MM-ories

Simple answers:
All forms of PvP are distinct from PvE. i.e.: PvP ≠ PvE
Death Nova is not an appropriate skill for human minion masters for a number of reasons.
Blood of the Master spam becomes viable in PvE assuming you have a half-way decent backline.


So you are of the opinion that a human MM should be trying to use Death Nova?

Speaking from personal experience... Yet you have somehow failed to grasp the very basic differences between PvP and PVE, MM and MB.
The fact that a you in your vast experience have never met a capable human necromancer is somewhat troubling and a dire indication of the level of general PUGs in this late stage of the games life.
The Ability for human Minion Masters to utilise PvE only skills means they are not only a viable alternative to a hero they are in all ways a far superior addition to a team.
That you advocate human MM's using Death Nova instead of maintaining or producing a stronger, more powerful minion army is quite frankly frighteningly stupid.

The most respect I have ever had for MM is a Rt/N with SoS, Bone minions and those upon creation skills Rt's have. It heals party members, brings good damage, creates good diversions AAAND it also is a perfect example of interclass usability XD

Heres a screen from back in 2005, in Sorrows Furnace

I seriously misread the title... thought this was a completely different thread..... memories... :P

I never said that.

You decided to diss me for no good reason - there's no reason to say "you suck" unless you're 12 years old.

Personally I don't play MM on my necro because my other options (Curses and so on) are better when my hero can cast Death Nova in a way a real person couldn't.

You might disagree on what the best way to play a MM is, but that's ultimately just an opinion because it varies depending on what you are trying to accomplish.

Do you mean in pvp? I've never really done much pvp MM.

But, I take offense to what you said about MM heroes being better. I've done a lot of pve (although I have taken long breaks from the game) and there is just no way.

I don't use Order of Underneath, I like Aura Lich now. We're all different, though, of course. And I don't use pve skills, either, so keep that in mind.

But let me state what I've learned from both doing MM/death (it's basically my favorite thing to do and I can make a build for any pve any mode as long as there are some corpses. Death magic dmg is insane...) and also watching heroes do it.

Heroes in general have very limited AI. I believe that the priority of what they cast is defined by energy. Meaning that they will not wait until they regen... they will just cast what they have energy for. Of course, with necro, that is negated slightly because of Soul Reaping. However, since Nova is a low energy skill, hero MMs tend to get stuck on it and that is one of the reasons why people say they are so good at targeting it and Jagged Bones.

They DO understand when a minion is dying, so that is a plus, but the thing is that when I play MM I focus on trying not to let my minions die. If they do die, I feel I have failed... and that usually only happens when I am getting chased around and can't spam. Or when I make new minions.

A large amount of these hero AI problems are solved by supporting as a human MM. So, if you take your human MM and bring another MM (one to cast nova, if you want or jagged... and to summon when you can not) for support it's not bad. Can probably support 30ish minions with botm. I learned that in Viz Square... but about 22 is great because it's not as risky to sac yourself to death during spam.

So, anyway, the AI WILL prioritize nova over making minions. It will get stuck at low energy. And it will not heal the minions properly. Not to brag, but I am pretty sure I could change your mind about human MMs.

Another thought, a blasphemous one, even. I personally believe MM is more viable now than it was back in 2005. The minion cap is bad, but botm spam is much more effective of a heal than even 30 second +10 from old vsac. I personally use both, it makes a difference esp in hard mode. And the minions have become so freaking powerful. I remember when I'm practically orgasm when I got a 19 minion from a +1 20%. Now we're getting like lvl 21s and 22s. It makes a huge difference. They hit harder and last longer.

To whoever said curses are not necessary, I like bringing a curse necro. Mark of Pain and Barbs tend to really work well (even if the hero rarely targets them correctly.) I haven't tried splinter hero, though, that may be better.

And to complete my wall of text, death magic offers so much armor ignoring damage, too. I've tried to use it and tried to use barbs/MoP myself, but there's just too much going on with blowing up corpses and raising minions as well as keeping my enchantments up and spamming. Maybe I have an over inflated view of myself, but from experience MM is not as easy as it seems; it requires concentration and constant usage of skills.

