AotL or Jagged Bones?

This thread may be of interest for this discussion.

I use BiP instead, because I build around the idea of time efficiency (in terms of opportunity cost) and I believe Jagged Bones/Aura of the Lich/Discord is a false trilemma.



AotL and Jagged Bones prioritise Death Nova synergy by trying to ensure a constant supply of minions. The problem is Death Nova also has a 2 second casting time and this creates the infamous "necromancer lagging behind" everyone problem, which I can't stand. They also love wasting time by casting it on party members and there's no way to stop them from doing this except by disabling it to micro, which is counterproductive. Dwayna's Sorrow is a lot better if you want the Necromancer to actually do anything other than Death Nova, but it's stronger on an actual healing prayers user. 1 guaranteeable Death Nova every 45 seconds or 15 seconds just isn't appealing enough for me.

Sure, a steady stream of minions ensures a constant stream of energy for the Necromancer, but so does a steady stream of enemies dying. I find it a little more effective to ensure a steady stream of energy for everyone else (and having the Minion Master nearly-always be one of the last people to die doesn't hurt either).

Blood is Power is probably one of the strongest energy management skills in the game and it doesn't require a massive investment into Blood Magic to be effective since the 5 arrow breakpoint is at 8 Blood Magic (Incidentally, Dark Bond works just fine at 0 Blood Magic too, but it's strangely unpopular for some nebulous reason or other.), allowing you to create an effective tri-attribute spec.

Of course, I can't guarantee this build to appeal to nor work for everyone. YMMV, but do give it a go - you may be pleasantly surprised. If you can't live without Death Nova, there's nothing stopping you from sticking it on that bar instead of one of the Paragon skills instead. (I prefer a more reliable BiP chain because I don't need the damage from Death Nova.)

Well, there's nothing stopping you from taking Putrid Bile nor Death Nova if you really want them - it's not like Dark Bond has a really short duration and needs to be cast incessantly; frankly I'd rather have it than the obligatory Prot Spi that most people stick on the standard Sabway. (I'm a believer of the theory the only reason it was there in the first place was for bar compression)

Frankly, I used to use the old Sabway build extensively and it was almost always the Minion Master that got jumped, perhaps thanks to his/her using Superior runes and having less hp than the rest of the party.

I appreciate the 75% damage reduction a lot, especially in HM. It's nice not to have your entire minion army turn red just because your MM got instagibbed because he/she was sitting in one place casting Death Nova (whee) instead of kiting.

But as I said, your mileage does probably vary vastly. I wouldn't like it half as much if I wasn't usually too lazy to pre-prot.

Yes, because 1) I run Soul Twisting and Shelter and 2) A skill that's actually used is more useful than a skill which is never used. Death Nova usually takes precedence over Protective Spirit mid-battle if both are put on a necromancer. If you just took a spike and you're at 30% life, the necromancer is going to be casting Death Nova on you, not Protective Spirit.

And I don't really believe attribute spreading is an issue. I've only used the one Superior Death Magic rune in that build. Everything else is minor and Command and Blood are perfectly viable at the levels they're at. Frankly, I'd rather have reliable energy for my party (Because unless you're running specialised builds, crap happens. Power Drain and WN/WN on Monks is not a terribly reliable solution for Energy management. In fact, you have less of an attribute spreading issue on other characters because you don't have to dip that heavily into e-management.) than have to use one of three janky Death Magic elites, none of which add much to my party as a whole other than slightly altered minor minion options.

Edit: The funny thing is that it's perfectly capable of doing its job as a Minion Master. You still get a lot of good meat shields that bodyblock enemies and do a wee bit of damage; You just get better side-effects on the rest of your party. I've been extensively testing that build out and reworking it over the last month and I can say confidently that I notice no tangible difference between it and running an AotL/Jagged necromancer as far as minions are concerned. It wasn't an issue even in corpse-light areas, although ST might be partially to blame for that.

It's a choice between:
- Party energy, no damage other than minions and weaker secondary skills; and
- Stronger minions, damage skills and stronger secondary skills.

For clarification, I don't advocate putting Prot Spirit on an MM.

No it's not. -_-

It's more a choice between

-Party energy

and

-Slightly stronger Death Magic skills (AotL) and a near-guarantee of 1-2 slightly more reliable minions.

As I said, there's absolutely nothing wrong with putting Death Nova and Putrid Bile on that bar if you want. Just remove the paragon skills, which are entirely there for convenience, and Dark Bond is optional too, especially with ST (but useful). Drop all the Command points into Soul Reaping, put SoLS on the bar where Dark Bond or Taste of Death are and it's near-indistinguishable from a Jagged Bones user as far as damage is concerned.

At 18 Death Magic, they still hurt a heck of a lot, AotL's +1 Death Magic doesn't suddenly improve the damage drastically or anything, and it's equivalent to Jagged Bones. If you kill and move fast enough, there isn't a noticeable difference in terms of damage at all.

I think we can agree (correct me if I'm wrong) that Empathic Removal / Signet of Removal are sometimes preferred to AotL / Jagged Bones on the minion bomber.

As much as I like AotL, Death Magic elites are just not that good. Taking BiP is fine imho.