POE2: Minions suck
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Ok, 4 Trial of Sekhemas runs with various permutations of minions and support concepts - 4 fails.
1 run with a basic lvl 5 Essence Drain with Swift Affliction + Controlled Destruction after losing ~1/3 of my honor when entering the boss room - success. Those results really should speak for themselves. I know the skill level is a factor in terms of shooting while strafing, but in no way should minions die that easily and do so little damage that the best way to use minion skill gems is to collect space in your inventory. Please take the current state of minions, and multiply damage by a factor of 2. Revive needs to be reworked such that when a minion dies there is a drop off in damage, but not an all out failure of play. Minion health is actually quite good - I disagree with those asking for more minion health in so much as the real question is "should minions ever die at all", if that makes sense. I think they should be able to die, so I applaud the design choice to encourage revive as a mechanic. That said, low level minions are so weak they are completely pointless to run. Additionally, there are simply not enough corpses to work the various mechanics involving them, and even if so by the time you actually do raise a zombie/detonate dead/living bomb/unearth you could have killed the enemy with a simple elemental skill or essense drain. At this point minions to half the damage and take twice as much work. Simply not worth it. Last bumped11 янв. 2025 г., 10:45:56
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+1
I had to stop at act 3 normal, because I'm unimpressed by minions. I'm still progressing, haven't died too much on account of how much I invested into personal defenses, but my minions are absolute jokes even having invested more than half my passives into both their damage and survivability. They struggle against white packs, get smeared by rares in one hit, and the only reason I'm making any progression is through spamming firewalls to create raging spirits, spending more of my time kiting and waiting for minions to revive. I have a friend and a fiance who are both running different non-summoner builds (friend is chayula monk, fiance is gemling legionnaire merc). They are struggling nowhere near as badly as I am, because they're not dependent on minions for damage that die instantly. I expect GGG intentionally made them stupidly weak to begin with so they can tweak them later. That said, until they actually get some buffs, I'm done with PoE2. Inb4 "you're playing like it's PoE1, you're supposed to use active abilities too" I want a summoner, not a spellcaster with minion addons. A summoner's job is to create and maintain minions, buff them, and debuff the enemy. Directly contributing to damage not only means your minions have failed you in their task, you have failed your role as a summoner. If this is the intention, then I wish GGG the best of luck with PoE2, because they've clearly lost the plot on what makes a good summoner archetype and have fallen into the same shitty pitfall as every other fucking modern ARPG. PoE players: Our game has a wide diversity of builds. Also PoE players: The [league mechanic] doesn't need to be nerfed, you just need to play a [current meta] build! MFers found strength in their Afflictions. They became reliant on them. I am not so foolish. Последняя редакция: Pizzarugi#6258. Время: 8 дек. 2024 г., 16:37:09
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I am also very disappointed with the minions and hope GGG will fix this. As it stands, it's a joke. Compared to all the other classes, they are absolutely useless.
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Yep, it's SRS or nothing.
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Agreed. I’ve specced fully into minions but my firewall with no passive points to support it does 10x the damage 🫠
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I've specced heavily into corpse minions and it makes bosses absolutely terrible. Either they have trash mobs and I steamroll the boss because I can raise their corpses, or I spend forever as a gimped mage with more than half my skillbar/investments being useless.
As for non-corpse minions, my skeleton warriors have been locked outside of the boss room on multiple fights. I never could get the archer to appear. I just tried to play with a friend, and their frost build is blowing up corpses. My character is completely useless following them around. |
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So far I have been playing minions twice through Act 1 and half of Act 2.
