to, and rarely uses BotM unless I tell him to. He spends his time spamming Death Nova on them most of the time. Is there a way to get him to MM better?

I've never had any major issues, he uses my MM build quite well. Might just be that I don't use death nova, I don't know. None of his skills are deactivated, correct?

For heroes, arrange their skills from left to right in the order you want them used. Place the animates at far left then BotM, then whatever else. That way what you want them to do is prioritized by skill position.

I don't use Death Nova either and have no trouble. How high is Soul Reaping, is he just running out of energy?

Heroes should work identically, AI-wise all things being equal...

I use Master of Whispers and Olias as MM on different occasions, I don't recall any problems.

Hmm really? Are you sure? I didn't know you should arrange them in the order you want used.

Skill placement has no bearing on their priority. They use the skills based on code. But some skills aren't used very well. Heroes are terrible with Death Nova, just remove it form thier skillbar. Other than that they do an excellent job as MM's. When I run my own MM, I can't bring Olias along as I almost never get a corspe. He's just too fast.

I've tried running Olias as an MM and a minion bomber. He's always filled both roles perfectly for me.

Death Nova is not a MM skill! It's a minion bombing skill. Both are completely builds.

The best MM skillbar for Olias is as follows:

Animate Bone Horror
Animate Bone Fiend
Blood of the Master
Order of Undeath (e)
Signet of Lost Souls
Leech Signet
Power Drain
Res Signet

Everyone has the misconception that Death Nova is a must for MinioN mastery, whereas you only really need 2 skills; a Minion spell and BotM.

I knew this applied to Henchies at one time, thought it was fixed after the Henchie AI and Hero patch...

Also, I have my Minions spells on the right with BoTM on the farthest right...Death Nova toward the left.

As of last play session, Master of Whispers was casting all very reliably for me.

Blech! Honestly, the way builds are named we could call it Whipsnoodleblam Build. It's not like build names are based on some kind of scientific hierarchy that's been absolutely defined via rigid, established standards.

So it's practical for Olias to use 2 seconds to cast Death Nova instead of using those 2 seconds to help create another minion or cast a BOTM? Keepinga constant army of 10 minions is a much more reliable source of damage than risking them die with Death Nova. (Especially since the AI can be very tempermental with it.)

The OP asked why the MM build wasn't working, Death Nova is the cause, plain and simple. God forbid I be reasonable.

Thanks everyone, I'll take Death Nova off his bar. By the way, he was nowhere near running out of energy because I was doing Vizuna Square (which has alot of dying things). It was just he was spamming Death Nova as much as he could.

I agree with zinger (even though I use death nova sometimes ) Death nova creates issues for Olias as a MM..

Also I would look as see what order your skills are listed for Olias. HERO's seem to place levels of importance on where you place a skill on your skill bar. If you have Death Nova on hot key 1 then he will primarly place Death Nova on everyone and everything.

Minion Spells
BOTM

then anything else..

Res SIG last of course.

Olias and Master of whispers are better than any human Minion master can ever be... because they can keep track of minion health bars

I find exploding Minions highly effective, myself. Whispers uses it a lot and I don't view it as detrimental.

It doesn't kill the Minion, it only triggers when the Minion dies...

wow my olias is a better mm than any of my characters could be....today I was watching him and even though he is only level 19 he had 10 minions going!.....not sure how since I have problems keeping 8 ------
cant wait to cap jagged bones so all of my olias' can use it (gotta get a toon with necro to the realm to cap it......)....and I usually make my olias' n/mo ---like to have another rezzer in the group.

Order of skills does matter, you can re-arrange most skill bars and they will behave differently.

All things being equal going left to right seems to decrease in priority, though many spells have priority of near 100% - death nova being one of them. For instance, lets say you have both Heal Area and Karei's Healing Circle on your skill bar (yes, I know that would mostly suck - I picked them because they should have the same priority and same trigger) it will cast the one on the left first. In short, the AI will cast the leftmost highest priority skill it has. In fact, there *has* to be one of three things - left most, right most, or random (there are several "random" - closest to last skill, true random (well, as true as you can get with a computer), furthest from last skill, etc).

Having both Jagged bones and Death Nova on a skill bar will have a necro running out of energy fairly quickly if you are not killing things quickly and have a fairly high Soul Reaping - the AI wants to keep them up 100% of the time regardless of position. Only use Death Nova if you are making a "minion bomber" in which you are not keeping an army up but are creating them just to die quickly and trigger a death nova.

I use Master of Whispers because I have found his pathing with Minions is better, but I have used Olias with the same build to great effect.

Here is what I use (I hope you have DM maxed). (this build is for minions, my human MM has a slightly different build)

Flesh Golem | Horror | Fiend | BoTM | Verata's Sacrifice | Verata's Aura | Deathly Swarm | Res Sig

There is only one problem I have had: and that is Flesh Golem. Olias, and for some reason not as much (could be just luck) MoW, tend to be stupid and cast it even if there is one up, which is not fun because it can potentially take away an extra minion when at capacity when they cast it. Dont know if they can make an AI fix to this, but, if you are a good micro-manager ,you can disable while FG is alive. Still, i find it a weakness I am working on removing, but I just love seeing that guy pop out and wreak havoc.

