I buffed them hard and used the Shielded Skeletons with a crapload of Thorns
Used Frost mages because I had the aspect that gives them Blizzard very early on. (I love that aspect)
I loved my minions. Then I started doing research.
I saw a no minion build with Bone Spear and Corpse Explosion and Blood Mist. ( I did the research because I got that aspect that allows Blood Mist to trigger Corpse Explosion)
So, I sacrificed ALL my minions for the boost and am now doing a crapload more damage to things and it feels good. EXCEPT!!!
I chose Necromancer to USE MINIONS!
If I wanted to cast spells, I would have chosen Sorcerer.
Yeah Blizzard loves the idea of forcing a class to play their class as something completely different to be effective. Want to be an effective Necro? Give up your pets. Want to be an effective Sorc? Get into melee range.
I blame the online aspect of this game, especially the PvP aspect. PvP ruins every game it touches because every class runs to the waahmbulance wherever another class kills them.
Minion mancer is just gimped hard. You’re simply better off sacrificing minions. If you really are hard headed about it you can spend 10 minutes killing a boss on Nightmare 35+ dungeons while most classes kill the boss in less than 5 but thats your choice.
Minion Necro is not competitive with the rest of the high end builds. It’s like worse than F tier. Better to play Shadowmancer/Bone build and sacrifice the useless minions.
Yea Bone spear necro is solid, but you’ll find solo play at high tier nightmare dungeons is basically impossible since Necro CC/Mobility is trash compared to Sorc. You can’t face tank mobs with Bone spear build in a nightmare 55 dungeon and Corpse Tendrils cooldown is trash for a legit CC. I did see a Bone spear player streaming duoing a 56 Nightmare dungeon with a Barb that could tank all the damage.
That isn’t really the point. The point is that it’s not really a necromancer if you’re basically forced to give up your minions to succeed at the game. It feels like you’re just playing a slower sorc.
That said, if you think bone spear hits hard, you should see what bone spirit nercros are capable of outputting. We’re past the point where resource generation is an issue, so there are a bunch of bone spirit turrets just nuking the ever living crap out of everything.
Bone spear/spirit necros are capable of face tanking on a limited basis well past tier 55, but it does drop off. They’ve got until that fortify/whatever shield they got from an aspect ends, after which they’re… boned. Blood mist isn’t enough of a saving grace to spare them. This is why so many bone spear necros ultimately wind up swapping to spirit. You don’t have to worry about taking damage if everything in the room dies instantly. …Well, assuming Corpse Tendrils doesn’t bug out and inexplicably refuse to pull the mobs into place.
I never did like the direction they went with D3 Necro in that even with your summons you still felt like some pseudo Sorc/Blood Mage. That was never what I envisioned for Necro.
Huge poison/shadow DoTs (too weak/slow to stack atm). Hard-hitting Bone spells (they did okay with this). High utility with a variety of curses and CC (curses are bit shallow and lacking atm (does anyone use bone prison???)). And a formidable minion army (big L for Blizz here, probably the biggest out of all the builds). Oh yeah I almost forgot they added a bunch of Blood type spells too but honestly… who wants to be a pure Blood Necro right now?
Honestly, i think the idea of a melee blood necro with minions is cool. Theres even a unique that leans into that playstyle.
But also, meh, i dont like to play melee
Personally I prefer a minion-less dark/occult caster for flavor/gameplay reasons but I would like to see blood/minions buffed as I think having essentially 1 build archetype for a class be strong is lame
The reality is that you cannot play pure minions build because it does not give the damage. I play pure minions, I’m in world 4 and all my items, powers and paragon are 100% focused on minions and I can barely make nightmare 22 at lvl 70 (when with other classes / builds it’s no problem).
It’s something that makes me sad, I love playing only builds of pure minions, I do it in PoE, I played rathma mages in D3… Impossible to do in D4.
I tried a lot of Things for a Zoomancer, but without avail.
Pumped something like 75 Mil. Gold into it, different Builds, enchanting Gear, upgrading it.
Unique Nova Amulet / Blood-Overpower = not working
Unique Ring, upping Lucky Hits for the Explosions = not working
Unique Thorn Armor with Thorn on nearly every Armor for a “Stop Hitting yourself Build” = not working
No Unique, just upping Minions with everything = not working
That we cant tell our Minions to attack a Specific Target isn’t in our Favor aswell.
One misplaced Damage Aura Enemy and you can stand 2-3 Minutes at one Group <.<
This was all done on a 100 Necro, so the Paragon Board was there and the Glyph were farmed to lvl 15 aswell.
It was fun planning out the different Builds, but the utter disappointment in the finished Builds ruined a lot of fun for me, all in all it was just a waste of Time to farm and grind the Money/Glyphs.
Never had a chance to go for a higher Dungeon then 45/50 with Minions.
Back to Bonespear it is…if i wanted to play a Caster solely i would have picked Sorc and not Necro.
If we want to play on higher Dungeons we need to ditch our Minions everytime, i hate it.
You can clearly tell that very little effort or thought was put into anything minion related. There should of been a whole part of the tree that focuses on minions only.
Like our ultimate passive should of been a massive minion buff to stats but with a cost to our own damage to balance it out. We have a passive that kind of opposite to this already.
Could also be why I’m getting bored with necro. That biggest part of why I like the class fantasy I can’t even play with. >.> I mean I could, but it takes way more effort then it should for a necromancer to play with the necro part of its class. lol
Check out Kripparrian on Twitch. I assume there will be YT video, maybe a guide later. He didn’t post it yet it seems like. But yesterday I checked what’s he up to on stream and he was pushing NM 38 with lvl 80 or so minionmancer, with easy. He was just testing how far he can go and it was clear he can do better than that. I think Bone Spear and Blood Mist were both in the build, not 100% sure though. Whatever it is he’s doing, it works. But he mentioned it requires a particular unique ring.