T4 necro minion build....kinda

Necromancer
1

Disclaimer: This isnt intended as a guide or a promotion for how good minions are. They certainly feel a bit weak. I love summoner builds and have finally got it feeling ok to play. This is just to share what im doing for anyone who loves minions but is struggling to make it work.

Aspects
Helm: 2 skelly mages

Body: 7+ minions gives minions x% damage mitigation.

Gloves: bone spear makes enemies vulnerable, bone shards do more damage and pierce.

Legs: damaging an elite gives barrier ( not sure if im keeping this )

Boots: cold skelly mages cast blizzard ( damage doesnt matter, we want the chill )
2h weapon: minion get x% more attack speed for 3 seconds when they attack ( this is also debatable. Im toying with the idea of the unique corpse explosion scythe. I just need a good off hand to test it )

Amulet: 3 skelly warriors ( usually 2 but amulet makes it better )

Ring: skellys gain x% damage when they have been alive for 10 seconds

Ring 2: ring of mendeln unique. ( this is not mandatory for things to function but is a nice addition )

Paragon boards.
Not fully decided and im not 100 either but im using in order:
Cult leader
Flesh eater
Scent of death

Glyphs
Mage ( starter )
Deadraiser ( cult leader )
Warrior ( flesh eater )
Exploit ( scent of death )

Stats
Look for minion health above all else, trust me you need it. For yourself stack health until comfortable then the usual suspects. Crit chance-crit damage-damage to distant-damage to vulnerable etc etc nothing out of the ordinary.

Skills
I wont be going over the entire skill tree as alot of passives etc just come down to preference. Play around and see what works for you.

5 bone spear + 2 passives
5 corpse explosion + 2 passives ( this is your generator )
1 blood mist
1 bonestorm + 2 passives
summon skeleton
summon golem
either the minion or the bone key passive. Again this isnt a guide as such so play around, see what works for you.

General rotation
Use golem to taunt
Use bone spear for vuln and ok damage
Use summon skelly for the minion buff and healing
Use corpse explosion to refill essence and deal some damage
Repeat

Book of the dead
Skeleton reapers with the 15% chance to generate a corpse
Skeleton mages with generate 2 essence when they attack
Golem … this is really up to you. I like the bone for the taunt or the iron for the stun. I switch to blood for the 15% damage transfer he offers for bossing.

I dont make guides as you can probably tell nor am I that good of a player but I experiment alot and have found something that works for me. I hope it helps other frustrated necros out there. You can always ask for more details if you need/want them. Enjoy the day people.

P.S heres a video of what i have and what it does. I play like a scrub lol im old ok no bully.

2 Likes
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i can tell you why… paragon nodes like the legendary one “cultleader” are not working. look at your tooltip golem damage, disable the node and look again. same damage for the golem…

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i did not know this, thanks for the heads up. I look forward to that node working again

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I haven’t gone into that much detail yet.
I read here in the forum that there should be more such bugged nodes in the paragon board. so i guess, we minions players are missing 50% or more damage. cultleader alone gives 15% for all minion types. THAT alone would be a very good damage boost.

i just skilled the yellow “mutation” note in the golem paragon board. it says “17% more damage for the golem”.
WITHOUT the note my iron golem deals 2964-3623 with the normal hit. WITH the yellow +17% note, my golem deals 2982-3644 damage.
i dont need a calculator here to say, that cant be correct.
you are welcome to try it yourself.

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here is a little showcase from me. just look at the golem damage numbers

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While I don’t really doubt you I’d say it’s better to actually test it against real enemies. Problem with that of course is finding a good way to make clean, reproducable tests. A DPS dummy would be nice.

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yes its pretty hard to test that. a dummy would be a great thing. at least the tooltip is wrong.

8

In b4 they add a test dummy but the AI won’t attack it.

2 Likes
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Im waiting for ascentral uniques before i switch to minion. Pretty sure they are almost needed.

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The build im using did fine ( depending on your definition of fine ) before i had any uniques. Due to my poorly optimised stats, the ring doesnt proc very often so the benefit isnt really felt very much. You can see how it performs in the video I posted at the bottom if you are curious. I dont claim it to be a meta or good build, just a " get the job done " build for minion lovers who are perhaps struggling.

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Lets hope for some minion transparency in some notes. Like besides damage what do they scale off of.

2 Likes
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yes please. that would help a lot

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Well of course im not an official source and im a filthy casual lol but almost all of your state seem to affect minions. When i build crit, they crit more. When i build health, they get tankier. When i build vulnerable damage, they hit harder to. Of course i havent been recording that data and could just be confirmation bias but it certainly seems to be that they get stronger as you do.

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Ill have to pay attention to see if they crit. Ik they can lucky hit. But idk if the bonuses from close or far effect them.

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but look at your inventory profile. there are stats like “skeleton mages deal xxx% more damage from stats and paragon board”
so if i deactivate minion damage nodes in the paragon board, the same % number is still there. thats the proof for me, that this stuff is broken.
i read in the forum, not every node is broken. the legendary note “cultleader” is broken 100% and some others too.
atleast the profile numbers should change in my opinion.

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Just an idea regarding the dummy for dmg.
There is the enemy all the way east at the magma cliff. Hes not fighting back. So you can let your minions pummel him with no feedback I think

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The tooltips are very much broken across the game. The only way to test is something is working is to watch the actual damage numbers when attacking mobs.

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This guy just tested it: How Necromancer Minions Work in Diablo 4 | 9 Hours of Testing Damage Stats Special Abilities - YouTube