Condi Minion Master - Reaper or Scourge for open world?

[Draezele.8216]

I'm one of those filthy casuals who only plays "single player" story/open world as frequent work interruptions makes it difficult for me to consistently play any sort of group content. After hitting HoT with a warrior and chronomancer, I found myself frustrated with the warrior's lack of range (particularly for story missions) or how often I would die to large groups on my chrono. I've decided to give condi minion necromancer a try. I'm looking for the tankiest option, preferably ranged (I sometimes find myself having trouble seeing what's going on when surrounded by enemies), and one that can solo as many of the skill champions as possible. I've grabbed a set of Khilbron's armor and full rabid exotic weapons/trinkets, but I'm stuck on which elite is better. I went reaper (scepter/dagger+GS; Spite/Curses/Reaper, though may switch Spite to DM for HoT) after hopping on a HoT HP train, but I'm finding that it requires me to run in for the shroud ability combos more often than I'd like. Will I be happier if I run through the PoF HP's to get scourge instead? Or will that just create a different set of complications?

[Anchoku.8142]

Necro does not do 1200 range well but < 900 range is better. True long range dps is almost nonexistent.

 

Minions will tank for you so you can take a glassy build with less risk than most professions, maybe not all.

 

Condi scepter builds (core, reaper, or scourge) can sustain good bleed stacks up to 900 range. Core Necro can be tanky.

 

Power axe builds (core, reaper) can stack vulnerability and generate more life force than scepter but generally do better in dps after swapping to dagger or greatsword in melee range.

 

You can kite with either type and minions will hold aggro. You can use Blood Magic traits to heal minions. Honestly, if you use minions and either scepter or axe while kiting, armor stats will have less impact than you might expect.

 

Rabid armor has toughness that will draw aggro so watch that. It is possible to pull hate from your minions. I could never get rabid stats to pay off because of that.

[mazut.4296]

I say reaper is better with minions, but both works pretty well. The shroud is the key for pve here. You can tank more adds with reaper then with scourge.

[James.1065]

Necro scourge and reaper can do sone ranged dps but are all pretty much a melee class. If you want a ranged class where you can solo most bosses, I would recommend levelling a beast master ranger. Ideally you would want to train a bear and use that as a tank while you hold back and wreck the mobs from a distance.

 

Before I took necro as a main this worked really well for me. When soloing an open would champion I would use 2 bears to tank and then swap them out just before one would die die, go into stealth until my newly summoned bear picked up aggro and then rinse and repeat. It worked like a charm and I could solo just about everything.

[unbornchikken.5104]

I started to play this game just because to have a minion master. I love this type of gamestyle. I play casually too, but in every game modes, and tried very hard to git gud with a freaking minion master. I read somewhere that core sucks, so I tried scourge and reaper variants, but always got back to non-minion builds because they felt way much viable. But recently I did put together a core condi minion master build, and it turned to be awesome. Dunno if they buffed it recently or what, but it just works way much better in any game modes than elites.

[Draezele.8216]

Thank you all for your responses.

 

900 range works fine for me, I just want to avoid being right in the thick of things so that I have a better chance to see what's going on around me. I've tried a ranger in the past, but it seems very slow to kill anything unless I get up in melee range. If I'm going to stick to melee, I'll go with my warrior.

 

I'll admit, though, that I hardly use shroud at all, which I'm sure is severely limiting my damage output. But it definitely does seem more survivable than when I played Mesmer (in part, because I don't have to keep resummoning my minions every time I kill something) and while not as personally tanky as the warrior, being constantly mobile definitely feels less risky than my usual tactic of facetanking.

 

I'll keep fiddling with my specs until I find what works best for me, but at least I know that I don't need to rush to get scourge.