The necessity of 4 minions (in General)

My current plan/strategy is designed for a 2 minion (maybe 3rd later on for EO and tat carrying) build and I am quite happy with the concept.

However the inescapable fact that 4 minions seems to be a necessity keeps crowding my thoughts.

Assuming an approx 1.33 mil MPR character:

1 minion training HP only = 4,429,939 HP total

4 minions (EXP shared evenly) = 4 * 1,202,624 = 4,810,496 HP total

Throw in the bonus of double hits not retargeting and it would take 2 rounds of 2mil blows for the one minion to die and 4 rounds for the four minion party.

I know of the standard argument about EXP dillution that comes with minion hiring and that the dilution is particularly relevent when dealing with offensive stats (DD, Dex, Str)

Basically I'm wondering if it is completely assinine/insane to decide to never progress beyond 2 minions?

I've managed to convince myself that the benefit of concetrating NW on 2 minions helps offset the necessity for 4 minions, particularly when one does not want to spend USD.

Comments anyone?

4 minions with only AS trained gives you way more HP ;)

4 minions? naah, all you need is an elb and a toa, tada.

I was thinking of how to use a 2 minion team the other day and came out with this:
1st minion training HP, archery and whatever is left into str and dex
2nd minion training HP and evasion only (Wearing all heavy AC armour plus mage shield and AoF)

This should be pretty good against mages and tanks :)

4 minions with only AS trained gives you way more HP ;)

But then you have to worry about DM :D

It isn't completely asinine/insane to never progress beyond 2 minions, IMO. I think 3 is perfection, myself.

Besides, the 1 minion training HP only gets the (small!) benefit of the TSA regenerating his HP - AS health is not regenerated. There's also no chance of DM killing it.

The EXP dilution case, as you pointed out, is important for offensive stats -but especially for mages. Tanks can slap on a ToA and make up currently for that lost EXP dilution quite easily, allowing them to bypass this strategic downside to the 4-minion team - but no such luck for a mage.

I regretted taking my first team from 3 minion to 4 minion, but that's just me.

Less than 4 minions is working fine here.