Some light to different minions

[khade]

Mastery of Necromancy levels based on how much exp you put into a minion, so it is directly linked to your kill rate. As your masteries go up, you will need less exp to level the minions and eventually they will start at level 1. A level 0 wight is worthless compared to a level 0 wraith, but once you get it some eq it will take less damage and maybe do more damage. I don't know which is better for a specific amount of time but there is something I've noticed, stronger corporeal minions can use strike from level 0 but they can't arm themselves, which means they can't use strike.

[jabari]

Aha! I thought there is something wrong with my lazy ass Wight. So the strike on all minions is useless unless they get a weapon in their hand

And what comes to mastery.. I get 65% of the xp and wight took 35%. I have made 1.4M in the past 2 weeks which translates that Wight has earned about 500k xp and made 1% of mastery. This mastery is truly a highbie mastery.. as my kill rate is around 1k at best and it just takes time to get the minion leveled up

Noob Minions need some loving.

[solar]

From what I've understood, your wraith - while requiring more exp to level up than a wight - takes a larger share of the exp made, so it might in fact level faster than the wight, since it yields a better party rate as well due to its higher offensive capability.

And thus, it will raise your mastery of necromancy faster than a weaker minion, if it in fact does rise with the amount of exp your minions receive.

It has been said, although I am not entirely sure if the information is (still) valid, that mastery of necromancy might be faster to raise with lower totals, as your minion gets more exp from kills than if you had higher totals, due to party sharing percentages being total worth dependant.

I guess that a wight will overpower a wraith with a proper weapon, such as a steel greatsword, once it levels high enough to benefit from the skill kits it gains with levels.

But none of that will matter when you finally get graveborn. One is supposed to have hard time with lower totals, so rising to a challenge and conquering it will taste all the sweeter (and makes you more addicted).

What might benefit you the most would be to get someone to fill that one empty party place behind your minion. A real blaster, rather than limited offensive spells of a low level earth_priest, might do real wonders to the party rate. Archers being the most convenient ones, since they would benefit from replenish stamina.

[khade]

So I think this is the correct place to discuss what haunting effects each minion gives and how to best use it. Naturally this is something that would only really be useful to highbies, but it would still be useful to know.

Only important bit of info I can give is that you can't be haunted and have a separate minion, summoning a minion banishes the spirit of the last one.

[nezen]

Haunting graveborn seems to turn the damage type of all your earth priest spells to physical. Didn't have enough time to do more research but i'll probably test all minions up to lich and post results here later at some point.

As a general side note epriest spells seem to do kinda pathetic damage even with the dam boost from haunt. Haunt was supposed to make epriests potential blasters for eqparties but as it stands they cant justify their place in any party that goes out so there might be some room for tuning haunt a bit.

edit: removed brainfart

[nezen]

Okay, this is what i managed to find out:

lich -> damagetypes to magical + lich special from spells
graveborn -> damagetypes to phys
wraith -> damagetypes to cold +wraith special from spells
wight -> damagetypes to asphyx
skeleton warrior -> damagetypes to phys
animated corpse -> damagetypes to phys +hpmax
zombie -> damagetypes to poison
skeleton -> damagetypes to phys
walking dead -> damagetypes to phys

Mr. Someone Else will have to post the rest, i'll probably never have enough mastery to test them. This is a bit offtopic but i have to change my mind about epriest as a blaster, if you have enough mastery and have done the epriest guild quest you should be able to do quite nicely in most eqparties with earth coffin thanks to the added damagetypes you can get, just a imho

[ezenya]

i tried just for fun the haunts for all minions and got different results, tho previous post was way old.
walking dead=hpmax, cold dmg type, resists
skeleton=cold
skeleton warrior=cold type+resists
animated corpse= cold+resists+hpmax
wight=asphyxiation dmg type, resists
skeleton warrior=cold type+resists
graveborn=hpmax, cold type, resists
wraith=cold, resists, wraith special
lich=magical type, resist, lich special
strigoi=asphyxiation, resist, hpmax
ethereal=magical type, resists, hpdrain special
herald=magical type, hpmax, resists, herald special


so i assume they have been changed or haunt % or necromancy %/mastery affects these, who knows..

edit: haunt 100%, necromancy 140+, necro mastery 100%, also the tests were quite fast so some might have some specials or something i missed

edit2:also the level of the minion which you haunt seem to have some effect on haunt's power, atleast in the hpmax amount, with lvl 2 herald i was at 1472 hp with poe, as when haunted lvl 5 herald i was between 1770-1970 hp with poe