Is PoE2 Telling Us Not to Play Minions?

I tried to stick with minions in PoE2 instead of doing what everyone suggests "play something else first and switch later". Honestly? It feels awful. Bosses sneeze on your minions and they’re gone. They’re fine for trash, but the moment anything real shows up it’s back to square one. It’s the same problem minions had in PoE1 you go caster and respec later cause early minions suck and scaling is further down the line. I hated that then, and I still hate it now.

What makes it worse is that GGG still hasn’t solved the visual clutter. I’ve played a lot of minion builds, and the screen is just a mess, especially with boss mechanics layered on top of it and don’t even get me started on the Trials. I hate the trails soooo much, they feel like GGG looked at how much people disliked Labyrinth in PoE1 and said, “hold my beer.”

I want to love PoE2, but right now it’s frustrating. I don’t want to play another class just to eventually play minions. If that’s the deal, I’d rather just go play a different game. I’ve also heard Jonathan Rogers doesn’t like passive playstyles, so I assume minions get left behind because of that. Could be wrong, but that’s how it feels.

Maybe things get better later, but right now I’m discouraged enough to dip. I don’t feel like slogging through other archetypes, especially melee, just to hope minions become fun down the line.

Im L77 odd, and have played minions the whole way thru.

0.3 is the first time ive ever leveled my minion character WITH minions, it felt great. Visual clarity...well we play minions so ive given up on that ever coming and learned to play around this by hanging back and using the minion command key bind (ive it set to ctrl+left click, i think original key is T or ,) which will make your minions run to your cursor location if hitting the ground or attacking a specific enemy if over a mob. This works great when you have lower life/res minions that get squashed.
Another handy thing in the game options, turn on health bars for bad guys - even when ive got vaal guard napalming the crap out of the whole screen and all i can see is firey death....i can still track bad guys easy as because the health bars are still super visible.

The fix for squishy minions is hammering +life and res nodes. Getting just 1 ice mage gets you access to its ice armor command skill which is super nice at keeping stuff alive.

If youre running pure skellies, I expect full party wipes regularly until mid-end game, countered by investing in + respawn nodes.

I am almost constantly casting somthing, so im not passive at all. Some times SRS, but usually curses, offering and/or mark plus ive stacked a chunk of bonus's that apply to my presense so im incentivised to stay near my army which makes mobility and dodging bad guys manditory. I am very active control wise, but im never doing damage myself if that makes sense.

Have a peep at these, I ended up with something similar.

Campaign Leveling - Ghazz (spectre)
https://www.poe-vault.com/poe2/witch/infernalist/infernalist-minion-leveling

Endgame - Ghazz (spectre)
https://www.poe-vault.com/poe2/guides/infernalist-spectre-endgame-build

Full run - Helm (skelle army or spect)
https://maxroll.gg/poe2/build-guides/minion-army-infernalist-build-guide


With trial of the sekhemas you can trivialise them by
-overleveling by 10-15 levels, never take a debuff that reduces your vision on the map picker (lets you avoid taking bad rooms),
-avoid Gauntlet maps like the plauge (these are the puzzle/trap rooms so just not picking these makes the trial 50% easier)
-buy some cheap decent relics w/ trade. Honor resist, honor max, for trial 1. Starting trial 2 add in more water, more merchant choices. You can fairly easily finish the trials having bought every minor boon in the game (I did with 15 ex worth of purchased relics)


And on a final note: Unearth is broken. Ive been using it the entire run, it is ffffffantastic. Instantly suppon 5-10-15-20 scorps at once, does OK damage but the real utility is the meat screen. Being able to pop a crowd of distractions out ya ass is SO nice :D

Have to agree with above, the only time i struggled was the first few levels before i remembered how Spirit worked, and allocated more skeletons.

Leaned heavily into unearth and combo'd that with contagion (which i've never used before) basically means i can cast Contagion once at the start of a map and that's it.

Midgame added zombies to the mix, and now have some high DPS abyss spectres too. If it's an open map i'll swap back to skeletons to have 30-40 minions running around at times.

Overall having a lot of fun with it, and tbh now that I'm used to it i dont miss having to manage/squeeze in 8 different aura's to make minions work.

My problem with minion PoE2 builds is lack of leech from minions dmg.
I rly miss this from PoE1, difference is huge.

PoE2 minions are somewhat passive, defensive. You must get swarmed to rly activate they actions. This is bad, I don't want make constant body pulls.

DPS is very nice, mobs melt fast, but you are glass cannon.
80 lvl, I use 5x Spectre Cultist Archer ( 25 lvl now )
Also I spam Contagion and Essence Drain for life / mana on kill.

I find minions are at an okay spot currently, but you are absolutely limited by equipment which in most cases is not made for us and can't even roll things useful to us in most slots. So the few actual minion focused pieces of gear are always very expensive because there's so few of them.