-CM

Me saying "then you suck" was out of line. I admit that. Is the entirety of your argument based on that?
But what I disagree with (quite strongly) because it's completely flawed is what I read from your (and other) posts, specifically:
Heroes with Minions > Humans with Minions.

This may not be what you're trying to convey but it's certainly what I'm seeing and what others appear to be seeing.

I'll agree that running minions is not necessarily optimal for a human, but it's not because your hero can spam Death Nova better than you.
The reason why we run hero minion bombers is because running minions is a job heroes do at a passable level and with their ability to spam Death Nova we get returns when the minions die.
You make the impression that Death Nova triggering on dying minions is all that makes them worthwhile and therefore because heroes spam Death Nova, they're better with minions than me - this is simply false.

Death Nova is a crutch - if it weren't for the fact that heroes could spam it then the offensive aspect of the template falls apart for them and a lot of people simply wouldn't bother with them.


This is ultimately why I said what I said.
If a hero performs better than a given human, then that human is doing something very wrong. I can think of two things that heroes can do better than humans, one is spam interrupts (which they do so indiscriminately) and the other is spam Death Nova on minions (which they can do because they don't need to click on things) - neither are things a human has to do to best the hero in the field of disruption and minion damage respectively.

Brings back memories!

Going off my experience human MM (Minion Masters) are, in the hands of a capable player better than hero MM's. Order of Undeath with a few vamp horrors to cover the health loss, combined with fiends pump out some nice dmg. EBSOH also adds to the dmg you can pump out.

MB's (Minion Bombers) are better run imo by heroes. It’s not impossible but it can be a pain to manually death nova minions, especially if you have all 10 engaged in combat and all bunched up. The ai controlled heroes just don't have this problem.

If i am not running a necro primary myself pretty much every time (unless there are hardly any corpses- so rare) i venture out to do a mission, or a vq a MB is always one of my hero slots. AOTL with masochsim creates some decent tanks, and if/when they are killed then death nova does the job.

On my Primary Necro i tend to run a Order of Undeath MM, if the group i am in already has a necro MM and their bar is good i will switch to SS, or mark of pain nuker. If I’m doing HM and there is loads of nukes- smiting or other aoe then i won't run a MM.

It is kind of basis and whole point of running MB build, of course build will fall apart without this skill...

It is as if you called bone fiends in human-run builds a crutch...

The Minion Bomber template itself is a fall back because heroes cannot run MM builds effectively in Hard Mode. Having your minions die to get some damage out of them is somewhat undesirable.
Without Death Nova the template could not exist and the build would lose most of its damage - leaving it with defensive support and there are better options for that.

Kinda, I don't see me posting a simple sentence warranted that.

We obviously see this from different perspectives, as I mentioned in my previous post it's situational what is the best MM build for a certain area - and I do agree with you that for a non-bomber human IS better.

And btw. others aren't seeing my post they are jumping on your bandwagon

But the simple fact is that the minion oriented spells "Jagged bones, animate bone horrors, death nova" on a Hero is one of the best uses there is.

At least for me, point of running it is not to run it as "fallback" plan, it is trully bombing pattern. Because: why try to fix broken stuff when you can simply replace whole build with something completelly different (with, say, spirits which heroes do know how to run decently).

Novaed minions are incredibly good at softening bigger clusters and function as likeness of pain inverter (most aoe casting enemies simply do not survive cluster of novaed minions)

(they also heal a lot if you use dwaynas sorrow btw)

You are still looking at it from MM perspective (minions dying being undesirable ...). Not really good way to judge it because aside investing to DM, they have little common (as in, zero skills used in common), not even same purporse.

It seems that some people have never seen the damage output that a OoD human Minion MASTER can achieve....its way above what a hero bomber can output..

Heros micro death nova like an savante! and refuse to spam OuD and havent access to Ebsoh. So you let the hero bomb instead as they can do that with a pretty good level of success..

Heroes bomb as they don't use the master skills very well at all, and humans don't bomb as the setup is weaker and mind numbingly micro heavy running nova. Thats about the jist of it, as Xeno has already posted.

They are basically a totally separate style tho, with the only similarity been minions and death magic. like comparing a prot to a heal monk.

