Minion issues in 0.2

It's not even that their squishy, but you can invest as much in your minions' defenses as your own and they still are glass. Their more glass bb guns than canons right now. It would solve a lot if respawn speed also affected the response animation, but right now even weapon swapping is horrid unless you swap to another Sceptre to keep all your minions, but then you lose the ability to "convocate" them.

Furthermore, Tame beast is easily the most interesting minion mechanic in the game, and it's gated behind a percentage of your spirit worth 2-3 damaging minions after fully investing in reduced reservation. I hope GGG creates an intelligence based companion.

You know GGG missed the mark with this patch when ~40% of builds on poe.ninja are Amazon Lightning Spear (and they all are apparently playing Amazon wrong).

The video posted in the OP is so right, it has a bonus of +1,000,000 to Accuracy Rating.

Every boss does AOEs. All minion builds are tied to minions to deal damage. All your minions constantly are dead especially in later stages of fights when usually the entire arena becomes an AOE.

Like, you put 2 and 2 together, what do you get? Minion builds suck right now super hard.

I love minions in both games and am a huge fan of the variety we have in this game. I main witch for my minion builds.

In .1 I was able to have several minions out and they did survive fairly well. I was able to use flamewall srs to quick react and get a few out to buy minions time to react.

One of my biggest issues is we rely on skeletal warriors so much early game, but they don't taunt at all. Most packs and almost all rares and blues just rush you. At least you can dot up and buy time and kite a bit when needed.

I went Infernalist and hellhound route.
This got me up to about the campaign 3rd act decently. I had used snipers and arsonists alongside srs and occasional unearth for some temporary bonus minions.

By the end of the campaign into maps I only made it to roughly 6th tier. Not huge gains, but getting better gear and loved the game. I also experimented with storm mages and was not a fan of the frost ones.

Then we have the .2 changes. I am leveling minions again.
The early game skeletons from sceptres help with initial minions, however, they die so fast and hit so lightly that most mobs will overwhelm you as they live 3 times longer than before. I found I had to greatly rely on ED and Con for dots and kite so much more. The sniper was a big jump in helping, but the cost is super high early game so you have only 1 along with the 3 skeletal warriors.

By this point I got SRS and flamewall. Then I have to chain cast (with spell cast speed support) 5 spells and all my minions are mostly dead by that point.

I have gone into the minion life and damage and similar super focus routes that are most common, so nothing out of the ordinary there. I went Lich and had Holy might. I was so proud thinking this would super jump my minion dps. I also got bind spectre. I went for a ranged archer for 70 spirit.

I died about 6 times on the act 2 boss for 2 nights in a row before asking for help from Global. I kept dying after my flask charges were gone. I can get up to about 15 minions with srs and unearth up roughly.

Today I was fighting the silverback. I died 11 times with kiting and cursing, dotting up and trying to keep up the srs inbetween. The biggest issue is almost every swipe (which he does alot) I lose every minion hit. I was kiting so far I ran into other packs often and died to being overwhelmed as those mobs themselves take a lot for my minions to kill.

I had on average about 6 to 9 minute battles with this one mob. My minions just don't survive, so my dots don't add up much as I am kiting so much and getting srs up when able. I have no taunts and most blues and above just rush me and ignore the minions too.

I have asked a few higher lvl Liches what route they went and watched videos. Most just don't level minion and focus chaos spell casting super heavy. The point is they know its gimped too and just avoid it until much higher levels and then respec.

Please address these noodle/glass minions. I figure you guys just keep tuning mostly towards the lvl 30 plus gem levels at high endgame, but this is more than just frustrating.

I love the game and love the Lich ideas, but this just misses the mark in my eyes guys.

Sorry for the rant. I will keep watching the patch notes with hope.

You did not progress far enough if you think they are not squishy.

Early on and mostly on mapping you are fin, You can just stack health, max res and + minion to 32 or so.

But once you reach pinnacle bosses or even many of the juiced bosses in t15+ maps the minions get 1-2 shooted by most of their attacks and you have to run w/o the minions most of the fight.

But even that is doable even if extremely annoying as fight takes 20x longer than it should as you fight w/o minions mostly.

Try doing even entry level of Simulacrum and tell me survivability is not an issue. Good luck even getting trough the 10+ waves let alone finishing it.

Your minions will just die and stay dead as monsters move at mach 11 and 1 shoot/stun everything so you cant do any dmg.