Scourage's MM Guide

Welcome to my MM guide. I decided to make this guide because MM is my favorite build to run, and there have been tons of posts on it recently.

Part I: MM Basics

What is a Minion Master(MM)?
A MM is a character that summons minions which can serve many different purposes (I will get into these later).

What are the different types of minions and what are they used for?
There are five different kinds of minions they are:
1. Bone Horrors - The most basic minions. Prophecies only. They are generally used for tanking purposes as they have a low energy cost and good health. Meele attackers.
2. Bone Fiends - Attack at range. A core skill. Used for damage dealing as they do more damage than horrors and stay out of direct combat more.
3. Bone Minions - This spell summons 2 minions that are meele attackers and have a lesser level than regular horrors. They are generally used for minion bombing.
4. Vampiric Horrors - A meele attacking minion that gives you life equal to the damage it does to an enemy. They have a longer recharge than the other minions but are a great source of healing.
5. Flesh Golem [E] - The big boy. Does more damage, has more health, and is a higher level than the other minions. You may only control one of these at once but they leave a usable corpse when they die. Only downside with this minion is that they atatck slower and they use up your elite slot.

What roles can a MM play in a team?
1. Damage Dealer - Taking such skills as Bone Fiends and Flesh Golem a MM can easily wipe out opponents and be the main damgae dealer of a team.
2. Tank(Meat Wall) - By using Bone Horrors, Vamp Horrors, and a Flesh Golem a MM can put up a wall of meat to take damage for you team as they destroy your enemies from the second line.
3. Minion Bomber - By using Bone Minions, Death Nova, and Taste of Death you can summon 2 minions, cast Death Nova on them, then use taste of Death to sacrifice them thus doing massive amounts of damage and poisoning
all nearby enemies.

Part II: Builds

My N/Mo MM build:

Skills:

1. Animate Flesh Golem [E]
2. Animate Vampiric Horrors
3. Animate Bone Fiend
4. Deathly Swarm
5. Death Nova/Taste of Pain/Rotting Flesh/Putrid Expolsion(depends on what im feeling like and what the situation calls for)
6. Blood of the Master
7. Verata's Sacrifice
8. Rebirth







Skill Slot #5: When and why I change these skills:

Rotting Flesh: I use this if I have a player monk in the group, as they will probably heal me better than a henchy. This is great for large groups of the same creature type, it gets degen on all of them and helps to kill them quickly.

Taste of Pain: I use this when i'm with henchies and know that im in a particulary tough mission or area that ill probably get attacked in.

Death Nova: Take this if I wanna do a little extra dmg. Cast it on any minion when its about to die. I usually cast it on my flesh golem when he's gonna die or when im gonna replace him.

Putrid Explosion: Great damage dealer. I bring it when I know there are going to be large mobs of guys. Only use this when an enemy dies in the middle of other enemies(makes no sense to summon a minion in this case b/c it will not damage each person as much as putrid will). I only use purtid if i know that it will hurt people more than my minion has the possibility to.

I do not use heal area, beacause I personally believe that it is a waste of energy and attribute points when you have vamp horrors to heal you and botm to heal minions(rather just have the 13 soul reaping). Most people would disagree with me on this point, but this is just my personal opinion.


Attributes:

16 Death(12+1+3)
13 Soul Reaping(12+1)
3 Protection Prayers(Remainder of points-only for rebirth)
*Requires both 15 attribute point quests completed





Strategy:

This build can be used to beat all of factions and just about all of prophecies with just henchies. It is a great build for questing with henchies and helping out your friends and guildies. That being said here we go:

First off cast deathly swarm(usually target a caster of some type as they have least health and armor). Also use Rotting Flesh if you brought it to kill even faster. After first target is dead animate a flesh golem. Keep targeting and killing enemies. Summoning order is as follows: 1. Flesh Golem (only can have 1) 2. Animate Vampiric Horrors (get as many of these as possible) 3. Animate Bone Fiend (only summon if Vampiric Horrors is recharging and you neeed a minion). Once you get 10 minions you can be a little more choosy about what you summon, and I tend to only summon Vampiric Horrors at this point.

Prophecies Only MM Build:

Skills:
1. Aura of the Lich [E]
2. Animate Bone Fiend
3. Animate Bone Horror
4. Deathly Swarm
5. Rotting Flesh/Putrid Explosion
6. Blood of the Master
7. Verata's Sacrifice
8. Rebirth

Attributes:
Same as previous build

Strategy:
Use Aura of the Lich to reduce sacrifices, enabling you to live longer and heal your minions more often. Only cast bone horrors if fiends is recharging(you want your army to be primarily fiends). Other than that its pretty much the same build as before.

Alternate N/Mo MM Build:

Skills:
1. Animate Flesh Golem [E]
2. Animate Vampiric Horrors
3. Animate Bone Fiend
4. Deathly Swarm
5. Heal Area/Karei's Helaing Circle
6. Blood of the Master
7. Verata's Sacrifice/Rotting Flesh/Putrid Explosion/Death Nova
8. Rebirth/Resurrection Chant








Attributes:
16 Death Magic(12+3+1)
10 Soul Reaping(9+1)
9 Healing Prayers
*Requires both 15 attribute point quests completed





Strategy:
This build allows you to heal your minions more with blood of the master and heal area. Heal area alos provides a nice self heal so you can sac more life without worrying as much. Other than that this build can be played pretty much the same as mine.

