N/Mo Minion Master

The Minion Master PvE build centers on creating and maintaining an army of minions. See the General minion mastery guide for in-depth discussion.

Attributes and Skills

See Variants for possible skills for the optional slot.
Karei's Healing Circle is the Factions equivalent skill for Heal Area.
The skill set presented here is an example. No claims are made to its supremacy.

Equipment

Bloodstained Boots or Insignia are a must. Other than that, any Necromancer armor is fine, although Minion Master insignia is preferred.
A staff or weapon/focus set that halves recharge and casting time of Death Magic is advisable. Ghial's Staff or The Nightbringer work great.
See the Equipment section of the General minion mastery guide for more options.

Usage

As soon as corpses are available, start by raising a Flesh Golem, then Bone Fiends. If you are low on energy or are waiting for Animate Bone Fiend to recharge, raise up some Bone Horrors. Summon new minions during battle if needed.
Use Dark Bond to mitigate damage, if you expect to be in a vulnerable position.
Use Blood of the Master and/or Heal Area to keep your minions alive.

Counters

An enemy with Diversion will screw you up if it gets used on Blood of the Master.
A good mesmer could mess you up when you try to summon minions.
Another necromancer may get to corpses before you do, which will leave you with a lack of corpses.
A mesmer with Conjure Phantasm or Conjure Nightmare will kill you pretty fast if you don't have a hex remover.
See also the Opposing forces section of the General minion mastery guide.

Variants

Some find the extra healing provided by Heal Area unnecessary. This gives the Minion Master more choices in selecting a secondary profession. Also, the points put into Healing Prayers can be used in other attributes.
Aura of the Lich can be used in place of Animate Flesh Golem to allow more spamming of Blood of the Master, although not advisable when anticipating health degeneration effects. This also makes Blood Renewal useful for self-healing if Blood Magic is used.
Taste of Death can be used in place of Dark Bond healing.
Skills such as Rotting Flesh, Putrid Explosion, Deathly Swarm and Bitter Chill can be added to give the Minion Master some direct damage skills that are linked to Death Magic.
You can bring Death Nova to make one last final use of a minion that's near death.
For more self healing Animate Vampiric Horror can be used in place of Animate Bone Fiend. This allows a more meat-shield like role of the minion master protecting the back line casters. If making this switch, it is a good idea to cast Animate Bone Horror more often due to the recharge time of Animate Vampiric Horror and to refresh your minions.
Fill the optional slot with Verata's Aura to reclaim your minions if you die, or possibly to steal minions from monsters who create them. Not many monsters can, however, and the ones that can do not create them nearly as fast as the average Minion Master Necromancer. As such, Verata's Gaze may be a better choice for stealing minions.
Infuse Condition in combination with Dark Bond is useful in scenarios where you are being targeted instead of your minions.
Some like to bring other healing skills such as Healing Breeze or Blood Renewal to offset the sacrifice damage suffered by using Blood of the Master.
Rebirth can be replaced by the resurrection skill of your choice.
Skills such as Putrid Explosion will exploit your corpses rendering them useless to a Minion Master. Instead of using Animate Bone Fiend and Dark Bond, try Fetid Ground and Deathly Swarm for damage when you need to kill enemies quickly without enemies.
You can use Animate Shambling Horror instead of Animate Bone Horror if you have Guild Wars Nightfall. The differences between a Shambling Horror and a Bone Horror, except for the 'skin', include a different attack range from Bone Minions and Vampiric Horrors, and the fact that when a Shambling Horror dies they will immediatly turn into a Jagged Horror, which will cause bleeding with its attacks. Those using Shambling Horror will find a longer recharge time in return for this fact, so faster-recharging summons are advised.
Using Dwayna's Sorrow on your minions can provide numerous, cheap heals for your entire party.
Signet of Lost Souls may be an energy management option.
If you consider the healing from Heal Area unnecessary, replace it with a Death Magic spell such as Deathly Swarm, Bitter Chill or any other high damage Death Magic spell.

Templates

Template Guide
The Skills Template for this build is:

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See Also

General minion mastery guide
N/any Minion Master