User:Kelvin Greyheart

My Variant of Sabway for all hench teams
Well its not really Sabway, seeing as its not using a resto nec, and the MMs are somewhat different, but since thats what people call it, I'll call it My Variant of Sabway. I'd almost always run two necromancers in pve. When I got GWEN I added a third. I experimented with various death builds including some odd utility builds meant to buff the MM's minions, and use things like putrid bile and rising bile with icy veins to make huge spikes when things died. Before trying Icy Veins I had experimented with tainted flesh. It was effective, but not as much as I had hoped. IV was more effective, but as before it just didn't feel quite right. Sure in some cases you could roll mobs in 7 seconds flat, but at other times it just couldn't get the job done.. I tinkered around with various similar ideas then I had the idea of using two compressed MMs. The idea here is that the two MMs don't bring the usual 3 or so summoning skills because with two of them you don't need that many. Presto 2-4 skill slots saved. Now, why do we need two copies of blood of the master? Another skill slot. With 20 minions running rampant 2 death novas are required, however you now have a bunch of slots that you can play around with.

After tinkering around I eventually settled upon this. Changes have been made as various skill updates tweaked a few of the skills, and in some cases removed them from the build altogether. These are not the fastest builds, but they are very reliable, and very durable.

This is NOT intended for 4 man areas. It is specifically for 6 and 8 man areas. And by 6 man areas I mean the crystal desert, and shing jea island. All other 6 person areas in tyria are best done with true sabway, or a protection monk hero because you need that second monk/rit for this to work. Unless you are some form of healer or protection this will not work in any areas but these.

Your first bar is your generic SS doomtrooper necro. Nothing fancy, just pure, raw, unhindered physical damage superbombing. Reckless haste may be added instead of another skill if your party cannot inflict blind or other blocking bonuses. Remember that the attack speed buff has no effect in Hard Mode.

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Next comes the Splinter MM. This build provides the party with very efficient condition removal, and splinter weapon provides excellent damage as well. You may need to micro the condition removal, but the build provides a renewable supply of minions, and good damage through the use of Splinter weapon..

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Finally you have the Sorrow MM. This build provides slow but steady healing to the party as well as cover enchantments, and melee buffs, and as with the Splinter MM a renewable supply of minions. Dwayna's Sorrow seems like a weak heal, but when combined with an army of 15-20 minions it provides immense resilience to pressure. Withering Aura can be swapped for an optional skill.

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You may note the use of shambling and bone horrors instead of bone minions. This is because, even without two minions a corpse you can still maintain large armies easily. With two copies of Shambling Horrors you can quickly animate 4-6 shambling horrors that will often split into two jagged horrors on death. The two necromancers use death nova and Jagged bones on each others minions meaning that most of the minions are recycled when you have fewer than 10, and Death Novas are put on ideal candidates very quickly, even under heavy stripping (Chilblains). The main reason for using the stronger minions over bone minions is that they have significantly increased durability, do far more damage, and the penalties for using them are essentially negated by using two copies of animate shambling horror, which effectively makes two stronger minions anyways. Typically you will end up with 8-12 jagged horrors, 8-12 bone horrors, and 2-6 shambling horrors. The sheer mass of bleeding and poison makes condition removal useless, and allows the party to use conditions with near impunity because they will be covered almost instantly, and covered again seconds later.

Typically, whenever a minion dies the party gains 35 health through Dwayna's Sorrow. While that seems pretty insignificant, consider how often minions are dying. With two copies of Jagged Bones, as well as shambling horrors it is not at all uncommon for the summoning of one minion to trigger the deaths of 3 and 4 others. This will generally be insufficient to heal someone under fire, but it is an excellent way to heal the party over time, and takes a noticeable amount of pressure off of the healers, especially in areas with a lot of degeneration hexes like suffering. This does take a while to get going, because with only a few minions, older ones will not be destroyed by animating more.

Dwayna's Sorrow also provides immense spike resilience. If an elementalist or ritualist boss hits your party and kills many of your minions, not only will they probably do decent damage because of death nova, but you will get a massive party heal. Heals to the tune of over 400 per person are not unheard of, combine that with two copies of jagged bones and shambling horrors and you are almost sure to end up with 5-10 minions even after a total nuke. This can make pain inverter even more powerful than it already was because your party can easily survive such large spikes, and continue on with enough minions to finish the fight.

Furthermore, putrid bile is an amazing nuke skill. Against groups of enemies, it is not at all uncommon to see chains go of where deaths can trigger anywhere from one to four copies on assorted foes. The resulting explosion will often cause nice green lines of xp across the screen. Putrid Bile also stacks nicely with hexes on the SS because it dramatically increases the number of hexes floating around, meaning that mobs with hex removal skills have a hard time keeping up with the rate that they are applied at. The net result is that even against groups of Jade Brotherhood, Spiteful Spirit, Mark of Pain, Barbs, or Putrid Bile do eventually stick.

Finally, you may note the lack of a resurrection skill on the MMs. After much thought I decided that they really don't need them. The healing and damaged provided by this threesome can overcome just about anything except areas devoid of corpses. The only reason death pact signet is included at all on The SS is so that if a henchman, specifically a healer, or a MM goes down you can resurrect them quickly.