I would love to see the Necromancer class focus more on a minion-centric playstyle. By minions, I mean having an army of skeletons or other creatures that can overwhelm enemies while I manage them through buffs and debuffs.
I am aware of the strong “minion” builds like Fire Wraith and Wraithlord, which are quite fun. However, they don’t quite capture the essence of a pure minion-based Necromancer that many players, including myself, are looking for.
I would love to experience the feeling of being surrounded by an extensive horde of minions. I’m not asking for this to be the strongest build in the game, but I do hope it can become a more viable and engaging option for those of us who enjoy the classic minion master fantasy.
What do you consider “viable”? Legitimately, what are you targetting? Corruption 300 and being able to beat all bosses? Just want to make sure we’re on the same page regarding the goal, so the gap (if any) between current performance and that can be evaluated properly.
If I remember correctly, this build is outdated and it’s not working as well as it used to.
Trust me I looked up every build that I could find.
But yes that’s the idea have an army killing everything for you
That might be the case, but the only 2 good builds ( by good I mean tier list good ) that I found are fire wraith and wraith lord, which like I said both are very very strong and fun to play.
Saying that its not the idea I have in mind for an " army" build
The problem with “tier list good” or however you want to call it, if you are solely going after for what kind of builds you find in tier lists, youtube guides, website guides, compilations or any kind of listings, you will mostly find the very few top perfoming guides, because other stuff will simply not attract too many people.
Surely there is always the occasional odd one, that is not really meta, but these are rare, especially for youtube or other things that require clicks and attention.
But that doesn’t mean that these other builds don’t exist or are bad. They are just not fancy enough on the outside to present them in this fashion for the most part.
Necromancer inherently is more about army type minion playstyle with expandable minions compare to Primalist.
The very few builds that are top performers, like Wraith Lord are actually not what Necromancer makes a Necromancer, because they require build enabling uniques that not 100% capture the essence of what a necromancer is from a archtype perspective.
There are so many builds possible in LE for all the masteries and archtypes you can think of.
And most of the mare just fine in terms of viability or clearing all the content.
There are so many builds and archtypes that I have played in my thousands of hours LE, that I never ever heard anyone even talking about in the context of build guides. But they still exist and I had some of my absolut most fun with many of them.
What you are requesting in your OP is exactly what Necromancer thematically is most of the time. Disposable minion army.
I don’t know if I gave you the latest iteration of his video or not. If it’s not, you can simply search it in lastepochtools.com. His build is reasonably up to date (I think the last one was for 1.06 or something) and it works fine. I think he said it can reach 200-300c. I tested a similar one and it can easily get to empowered monos, but then again, any build can.
You can also search lastepochtools.com for Fred. Fred is a single Archmage summon by the Necromancer and I checked it out and can still get to at least ~469(?) corruption. That number is approximate and is the highest I’ve gotten but not playing it at the moment as I’m trying to level a new Paladin build, but I’m sure Fred can be pushed higher as my gear still isn’t the best.
EDIT: Yes I realize this isn’t an “army” in the way most people think, but it is a great minion-only build and Fred is an army to himself.
This the reason why I refuse to play Wraithlord. If I wanted one minion that could wreck everything I would just play a Falconer. I’m still fairly pleased to get a skeleton build up to 600c but can’t tell you the countless times people have told me to just go WL lol
Minion army builds are viable, they are just way more work then most people want to put in.
Singular minion builds are the flavor everyone generally ends up on because its much easier to control and keep one minion with 100k health alive then it is trying to keep 10 skeletons alive with 10k life each.
So the reason no one makes guides for the builds is because most players dont enjoy the annoying mana upkeep and buff upkeep you need to deal with on minion armies. Havin g julra blow up your 15 skeletons that each cost 30 mana to resummon is a … less then fun experience. you still can kill julra, the build is still viable. its just not everyones cup of tea.
