How viable is a non minion necro/reaper?

I would like to try a Necromancer, most likely Reaper but i really dislike minions and pets (Ranger), so i was wondering if there is a non minion Reaper build with GS which doesn't cause a significant drop to my dmg and my survivability? I have in mind mostly open World, PvP, WvW, maybe some Fractals too. I don't want to have even one single minion!

When playing Reaper in PVE, I never use minions - except Rise, which distracts mobs quite well. But Rise is a shout, not a "minion" per se.

I don't know about PVP, but in WVW, minions can be good to solo towers, but not much use elsewhere. I can tell you a roaming minion mancer is usually a free bag.

Minions are generally only used for npc farming etc. They are poor damage generally and overall unintelligent in other game modes other than open world farming.

Most performance builds don't really use them though they do make open world farming a breeze.

Better than with minions, because taking minions is just wasting your ulility skills. Well of suffering does better job in damage and necromancer has enough survivability. Chilled To The Bone is an excellent AoE CC skill.

@Sifu.9745 said:I would like to try a Necromancer, most likely Reaper but i really dislike minions and pets (Ranger), so i was wondering if there is a non minion Reaper build with GS which doesn't cause a significant drop to my dmg and my survivability? I have in mind mostly open World, PvP, WvW, maybe some Fractals too. I don't want to have even one single minion!I hate them too and I main necro. Necro is fine without them. Minions suck and are only a gimmick.

In theory maximizing pve damage requires the elite minion (golem), but we are talking about less than 5% more dps, so you can just ignore that skill and put chilled to the bone into the elite skill slot to increase your chill uptime (+15% damage).

Actually minions* are almost useless, even with death magic traitline.Sure you can have pets tanking for you, it's good when you want to solo some bosses and Hero Point, but for 98% of your time you can just replace them by GS #4 or well of Darkness to apply blindness/chill and have 4-5 utility skills for better dps and sustain.

Minions are only one element of Necromancer.. most Necro builds do not use them or at the very least barely use them in any form.

For the most part Minions are a defensive utility with some offensive capability, they can be useful to add some defence to more offensive builds but they're better off adding more offence and defence to more tanky builds, making them very hard to kill.Minion damage does not upgrade with stats so a glassy DPS Necro's minions are going to do the same damage as a Tank Necros minions are and since a lot of their defensive potential comes from their lifesteal on hits they're not all that useful in situations where enemies are bursted down really fast either.

So if you want a DPS focused Necro.. Minions are really not what you want to be running anyway.. better off focusing on damage modifiers such as chilling and jumping in and out of shroud.If you want to make a near unkillable Necro that can outsustain and solo almost anything then yeah.. Minions are one of the best things in the game for that.

Minions are unnecessary and often decreases dps once you get the hang of Necromancer and it's elites.

I very rarely use them but they do have some benefits in specific situations. Try them out and read about their uses but do not feel like they are at all necessary.

For PVP, minions make are great. You just jump in and out of reaper shroud and they muck up the targeting of many players.. I love being a MM reaper in pvp

I'll add in my vote of a Reaper who doesn't use minions. I was a minionmancer for a long time before I decided to up my game. And there's very little you can go wrong with as far as the rest of your build goes. MetaBattle's Power DPS reaper is a decent start:https://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Reaper_-_Power_DPS

From there, you can experiment- swap some skills and a few specializations around to see what you like. My specializations are close to this one, though I use different skills and gear to suit my own playstyle. Start with something like this and find your play style.

It is generally better. Stun breaks and defensive skills to complement High DPS is nice

I have both a Minion Necro (Core) and a Condi Reaper and I think they're about equal in terms of effectiveness. You don't need Minions to tank, Necro is already very good at that on its own due to lots of Blind, Chill, Cripple, etc.

Not a necro main, so please excuse the ignorance. Some of you are saying that there are better utilities to take as a reaper, but don't really elaborate. What do you suggest or can you link your build? I'm mainly OWPvE, but asking for others as well in my small circle. TIA!

