Advice... again.

[Ryuujinx]

Yeah... a while back some people gave me some advice into my MM Build, I took it into consideration and made my build. anyway...

Attributes:

Death: 16(12+1+3)
Soul reaping: 7
Healing: 6

(still need to do attribute quests =/)

Weapon: Bortek's Bone Staff (given to me by a nice alliance member ^^)

Skillset:

Animate Bone Horror
Animate Bone Fiend/Vampiric Horror (vampiric in tyria, fiends in cantha)
Animate Flesh Golem
Blood Of the Master
Verata's Sacrifice
Dark Bond
Healing Breeze
Res Chant

so... anything I can do to improve on this? (other then doing the attribute quests, I'm working on that...)

[Kyshen]

dark bond is a bit killer without AotL.

how well do you find healing breeze works for you? most people take heal area or something similar and run 'BotM>heal area>BotM'.

nice to see someone with V's sacrifice, not used much anymore but I always found it helped keep minions alive in the heat of battle as I'm using BotM.

[Necromas]

Do those attribute quests man!

If you can, try doing Death Magic 16 (12+1+3), Soul Reaping 8 (7+1), Healing Prayers 8, which can be pulled off by a level 20 char without the quests. Take heal area instead of healing breeze, since it's a self heal and a minion heal. If you find you need to raise soul reaping more, I'd just sacrafice a point of death magic, it's not the end of the world if your minions go down a single level.

[Ryuujinx]

I was tempted to bring heal area, fo the reason it's a minion heal but getting hit for 100 or so per sacrifice with 10 minions and such. Healing Breeze gives a very nive over time health regen, that way its more of a HB > Botm > botm > Botm > HB

cycle, (a little wait between each of botm so I don't kill myself of course)

Also Dark Bond Is kinda of a killer, but as someone pointed out before it's either I die and have my minions and they go phsycho on everyone, or I have dak bond up and can remake the minions.

[Chthon]

Yeah... a while back some people gave me some advice into my MM Build, I took it into consideration and made my build. anyway...

Attributes:

Death: 16(12+1+3)
Soul reaping: 7
Healing: 6

(still need to do attribute quests =/)

Weapon: Bortek's Bone Staff (given to me by a nice alliance member ^^)

Skillset:

Animate Bone Horror
Animate Bone Fiend/Vampiric Horror (vampiric in tyria, fiends in cantha)
Animate Flesh Golem
Blood Of the Master
Verata's Sacrifice
Dark Bond
Healing Breeze
Res Chant

so... anything I can do to improve on this? (other then doing the attribute quests, I'm working on that...)

1. Do the attribute point quests.
2. Always take fiends (the high DPS ranger "bone bunnies"). Choose 1 type of horror or the other (vampiric or bone). (I'm not sure if you just confused the two names or if you're build's messed up.)
3. Ditch Verata's Sacrifice - it was nerfed to total junk status.
4. Heavily consider ditching Dark Bond - you should not be getting hit enough for it to be worth a skill slot. If you are getting hit that much, you need to adjust your play style.
5. Healing breeze is an OK unconditional self-heal, but I wouldn't consider it one of the best. (After you get your attribute point quests done) Play around with breeze, heal area, blood renewal, generous was, and AotL. You may decide you like one of them better. Nightfall looks like it will be adding at least 1 contender for the unconditional self-heal spot, so stay tuned.

[Ryuujinx]

The reason I have Vampiric and Horror is for when I'm first making minions, Vampiric coss 25 and has a horrible recast, whereas Bone horrors are 15 and have a relativley short recast.And most times, I don't have dark bond but thigns DO go wrong, and it wouldf be better to stay alive and not wipe because of my minions going AWOl. Vampiric and Fiend are switchable because they have the same cost. In cantha I prefer to have fiends because of the range, but in tyria having a wall of relatively high damage melee minions seems to work rather well, I haven't noticed much difference between when I went 4 Melee 6 Ranged, and 10 melee really. As for verata's it might have bene nerfed, but it is still +10 health regen for 10 seconds. It augements Botm, without having to sacrifice an additional 2% per minion.

[Chthon]

The reason I have Vampiric and Horror is for when I'm first making minions, Vampiric coss 25 and has a horrible recast, whereas Bone horrors are 15 and have a relativley short recast....Vampiric and Fiend are switchable because they have the same cost.

Once you've gotten all 200 attribute points, you can have enough soul reaping to afford all 25e minions if you so choose.

And most times, I don't have dark bond but thigns DO go wrong, and it wouldf be better to stay alive and not wipe because of my minions going AWOl.

Then you need to learn to stay out of trouble. If you're in a human party, let the warriors go in first, then move up to spell or wand distance to send the minions in. Never get any closer. If you're using henchmen, use ctrl+shift+space to send the henchmen in ahead of you so you don't take the aggro.

