Necro Minions...er and stuff?

I read that monk is a good secondary for a minion necro because they can keep their buddies alive longer...

then someone hinted that a ranger secondary is better.... how is that possible.. can a ranger keep the minions alive wioth beastmastery as well as his/her pet?

As far as I know, a Ranger Secondary will not keep Necromancer minions alive much better - Beast Mastery skills only work on your Pet, not on animated minions.

Indeed a Monk secondary can help keep your minions alive, along with healing yourself when using health sacrifice skills.

I personally used a Mesmer secondary to make myself more diverse, minions for my main focus, but with Empathy/Backfire/Power Spike to disrupt enemies that little bit more.

hmmm...that's actually an interesting idea. I'd like to see what happens to minions when exposed to Edge of Extinction/Fertile Season/Symbiosis.

Edge of Extinction would make them walking bombs wouldn't it? Symbiosis and Fertile season would give them an incredible amount of health if your beast mastery was high...that is ofcourse if spirits effect minions.

*starts new character*

Its so easy leveling a necro up just buy a superior death rune put everything you got into death and soul reaping and summon away yes monk with heal spells will definatly help but its not that much farther along that you get blood of the master(quest is north of the bergen hotsprings). monk helps a little *shrug* but any secondary will work really. I did ranger didnt really use any ranger skills. Dont use edge of extinction you wont be able to keep your minnions up it will kill them all off too quick and you wouldnt get deathnova on many of them.
fertile season affects the enemy too but winnowing will help you out more because of sheer numbers.

I have a Necro/Monk, and have found that it really isn't worth the effort to try to save the minions. After a certain time, unless you have only one, you would wind up spending all your time just trying to save your minions from their rather hefty health degen. Necros can get Verata's Sacrifice eventually, anyway, which will give all your minions a +10 health regen for a brief period (at a health cost to you). That is usually sufficient to keep them up until the next fight. Of course, having a Monk secondary at that point to alleviate the effects of Verata's Sacrifice could be helpful....

I've found that it's better to simply count on their demise and throw Death Nova on them.

Hmm then wouldnt it be a good idea to have beast mastery up there then? Death Bestmaster and ?

You will always have a pet and if your pet dies you can make a minion I would imagine..

Sorry Im still new and don't know what the hell I am rambling about.

Healing spring is a decent minion healer but necros have plenty of minion healing as it is.

Winnowing with Bone Minions .. now that's something I hadn't thought of. The before insignificant damage might rack up. Along with Fertile Season to make them last a little longer - might actually make a decent damage amount eventually - hell you could even throw in Barbs if you go tri-attribute. Something to test in Pvp methinks.

I've heard from a random necro in a tombs PUG that favorable winds affects fiends. It would be hard to test though.

Is there a hot key to target the minions only? It is very frustrating to look for the minions during an intensive battle to cast Death Nova.

no hotkey to target minions :/ use taste of death to set a minion off.

when pets die it disables your skills for a certain amount of time 10sec? despite that my N/R did use them though.

healingspring isnt worth the effort just spam blood of the master and move along quickly the longer you keep a minnion the harder it is to keep them up.

I had some fun in a minnion master build for pvp its not effective but its fun we used bone fiends winnowing and favorable winds i have no idea if favorable winds or winnowing helped *shrug* everything died really fast anyhow.

Yep, Verata's Sacrifice is the key to large undead armies. Without it, I had maybe 6-8. With it, I've had over 25. All that without a monk secondary (I'm N/E).