PvE:Open World, Minions are really good just because they can tank some hits and let you use cheesy OW builds that focus on them.For actual damage dealing, only Blood Fiend and Flesh Golem are optimal.

Blood Fiend can be easily replaced by Signet of Vampirism or for something that you want to actually use for healing (Such as Consume Conditions or "Your Soul Is Mine!")

Flesh Golem is hard to replace, because it's the only good Elite for Power builds (Not that it scales with power, it just sucks the least of the options available)... Lich can do some burst damage, but Golem provides consistent DPS and Breakbar damage (It also doesn't jankify your camera). You can run with Lich Form though.

Beyond that, Signet of Spite, Well of Suffering and Well of Darkness are optimal utilities for PvE Necro. (If wanting to run some form of Condi build for whatever reason, Blood is Power, Epidemic, Signet of Undeath (Scourge) or Well of Darkness (Reaper) would be optimal)

PvP/WvW:Minions really suck here.

Really the only one with any sort of use is Flesh Wurm, just for the teleport in PvP for faster rotations (Also, getting tf away from someone trying to murder you)

Outside of this particular option, no build in PvP/WvW will really use minions at all.

Minions helps soaking up big hits in solo pve, so they are not totally useless.

I can't say enough good stuff about Spectral Walk for stun break/condition removal/escape/jump puzzle utility. One utility that really does a lot.

I also find good use with Spectral Grasp. It adds life force, chill and the pull is good when faced with mobs or ranged opponents so I can drop my AoE attacks. Or to add CC.

@"Taril.8619" said:PvE:Open World, Minions are really good just because they can tank some hits and let you use cheesy OW builds that focus on them.For actual damage dealing, only Blood Fiend and Flesh Golem are optimal.

Blood Fiend can be easily replaced by Signet of Vampirism or for something that you want to actually use for healing (Such as Consume Conditions or "Your Soul Is Mine!")

Flesh Golem is hard to replace, because it's the only good Elite for Power builds (Not that it scales with power, it just sucks the least of the options available)... Lich can do some burst damage, but Golem provides consistent DPS and Breakbar damage (It also doesn't jankify your camera). You can run with Lich Form though.

Beyond that, Signet of Spite, Well of Suffering and Well of Darkness are optimal utilities for PvE Necro. (If wanting to run some form of Condi build for whatever reason, Blood is Power, Epidemic, Signet of Undeath (Scourge) or Well of Darkness (Reaper) would be optimal)

Their main and biggest benefit is their ability to lifesteal via blood magic traits, minions can provide so much lifesteal it's borderline ridiculous.. this is a key part to making Necro into one of the tankiest PvE classes in the game while still leaving them without completely crippled damage.

Signet of Vampirism is a good skill to take over the Fiend for it's passive effects, combine that passive effect with some wells and you can still get some pretty great healing out of it, it's unfortunately nowhere near as good as it used to be since the removal of Vampiric Rituals which added so much more life steal and some protection but it's still a usable combo that can still make you reasonably tanky when fighting groups.I recommend Well of Suffering and Well of Darkness as they are what I personally use on my Wellmancer.. Well of Corruption can also be taken for a 3rd well if you want more life steal and damage, though from personal experience i've found no common need to run 3 utility wells, I prefer to take Rise! and Flesh Golem.A good trait I like to run with this setup as well is Ritual of Life for a free Well of Blood when I revive people, I also keep a Dagger/Warhorn set as a secondary for some extra CC and healing if I need it.

Flesh Golem I agree is hard to replace.. it's a great hard CC skill which I get a lot of use out of on multiple builds.The biggest problem with Necromancer Elite skills that make Golem so viable in almost every build is the fact that Golem is the only good Elite we have that has a good Cooldown.48 Seconds base is better than any other Necro elite even when traited for reduced CD.. this is a serious problem imo and it's hardly uncommon in other classes too.There are far too many Elite's in this game that have atrocious cooldowns even when traited and the end result is that these skills are often just ignored or have extremely limited uses in the game.In my opinion Lich Form should be reduced to 90 seconds base CD, 80 seconds traited.. while Plaguelands and Chilled to the Bone should be reduced to 60 seconds base and 50 seconds when traited.. similar times should be applied to all other elite skills on other classes too.. and while we're at it.. racial elites and mistfire wolf should have their cooldowns cut by at least a third.. the CD's on these skills are just idiotic and make them completely rubbish even as gimmick skills.