While I can understand why their damage won't reach a melee single fighter damage due to more "safe" playstyle I do see lot of issues with it as oppose to what they presented back then in the showcase of Witch. Problem 1) - Constant need of investment They are indeed too squishy. With level 20 on Witch right now and everything invested into minions, including maximum HP they still perform mediocre.  This creates another issue. With so much need to invest into minions on a tree for them to constantly keep up with increasing level of maps, this leaves no space to actually work on our own defense. I feel if I skip just few points to increase my own ES for survival matter it will immediately leave minions way too back and useless once again. Solution: Buff their survivability and performance so we can actually invest in our own defences as well. Problem 2) - Lack of spirit sources The only way to gain spirit was to use same Sceptre with same 100 spirit. The only way to get a bit more is to roll a lucky modifier on it for % increased spirit.  At lvl 20 I can still only support 2 Skeleton Snipers while 2 Warrior come for free from Sceptre. The only damage boost in this situation are Raging Spirits. Improving gem levels does decrease their spirit reservation but its not enough. Solution: Spirit amount on sceptre should gradually increase with item level. Energy shield based armors should also provide possible spirit bonus via rolled stats. We all based our minions expectation on the official Witch gameplay trailer showcased some time ago. And looking at it, I have no idea why they would show something that is not achievable in Act 2 at our current level being there.  Problem 3) Minion Tree is all over the place Because of Problem 1) the fact that all minion nodes are spread out in all directions on passive tree doesn't really help to scale them reasonably considering how much they seem to lack and investment into local passive doesn't feel paid off. It always feels just enough to not have them completely useless. Solution: Fix Problem 1) or rethink the location and type of minion bonuses on tree Conclusion: While many may think its justified that minions cannot be too powerful because it is a safe type of gameplay, looking at current warrior builds killing bosses with 1 skill usage during 1 stun duration I say: Minions deserve a buff and we deserve more spirit. You can see at the very start of video below how currently warrior builds can just 1 shot bosses. If anything deserves a nerf it sure wasn't a gas arrow combo :) So yeah, small buff wouldn't hurt. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_NP0GvZ5A8&ab_channel=ExiledAgain Personally I do not care to one shot anything. I just want a decent balance on any kind of build that was worked on logically, investing correct nodes. I do not want to go through again the same issue of PoE 1 meaning that only some skills are worth playing. If devs want to look how typical minion build works on bosses I do upload all bosses highlight from my stream in PoE 2 collection: https://www.twitch.tv/collections/qb5yQ_Y0DxjdgQ I won't change to other build because I enjoy current one enough and it did not put me yet into impossible to pass through situations but I can certainly see the issues. Lastly Problem 4) Ranged minions behaviour Skeletal Archers, Arsonist and so on which are ranged minion should have actually behaviour of trying to move away if any mob approaches them at melee distance. Currently those just stand still even if they get surrounded. It would help their survival a bit considering those have much less life. twitch.tv/unik0rnu Последняя редакция: Unik0rnu#9262. Время: 10 дек. 2024 г., 06:21:28
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+1
I rolled witch and have put nearly every point towards making my minions have more life and elemental resistance, and they still get 1 shot by pretty much everything beyond an auto attack. I find myself running around like a one armed Sorc half the time, and some maps which require going up elevators and such separate me and my minions forcing me to walk far away to respawn them. I choose zombies and Unearth as well so in boss fights I run around waiting for my minions to revive, hope they don't get 1 shot immediately, have 0 zombies or unearth minions fighting with me, and now I'm a dot necro...... With a single dot Minions feel more responsive and better overall but the tuning is terrible. |
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" Use your spectre inherent Skeletal Warriors as meat shields (can put the Meat Shield support on them), and focus solely on a single type of (preferably ranged) minions. Don't mix them like you're doing. I recommend Arsonists. Arsonists, ever since I got them, clear maps and bosses by themselves without me even having to do anything. Both packs and bosses melt. You can support them with Flammability and Pain Offering. I personally am spamming Flame Wall with SRS, and that also melts stuff. With my Flame Wall spam and Arsonists, we double melt stuff. Here, my build, with a written guide pinned as a comment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kl5SyQgLtRk Последняя редакция: Fae_Lyth#6750. Время: 10 дек. 2024 г., 11:25:57
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Update:
Level 50 now, and with some optimizing investment and supports, it's actually quite smooth with a number of different minion configurations and selections. I no longer have to rely on SRS + Arsonist to progress. Wither and hinder on expendable warriors and mages works great while the revers deal the heavy hits with contagion. Snipers with gas clouds, both DOT and exploding is another option with igniting hellhound. Straight physical is less punchy, but entertaining with unearth lacerate and stun/freeze/pin/electrocute supporting cast. I'm having a blast with all the different curse combinations and synergies we can play with here, which is great. In terms of the original post, I think the ultimate question now is how do we make minions viable as an option for early game play without overdoing it in the late game? Specifically, if SRS + arcanist is the only option for early-mid game, how do we optimize for play before you get SRS via spirit gem in the early game? Really more question for the GGG, as they mine the forum for feedback. |
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