Minion Testing and Theory Crafted Highest Damage Build

Necromancer
1

d4builds.gg/builds/b717c1f1-80c8-4360-afa7-332883616339/

I made a spreadsheet to see what the damage scaling on minions is capable of on the top end. Some things I found out in testing are as follows.

  1. Minions gain 30% of your weapon damage / dps.
  2. Minions share your weapons attack speed, for example a skeleton will auto attack every 0.9 seconds before attack speed multipliers on a slow weapon.
  3. Minions gain 30% of your attack speed, critical strike chance, and critical strike damage.
  4. Damage gained from Intelligence counts to your minions total damage roll. For example 500 Intelligence will net a 50% damage increase.
  5. Vulnerable damage is applied at max value, this is the single most powerful damage multiplier for minions.
  6. Corpse Tendril and Aspect of Grasping Veins works with your minions but applies the bonus at 30%. So if you gain 10% critical strike chance, your minions get 3%. This is still the best damage buff and vulnerable application available to us.
  7. Attack speed gained from aspects such as Frenzied Dead and Unyielding Commander’s aspect, go directly to your minions.
  8. Aspect of Reanimation is the single highest damage multiplier for your army.
  9. Thorns is applied to minions at 30% value or 40% for defenders and 50% for bone golem with their respective thorns upgrades.
  10. Needleflare Aspect does not seem to work on Thorns damage applied by your army. "Further testing required to verify.
  11. A two handed weapon regardless of attack speed will always outpace dual wielding except for instances where you are playing Thorns.
  12. The theoretical top end for a minions damage in fully optimized gear is around 50,000 damage done by your blood golems activation ability. This is using affix ranges provided on item level 825 ancestral gear. “Could be wrong, this is entirely speculative.”
  13. Thorns will probably never exceed the damage capabilities of other builds but a hybridization of thorns and damage maybe more dps. “Awaiting Blizzard to acknowledge it was an afterthought and fix it.”
  14. Nodes improving minion damage seem to be additive not multiplicative. Still a worthwhile investment to raise critical strike damage ranges though.
  15. Tested Mastery, plus skill on curse, close, ranged, and damage nodes, all to be working. They all also appear to be additive and not multiplicative.
  16. Overpower does not seem to work or activate on minions. “Further testing required.”
  17. Vulnerable damage appears to be the best stat you can put on gear besides Intelligence to buff minion damage.
  18. Skirmishers with guaranteed critical strike chance and 50% improved critical strike damage appear to be the highest damage / dps option.
  19. Bone mage upgrade 1 that increases damage by 40% and lowers cost by 10% appears to be the highest damage / dps option. Shadow simply does not attack fast enough nor does it synergize or activate shadowblight.
  20. Blood golem upgrade 2 for 25% damage reduction and 50% damage dealt for the golem itself, appears to be the best option. The aoe damage dealt from the activation is the meat and potatoes for clearing on this build.
  21. Army of the dead is the highest dps ultimate option during a stagger on bosses and largest quality of life option for keeping mages alive.
  22. Minions apply lucky hit at an unknown percentage.

Let me know if you have found anything in your own testing and I will add or correct what I think to be true. I hope this helps my fellow skelemancers as they lead their army through the burning hells and beyond.

21 Likes
2

Curious how you concluded the minions have lucky hit thing, they proc decrep aura but I legit sat there with a bunch of shield skeletons active and nothing else and just watched them for 30 minutes waiting to see if they proc mendeln and they never did.

Very nice thread overall though, thanks for the hard work.

3

Shield skeletons don’t work that is where you screwed up. Reapers do (specifically the ones that drop corpses).

All minions do not apply lucky hit the same. Even different specs of the same minion type are different.

It’s probably a bug and no one has fully tested it.

4

Yeah, I only know they can apply because of watching them attack by themselves with decrepify up and using no other skills.

5

You keep asserting they proc mendeln on their own, I’ve at least done tests to show otherwise, I’ll wait for you to run tests that prove otherwise before I continue this back and fourth with you.

On topic of decrep, yeah decrep definitely works, it’s not representative of other lucky hits though, I think it’s uniquely applying to minions, that’s what I’ve noticed at least, again, unless someone thinks they have proven otherwise.

1 Like
6

I have said they should because they proc other lucky hit and other people have asserted they do.

Multiple people have.

You prob need to go do more testing since you were using shield warriors which don’t proc any lucky hit.

Oops…

Decrep doesn’t work with all minion types. I’ve tested this myself. I just didn’t exhaustively test since I just wanted a minion that worked and some streamer told me it didn’t work, but it does.

7

again, you do the test, I’ve already arrived at my conclusion, you can believe what you want idc

2 Likes
8

It’s OK to be wrong and be stubborn.

The streamer swore to me he tested minions and they don’t proc decrepify and he was wrong too.

9

Minions are in a bad place right now. It could be exclusive as I have no other lucky hit items to test it atm. We will see if I get another source.

3 Likes
10

According to this steamer Blizzard said that minions are not supposed to proc lucky hit at all, but they do.

11

Don’t even bother with this dude. He just theorizes what works with zero experience himself. He doesn’t even have the ring yet keeps speaking on it as of he knows what procs it.

3 Likes
12

Multiple other people have said the ring procs.

You can keep denying it all you want.

You probably messed up your build so bad it doesn’t work because most people who play necro are just bad at necro.

13

decrepify works off of lucky hit. I seriously doubt they coded it differently than every single other lucky hit.

1 Like
14

I just copy paste partial post I did elsewhere directed at Singularity, but I think it’s relevant here too to get to the bottom of how summons interact:

Basically there’s LHApply % and LHProc %

Apply% is basically what you’re using to trigger the LH, so Bone Spear is 59%, CE is 47%, Tendrils is 24% using my stats. I do believe minions have an Apply% and it probably does vary.

Proc% is what you’re trying to proc, so mendeln is 10%, Hewd Flesh is 12%, Decrep is 10% to stun, 15% to CD reduce, and whatever other Lucky hits on your gear has it’s own %.

Now the question is what Proc’s are even applied to your minions, and this is where I think the issue is in our understanding, because I believe that minions don’t access our gears Procs, I think those only apply to the necro himself, whether that’s a bug or not is debatable, whether it’s even true or not idk, but my testing has suggested it is true.

However Decrep puts a debuff on an enemy, it isn’t just attached to our character directly like Proc’s on our gear is, and the debuff on the enemy GRANTS anyone that hits the enemy a Proc chance, aka, it also grants it to minions, and assuming the minions have an Apply%, they can then use it to proc decreps Proc’s. I don’t know if they can proc Hewd Flesh or not, but considering that Decrep aura Proc% is a mere 15% and it procs constantly like we all know how fast that procs with minions attacking it, then it’s safe to assume that if Mendeln could proc from minions, and it being 10%, it would be up literally 24/7, and it’s not. It’s objectively true that it doesn’t proc constantly from minions, anyone can see that, and it doesn’t matter what minions you use, it just doesn’t.

1 Like
15

No one cares what you think because you are wrong.

Lucky hit is a chance to proc and the ring has a chance to proc if lucky hit procs.

Every lucky hit item works this way.

So yeah, it has a low chance. You need to maximize your lucky hit and use the correct spells.

Durrr.

16

Minions share 30% of certain stats, on the topic of lucky hit procs though, what are you even implying, that they just “obviously” apply any lucky hit that our character has? What’s the logic, that they are treated as any other spell with a lucky hit rate, is that it? You think blizzard treat them the same as any of our abilities that have lucky hit Apply% and don’t treat them uniquely as minions?

I’m just trying to steelman your belief here because I don’t wanna be strawmaning you…

So I guess since I use Howl from Below which have a 20% chance to stun and a 25% chance to fear, even if I afk enemies should be chain CC’d right? I mean decrep have 15% chance to CD reduce and I see it going down rapidly, so whatever the minions Apply% is, it must be solid it takes no time at all for those procs to roll in from decrep, and obviously both the stun and the fear has higher %, they should proc even faster right? Isn’t that logical?

I just ran around all of fractured peaks with my army, including ReApErS because you’re so fixated on them, with both mendeln and howl equipped, and i dont click a single attack, i just let my minions attack everything. Clear half the map, zero mendeln procs, zero fears, zero stuns.

“I dont care because you’re wrong” isn’t going to cut it, stop spreading misinformation simply because you’re too lazy to test anything yourself, and hopefully you learn a lesson from this about how your own ego cloud your judgement and cause you to make a fool of yourself and harm the community your part of.

1 Like
17

Minions inherit some stats 100% from your character like armor and crit damage.

Yes they proc all lucky hit. At least some do. I posted a list of all minions and which ones do and which ones do not proc lucky hit.

18

You should change decompose for corpse explosion and tendrils for blood myst on that build. Decompose turns you into a sitting duck and can only target three enemies with the aspect. No blood myst = you are dead.

With decrepy, cold mages and bone golem you can get taunt, stunt, vulnerable, slow, chilled, and freeze from the minions, you don’t need tendrils.

If you want to buff the minions use blight multiplier instead.

A two handed weapon regardless of attack speed will always outpace dual wielding except for instances where you are playing Thorns.

If you want the minions to be strong, you must use a shield. I always use a shield and the minions are quite tanky, every time I tried to use a dual handed or a focus, they (and myself) starterd to die much quicker on WT IV even in the cases where the focus gave me more armor than the shield.

They seem to inherit the blocking chance.

19

Yeah I think this is quite big. I remember this from the beta. When I used a shield they were way stronger.

I haven’t used shield in the release.

This could help a lot in higher content. Unfortunately shields do not have armor though, which makes no sense LUL.

Using a shield also gimps their damage a lot. But you can get attack speed on a shield to partly make up for losing the 2 hander damage, which they inherit.

Also some corrections for the OP’s list:

  • Minions get 100% of your crit damage
  • They get 100% of your armor
  • They get 100% of your vuln damage
  • They get 100% of your attack speed
  • They get 100% of your fortify
  • They get 100% of your DR (I think)
  • Some minions trigger lucky hit (notably defenders and reapers). Not all of them do.
20

Yesterday I found a nice ancestral legendary focus that boosted my damage a lot, had the proper aspect, gave me some armor and seemed perfect to me, so I decided to switch my shield for that.

2-3 hours later… I switched back to my trusty sacred shield I’ve been wearing since lvl 50 or so that also buffs the minion attack speed. I was in the constant need to spam the priest, I started to die a lot, minions died a lot… it was a mess.