I wanted to provide some insight into an alternative minion build not many people talk about. The deathspeaker amulet Blood surge minion build. As the vast majority of builds are CE bonespear or some variation of it, I just want people to know there are other options out there. I am not claiming this is the best build but it works in WT4, my minions survive well and is a ton of fun to play.
This build works with Deathspeakers amulet which provides a mini nova for all minions. As a true minionmancer at first the damage might look bad from the amulet but where it really shines is when it does overpower damage. The mini nova on minions also gains overpower and is cast by you so it can get some decent damage numbers. Multiply that by having 12 minions and it can delete screens.
The Build:
Skills:
Decrepify - Provides our source of slow and added damage reduction. Also gives a source for cooldown reduction.
Summon Skeleton - We wouldn’t be a minion build without having minions.
Warriors: I have finally broke down and agree reapers are the no brainer choice and seem to be better than other warrior types. Select the heavy attack cooldown.
Mages: I use Bone in my build but you can switch to cold if you want more CC and control. Cold is good for solo for that reason and does provide a vulnerable source. I have no issues keeping my bone mages alive and they do much more damage than the cold ones but I know I will get some disagreement here so if you want to use cold mages, go for it.
Summon Golem - Bone Golem, upgrade 1. It has basic attack AOE and the taunt is your way to group everyone up and provide cover for your blood surge. Also will provide a corpse or two when you cant generate them.
Army of the dead - This is used for Elites and to help resummon our army. You can probably put whatever other skill you want here but the build will struggle greatly when your army is gone.
Blood mist - This spot can probably be changed but having an oh crap button when a bunch of mortars and flying at you is great. The lack of a mobility skill on a necro makes this a good choice. Also provides fortify increasing overpower damage and healing
Blood Surge - Our bread and butter spell. Really comes online with deathspeaker’s amulet. Does good damage when it overpowers, on all of our minions. Hits twice per cast with the Blood Bathed Aspect for a total of 14 casts per use.
Aspects:
Head - Additional Mages
Boots - Additional Warriors
Chest - Hardened Bones, adds damage reduction to minions
Gloves - Reanimation provides more minion DPS
Pants - Disobedience - Increases our armor and provides a great boost to minion survivability.
Amulet - Deathspeakers
Ring 1 - Mothers Embrace - Provides more casts of blood surge. Everyone should have a copy of this. If you are lucky to get ring of Meldeln this is where I would put it. Umbral would probably work as well until you get Meldeln.
Ring 2 - Blood Bathed - doesn’t work on minions but gives you a second wave of overpower damage for free.
Weapon - Frenzied dead. For longer fights, if you can keep your skeletons alive, this will provide them with 84% increased attack speed. Your mages will be shooting machine guns with this. Your reapers will constantly do the heavy attack for huge damage.
Weapon choice: 2H Scythe. Using a Scythe is very important for this build. It has high damage, your minions don’t get your base weapon attack speed so it provides them more DPS. The main reason to use this is the guaranteed life on kill. LoK applies to minions and helps keep everyone alive. This is how my bone mages stay alive even with the massive bonus to attack speed on my weapon.
Playstyle:
Golem taunt to get everyone together, cast Decrepify, wait for skeletons to get into the fight, spam Blood Surge, spam Summon Skeleton, repeat.
Spamming Summon Skeleton gives our army a massive heal, a DPS boost, essence generation and a use for all the corpses we have.
Cons:
Lacks some single target damage. If you don’t have corpses you won’t be able to get enough essence to spam blood surge. For this reason its sometimes good to switch to the corpse generation Reapers. This will help for packs of elites and bosses you can’t generate corpses fast enough for.
Lacks Vulnerability - If you are in a group this is less of a concern because almost everybody will provide it for you. However, you can switch to iron golem or cold mages to fill this gap here if you have a lot of bonuses for vulnerability damage.
Ring of Meldeln - This is pretty hard to find. Still haven’t got one but i would expect this would be a huge increase in DPS for me. Probably will need to do some changes to build when i get it as my LH on blood surge and mist is very low currently.
Deathspeaker’s Amulet - Obviously a requirement. You can’t use this build without it.