Necromancer / Monk Help!

I would like to make the best PVE Minion Necromancer I can but I do not have enough experience to know what works well and what doesn't. I am not even sure if Monk secondary is the way to go

I found two builds in the forums here and was wondering if someone could give me the pros and cons of these two approaches? And are there better skill choices or are these about the best? Thank you!

First: (By Freyas)
Death Magic: 12+
Blood Magic: 7+
Healing Prayers: 8
Soul Reaping: 8+

Animate Bone Minions
Death Nova
Taste of Death
Verata's Sacrifice
Blood is Power{E}
Heal Area
Healing Breeze
Restore Life

Second: (By Walder)
Nec/Mo
Death 16
SR 11
Heal 8

Animate Bone Fiend
Heal Area
Verata's Sacrifice
Blood of the Master
Taste of Death
Death Nova
Deathly Swarm
Deathly Chill

My N/Mo @ Level 20 is similar to that build, but it is nothing close to the attribute distribution.

Lvl 14 DM
Lvl 11 BM
Lvl 8 SR

I use runes :P. Main point is, its very flexible in the outcome. You basically use the minions to do the fighting for you. Where as Option #2, revolves around using bone fiends to fight for you with the ocasional death enchantments.

Thank you, ForeverGoNe. Which skills do you use for your N/Mo? And what is the difference between bone fiends and bone minions?

I didn't really like Deathly Swarm, so is there something to replace that with? I think the idea was to use that to get your first corpse. I am not sure how option 1 gets the first corpse.

With my current N/Mo minionator, I've been varying between Fiends and Minions. The difference between the two is that with Bone Minions, you get 2 lower-level minions per corpse, whereas Fiends are higher-level, ranged, and do considerably more damage. In the build of mine that you have posted, the method of dealing damage is via Death Nova rather than the actual minion damage.

Here's pretty much the two setups that I've been running(switch between the two depending on what area I'm fighting in)

N/Mo(level 20)
Death Magic: 15(haven't found a superior death rune yet- just major)
Healing Prayers: 10
Soul Reaping: 8

Animate Bone Fiends
Verata's Sacrifice
Death Nova
Deathly Swarm
Taste of Death
Rotting Flesh
Heal Area
Soul Feast/Restore Life

I generally use this setup when I'm soloing in low-medium level areas for drops- A good pack of Bone Fiends can deal some major damage, and when you see a fiend getting beat on, you can throw a death nova on them. If you're getting nailed hard, you can taste of death to keep yourself alive. I've been mostly using this setup to farm Ettin's Back outside Ventari's Refuge(there's some Shining Blade there to help you get the first few corpses), and the Flame Temple Corridor(massive swarms of Charr= lots of crafting materials). When I'm going completely solo in these areas, I usually use Soul Feast for a massive self-heal if I need it(assuming I've generated a corpse).

Animate Bone Minions
Death Nova
Taste of Death
Verata's Sacrifice
Heal Area
Healing Seed
Healing Hands/Signet of Capture/Infuse Health
Restore Life/Rebirth

I've been using this build for the later areas of the game- corpses tend to be harder to generate, and a horde of Fiends won't wipe things out very quickly- in fact most encounters will clear out a good portion of your minions, keeping you from getting enough to take down the enemies. I'll usually try to get 4-6 minions up at the end of each encounter, and death nova them as they head into combat versus the next group of enemies- They'll tank for a few seconds, and then die, both reducing the amount of damage taken by my real party members as well as weakening the groups of enemies up considerably- depending on the enemies, this can wipe out groups very quickly, or just weaken them up and poison several of them.

Thank you, Freyas. That is very helpful information

1. Do you think your N/Mo is probably the best Necromancer/Secondary and skills for solo PvE play? Sometimes, I play at my boyfriend's house with my 'more group friendly' class and group with others too. But during the week, I only have short play times and do not have time to group. So I wanted a solo character to play. Is the N/Mo it, do you think? I had thought this would be a better solo'er than W/Mo or Ranger.

2. Do you ever use bone horror's too? I really am not up on the differences between the three pets. I assumed a melee pet would work better than a ranged?

1) I think a N/Mo is one of the best classes for solo play- it can sometimes be difficult generating the first corpse to raise minions from, but once you get a few minions, it gets much easier. W/Mo and E/Mo are also good solo characters- W/Mo have a lot of survivability plus decent damage, and E/Mo tend to be more fragile, but have more damage output. N/Mo have the advantage in that you can use your minions to tank for you, but there's always the problem with getting those first couple corpses to raise.

2) I don't usually use Bone Horrors, simply because Fiends do better damage, and although Minions are weaker, you get 2 of them. Fiends are nice because they're ranged, deal similar or higher damage as minions, and since they're ranged, they don't have to shamble around trying to find a place to attack from. They'll also avoid point-blank AoE attacks used by a lot of enemies which will generally make short work of a group of melee minions, such as inferno or aftershock, though getting them to move out of a spell like Searing Heat or Firestorm is pretty much impossible.

Thank you so much for the answers, Freyas

To let you know, the first few levels of trying out this build, when your Death Magic (This attribute makes your pets higer levels, meaning more health, damage, and stay alive longer) is low, it can be very, very frustrating. Your minions will die in an easy 30 seconds or less if their fighting. You may only be able to get one or two minions up before they start to die. What Im trying to say is, you may want to look for a better source of damage at lower levels while you build your death magic.

Some nice combos/tips I've found are:
High Soul Reaping + Alot of pets. Your pets lose health over time, and eventually die, giving you tons of energy with higer Soul Reaping. Your pets will also sluaghter other mobs, meaning even more power. With high Soul Reaping, you can't lose with a Minion build.

DO NOT cast damage over time spells (DoT's) on mobs you may use an AoE on (Deathly Swarm for instance). The mob may die before you get it off, and you just wasted 10 energy for nothing. It also helps to know what your pets are hitting, so you can assist them in damage if necissary.

Hope this helps.

I've been wanting to try a N/Mo build, but I really dislike the pets. Granted I haven't leveled a necro past 10, and never used pets post searing, because they seemed so misbehaved. They don't attack what I say or they attack everything around if I happen to just be passing through. Is there some secret to a well behaved pet? I'd love to try a necro build that includes minions because death magic is my favorite attribute, but it just seems so unpredictible.

Freyas: do you still recomend this build?