United Minion Army

Ok, I have a general idea for a team build involving 3-4 minion masters (2-3 probably being heroes) for general pve, just want to know if you guys think this is feasable and maybe help me get the builds perfected.

Alright first thing is this build uses 3-4 minion masters. "well how's that possible, don't MM's suck up corpses faster than a dirt devil on speed?" and you would be right there, thing is I intend to use other minion creation skills that don't require a corpse (i.e. malign intervention & jagged bones) and use only one "traditional" Minion Master.

Ok so here's the lowdown on this.

Necro #1 Traditional MM: This is your standard Minion Master Build, using lots of corpses to consistantly maintain the peak minion count, this will be the main bulk of the combined army.

*Necro's #2-4 all use Malign Intervention+Verata's Gaze to gain minions without corpse fighting

Necro #2 Jagged Support MM: Uses Jagged Bones (and probably arcane echo) to create an additional supply of minions as well as applying death nova to minions for added damage

Necro #3 Dark Bonder: Uses Life Bond on the Other Necros + Dark Bond + Flesh Golem to effectively send damage intended for the Masters Back to the Minions, it would also provide healing and additional support for the other masters (would a Mo/N be more effective for this role perhaps?)

Necro #4 Order of Undeath Support: Uses Order of Undeath to increase minion damage output. (This one is rather iffy. First off does anyone know if OoU increases all allied minions damage or specificly just the ones you control? Also with 14+minions all using this saccing might be suicidal, maybe a 55 build would make this controllable with hard regen?)

pretty much I'm trying to take all the useful Minion Master Skills that can't fit onto one bar and make one giant (hopefully) super effective army. oh, also for minion healing we'd be carrying Verata's Sac instead of BotM to keep saccing under control.

Again, just an idea I've had rolling around, I'd appreciate any suggestions on specifics and/or tactics with this. Thanks in advance

Problems:

1. Blood of the master will pretty much instantly kill anyone with that many minions.
EDIT: Just noticed the verata's sac thing. Recharge is too long without glyph of renewal, and you need your elite for other stuff (jagged bones).
2. Even wonking around with malign intervention and jagged bones, there's going to be a corpse shortage.

3. A couple hits of AoE will still wipe the whole army.

4. 1 minion master is usually enough to exploit most all the corpses and pump a ton of DPS out.

OoU only affects your own minions.

If you're going to run 4 MMs they should be using AotL so they don't suicide when using BotM.

It's impossible to run more than 2 MMs. (outside of Vizunah Square)

There just won't be enough corpses!

Alrighty, thanks for pointing out my mistakes, I still have faith that this can work.

Perhaps I wasn't clear on how we'd be accomplishing more minions, as it stands now only Necro #1 would be actively using corpses, the Dark Bonder Necro #3 would be running a Flesh Golem, but thats the only corpse using skill outside of Necro #1. Necros 2-4 wouldn't be running the minion peak (10) probably closer to 4-6, however that's still an extra 10+ minions running about.

Order of Undeath wont work for #4 now, but it actually works out better this way, now #4 can use AotL making BotM safe (only #4 would have it)

Also I've found some useful minion healing skills outside of the necro line (#1 & 4 don't have a specified secondary prof atm)

Paragon:"Never Surrender" & "Fall Back" very useful (minor) healing and speed boost for the whole army & party

Ritualist: Recuperation & Life very useful minion & party wide regen & health gain

I'll try and put together the actual builds I'm thinking of to make this a bit more clear, and again any advice for this is welcome. Thanks

If you can find an area that's not Vizunah Square that can support 4 MM's, [skill]Aura of the Lich[/skill] is a necessity. Else BotM will kill your MM instantly. 10% + (5% * 40) = 210% health sacrificed. That being said, even with the half damage from AotL, the MM would be killed instantly would he not?

AotL actually makes you take 1/4 damage from sacrificing, since it reduces your max HP by 100%, and reduces damage taken by 100%, both of which reduce the sacrifice.

It makes you take 1/4 damage absolute, but 1/2 damage, percent-wise, and that's what's in question here.

I don't know if your intention is to accomplish 40 minions. If that's what you're trying to do, using BoTM is out of the question. Bringing up 40 minions _without_ BoTM is most likely impossible - natural minion degeneration makes pip-based minion maintenance impossible in the long run. All I can think of is Heal Area.

I think I see what you're trying to get at... However to make this into a REAL powerful build will be pretty hard. I'd probably go with one N/D, one Rt/N minbomber, and two Death hexers running Fleshie as elite.

Hmmm, just readin this thread nad thought, you cant have 4 MM (not enough corpses + death by healing) but what if you had 1 normal MM(with golem), and 3 additional MM, but the only summoning skill they would have would be flesh golem, so you would have like 9 fiends and 4 golems running about, the other 3 would also have heals, and as you only have a total of 13 minions BotM isnt suicide3, this may be really inafective but meh, I havent played MM for a really long time, I just liked the idea.

Oh god just realised that I've written one long sentance, oh well you gus just the idea.

~A Leprechaun~

Quote:

It's still too much to be really feasible to maintain 40. I guess the AoTL MM can go 55. However I'm not sure how feasible the team build will be.

Quote:

WARNING THIS COULD NOT HAPPEN BUT I HAVE THE URGE
*runs into the middle of the army with shadow form on giggles uses vereta's aura giggles again*

Just used all the info in this thread and used a 2 MM Hero setup to finally complete Sanctum Cay Hard Mode (completely Hero/Hench)

Necro 1: N/Rt

Animate Flesh Golem
Death Nova
Animate Shambling Horror
Blood of the Master
Union
Blood Ritual
Signet of Lost Souls
Death Pact Signet

Necro 2: N/Rt

Animate Flesh Golem
Malign Intervention
Animate Shambling Horror
Recuperation
Verata's Gaze
Blood Ritual
Signet of Lost Souls
Death Pact Signet

Ohh, good stuff Chronos. Put the multi MM theroy to the test, and in HM even, sounds like it did the trick!

I can't wait to put together all my necro heroes now and see what a complete team with set ups like that can do

Verata's Sac DOES NOT cover hidden regen, so older minions won't even get affected by it.
This bug has been on for a long time and people still don't know about it :/

OoUD can be exchanged with Order of the Vampire, this adds damage to all minions that aren't enchanted(not only your own) and it lets the minions heal themselves a little, so you won't have to fire BotM as much saving you a bit of health.
It in turn does require you to sacrifice 7% health every few sec, which isn't more than OoUD sacrifices with 10 minions but it can still be suesidal, OotV has the additional problem of robbing you of energy if you chain it for long.

Also if you have a problem with corpses, using Charm Animal the new GWEN Feral Aggression and Comfort Animal you have a pet that can deal fine damage when there are corpses and that can get killed and resurrected infinitively supplying corpses to make minions off when you do need them, this is especially useful if you still need that first corpse to make a flesh golem with to start racking up more corpses for more minions.
(mobs always aggro the creature with lowest max armor and health, only fleshy outranks a pet so when theres minions up its kinda hard to keep mobs killing the pet, I have a Janmai Rat cuz its the pet best suited for necro)
Couple this with Flesh Golem and Malign Intervention(and gaze of course) and you have a MM that can have 10 minions without ever exploiting a corpse.
Exchange Flesh Golem for Discord and Feral Aggression for Poisonous Bite and you have a good spiking build to rack up some corpses for your friends to use.

I like bringing Recuperation along to cover some of the degen on minions.