My "Roving Mob" hero builds.
As many of you have realized, I'm a pet freak. Those of you who have adventured with me recently when I'm in "Roving Mob" mode, have discovered why I'm such a fan of pets. I think everyone who has been with me on these runs has left quite impressed with the technique. Basic theory: Use pets and minions to body block and swarm the enemy. They are very good at holding most, if not all the aggro, while your back line is free attack/heal in relative peace. The wall can absorb a lot of damage, and it's no great loss if any of them die. Pets compliment minions nicely, since they are always around, can be more easily healed, and add several more bodies to the wall than a single MM can muster, while avoiding the "dueling corpses" problem with dual MMs. You can run pretty much any class for your own char with this system, but ranged attackers fit the mindframe better, but my Warrior has fun as well. Just remember that the pets as used here are almost pure defense. Be sure to bring some damage dealers. Upon request from a certain guild officer, below are the builds I use for my heroes to achieve this. Olias Main function is Minion Master, but with some curses thrown in to help between animates. Taste of Death is a fail safe heal to keep minions from running wild upon necro death. I've been underwhelmed with the utility of Flesh Golem. Bone Fiend is out, because I want minions to body block. Necromancer/Ranger Level: 20 Soul Reaping: 9 Curses: 9 Death Magic: 16 (12+4) Beast Mastery: 3 Animate Shambling Horror (Death Magic) Animate Bone Horror (Death Magic) Spiteful Spirit (Curses) Mark of Pain (Curses) Taste of Death (Death Magic) Blood of the Master (Death Magic) Charm Animal (Beast Mastery) Resurrection Signet () Zenmai Your basic Crit BP Ranger. Could likely use some tweaking, but seems to work well. Assassin/Ranger Level: 20 Critical Strikes: 12 Beast Mastery: 3 Marksmanship: 12 Critical Eye (Critical Strikes) Sharpen Daggers (Critical Strikes) Barrage (Marksmanship) Savage Shot (Marksmanship) Distracting Shot (Expertise) Revive Animal (Beast Mastery) Charm Animal (Beast Mastery) Resurrection Signet () Acolyte Jin BP Ranger w/ a couple nice Paragon shouts added in. Note that both shouts affect all allies, so pets+minions get buffed, too! Ranger/Paragon Level: 20 Expertise: 11 Beast Mastery: 2 Marksmanship: 12 Command: 6 Barrage (Marksmanship) Savage Shot (Marksmanship) Distracting Shot (Expertise) "Go For The Eyes!" (Command) "Stand Your Ground!" (Command) Whirling Defense (Expertise) Charm Animal (Beast Mastery) Signet of Return (Leadership) Margrid the Sly Interrupt BP Ranger. Heroes are excellent at interrupts... why not give one four skills to use for it? could swap out Barrage for Broad Head Arrow for fifth, plus dazing. Ranger/Mesmer Level: 20 Expertise: 10 Beast Mastery: 8 Marksmanship: 12 Inspiration Magic: 1 Domination Magic: 2 Cry of Frustration (Domination Magic) Leech Signet (Inspiration Magic) Barrage (Marksmanship) Savage Shot (Marksmanship) Distracting Shot (Expertise) Whirling Defense (Expertise) Charm Animal (Beast Mastery) Revive Animal (Beast Mastery) Dunkoro / Tahlkora Nothing special here. When going hero + hench, I'll just take the hench healers instead. Probably a lot of improvement could be had here, but build seems to keep people alive. Monk/Ranger Level: 20 Divine Favor: 12 Healing Prayers: 12 Beast Mastery: 3 Signet of Devotion (Divine Favor) Glimmer of Light (Healing Prayers) Healing Breeze (Healing Prayers) Mend Condition (Protection Prayers) Remove Hex (Monk other) Heal Area (Healing Prayers) Charm Animal (Beast Mastery) Resurrect (Monk other) Zhed Shadowhoof Moderately standard Searing Flames build... with a pet of course. Elementalist/Ranger Level: 20 Energy Storage: 12 Fire Magic: 12 Beast Mastery: 3 Aura of Restoration (Energy Storage) Fire Attunement (Fire Magic) Mark of Rodgort (Fire Magic) Meteor Shower (Fire Magic) Searing Flames (Fire Magic) Glowing Gaze (Fire Magic) Charm Animal (Beast Mastery) Resurrection Signet () I only use Koss and Melonni when I absolutely have to. I got enough of a front line without them. PS - I love playing this with my Rit. I can drop some attack spirits, heal the entire horde, then staff attack at will. I think it would be a riot to run a full guild team (even 2 people would suffice), where everyone is playing this way. :D

I do pretty much the same thing. Each different character + heroes has the same pet so it is pretty cool to see 4 crocs, moas or whatever all swarming around. If you equip a hero with either Comfort Animal or Revive then be sure to disable it and choose yourself when to use it. With Comfort they spam it once their pet starts taking damage and you don't want them spending the time to rez pets in the middle of battle.

That sounds really cool, time to go charm some pets :D Except I think I'll take a different approach than Dean and try to get as many different ones as possible. Kinda make a roaming zoo of sorts.