Honestly not having the issues you are with minions.

Played with them from level 1.

Currently level 86. I'm running T15's with, and I truly mean this, dog-shit tier gear and setup. I've watched some build video from Ghazz but truly am too lazy to follow them closely so I'm running some home-brew abomination.

I have 1.5k health and 2.6k energy shield. It's a joke. I die if a monster queefs on me from the wrong direction.

But I still can fairly easily run a T15s and gain levels. I was able to run T15's with this crappy setup basically straight from the end of campaign too. Finished campaign and basically chained 14 boss maps back to back to get the higher tier waystones.

My biggest complaints are that I'm using vaal guards so it's the on screen effects and FPS.

All this to say, I truly don't think the minions are the problem. I'd encourage you to keep trying new things, get all the gear with +minion levels you can, it should come together.

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Elua#0230 написал:

My problem with minion PoE2 builds is lack of leech from minions dmg.
I rly miss this from PoE1, difference is huge.

PoE2 minions are somewhat passive, defensive. You must get swarmed to rly activate they actions. This is bad, I don't want make constant body pulls.

DPS is very nice, mobs melt fast, but you are glass cannon.
80 lvl, I use 5x Spectre Cultist Archer ( 25 lvl now )
Also I spam Contagion and Essence Drain for life / mana on kill.

Have a hoon with the minion move/attack keybind I mentioned. I dont pull myself. I just move my army forward and the ranged units tag a bad guy and bingo the fight is on and im safe way in the back.

re: leech, whats your ES situation like? Im comfortable defensively pure ES (no evasion this time), regen start time for me is 1.65 sec (4 sec default), and my rate of recovery is just shy of 50% per second (in 1 second half my ES regenerates). All i gotta do is stay away from dangerous 1 shots. My flasks and charms are random trash...only thing of note is i picked Life flask with x% instant recovery so when i panic smash it I get a buffer to stop little taps KOing me.

Also skill gem upgrades are cheap as hell 1-2 ex perun cut gem up to L17 I know (i havent gone higher just yet), and greater jewlers orbs are 4-5 ex per, which is cheap as hell. Grab some from the currency exchange, super cheap power boost right there.

Yeah, I get how to “fix” it. throw on Contagion/ED, spam curses, stack defenses, but that’s exactly my issue.


In my original post I said I didn’t want to play something else just to eventually get to minions. And reading these replies, that’s basically what’s happening. You’re not playing minions. you’re playing DoTs + minions, or curses + minions. Even the leveling guides you guys point to basically say “go Contagion until Act 3.” That kinda proves my point.

If you enjoy that hybrid style, cool, but minions on their own just don’t stand up. If the only way they feel “good” is when you bolt on a whole other playstyle, then the archetype itself still has a problem.

I watched my minions get one-shot by a single AoE over and over. Then the boss hit me with the same attack and I braced for a one-shot… but it wasn’t. I actually took about 4-5 full hits before I died. That doesn’t feel right.... if I’m specced into minions, life, and defenses, I shouldn’t be tankier than the “tanks” I’m summoning. buuuuuuuuut thats just how my logic works.

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Linkefer#6630 написал:

Yeah, I get how to “fix” it. throw on Contagion/ED, spam curses, stack defenses, but that’s exactly my issue.


In my original post I said I didn’t want to play something else just to eventually get to minions. And reading these replies, that’s basically what’s happening. You’re not playing minions. you’re playing DoTs + minions, or curses + minions. Even the leveling guides you guys point to basically say “go Contagion until Act 3.” That kinda proves my point.

If you enjoy that hybrid style, cool, but minions on their own just don’t stand up. If the only way they feel “good” is when you bolt on a whole other playstyle, then the archetype itself still has a problem.

I watched my minions get one-shot by a single AoE over and over. Then the boss hit me with the same attack and I braced for a one-shot… but it wasn’t. I actually took about 4-5 full hits before I died. That doesn’t feel right.... if I’m specced into minions, life, and defenses, I shouldn’t be tankier than the “tanks” I’m summoning. buuuuuuuuut thats just how my logic works.

You're just coming off as angry because you tried one thing and that didn't work so now it's everyone's fault but your own. Pretty classic stuff really.

I had 0 issue leveling entirely using minions, and am currently using minions at endgame even with a crap build / gear.

Doesn't really seem like minions are the issue here...

“Classic stuff” huh? Funny, cause when I leveled Deadeye it was literally two buttons and I was clearing screens....even after the nerf. No micromanaging, no dots, no curses.

Assume. makes an ass of u and me. mainly you. minions cearly seem to be weak early game and thats from a majority of the people talking about them, including ghazzy.


…Wow, 0 problems?! How do you do it, king? I’m sure you use your skills outside video games to solve world hunger, broker peace treaties, and walk uphill without breaking a sweat. Truly inspirational.