To defend my use of Verata's Sac - The Heros manage their health pretty well, and I have found both of them do a great job of when to cast Verata's. I found significant increase in minion longevity after I added that, as opposed to my split thoughts on human MM use of the spell.

Verata's Aura has been a lifesaver I found, especially for Heroes. Heroes will die more than a human MM, thats a fact. And then there are 10 minions running around and it sucks. When ressing a MM hero, they will priority cast VA, and in short order the minions are pacified for the time being (unless disenchanted, but at that point Olias or MoW has already cast a couple more minions and gotten the minions back at the front line when they aggro again). It has been very useful in my hero builds.

I dont know how the rest of you keep their ai setting, but I keep them as MM on Agressive/Attack, not passive, since they will move into battle (with minions of course) quicker, and disengage like a real MM oddly I have witnessed.

Now, Olias and MoW as SS, well, thats a whole 'nother story...

Better use Order of Undeath, like Zinger pointed out. +5dmg for every minion...it's a killer ^^

I use Heroes for MM with no prob, although giving them death nova is a bad idea because that is all they will use, even stopping while you are moving and getting left behind. I do recommend giving him heal area if they have botm, they handle the saccing really well and always heal themselves up after. The only prob i notice is them not using jagged bones on every minion.

Tried it out last night with DN, he kept 9 minions up pretty much constantly (his max is 9 cause I'm not gonna spend 7k for a sup death rune, so he just has a major). Thanks again.

And that makes them better with Death Nova. They can target a low health minion in the middle of a large fray, something I have difficulty doing, and apply Death Nova. I don't seem to have problems with either Olias or Whispers raising minions or with over using Death Nova. I do have the skills set up the way I'd use them (left to right) with DN near the right, but I'm not sure that makes any difference to the heroes.

I wonder if we could get anyone from ANET to confirm or deny that skill placement matters? Gaile?

I swapped fiend, BotM, and order of undeath, leech signet, powerdrain with death nova, veratas gaze veratas aura, taste of death and jagged bones. Olias was an absulute killer with it. With the new jagged bones i dont know. He didnt use taste of death as a bomber would, but he would be the last man standing in a party wipe. I guess your build will do very nice or even may be one of the best builds since the nerf of jagged.

What i find as well is that hero monks and mm dont go well together. hero monks tend to waste energy on minions healing/protecting them. They do silly things like casting protective spirit and such on em. Best take henchies with you or even better human monks.

I've found that the Necro heros do a really good job at running almost any MM build I give them. This includes Straight MM, Jagged MM, or DN Bomber and almost every combination of the three. I intuitively priortize thier skills from left to right but I'm not sure it makes a difference. They work great as a team with one running Standard MM build and the other a Jagged Bones/Death Nova Bomber supporter. They usually are running around with 20 minions after the first few encounters.

My hero mm's always seem to lag behind and be out of energy. But as has been stated many times here they are far better than I am at casting death nova. This does not seem to be a bad thing to me. What does annoy me is that they have a tendency to raise a lesser minion from the corpse of a flesh golem.

Saying that I almost always run a MM hero because they support the party so well with death nova spamming.

I use the same except with tainted flesh in place of OoU - I prefer the general damage spread it gives while doubling as a cover enchant.

It never even occurred to me NOT to have Death Nova on Olias's MM build.

Now... lets see if I can recall his build from memory...

Flesh Golem, Shambler, Bone Fiend, Feast for the Dead, Taste of Death, Blood of the Master, Verata's Sacrifice, Death Nova...

I think thats it... (if you'll excuse the short-form references to certain minion spells)... Works just fine. O'course I wouldn't mind something that works a bit better... if possible... though for the record having individual minions do too much damage would negate my own heavy use of Mark of Pain.

Only problem I've ever had with Olias is that from time to time he nearly kills himself with Blood of the Master trying to keep his troops alive. For this reason, I use Animate Flesh Golem for my elite instead of something like Order of Undeath - I worry that another sacrifice skill might lower his health too much.

All in all, Olias makes a great MM. I'm lucky enough to have two Ghial's Staffs, so I gave my monk's Olias one to beef him up a bit. He might lose that staff if I ever get a good offer on it though.

My Olias has Ghial's Staff as well.... Customised...
My Necro got the second one, though given how much better Hero MMs seem to be than player-ones, I doubt she'll be using it for herself. More likely her own Olias will be getting it while she goes SS.

Last I checked, Flesh Golem does not leave an exploited corpse. This is why you can have 6 MM's run 6 Golems off 1 body. This also means that you can re-exploit the corpse with another minion skill.

Also, for the OP. Make sure you are not running from one mob to another, because Heroes tend to stop their spell casting once the party starts moving. Instead, I would flag the heroes for battle, this way Olias or Master of Whispers doesn't stop casting and raises the minions properly. I have run into occassions where they like to use other corpse skills like Putrid Explosions more than raising minions. I have since taken those skills out of the bars of my MM's.