Decay Rate of Minions (Necro)

I haven't played much using minions, since the decay rate made them mostly too high maintenance for the benefit -- mostly I've just used them to initiate combat from a distance.

I can't remember but I'd guess they're tied to Death Magic -- how significantly would bulking up that rating help? Also, are there any necro spells that could sustain them without too much sacrifice of health or energy?

And do other minions have a better decay rate than typical Bone Horrors? I might try this a little further next beta.

The higher your magic level the higher level minion you spawn and the higher level minion last longer. Take a look at my minion. Level 16 Bone Fiends.
I don't think there very usefull in PVP, but in quest they are.

i have a theory about that decay rate, although i have never played a summoning necro. it used to be thought that the decay rate was based upon the number of minions that you have up, but i have heard many think otherwise. i do not think decay rate is tied to the attribute, only the level of the summoned minion, and therefore total health of that minion.
what i propose is that the minion decay works the same way as player passive health regeneration. when you are not using skills, attacking a target, or getting hit, you will gain health pips at a set rate, (not sure what it is). that means that your health increases exponentially as time passes. i believe that minions, on the other hand, gain degen pips if they are not doing anything. if the degen rate was fixed, meaning that they had a set number of degen pips at any given time, they would be degenerating during battle as well, which i doubt is the case. the exponential decay would also explain most observations of minion health over time.

If you are really worried about this and want to base your build heavily on minions, I'd go with N/Mo. As the picture above shows they are the best at keeping them alive.

I played a PvP E/N last beta and my necro skills were mostly focused on minions. While they aren't as effective in PvP as they are in PvE, and I had a lot harder time keeping them alive than if I was a N/Mo, they did come in very handy and I had a lot of compliments from teammates and opponents at my skills of keeping a good army (5-10 depending on skill and corpses) alive and effectively aiding my team with damage.

And if you really don't care about your minions staying alive for a while, bring Death Nova

Edited to add: I agree that it seems the more minions the higher degen. My big armies became a waste of time once there were no opponents around because they died too quickly.

Animate Bone Minions + Death Nova + Taste of Death = Happy time!!!

or u could make some sort of monk/necro build using minions and then once u get 4 minions cast mending on them to stop there degen, creating super minions.

then use signet of devotion and other signets to gain energy fopr may small energy spells(blessed signet) and then use necr signets and all, may work

more of a crazy build, lol.

I've personally found that the best way to keep minions alive, even with an enormous army, is to use Verata's Sacrifice. This past BWE I played a Necro for the first time since E34E and found them to be much improved, particularly due to the addition of Verata's Sacrifice. It has the added benefit that they don't need to be next to you for it to work and I think they automatically get regen 10 regardless of how much degen they would have normally.

The picture above has mending on all of the bone fiends... that's the first Kryta mission after LA, and there is a mending statue... no monk could keep all those alive without "heal party" with them at all times (and I don't even know if that works on fiends)

I used this in PvP, as it helps when they are not near you, but it still didn't keep them alive forever. Once it wore off, they ended up dying before I could recast it (30 second recast I believe). And I tried the necro area heal for minions, but I found it useless. If you could use Arcane Echo (mesmer spell) and then Verata's Sacrifice it might work out also, but I still feel N/Mo is your best bet (I don't suggest Mo/N as I think your group would want you to focus more on healing/protecting than raising and managing minions, but doesn't hurt to atleast try it).

Thanks everyone for the ideas. I wasn't sure if having Monk as secondary would be feasible, as I'm not sure which spells will even work on minions. But it's something to try.

I didn't have much success with Bone Fiends with my W/N. Either I'd have to put some serious points into the skill or have a healer that would keep them alive longer for them to be better than my other spells. Sometimes they were useful.

The life degeneration on minions is based on how long the minion has been alive- it's variable and independant of your death magic attribute. However, higher level minions have more health, meaning it takes longer for them to die through their life degeneration. You can't cancel out the degeneration with mending- the best that will do is eat away your energy while keeping your guys alive for a bit longer... eventually their degeneration will grow so large that it's impossible to keep them alive. I've found Verata's Sacrifice and Heal Area to be the best methods of keeping your minions up between battles.

Verata's sacrifice only adds +10 regeneration, it doesn't stop their degeneration at all- I've had fiends alive long enough that when casting Verata's Sacrifice, they didn't regain any health- it just stopped them from losing health for a while. One benefit though, is that Verata's Sacrifice affects all friendly minions, so if you have 2 characters in your party with high death magic, it's possible to keep all of the minions in your party at +10 regeneration almost constantly.

As far as how many fiends you can keep up, I've often ran around with about 10-12, rasing new ones as the old ones died. You can keep this up in many missions or EA's, though you'll occasionally run into places where you've got a pretty long hike between groups of enemies, where you'll start losing your minions, and will have to start building up again.