Hey everybody! Currently lvl 78 on HC, made a video for the build I’m running.
Build Vid: HC Shadowblight Minion Necromancer Guide - YouTube
Curious if anyone else is trying a Shadowblight Minion approach?
Really wish people would stop making CE builds and then say it’s a “minion build”. Just because there are minions out doesn’t make it a minion build. He even says the central spell is CE. That’s a Corpse Explosion build, not a minion build.
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The title is Shadowblight Minion Necro Build. Not Pure Summoner Build.
It has a dedicated paragon board for minions, using glyphs to scale their damage against CC mobs, pure skele mage scaling. They nuke on bosses and elites. But yes, we use CE to clear trash.
if you want a pure summoner build (ie not using Shadowblight damage, or bone damage etc.) wait until Blizz makes it viable. 
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That wizards are minions as well and they are a great boost in these kinds of build. Also the other minions really help out well in those kind of builds in different ways. So yeah i see it as a viable minion build. You can go full autism about it, BuT It Is NoT FuLl MiNiOn, minions are still being used in a different way, so it still counts as minion.
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Just because there are minions out doesn’t make it a minion build.
You still use the minions, but in a different way to lets say even buff up the shadow dmg, with a (in my case) nice golem taunt and power attack spam of my reapy bois, really being part of a different stack of cards kind of dps.
I could keep repeating the obvious, but it’s clear you’re not gonna get it.
Druids with their wolves out aren’t considered to be a minion build. Why? Because that’s not the focus of their build. Just like the video states that Corpse Explosion is the focus of the build, not the minions. Don’t know why this is hard to understand.
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Nah, i was talking about my own build, that combines certain things just to give you a bigger perspective. Seems i was not clear enough about that, really dont care about the video on this post.
I never called it a minion build, it’s a shadowblight minion build. They are support and provide different functions (golem stuns/vulns on rapid CD, mages chill/freeze/vuln, reapers gen corpses/absorb damage). We scale their damage based on CC and if mobs are affected by my shadow damage.
Unfortunately, I don’t think you understand our point and I don’t think you want to either. Or you might be trolling (I think this is most likely, based on your post history).
Take care friend.
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They need to let shadow mages trigger shadowblight charges, then the spec will go ham.
people arguing over semantics, if thats the case then there has never been a “pure” minion build in any game of diablo that has been good.
currently playing a fishadowmancer as well but on softcore. defense of skeletons need slight tuning but other than that doing torment and keys 10+ levels higher than me in world 4.
I am using a different slightly dif setup since softcore. less defense more offense, shadow mages and bone golem
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Yeah, I’m still making adjustments everyday as I play.
My biggest takeaway for minions (as mentioned in the video) are:
- Better AI
- A keybind to direct them to your target (this is standard in most arpgs today)
- They are still too squishy for the investment you provide.
i think the biggest problems for minion survivability is the fact that the heal is pretty crap and you have to spam it to keep the heal going when it should just be 12% per second or 30% every 2.5s.
Besides that the issue is they get shotgunned by aoe mechanics. Like you said seems like the investment into minion DR% and armor doesn’t help when a bunch of affixes do 30% of their hp 10 times a second so they just die instantly.
Well you should be spamming the heal anyway for the 20% damage boost it provides too.
Its not much, but it should still be kept up as much as you can
The 5s burst healing isn’t good when the enemies can burst faster than your heals get off. Thats why some kind of HoT would go a long way to increase minion survivability. I keep the buff up as much as possible but often times the skeletons die before the heals get off leading to spamming it to get skellies back up and the buff rolling again
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Honestly there should be a lifeleech curse like D2 skill option. They turned Amplify Damage into a passive, lifeleech for minions ought to be there too.
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I’m fairly certain they are going to be addressing minions eventually, most likely before Season 1. They are probably getting data on what players are engaging with, and what they are avoiding. I imagine a lot of people aren’t playing necro or avoiding using minions, which can’t be what they want.
The heal is effective currently as long as enough damage doesn’t come within that 5 second window. However, there are some stacked elite groups that will nuke minions very quickly and thus negate the heal.
Nonetheless, having a blast with this build and I’m curious to see how far I can push it if I live to 100. 
I’m actually mildly concerned about this. A lot of people are continuing to use minion builds despite their shortcomings. Which, I mean, kudos to them for riding it out, but it also means necro might get screwed over if Blizzard looks at engagement numbers rather than running a deeper analysis on what builds seem to cap out at what nightmare tiers.
That’s a fair concern. Personally, I’ll push this build until it hits a wall (or I die). I am collecting gear for other setups if I decide to switch things up.