*must dash will finish post later!

Actually they do have the same purpose.
There are two reasons people take minions and without both of them, there's not much reason to invest into them.

1. Detract damage away from your team.
2. Deal damage to the enemy.

A minion bomber build does very little of 2 whilst it's performing 1. When the minions die, 1 is no longer going to be fulfilled but 2 is going to spike for a brief instant.

An OoU MM is going to be fulfilling both 1 and 2 very well whilst he's keeping up a reasonable minion count.

Both builds are affected by untimely minion deaths and both have little to do when there are no corpses left and all their minions have been obliterated (these are scenarios that do come up).


There's a problem though - I cannot think of a place or even hypothetical circumstance where I would say a perfectly run bomber build is superior to a well run MM build.*


Edit:
*When I made this statement I was working under the assumption (like I always do) that I'm playing with competent players or I've built for it (should I be H/Hing with me as a MM). A trivial situation in which I would concede that running OoU would be a bad idea is if I was in a truly terrible pickup group with a backline consisting of people who thought Orison of Healing and Heal Other are amazing skills and think that Prots are a waste of time when I'm attempting to do something in HM. Due to the sac costs of running an OoU bar I wouldn't recommend it at all.

There's a reason for that. The area was more densely populated than other areas of the game, meaning that corpse exploitation was more potent there than in other locations. Also, the monsters there had no AoE with which to quickly wipe out minion armies.

That's because the local optimum was to run a pair of nukers. With competent tanking and an optimal OoB Monk bar, you could run four players instead of five. The pair of nukers could spike out mobs faster than the Necros with less risk. The long recharge of Meteor Shower wasn't a problem due to long walks between fights (especially if you were smart enough to use Serpent's Quickness), and the series of KDs prevented damage, kept the monsters in place and stopped enemy monks from healing.

The catch is that everyone had to know what they were doing (especially the tank) and run the right bars. There wasn't much margin for error with a single Monk and only one copy of Rebirth, so your garden-variety pug was usually better off with the Necros.

Also, once the AoE nerf hit the Necros were clearly the better option.

EDIT: Ah, Minion Factory. Amusing gimmick.

Excel's minions in Halls.




nah, not OP'd.

There was no risk... if the tank was holding the gear what risk was there?

I agree sort of about the AoE simply because they would just stand in a maelstrom.

Death magic damage is insane, all the nuker had to do was drop 1 person. Kind of like in Tombs pve, too, because the way the aggro balled you'd already have rotting flesh on everyone, then the first guy would drop (the purpose of having a nuker), and you'd put down well of suffering and spam putrid. Plus after the first mob you'd also have minions attacking. I can't fathom how one more nuker would be better than (or even equal to) that.

I actually ran OoB back then (although I should have gone with a targeting curse like MoP.) I think my bar was something like oob, horror, fiend, vsac, putrid, wos, rot, strip enchantment. Trust me, man. The AoE damage of -10 degen plus 126 armor ignoring dmg every (not counting quick recharge) 5 seconds owned plenty of mobs.

The one downside was, of course, I'd always be screaming KILL THE BINDER. But after a few runs people understood why.

-CM

Are you talking about an orders necro or an Order of Undead? I think it's the latter and in your hurry mistyped it
I tried to run it once after reading it here or pvx but never got the hang of it. Even with soulreaping it seems very nrg unfriendly.

since ppl seem to be posting their screenies, i thought i'd do the same (i wish i had some from my sf/topk days).

by no means was i trying to be clear as fast as i can, but rather was just a test i did for fun to see if i could hit 30 minions with my necro heroes. i used mes skills, but this was done before the mess buff/confusing images nerf (it used to be a cheap 5en aoe hex).

Gear farming was not introduced on the first day.

If you had the right skills and the tank and nukers knew what they were doing, you could knocklock groups for 15 seconds and have them all dead by the time the second MS exhausted. I want to say that the bar was something along the lines of | Glyph of Energy | Meteor Shower| Fireball | Incendiary Bonds | Rodgort's Invocation | SQ | Fire Attune | Sig |. Basically, one nuker uncorked the first Shower while the other got the burning going and pumped damage. Then that nuker started the second Shower about 7 seconds in (without 40/40 up) while the other one pumped damage. SQ was optional; it enabled you to be fully recharged on shorter walks but introduced the risk of time consuming mop-up. I think Searing Heat was the alternative there, but I could be remembering wrong. Fire Attunement was a necessary evil; without it, you'd have to go to batteries and it would take too long to be ready for the next fight.

