Non-minion 7H general build for SoS spirit spam player doable?

Somewhat new to the game, played a little over 2 weeks and working my way through the prophecies campaign. I finished the others.

The 7H builds with minions certainly work, but I find the slow speed of the minions really annoying, having to wait for them all the time. I play a SoS spirit spammer.

So is there any way to get away with a (predominantly) caster/ranged team without minions to act as meat-shields for the hard areas/missions?

Yeah, I hardly ever use minions anymore. You can bring a ritualist similar to http://www.gwpvx.com/Build:Rt/any_Soul_Twisting_Hero in order to take some of the damage applied to your party.

I haven't ran a MM for a while now. I currently run:

W/D Enduring Scythe
Mo/Me UA Healer
Me/Rt Panic
Me/N Ineptitude
Me/Rt Esurge
Rt/P SoS Resto
Rt/* ST Prot
E/P Searing Flames

I imagine you could work around something like this, maybe:

Rt/* SoS (You)
Mo/* UA
Me/* Panic
Me/* Ineptitude
Rt/* ST Prot
*/* Dmg
*/* Dmg
*/* Dmg

The biggest problem with minions is that the MM will constantly stop to cast death Nova on them.

Sometimes he'll just stand out of aggro range casting it over and over, never even letting them
get into attack range.

If it looks like that's the problem, you might want to disable DN and activete it only after the
minions start attacking. Or even replace it with Putrid Bile it that's too much microing for you.

I've run some minionless builds, (pvxwiki is a good place to get something to start out with)
but I really prefer to run with minions most of the time. Not only because they absorb damage
and draw fire from the rest of the team, but it also is a good way to deprive opponents of exploit-
able corpses.

Slow Minions may be annoying (as is the death nova/heal spamming that heroes sometimes do when they're around). However, the reason minions are used so often is not for their acting as a meat shield (spirits and pets do this at least as well, sometimes better) or the damage the deal (spirits and pets definitely outmatch this). The real reason they are in all the meta builds is because their death activates soul reaping on necromancers, fueling the machine. While its certain possible to run teams without them and succeed, you'll need to build in a lot more e-management (which usually means less damage as well) if you want to use casters.

That being said, you might consider running some more unconventional teams, like the old BP-ranger teams (works quite well if you're good at balling foes up with spirits) or some crazy yellow-way idea (which operates with virtually all warriors and paragons). I think PvX used to have some of these builds, but they may have been removed. However, if you check around online you'll probably find some variants still around.

As long as your team has enough power to sustain a decent kill rate during skirmishes, the extra triggers from minions isn't cruicial and a nec resto can comfortably manage with sols to top up.

Anyway, regarding the TC's question, you'll want to make a few minor changes to how you play, such as swapping out one spirit for Armour of Unfeeling if you're not taking it already, because your spirits will probably be the ones taking the initial hits most of the time. However, between whatever cover your mes midline is taking and weakness/shadow of fear, you've still got enough defense that you can literally slot in the ST rit as suggested and continue to chug along happily without any real problems.

You don't have to include a MM if you have a good enough team setup. On other hand, I find a MM to be very useful in harder 4-man areas in HM. A ST rit is not as effective as a MM with protective spirit in those cases.

As for the MM being too slow, that is nothing that a good flagging can't solve. While I would admit that a MM generally requires more micro than a ST rit, the extra damage and meat shield supplied by the MM makes him more useful in HM 4-man areas.

Playing WoC in 4-man areas, it becomes harder to protect your defensive spirits (e.g. Shelter) from coming under attack as you have fewer bodies in your team without a MM. And yes you should be pulling and flagging with or without a MM in the harder 4-man areas anyway.

If you play SoS, your spirits are enough meatshield.
As stated above, a ritualist hero with shelter and maybe other defensive spirits should be enough to keep your caster team from taking too much damage.
I occasionally take Stand Your Ground on a hero too, if I feel I need even more defense.

EDIT: A problem you might encounter when taking minions is that they overaggro. I ended up ditching my MM in HM Rescue at Minister Cho's Estate, because the groups are close to each other and minions tended to aggro too much. So if taking minions in difficult 4-man areas, see to it that you pull groups far enough.

Thanks for all the replies, lots of good feedback. I'll start trying the things out.

Since the introduction of 7 hero teams so many people have believed and said they "outrun" their necromancer heroes along with SoS and SoGM and that they would be faster without them. I've been there myself.

It's bullshit, SoS, SoGM and AoTL Death bombers are so all-powerful they should not be left out of any team. With the strict exception of ball-and-spike teams (SF Sin, melee characters) and even then they should only be left out if you are exceptionally good at what you do.

In other words if you're not EFGJack himself, or better, keep the damn necro in team.

The main reason not to run MM on spike-oriented builds is because they don't provide any spiking power and minions can mess up pulls and balls. People often replace SoGM with ST if they are moving too fast for their spirits. You don't have to be EFGJack to run tank n spank builds or even normal spike builds anyways...

Sounds like you should drop death nova and load up Fall Back on your necromancers, that will solve 90% of problems.

Also, keep in mind that if minions are lagging behind you can always whip out a bow and pull your enemies toward them. This is actually better for aggro purposes. With multiple MMs enemy groups die so fast that in many areas I don't even bother fighting myself, I'll just run around aggroing 3 or 4 groups and pull them towards my group.

Quote: Originally Posted by Relyk

You don't have to be EFGJack to run tank n spank builds or even normal spike builds anyways... No, but you have to be exceptionally good at balling up mobs to justify removing MM/Spirit spammers. And by exceptionally good I mean exceptionally good, not just above average.

If you miss even just 1 mob per pull when doing mixed groups, or spend too long time to do perfect ones (which really is a much bigger problem then doing imperfect ones), you're almost always better off bringing mixed DPS.

And also, between splinter weapon, player AOE attacks, ancestor's rage and 2-3 mesmers, you got enough damage to take down good balls nearly instantly anyhow.

If you want to ball while using MMs, just use shadowsteps and go in a few seconds earlier. You won't get a 100% ball, but you can get a minimum of 1 caster + all melee on you before the minions get within aggro range. This is by far the fastest way to dispatch most groups, you waste almost zero downtime trying to pull mobs and all that's still left alive are a few casters, easily dispatched.

As Gabs says, you already have enough buffs and AoE damage to eliminate most balls pretty quickly, assuming you have a strong melee build. There's really no reason to drop much more generally-useful characters in order to amass more AoE that might drop a ball in 1.5s instead of 2s. Even if MMs aren't the core of your play every 11 minions is a ~5000 HP damage sponge if shit hits the fan or if you want to take on multiple mobs at once.