Having seen this party build in action, I gotta say that it works exceptionally well in 95% of the explorable areas in the game and is only slightly limited in those areas where MMs are not as effective (for example: MMs aren't quite as effective in the last three missions in Prophecies since (1) minions aren't infused and can be taken down fast by the Mursaat, (2) mionions don't do well in the lava areas, and (3) a good amount of enemies, like jades, don't leave bodies). Even without the MM, this build is effective. But with the MM, this type of party can basically roam almost anywhere and kick tail without having to worry about anyone or anything. Hey, if this party build is good enough to get you from Beacon's to Drok's (Rod, Fort and I did this run a couple days ago) - then it can handle almost any explorable area. Gotta give credit to Rod for an excellent paty configuration. :D

Lets bring them to DoA see how it goes there.

Now, that would require actually getting to DoA someday. And considering that I most want my Rit there, it's going to take a bit of time to get there. But I'm working on it. :)

Ditto on the pets. All my heros have white tigers. Looks pretty cool standing on a plain with 4 whites milling around you.

Rod what are your standard Rit builds? While in Factions, might as well bring over Dee the Rit.

Don't really have "standard" builds going at the moment, but the one I've been running with the herd lately looks something like: Recuperation, Spirit Channeling, Charm Animal, Flesh of my Flesh, Pain, Bloodsong, Anguish, Union. With attr points something like Communing: 10+4, Spawning 10+1, Restoration 11+1. Been thinking of swapping Anguish for Shadowsong. This is my Communing/Restoration setup. However, I also a couple other build themes. One is Channeling/Restoration, which is good for when you're in a group that's constantly run,run,run. It looks something like: Life, Recuperation, Spirit Light, Flesh/Flesh, Gaze from Beyond, Spirit Boon Strike, Essence Strike, Spirit Burn. Lately, I've toyed with a pure offense build, which takes Pain, Bloodsong, Shadowsong, Flesh/Flesh, Gaze from Beyond, Spirit Boon Strike, Essence Strike, Spirit Burn. Too soon to really say how well it works, but it can dish out some serious damage. I've never played with a restoration centric build, just not my style.

Not to steal your thunder, but I am curious as to how this compares to running Necro secondaries. Once the army is built I stand back and do nothing but spam Blood of the Master. You can see that it takes nice chunks out of my health bar, but the monks in the group quickly remedy that. Do Ranger secondaries lose their pets if you change them to a different secondary? If so, which I think they do, it's too bad as you can't flip between MM and PM (Pet master?) according to the mission/objective. We'll have to do some in-game comparisons some time.

A jagged bones {e} team would be interesting. As long as you didn't put blood of the master in their bar, as you would have to run a strong self heal, as you would heal all the minions

I've thought about running with running 2 MM heroes, but the following counters keep coming up: 1) not enough corpses, and they constantly fight over the ones that are there. Besides, with one MM, he'll use the 'extra' corpses to keep the livestock (deadstock?) fresh. Minions have HP degen, which increases w/ time. Fresh minions are better than stale ones. 2) For effective minions, you really have to have high death magic. DM affects the HP, AL, Dmg, and quantity of minions. This takes over a char build much more than the 'whatever's left' approach I use in Beast Mastery. Only pet dmg is hurt by low BM. Leave the damage dealing to the heroes, and all's great. :) 3) If everyone is so dedicated to the minions, that makes it really hard to get the initial kills in each zone for minion production. Pets on the other hand, are already there. That said, I love having hero MM (w/ pet) in the herd. Minions and pets balance each other nicely, each side addressing the other's weaknesses. However, if you can get an effective team build of MM's going, feel free to make a posting in this forum! I'd love to read it! PS - Yes, in order to have the pet on zone, you have to have Charm Animal on the bar, which requires a Ranger primary or secondary.

There are some things that need to be avoided. Don't put Blood of the Master in the Heroes skill bar. Koss(the idiot) would get into the thick of things and then cast it, going down in heap of blood and steel. So I don't put that in anyone's skill bar but my own. Obviously, anything that can't be used should be avoided, such as elementals. Something will drastically reduce your ability to keep M's alive or even stop you from getting an army. I tried the build in the picture several times in the desert with all the hydras and it didn't work at all. However, it did work really well just outside Seeker's passage. I've also learned to be a little resourceful. I kill any animals that I see, for the army, and some zones have corpses just laying around. I think both methods have their ups and downs, 24 shambling horrors do massive amounts of damage vs. pets, but pets can zone and the undead can't. (But they can teleport) It might be more productive to find the balance. Such as counting on the pets to help build the army and then switching tactics and the army does the dirty work. One more note, I only let the heroes generate them. I do all the army maintenance so to speak. And unless there is two PC, I never seem to run out of corpses, it's either A) can't kill NPC fast enough to get a corpse or B) actually leave corpses behind because of the recast time for Minion spells and energy regen. Another topic for discussion concerning this build, but outside the scope of the thread is: which is more effective for the MM, soul reaping or energy storage. Rdm, I think you mentioned dropping Koss altogether, and I'm going to try that tactic as well his energy is just too low.

I have been working towards putting together heroes per Rod Suggestions. I have Olias (less Taste of Death), Jin, Dunkoro and Zhed set up right now. I am going to try and find a protection build for Tahikora. Not realizing what I was doing, I picked up Shadow instead of Margrid. I have had very good look using Jin, Olias and ZHed. For henchmen, I pick up two healers, a third ranger and another caster (Cynn or Orion). With all of the pets, and the suggested Olias build, it is very rare that baddies make it through the front lines. I do want another Ranger hero though, Barrage is neat to watch, if nothing else, with all of those arrows raining down. While effective, I have found one big draw back to barrage. My barrage finger is nearly warn out.

If you have factions, hop over to Kaineng Center and get Zenmai. She makes an excellent barrager.