Help with my Minion Master

My build is designed to keep a large, healthy-ish army of Horrors and Fiends.

My current stats are:
Death Magic: 16 (with superior rune of Death Magic)
Soulreaping: 12 (with minor rune of Soulreaping)
Healing: 9

Superior rune of vigour.

1. Deathly Swarm
2. Deathly Chill
3. Verata's sacrifice
4. Blood of the master
5. Animate bone horror
6. Animate bone fiend
7. Heal area
8. [Need Help]

I need some help deciding what weapon/items I should be holding in my hands.
Ideally, I would like to boot up my Death Magic, and perhaps decrease the regen time of spells. Also, energy is an important factor for my build, so this would be useful.

I was thinking Bordak's Bone Cesta, Bortak's Bone Staff or Bortak's Bone Claw?

My other problem is my 8th skill. What do you think? Res? Taste of Death?

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Note: I DO NOT want to change my build from n/mo, so no suggestions saying 'go n/r, n/e, n/me' etc please.

your skills are pretty much set up. # 3,4, and 7 are the main ones needed to keep your minions up. You HAVE to bring Res or rebirth etc if you are going with a group. I personally like Death Nova, Putrid Explosion, or Spinal Shivers, just for the fun of it, and when you get up against boss' or wurms in Tomb and healing your minions is not going to matter. (but I use SS also for beginning of levels etc).

Currently, I can't afford any of the Bortak's stuff so I am using collector stuff from desert. I have a 20/20 staff and a 20 trucheon/20 cesta I use. The 20/20 staff I have upgraded with +5 Energy and 18% +1 DM (but I get a lot of lvl 19 minions).

I use the desert collector bone staff outside of Elona Reach. its a decent 20/20 death staff, just add the health and energy mod and its cheaper than those greenies. I paid 400gp for 5 minotaur horns to get it.

Bortak's does look nice, but I don't like how it's limited to only death. If you only plan to be MM, that's fine, but I prefer Morgriff's. Same death req, but it gives bonuses to all spells. I'll admit the lack of energy bonus is disappointing though.
You'll definitely need a res spell, but I'm not sure about the other skills. Having 2 attack spells seems a bit excessive, especially since you'll need to focus energy on raising and maintaining minions. Taste of death might be a good idea.

I think I'm still undecided on if I'll stay MM or not. So waisting 50k on Bortaks Staff seems kinda foolish to me. I haven't seen Bortaks Staff, but I know the stats. What does it look like compared to a regular Bone Staff?

wsmcasey just get staffs etc from the desert. I know for sure there is a curse one 20/20 as well.
I think Bortaks is like the 20/20 DM staff with +7 Armor and +5 energy. Too lazy to look at Wiki.
Wicked, I have Morgriffs but I don't use it because I just get collect staffs and trucheons from the desert when I decided what I am going to run as. 10/10 compared to 20/20 is a big difference to me now.

What can you recommend if I want:

+1 death (20%)
Faster recharge time
Around +15 energy

(In addition, but not as a priority:

Faster casting time
Health bonus)

fast cast > everything
User bortak's wand and 20/20 cesta from collector. That gives you 40% fast cast chance.

Quote:

i might be wrong on that, but there is no way the amount of fast-casts im getting is 20% of my casts

Quote:

i roll with the 20/20 bone staff from outside elonas w/ upgrades (+4 head/+24 health)

i switch out to Morgriffs+Shadstone somtimes...

to cheep fer the other greenys


as for last skill, death nova or dark bond or vamp gaze

i feel if your going to use death nova add taste of death for proper detonation timing

lates and GL
punchy


oh fyi: the 20/20 curse staff collector is in skyward reach near the teleporter south of destinys gorge (lots of hydras) hes kinda tucked way back at front of teleporter (great staff...)

generally Ill only bring deathly swarm and no other offensive spell..

Ill pack rez sig and rebirth in topk simply due to rez sig being VERY NICE when the monk goes down or another party member bites it suddenly..

rebirth is there when over half the party eats dirt and you have to make the run fer your life move and come back to rez them. (usually Ill use theyre bodies to make a good escape by minioning them , its not happend often but ther have been moments when Im spammin minions left and right and three rangers get tore up by something and everyone runs off instead of holding ground and fighting through it.. even worse when ONE goes down and the monk rebirths.... UGH)

I was goofing off tonight and did ember camp and ROF. Once I had my minions up no one else attacked. I was messing around with putrid explosion and it was fun. over 100 dmg to everything around the corpse. I know no one has said SS but me but I still love it during battle.