Why kill only one monster, then wait around for -10 degen and Putrid to clean house, when you can get them all in one fell swoop?

The catch, of course, was that the tank had to be good enough to not die when balling the critters into nearby range. That took some skill and a focused bar.

Not to change the subject, but since we're on this subject.

What are the advantages of Sabway over Discord? I'm looking at the builds on wiki and there's not that much difference. Yes, one hero is running curses. I ask because I've been using a Discord team with henchmen to vanquish Cantha for a title and so far it's been a breeze (except for Raisu Palace, I think it was... that ele boss raped us. I need to remember to bring pain inverter).

Sorry for the noob question. Sorry if OT.

Long story short, Sabway is more physically oriented. It's attractive for physical characters, because they deal big damage (which Sabway lacks) and have synergy with the physical damage buffs Sabway runs. The team can stand up to mobs for a long time, but requires you to supply damage and micro certain hexes.

Discordway is a fast, spammable spike. It is generally more attractive for caster professions that can make the most of Assassin's Promise and the ability to repeatedly spike single targets with PvE skills. You can run Asuran Scan on a physical character with Discordway, but you're giving away a lot of the build's efficacy if you're not running an Assassin's Promise caller. It's a little less effective at staying alive than Sabway, which means that you have to maximize damage output and kill quickly to stay upright against tough mobs.

Yes, it's OT, so let's minimize this discussion and not hijack.

Oh I appreciate the skill involved, but that doesn't mean I will find it fun, still bores me to tears much like soccer.

And yeah that's why I said tennis.


The reason MM can beat out pretty much every other build PvE wise and why there should also be a spot for one on most HM teams is: When you have 5-10 extra bodies taking and dishing out damage, that beats 1 high damaging nuker. Sure you can nuke some things and kill them before they kill you in HM, but not everything. Where as a MM in a place with bodies can dominate no matter what they face (unless it's another death magic enemy I suppose, but even then). I mean, even if the minions didn't do damage or couldn't damage from dying they'd still be mega useful because when enemies focus on the 10 minions, the rest of your team can dominate that enemy and then 1-2 more minions pop up.

Throw in a SoS hero with that and it's like having up to 15-16 more bodies to spare instead of your 4, 6 or 8. And if you bring more than one MM and you have an area with a lot of enemies like shown in that screeny by snaek earlier, well then you have up to 30+ bodies on top of your 8 and you will steam roll pretty much everything guaranteed. Even more so if you bring pain inverter and watch as the enemies kill themselves when they aoe your minions. Bringing a nuker or 3 nukers doesn't give as much of a guarantee. Course..if all 3 necro's die..well then yeah those nukers would probably be a better bet..but eeh how often will that happens with 30 minions out haha.

Hmm, I didn't learn about the goodness of Death Magic until late into Prophecies. It was probably around 2006 and I was a poor elementalist still on the first playthrough. I wanted to explore and do quests, so I joined a PUG in the Southern Shiverpeaks, headed out toward far outposts like Granite Citadel that held mysteries to me. This was at a time when I thought the area was certain death, and so I looked upon other players for help to get anywhere. The MM had level 18s and I was trying to understand what the group was talking about. It went something like this:

Guy 1: (before we set out) You got lvl 18s?
MM: Ya, lol. Only noobz don't have them.
Guy1: lol yeah, 1 dmg. (must have been with a noob MM?)
Me: (??? level 18 only minions that will damage enemies here. mental note)

From then I pretty much felt MMs were godly and as good to have as a Monk in the party. That was also back when lots of people ran bone fiends.

Vast lol, no, just my personal xp of mm's, Olias is mine, I don't play much with humans outside guildies etc. the ones I have encountered been quite pathetic. And like I said, about JQ, maybe I just never came across one who was a hardcore mm.

So much venom, why?

Your US?

Soul Reaping.

Yummy.