when he manipulates the hero's to do his work for him..
The first that would come to mind would be Hannibal Lecter..
A villain who can't make effective use of minions sounds really silly...
Grr... <3
I actually think minions are less than 50% likely in a story. Minions are usually an extension of the power of a villain. But there are many types of power a villain can have.
That got me thinking - in many cases, 'minions' is just one of the powers of a villain, oftentimes the power that gives the villain a great advantage over the hero and sets up the villain-hero conflict.
Complex plans often require minions. Minions to attack, minions to set up traps, minions to shuffle papers around while manipulating the legal system, all sorts of minutia that would require a lot of workers. Depending on genre, even heroes get minions because they're necessary! They tend to be called something other than 'minions' though.
If a villain is an immensely powerful Reality Warper, would they need villains or no?
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It all depends on what kind of scope the villain operates on.
If a villain is a serial killer, a stalker, a paparazzi, a Methodist, he or she wouldn't need any minion.
I'm a (socialist) professional writer serializing a WWII alternate history webnovel.
Where force fails, cunning prevails
This reminds me of something, actually. The creator of Rurouni Kenshin mentioned that he regrets giving the final villain Enishi allies and, were they able to rewrite it, would make it him alone going on a solo rampage. I felt the mooks worked for him though.
Anyway, I'd say more personal villains tend to work for that. That and/or ones that rely on sneakiness or covert actions.
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So when do you think a villain is more memorable without the need of any minions?