In cantha I prefer to have fiends because of the range, but in tyria having a wall of relatively high damage melee minions seems to work rather well, I haven't noticed much difference between when I went 4 Melee 6 Ranged, and 10 melee really.

Thorough testing shows that a bone fiend does 50% more DPS than a bone or vampiric horror. Someone with a 5/5 split is doing 25% more overall damage than you with 10 horrors.

As for verata's it might have bene nerfed, but it is still +10 health regen for 10 seconds. It augements Botm, without having to sacrifice an additional 2% per minion.

Perhaps this goes back to the need to get the full 200 attributes points and try out other self-heals. Something's not right with your self-healing if you're afraid to use BotM to cover all your minion healing needs. You should be able to fully heal yourself from the cost of using BotM as often as necessary to keep the minions up. That makes VS redundant and, thus, not worth a skill slot.

[sonicpollution]

Try throwing death nova in there.

Wonderful way to punish mobs for deciding to pound on your minions at melee range.

Also fun in those cases when party members start dying.

[Ryuujinx]

Once you've gotten all 200 attribute points, you can have enough soul reaping to afford all 25e minions if you so choose.

Whenever I finish the quests and put the rest in soul reapeing I'll have

DEath: 16
SR: 11
Healing: 8

Meaning 11e, per death. That is 1.5 energy under half the cost of a 25e minion. as much as this would help, theres still the heavy recast of the vampiric horrors to deal with. Going straight fiends may have better damage, but IMO the ability to take more damage, or so it seems, of the horros makes them more worth it. plus the vampirics heal me in addition, giving me less worry about self heal from life sac.

Then you need to learn to stay out of trouble. If you're in a human party, let the warriors go in first, then move up to spell or wand distance to send the minions in. Never get any closer. If you're using henchmen, use ctrl+shift+space to send the henchmen in ahead of you so you don't take the aggro.

I don't, but things DO go wrong. Saying that is the same as saying bringing distorion on my ele is pointless, it is there for emergency situations, when a tank aggroes to much, etc etc.

Thorough testing shows that a bone fiend does 50% more DPS than a bone or vampiric horror. Someone with a 5/5 split is doing 25% more overall damage than you with 10 horrors.

True, but the horrors seem to take hits better, so imo going straight horros in tyria seems like a better option.

Perhaps this goes back to the need to get the full 200 attributes points and try out other self-heals. Something's not right with your self-healing if you're afraid to use BotM to cover all your minion healing needs. You should be able to fully heal yourself from the cost of using BotM as often as necessary to keep the minions up. That makes VS redundant and, thus, not worth a skill slot.

Why on earth should I be limited to one spell, and only one spell to cover my minions? VS is like an AOE helaing breeze for my minions. True, you can use things like Heal Area, or the Healing Circle. But you really can't use those mid battle, and as much as I enjoy staying away from things you ineviteably end up with crappy tanks and things DO look at me, using something liek heal area and healing it at the same time seems rather counterproductive, you also can't use heal area to heal something across the radar.

[Chthon]

Whenever I finish the quests and put the rest in soul reapeing I'll have

DEath: 16
SR: 11
Healing: 8

Meaning 11e, per death. That is 1.5 energy under half the cost of a 25e minion.

WRONG! It's 22 energy, very nearly the full cost of the minion. You get 11e from the whatever died and left the body to use plus an 11e "rebate" when the minion cap kills off your 11th minion. I'd suggest moving up to a major rune for 24e, since lower max life helps with sac costs anyway, but 22 should be close enough that you can fudge the difference.

I don't, but things DO go wrong. Saying that is the same as saying bringing distorion on my ele is pointless, it is there for emergency situations, when a tank aggroes to much, etc etc.

What can I say? Learn to stay of of aggro, learn to kite, pick a smarter tank. You are doing something wrong if any of your party members outlive you to get attacked by your minions if you die.

True, but the horrors seem to take hits better, so imo going straight horros in tyria seems like a better option.

They do. Horrors have 18 more armor. That's why you mix them so that the horrors tank for the fiends. You only need enough horrors to protect the fiends, extra horrors beyond that is a needless waste of DPS.

Why on earth should I be limited to one spell, and only one spell to cover my minions? VS is like an AOE helaing breeze for my minions. True, you can use things like Heal Area, or the Healing Circle. But you really can't use those mid battle, and as much as I enjoy staying away from things you ineviteably end up with crappy tanks and things DO look at me, using something liek heal area and healing it at the same time seems rather counterproductive, you also can't use heal area to heal something across the radar.

You should limit yourself to 1 minion healing spell because 1 spell gets the job done and you only have 8 slots available. I strongly suspect that your self-healing is deficient and that's leading you to fail to cast BotM as often as you should.
As for using heal area on a monster. First, you've done something wrong aggro-wise if you have a monster in your face in the first place. Second, so now there's a monster in your face - KITE!