The state of minion army Necromancer builds. My feedback

Feedback and Suggestions
1

Hi,

I’ve been trying to do succesfull build around skele minions and bigger pack of minions for Necromanser. Still no luck.

I am having the worst minion experiance from all diablo-clones I’ve ever played. This post came from my constant frustration over the state of minion army builds in LE and anty-minion (and anty melee of course!) design of the game, and well… also my love for the classical minion army builds. I hope it would help to buff this kind of builds in the next patches so I can finally play what I really like :slight_smile:

So what’s wrong when you choose to play minion army build in my opinion?

  1. Minions are even worst in 1.2 than before because of the layout of new areas: tombs and cementaries. But not only… also some side quest areas like the bridge for example.
    So what’s wrong with the design? Well tight corridors, no space for doding shit on the ground for the char… and of couse for the minions. When you have like in my current build: 16 to 19 minions and you are on the brige or inside the cemetery, the summoned minions take all the possible damage, because there is no space for them to stand outside of many highly damaging pools on the floor. There are also many mobs that just throwing shit around: everywhere… so minions are dying a lot, meaning they don’t deal damage, meaning char is in danger… jada jada.
    Conlusion, tip for the designer: make some more space in corridors, take off some “throwing around” mobs skills, make mobs slower with longer cooldowns so they don’t clutter all the screen with theirs attacks.

  2. There is not enough dmg scaling from the crit chance side to give minions enough dps to be able to clear fast enough 500++ cc areas. Of course there are some combinations that can multiply dmg but my build is chosing perma minions and there is no way to make them fast clearing areas >500cc. Some would say, that 350cc is enough… ok, but comparing to the time needed to push this patethic minions to 500cc, to for example any of my FG buiilds, it is like FG build is 20x faster to get there.
    Conslusion, tip for the designer: give more +crit chanse nodes in the skele, mages, bone golems skill trees. Give more cc to revenants and vanguards, give option too bust crit chance for these minions from the passive tree.

  3. Also Acolyte char is not tanky enough. I need to spend too many of the prefix/suffix and gear slots to make Acolyte tanky enough to withstand dmg in around 500cc. I need to make her that tanky only because I neeed to stand still to revive my minions that are dying all the time.
    Conlusion, tip for the designer: give more ways to boost dmg mitigation to Acolyte. Now I use: block chance, ward generation, HP regen. But it is still not enough if my minions aren’t killing fast enough.

Ok, that’s my 3 main thoughts in the topic.

Here is my build that I’ve been so frustrated about:
https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/BMErgKnB

I can also provide video to showcase the problems with minion army Acolyte. But fot now I just going to rest from this kind of builds. Just too much frustration. Game should be fun generator, not frustration generator.

I hope you are all well and have better experiances with minion builds that I am.

GL&HF!

ps. Dammitt is working on fixing LE planner issue with loading Acolyte idols into the planner, so keep in mind that my ingame HP is really: 4,2k HP + around 3k ward all the time. So for the Fore Guard todays standards I would be tanky AF, but in Acolyte situation I am just dying very often… the same thing with my minions :slight_smile:

2

Next season we’ll get the Lich and Necro rework, so maybe that will give us something (I also love minion zoo builds).

2 Likes
3

I keep my fingers crossed :hand_with_index_finger_and_thumb_crossed: :hand_with_index_finger_and_thumb_crossed: :hand_with_index_finger_and_thumb_crossed:

5 Likes
4

Waiting for zoo buffs, I will revisit my physical zoo build

5

Zoo isnt strictly that bad in the damage department.

But gosh damn are minions squishy little bone bags.

Watching my 5 mages crumple to a fart in the wind is insane. much less stuff like nemesis or harbingers.

They drastically need to massively buff minion hp and recovery for zoo to function. cause unlike solo minions, when your minions engage with a pack not all of them get to do damage. sometimes the first 3 skeletons there take care of the pack, now the ones in the back didnt get any leech. and minion life regen is very limited.

2 Likes
6

I highly recommend pumping Minion Health and Minion Regen. Two moderately-rolled “Reptilian” prefix items and some Turquoise jewelry will pretty much have them unkillable.

Heck, I’ve got that permanent version of Dread Shade on my Bone Golem (so he’s taking about 2x damage) yet he’s still happily tanking stuff.

Here’s approximately what I’m using: https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/oy67W07A

1 Like
7

That should be avaliable in passive tree imho. No space for extra slots in my gear. Especially if you are HC, the priority is survivle ot the char. So no space to squeeze more prefixes unless very lucky 3lp slam on both rings which is very unlikely :slight_smile: still good tip though for sc :slight_smile: :vulcan_salute:

8

On what corruption lvl? 300? 500?
The only thing, that makes them unkillable - Scale of Lemniscate when you cast Infernal Shade

9

It is, Necro has quite a few minion hp nodes, minion hp regen & some minion leech nodes, but you do need to actually take them & build for tank if you want tanky minions.

10

Yeah but when I take them, minions dont do any dmg so… still dying a lot :wink:

11

“I need to spend too many of the prefix/suffix and gear slots to make Acolyte tanky enough to withstand dmg in around 500c”

Yeah, you need to spend something to be tanky on 500c, what do you expect? Especialy int based characters, they don’t have def scaling from dmg atribute like str or dex. Why you even tanking? Don’t like narrow locations? don’t stand here, move on. The most important thing in any summoner gameplay is positioning. Don’t stand here or here, move your ass around and avoid things, if you stuck between monsters and walls - it’s your fault!
Btw ability to clear 500c with any speed without dying is enough good already. All rest depends on gear, at least your army should tank something.

I am gonna make some post like “I am clearing full screen only with 4 hits on 1000c, thats sooo slow!”

ps: character link is okay? Gear is kinda wierd. You can show us your actual character!

One more thing, I dont like minion builds here coz they have one mandatory item: Julra Gloves. If you dont have them, you need them.

12

Also

boost dmg mitigation to Acolyte. Now I use: block chance, ward generation, HP regen

Ward generation and hp regen is not hit damage mitigation! It’s DoT damage mitigation and primary sustain mechanics!. Some non-FG values block mitigation is not enough. You need not only mitigations, but damage avoid mechanics so you can sustain damage. When you nearly const damaged in fight even good sustain can’t help. You need more EHP: higher block, dodge, parry, “%hit 0 damage”, DoT damage taken as armor, etc etc. Yeah int characters squishy, you need to compensate that with def layers.

Basicaly, if you can avoid big hits, (the ones that should be avoided like Shattered Strike) with enough sustain to recover damage you can tank everything. Leech is a very good mechanic for that, dunno about minions :thinking: Never played acolyte seriously. If I remember correctly they all life degenerators ward maniacs :laughing: