General minion mastery guide/support skills

Minion Skill	Advantages	Disadvantages	Other Notes
Barbs	Extra Damage: Provides an additional boost to damage based on sheer quantity of attacks rather than the damage of the attacks themselves. They work well with bone fiends, especially due to their speed of attack. Short Recast: It takes 5 seconds for barbs to recharge, making it quite a useful skill for its quick recharge. Excellent vs. High Armor: When you're fighting warriors and other high armor enemies, Barbs provides an excellent manner to bypass the reduction in damage caused by armor by adding physical damage to attacks.	Outside skill: It is a curse skill, which requires putting skill points towards Curse Magic in order to work well. Long Cast Time: It takes 2 seconds to completely cast, which may prove futile if the enemy dies before that time.	Bone Fiends and Bone Minions provide cheap quick damage which can prove quite lethal with a high level barbs placed on an enemy.
Mark of Pain	Area of Effect: Mark of Pain serves in a manner similar to that of area of effect abilities like that of the Elementalist by distributing damage to all adjacent foes. While it is necessary that the enemies need to be quite close together, most warriors tend to gather together. Quick Recast: It takes 20 seconds to recharge (updated: took 30 seconds before), which is normally less than the time it takes for your minions to kill an enemy with mark of pain and to reanimate that enemy. Long Effect Time: It lasts 30 seconds, which is quite a long time for a hex. In most cases, it would last until the death of the enemy. Shadow Damage: Shadow damage, unlike physical damage, provides direct damage to the enemy, which can be a way to deal effective damage against well-armored enemies.	Outside skill: It is a curse skill, which requires putting skill points towards Curse Magic in order to work well.	Mark of Pain can introduce an interesting effect amongst the behavior of the enemies (PC). Enemies, after being exposed to about 5 seconds of damage from mark of pain, will disperse. The effect, may hurt or help depending on your strategy, though with an army of 8 fiends, monsters suffer well over 200 damage before they disperse in most cases.
Putrid Explosion	Catalyst Effect: Can be a great way to go from 1 body to 4 bodies. Even if it does not kill the monsters, it usually weakens them significantly. Though depending on the difficulty of finding bodies to start an army, you may choose not to use putrid explosion too early until an army has been constructed. Short Recast: The recharge time is very low, allowing the recast of putrid explosion as soon as an opportunity arises again. With soul reaping, the energy penalty is almost none.	Counters Body Production: To use this skill, it consumes a corpse that could be used as part of the army, which for a minion master could be a bad choice. Often times, it can only be used in times in which there are many monsters around the body before it can encourage body production.	It is a controversial skill to have with a minion master, since many believe the most effective minion master is one which has the most minions in it, though it can enhance damage and produce bodies in the process if used tactfully. With Death Magic at level 16, Putrid Explosion does 126 damage to all monsters which can add up with several castings.
Icy Veins	Catalyst Effect: At level 10 Soul Reaping, Icy Veins deals 63 cold damage, which is excellent to kill the first few monsters to gain bodies. In addition to this, it provides a second source of damage once that monster dies, helping to destroy the other monsters as well. If cast on multiple monsters, this can quickly gain momentum. Long Duration: It lasts 27 seconds at level 10, which is a significant amount of time and should allow enough time to take advantage of its secondary damage upon the enemy's death. No Corpse Consumption: The area of effect damage is similar to that of Putrid Explosion, without consuming a body. So Icy Veins could prove a handy substitution for Putrid Explosion to provide a catalyst without losing bodies.	Outside Skill: It is a Soul Reaping skill, which requires that the minion master's primary profession is Necromancer (no Ritualist/Necromancers), and requires a decent amount of points to work effectively. However, most minion masters typically have points invested in Soul Reaping. Elite Skill: It is an elite skill, and as such prevents the usage of any other elite skill equipped	Note this skill can only be used if you own Factions.
Putrid Bile	Catalyst Effect: At 16 Death Magic, Putrid Bile deals 89 armor-ignoring damage, which is great for killing the first few monsters to gain bodies, and stacks excellently with Icy Veins. Combined with Icy Veins, this would make for a powerful area-of-effect bomb, helping to kill other foes quickly following the first one. Long Duration: It lasts 21 seconds at 16 Death Magic, which is a significant amount of time and should allow enough time to take advantage of its secondary damage upon the enemy's death. Quick Recharge and Casting time: 12 second recharge allows placement on multiple targets, creating a possible chain reaction, and 1 second cast time has low likelihood of being interrupted, as well as allows quick placement on a foe that is near death. No Corpse Consumption: The area of effect damage is similar to that of Icy Veins and Putrid Explosion, without consuming a body. Death Magic skill: This skill is from the Death Magic line, and requires no additional attribute points, as most MMs have the maximum rank of 16 in this attribute. Unlike Icy Veins, this skill can be used effectively by non-primary Necromancers, such as Ritualist MMs. Health Degeneration bonus: At Death Magic 12+, the target suffers -3 health degeneration, speeding up its death.		Note this skill can only be used if you own Eye of the North Expansion.