POE2: Minions suck

Arsonists + 1 Lightning + 1 Cleric is OP. Invest in the revive speed nodes and you'll be fine. SRS is definitely required based on its low low spirit cost vs output. Its not your main source of damage though. Once you get 8-10 arsonists things start blowing up.

Spirit costs and values of minion damage/hp will need to get adjusted but minions are certainly viable and quite fun to play once you get it setup.

minions are at very crappy state.

BALANCE (NUMBERS) :
1. only viable options are srs and arsonists (only due to the next reasons):
1.1. 10 srs per 30 spirit, each 1 deals ~same dps as 1 skeleton
1.2. arsonists with +2 proj which are overlapping resulting in ~2x damage (3 proj * -20% less damage * -20% less as = 3*0.8*0.8 = 1,92)

Yet even then those minions sucks until you stack at least +3+2+2 to minions on scepter+helmet+amulet. And ~300-400-500 spirit to get arsonists number to 12+.

other minions just crappy, only gas ability into flamewall is nice when running through campaign.

Conclusion > srs too cheap, other minions too weak and useless

CONCEPT :
it's mostly not minions dealing damage (until lategame setups), it's mostly player cast spells-commands via proxies (minions) and it feel very bad.
Also cap of gems is 9 limits variety in an minion army.

For srs it's also very boring to always play with flamewall. Would be nicer if bone-spells can summon them too, diversing arsenal. (i use corpseexposion as 2nd spell to speed up clearing, yet it would be nice to be able to play w/o srs+flamewall).

PATHING & REVIVING :
it's very frustrating that revive timer resets to max when other minion die. Sometime it means if you lose minions one by one (vs boss/rare fight etc) - it will deplete your dps to the moment when there is no minions left and only then you can revive them after timer.
It would be nicer to add just 1 second if other minion die during revive timer (capped at max timer).

Even pathfinding and collisions work well, the stucking is extremely common (and you need to run far forvard to respawn minions). It's frustrating. They should phase through each other (at least if not fighting atm).

Die when player goes far away and reset respawning timer. Feels very bad as i cant move faster through the map if some of minions start attack something. It would be great to respawn those minions w/o timer.

this is what im going with atm, im somewhere into following this tree i sketched out






ive never rly done minions in poe1 so its one of my least knowledgeable areas in poe. im doing the fire throwing dudes and popcorn srs flamewall with the burning dog. gonna do the phys to chaos shift and get chaos res, the dogo for the 20% DR and then a mini MoM, 18%, with EB and a bunch of damage taken recoup as life and mana.


im doing es on a sorc atm, im trying something different here we will see how it goes with all this damage splitting between both globes and different resists. in poe1 im a big ES lover but playing poe2 strictly group found with a few m8s i dont fancy gearing multiple es builds at once, esp without knowing how anything performs with the new game. would mind finding another cloak of flame.


so far im about half way through towards endgame and its just cruising? feels very much easy mode so far (fingers crossed).

I think a big issue is that the early game in particular is terrible. No way to control aggro is a big pain point as well. In POE1 my zombies/holy flame totem did a fine job of pulling aggro for me they were also somewhat decently survivable. Later on I could do something like Vaal skeletons to pull up a huge army that was able to block out mobs. I was thinking golems could also fit that need pretty well but I don't seem to find any atm. Something something where's my build diversity.

Unearth is also kind of awkward in pulling up corpses. Combined with contagion though it can at least make the early game somewhat tolerable. The only problem is I need corpses first, and with the abysmal damage skeles do it's kind of annoying bootstrapping them. Keeping them up also requires the zoom zoom playstyle I thought was trying to be avoided.

There's also the design philosophy of skeletons in the first place. In general I tend to find summons as one of two major sects:

* Lots of minions, but less damage and health per minion, or short lifetime duration
* Less minions, but more damage and health per minion

Skeles at the start feels like they should fall into the later category. Skele warriors in terms of health and aggro management. Spirit allocation also doesn't feel like it matches well with powerscaling minions through their numbers. Unless you get lucky with that one 100 spirit unique I remember seeing at some point.

SRS can help but I don't feel like it should be a mandatory skill to do damage. Also why is that not part of witch's spirit gems? it feels weird that it ended up in another class when SRS was a major witch thing for POE1. This has turned it into a new player trap as there's no way to go back on spirit gem decisions and you just have to farm another one.

Part of me also thinks they were betting on spectres being a damage contributor but they took it out at the last minute. This gave us less minion options and reduced our toolkit. We honestly should have gotten a buff to other skills to compensate.

I'm also not too thrilled on the whole nerf party stance GGG is going through right now. Underperforming builds are much more dangerous in an EA testing phase as they gate progression (and thus what can be tested). OP builds don't, so I don't see why they should care about those right away. Minions should have been sorted out way before the one shot slam bro nerf. Blood mage should have been sorted out before they went with cast on changes.

It's crazy that at end game my entire build is supported by a 3 link SRS.

I have 11x 5 link arsonist's skill gem level 24 and a 30 spirit reserve skill still does a good 50% of my dps. That and a lack of a minion focused ascendancy which can be used as another tool to balence minions is just badly designed.