PvP/WvW:Minions really suck here.

Really the only one with any sort of use is Flesh Wurm, just for the teleport in PvP for faster rotations (Also, getting tf away from someone trying to murder you)

Outside of this particular option, no build in PvP/WvW will really use minions at all.

Agreed, I used to run a really effective MM build in PvP a really long time ago but Minions are complete garbage in PvP modes now.Anyone with even mediocre AoE capability will eradicate a whole squad of minions in seconds.. they are totally useless against other players in their current form and should be avoided.. with exception to the Wurm which can be used as a teleport but even that can and often will be focused by an enemy to either force you to waste the port or sacrifice it.

Outside of learning the game and skills as they change, I've never used a minion in a serious context and have absolutely no regrets whatsoever.The only useful minion is Flesh wurm, and it's to immediately blow it up for the free shadowstep. Even then, it's not a required pick on Reaper.

@"kharmin.7683" said:Not a necro main, so please excuse the ignorance. Some of you are saying that there are better utilities to take as a reaper, but don't really elaborate. What do you suggest or can you link your build? I'm mainly OWPvE, but asking for others as well in my small circle. TIA!

Wells (Well of Suffering, Well of Darkness) will do pretty decent damage if enemies stay in them the whole time (as will happen for, e.g., a champion). They're also decent AOE.

The Spectral skills are pretty strong in a variety of scenarios: Spectral Walk is a stun breaker and condi cleanse, Spectral Armor is a stun breaker that gives you some fairly long-lasting Protection, Spectral Grasp plays well with Reaper because it's another way to pull enemies together into melee range (and it's a bit less "fickle" than Greatsword 5 for some reason) -- and they all give you bonus Life Force, which helps you "top up" very quickly. Spectral Walk and the Flesh Wurm are your strongest mobility skills on a necro.

Signet of Spite and Signet of Undeath provide very desirable passives effects and you can take a trait (in the Spite line) to make them buff you in Shroud.

Epidemic used to be super strong but that got nerfed a while ago.

Thanks! Will take a look and pass that info around my group. :)

It's fine. I used this kind of build all the time on my necro. You can even solo group events in dragonfall with non minion necro reaper. As mentioned before the wells and signets are particularly useful utilities.

@kharmin.7683 said:Not a necro main, so please excuse the ignorance. Some of you are saying that there are better utilities to take as a reaper, but don't really elaborate. What do you suggest or can you link your build? I'm mainly OWPvE, but asking for others as well in my small circle. TIA!

One simple build for use in open world is a full-glass berserker Reaper with rune of the scholar. You can build stacks of might quickly and mow down most small mob groups. For a little more sustain, swap Scholar runes for Reaper runes and slot several shouts. Each shout will then also proc AoE chill, which helps a lot in aggressive crowds.

The best thing I like about Reaper is how forgiving it can be for sub-optimal builds. It lets me change traits and how Reaper plays without making it non-functional. Hybrid power-condi is fine for groups, too. When you play Reaper in open world, simply charge in and act like all mobs are life force to be harvested. I'll add some builds, later.

Thanks for the responses so far!

Like most said, Minions aren't especially viable for group content. Some can be useful (Blood fiend, shadow fiend) but having a build heavily relying on minions for end game content isn't "viable" in itself.

So the answer to the question is bound to be: "a non minion build is always more viable than a minion build for group content!". Maybe the next e-spec will change that or maybe not.

@"Anchoku.8142" said:When you play Reaper in open world, simply charge in and act like all mobs are life force to be harvested. I'll add some builds, later.

Ha- too true. I've heard complaints about Pocket Raptors, and all I think when I see a group of them running around is "OOh, instant refill on my life force!"