Part III: Equipment

Armor:
Scar Patterns(or energy adding armor), Bloodstained Boots, +1 to Death Magic Facial Scar

Runes:
Superior Death Magic, Minor Soul Reaping (you can use higher but I don't like to lose that much health)

Weapons:
Many different things work here. Some poeple like to add +1 to Death Magic, but I view this as a waste because it only happens 1/5 times on average and 1 lvl higher fiends, vamp horrors, or flesh golem really arent that much better. I would much rather have faster casting speed/recharge speed(helps takes down the long recharge of vamp horrors). This is my weapon set:




The Bone Spiral Rod can be obtained form the weaponsmith in Vasburg Armory or the weaponsmith in Leviathan Pits: http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Gertrud
http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Telamon

The Grim Cesta can be obtained through many collectors throughout Tyria and Cantha (sometimes appears as a Bleached Shell in Cantha), I obtained it form this collector in the Crystal Desert: http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Sir_Pohl_Sanbert

Many people also like to have a weapon that adds energy and I also find these usefull. Many wepaons like this can be found at collectors throughout Tyria and Cantha, here is a complete list of collector rewars in both continents: http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Necroma...lector_weapons

Additional Builds:
Additonal Builds can be found on the following sites:
http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Category:Build_stubs
http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Category:Unfavored_builds
http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Categor...ampaign_builds
http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Category:Prophecies_builds
http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Category:PvE_Builds


Part IV: Credits
Undead Preacher (For help with my MM build): http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s....php?t=3031906

Your suggestions and comments are greatly appreciated, but please no flaming of me or others who post here.

I don't see why you take both vamp horrors and fiends. In my opinion its best to go with one or the other. I usually break out the horrors when I'm in missions with people since they're relying on me to keep up a flesh wall instead of deal damage. I use fiends when I'm running around questing with henches to deal more damage. Mixing the two will give you a less powerful flesh wall and less powerful ranged attack. Heal area is pretty useful getting your army from place to place in my opinion, but you're right it's not necessary for making a good minion master.

1) were can I get those weapons
2) is the only 2 places i can get veretas sacrafice copperhammer and ember light camp

Quote: Originally Posted by A Leprechaun

Awesome, thanks!

Quote: Originally Posted by A Leprechaun

so where is vereta can anyone post a map pls i would be very gratefull

Added: where you can get weapons (in op)

Quote: Originally Posted by Scourage of Death

thanks its been very useful. i just made a necro a 2 days ago and this guide really helped can't wait to get to flesh golem and to tyria for verata >_<

yea verata's sacrifice kinda sux since the nerf imo. also a mm kinda needs self heal due to all that BotM spamming. my build:

Animate Flesh Golem
Animate Vamparic Horror
Animate Bone Fiend
Blood of the Master
Rotting Flesh
Deathly Swarm
Healing Breeze or Heal Area ( i use breeze for self heal)
Resurection Chant

16 Death
10 Soul Reaping
9 Healing

+5 energy +1 Death magic 20/20 staff

leprechaun: its right under the pictures of my weapons
Cory M: thanks man its good to know someone has gotten some use out of this

Kali:Inbetween fights your natural regeneration wil kkick in thus healing you as youi run between groups(if not enough space between them I often just wait a few seconds for it to heal up)

Mixing a vamp horror or two with a flesh golem and bone fiends works fine, as it provides the MM additional healing. I don't understand why anyone is against it.

While I agree that Heal Area has a high cost, when you're between fights, you don't have any ways to heal yourself without consuming your minions. You need something to counter the BotM usage when you're not actually in a fight. Heal Area isn't necessary, but something should be in there.

for someone without factions, how would this build be managed?

Use Aura of the Lich for less self sacrifice or put points into blood and use Offering of Blood for energy managment.

added: new sections on build for people w/o factions and build using heal area

is there anywhere a weapon similar to that factions rod can be found in prophecies?
i looked everywhere, and the collectors only had a 20/20 2 handed weapon, and the 1 handed trunch only had 20 recharge
maybe a green weapon or something?

sadly one can not be obtained through collectors or weaponsmiths in prophecies to the best of my knowledge but you could trade someone for one(or get someone to make you one)

[Warning: Long post! ]

I've decided to start playing GW again, having not played it since last summer. I had a N/Me then and got as far as the last mission in Maguuma, using some sort of a blood/curse build.

Anyway I want to start from scratch with a new Necromancer but I've obviously forgotten a lot and what I do remember may have changed with patches.

From what I've read MM is still a solid build to use for PvE. However despite forums being in no short supply of MM builds, I'm unsure of how to actually best progress to a build such as yours, Scourage. I was thinking to start off putting points about equally in death/blood (along with some in SR ofc) because I remember there being some effective blood skills pre-Kryta like life siphon, shadow strike, dark pact and blood well. But still using the early death skills like deathly swarm and bone horrors. Then decrease use of blood as I progress to Kryta, where I can drop all blood in favour of the MM skills available there: BotM, VS and fiend/minion. Is this a decent plan? Or should I change some things?

I also just realised there's the small matter of a secondary class . I remember N/Mo being the standard MM before, but after this 10 minion nerf I'm not sure. I was thinking to go N/Mo over N/Me since I figured the former would be more useful early on for PvEing as a MM and that I can always switch to a N/Me build later in the game where it's best (?) for PvP and certain difficult PvE.

I'd really appreciate any advice you can send my way.

(BTW, Where can I get this 20/20 collector's staff I've heard so much about?)

alrite although i dont have access to that factions weapon, im ending up using the truncheon and grim cresta from these places in prophecies

http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Arliss_Vaughn

http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Volsung_Stoneketil

you can easily gain the scalps and wings with a 55 monk/necro or a warrior with a troll farming build
you may be lacking the 20% faster cast, but on a 1 second spell like botm it doesnt make that much of a difference, and youre still getting the 40% for faster recharge