That's before you get started on the AI, mobs charge through minions to get to you, minions constantly get stuck unless you're on an open map, the lsit goes on.

It wont change because they are obsessed with everything being an active skill. Perma minions have be constantly nerfed into unuseablilty in poe 1 and the trend has copy pasted.

Just came in to give my 2 cents as a brand new player that never really got into POE1 (highest lvl character reached lvl30).

I'm at lvl 23, so early days still, but I'm seeing complaints about the early game experience which is why I thought I'd say something as a noob.

While I think there are some issues with things like the hitbox with Unearth which seems quite finnicky and are minor complaints, I've generally been having a blast with summons.

While it's true that some mobs will chase you with a passion, I've found that in general terms summons work quite well in keeping most at a distance, main categories being permanent summons vs decaying ones.

I like the fact that you have to pick and choose what skeleton combo works for your setup and using corpses according to the situation, and I feel that decaying summons' short life spans are to encourage play with sacrifice mechanics.

Maybe it's not a "pure" summoner build as someone was describing but generally playing with summons (Warriors + Archers + Unearth, later complemented with Zombies - need to experiment with mage and arsonists) while using Contagion + Essence Drain + Enfeeble + Poison Arrow, with Bone Cage as CC for groups that chase you and Bonestorm as a situationary DPS burst for meatier monsters & bosses, complementing with Power Siphoning for charges, has me seeing whole groups chain combusting.



There's been some tight spots but, in general, it's been very satisfying, and feels like there's elemental and other synergies that could be explored to give unique flavours to this curse + summon build.

Spirit does feel a bit weird as it's obscure how to get more and you do feel a bit limited in that regard but, conversly, having the items give skills helps mitigate that in what I assume is a learning curve, and I wholly embrace this resource as opposed to gimping Mana.

A couple bosses have been a pain like Balbala but in general even Act1 boss seem very manageable, the main obvious problem being having to rely more on curses if mobs weren't that available as part of the boss's fight.

I'm new and might be overlooking issues as I'm still learning the ropes but I've honestly been spending most of my time pretty much just rolling over everything.

I've seen some of the issues of minions getting stuck and whatnot but haven't felt that impeded by it tbh, let's see how things progress near the end game.

I've complained about some parts of the game enough, but the 1st sekhema trial as a minion witch really isn't too bad, you're having a much easier time than some classes. When I was in Act 2 I didn't spec heavily into raging spirits/corpse explosion/firewall combo yet and did it the first try.

Ofc rng with gear also makes a difference. When I was in cruel act 3 I got lucky and got a lv58 sceptre with +55 spirit, minion +39% life, and +3 all minion skills at the very beginning of the act. Made the rest of cruel act 3 a total joke.

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Pizzarugi#6258 написал:

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.

I'm in the same state and can only hope that devs will really decide to work on a summoner build as they were in old school RPG when players had to use their brain and not only their agility on the keyboard mouse...

I wait for real tank minions aggroing mobs and able to defend me while I use dots and debuff, currently warriors minions are a joke...

Tired to play Path of Dodging, running like a rabbit hoping beeing able from time to time to send spell before beeing one-shooted.

For the lack of spirit on scepters don't forget that updating the quality of scepters also update their spirit pool.

What I did was run a L8 Bone Blast Wand (its L6 but has +2 on it) with L4 Skeleton Warrior +Last Gasp (+2 to minions total), along with 2 L8 Snipers (Comorbidity + Corrosion) and 1 L8 Arsonist (Scattershot + Ignition), coupled with L5 Contagion +Arcane Tempo. I had zero issues with Sekhemas and breezed through it surprisingly quickly; probably twice as fast as my lightning archer. The boss took a bit longer than I would have liked, but that was about it.

I have found that Arsonist + Sniper + Last Gasp Warriors work surprisingly well. Use Sniper's Poison Arrow and if the Arsonist doesn't blow it up (is a 50/50 depending on where they throw their grenades), you can trigger your Warrior to explode, and he'll still stick around for 4 more seconds. Also, tagging a weak enemy with Contagion so that it spreads quickly is pretty helpful as well; and Contagion + Poison = double DoT.

Generally speaking, I have not run into any issues with that setup thus far. The biggest hurdle I have is timing the big attacks from bosses, because they all have different wind-up speeds. You think they're about to swing, but this boss decides to have an extra 0.5s pause before he swings and ends up tagging me at the *end* of my roll. LOL

It’s not so much that the idea of minions is great; however, the execution of minions and their laughable AI makes them almost unplayable. Sure, you can take a bunch of them and nuke a boss in a video, but playing with minions that don’t follow you properly is frustrating. You literally have to lead them into rooms (you are playing their meatshield, not the other way around). They phase out, can’t keep up with your speed, and despawn. Reavers don’t even cleave, and they have some weird collision where only the front line attacks.

I’m sorry, but D1 minions play a lot better than this. It feels like it’s not even coded properly. Why would you add collision to minions so they can’t stay in formation, or have an aggro range that’s basically nonexistent? Playing minions in maps is pointless until they seriously take a real look at what’s going on.