You do realize that this only strengthens my "minions suck" argument, right?

That's funny, I could of sworn that every single one of my other characters made fantastic use of their heal skill during clutch combat situations every single day I've played this game. I must have been just imagining things.

Clearly you're missing my point. "Clutch heals" shouldn't have to be frequent. In fact, if they are, they cease to be "clutch" and are instead just "heals". If you need to get clutch heals that frequently, you aren't going to win that fight.

Yes, every character can get excellent use of clutch heals. I won't debate that. However, my major points on that are as follows:

1. Blood Fiend is a terrible clutch heal, as it's usually not available when you really need it due to the minion having been killed and the skill being on recharge through no control of your own.

2. Well of Blood works very well as a clutch heal (typically about 1/4 to 1/3 your max health on the initial heal, plus the healing pulses for 10 seconds) and even works to heal your minions and other allies. It's longer cooldown is irrelevant for its function as a clutch heal because it's only got a 30 second downtime, comparable to Consume Conditions, the only other clutch heal skill that necros have.

I don't see how having to use the AoE healing skills that necros have (and heal for insane amounts) to keep your minions going throughout the entire fight instead of using the worst minion in the game makes your point that minions suck. Just that the one sucks and, like all focused builds, you have to put some effort into it.

I won't argue with you there. Just another mark on the "minions suck" page.

The point is that if you're using it between combats to heal your minions, you don't have it available during combat.

And every other one of the 7 classes (and even the non-minion specs of necromancer) can fully heal between combat encounters without burning resources.

40 seconds really isn't long. You can use it between combats just fine.

So, admittedly, you have extra waiting time between each encounter because you have to wait on your heal to cool down.

My Guardian is doing quite well so far -- only level 18 or so, but he uses Sword and Torch and trades out with mace and shield as needed. Going the tanky route anyway, but I find I can still kill most things with the sword/torch combo with ease.

You don't need the heal as soon as you enter combat, so there isn't any waiting beyond the 10 seconds it takes to run its course.

Then combat ends and you're waiting for the cooldown to finish so you can heal up your minions. And then you don't have the heal for the middle of combat when you actually need it.

You can keep repeating yourself all you want, but it doesn't change the fact that you're dedicating resources to make sure your skill slots don't crap out on you in the middle of combat, which no other class has to do.

My main is a ranger. When a battle is over and my pet is low on health, I wait 5 seconds for him to heal up, then I pull the next group of mobs. I have my heal available for in-combat healing, every single encounter, because its cooldown is half as long as WoB (and still heals both myself and my pet). Not only that, but when I use a tankier pet, he can get beat on by 3-4 mobs and not die. And if for some reason he DOES die, I can just hit my "swap" button and pull out my backup pet with no cast time whatsoever, and no skill slots used.

Even if you want to make the distinction between "pet" and "minion," necromancers simply don't have the sheer summoning power that they need to constantly replenish their minions mid-battle. Every minion summon has a lengthy cooldown, every minion is relatively easy to squish, and every minion does crap for damage. If even one of those three problems were fixed, minions would be far less "meh" than they currently are.

But as it stands, those problems do exist, and Condition Master is hands-down the best build for the class. Which is sad.

I just hit level 65 last night. I dinged doing a world event in Sparkfly Fen that built up to fighting Tequatl the Sunless, a giant dragon boss minion of Zhaitan's. It was so much fun clearing out all these undead and then turning around and going "HOLY CRAP DRAGON D:"

I love my build right now. My engineer has a chance to inflict bleeding, vulnerability, and burning on every crit, and his precision and condition damage are stacked through the roof. This is the build I'm aiming for when I hit 80. I'm not at it yet because I still don't have the 2g I need for my trait book. I would have but I bought a lot of dyes >_> Oops.

http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#...xmax0GaVVRqVkV

They actually changed Juggernaut recently, which is not reflected above. You still gain the Toughness but instead of the speed reduction and Stability, you get 15sec Might every 3 seconds you're using the Flamethrower. I can definitely make use of that >_> The Flamethrower kit is my primary weapon while soloing.

How many world bosses have you guys fought? Not counting quest bosses.

So far I've done Shadow Behemoth and the Shatterer. Gotta say, Shatterer was bloody awesome. Didn't hit enough the first time around to have the chest drop for me, so did it again!