Questions about minions
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I've started a summoning witch a couple days ago and am nearing cruel difficulty. It's been working great so far with mainly Minion Instability, a few extra minions, some extra minion life, and firestorm for support. I also threw in an added fire damage support for my zombies which helps. I took spectres which turned out to be very weak but explode constantly. That pretty much makes up most of their dealt damage.
The only hurdle I came across was Merveil's first form. I didn't have any minions to help and her shield kept regenerating due to the inconsistency of firestorm. I ultimately had to TP to restore my life flasks, but when I got her down to her second form and got my minions, she went down easily. That's what I have so far, but there are a lot of things I don't know about minions. (1) What supports affect minions? (aside from the minion labeled and added element damage) (2) Are minions affected by any non-minion passives? (3) Item mods that affect minions? (4) What affects the Minion Instability keystone? -Does it get boosted damage from the minions' passives/supports? -Can the AoE be increased? I'd also be interested in hearing any success or failure stories from anyone who has tried a minion build. <Dregs of Theopolis>
~US Eastern~ *Hardcore PoE fan since September 2, 2010* |
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double post, can a mod just remove this?
Last edited by reciprocate#3631 on Dec 6, 2011, 8:39:27 PM
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I know these supports do work on minions since I tried them myself: Life on Hit, Added Cold Damage, Attack Speed.
I can't find my added lightning and chaos damage gems(i know they're in my stash, but I may have misplaced them). I assume they work with minions too. I also know certain supports like Increased Critical Damage, Increased Accuracy (do Minions even miss? I don't notice it all that much if they're attacking units standing still who have no Evasion buffs like some blue/yellow mobs). I have my hybrid lightning/minion based witch with Raise Zombie -> Minion Damage -> Life On Hit. They survive in Act1 Ruthless fairly easily and for the most part as long as they don't get swarmed, they will kill things albeit slowly but survive thanks to life on hit. I am curious about non minion passives and what may affect the keystone. This is to ask to anyone who put time into discovering it or to a dev but would say added fire damage from gear, or passives add to minion instability's corpse explosion effect? I would hope so even if marginalized. I also wonder if Avatar of Fire would make minion's melee damage turn into fire itself. Would be nice if it did, but I don't think it would work that way. [edit] Added Fire Damage also works as a support gem for them. Last edited by reciprocate#3631 on Dec 6, 2011, 8:40:45 PM
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I had just finished replying to this when the power got cut to my computer. Here we go again...
"Any supports which affect the things the minions do. Zombies will only use the default attack, so can be supported by anything which affects attacks. Faster attacks, stun, knockback, life leech, added damage, melee damage, etc. Spectres (and converted enemies) can do more than attack depending on type, and thus are affected by a wider variety of supports. Faster casting will affect spectral version of caster monsters, multiple projectiles will affect spectres of skeleton casters and or enemy archers, increased area will affect minions using area attacks, etc. Note that it's up to you to make use of the supports you apply. If you put increased area of effect on your raise spectre gem, then raise enemies that have no area attacks/spells, then you're paying extra for no benefit. "No. Passives are part of your character, and are not transfered to any other entities. "None that I am aware of. Yet. "Not currently. In order to be able to implement this in the current game engine, it actually bypasses the damage system. We'll be improving this in future. "Yes. If you support your minions with increased area of effect, their explosions will be bigger. You probably can't currently do this to zombies because I don't think the area gem is set up to affect them due to previously zombies couldn't use increased area in any way. That'll probably get fixed up soonish, I guess - I need to go change how the gem supports determine which ones they can work on some time, so I expect you'll be able to do this by 0.9.5. But it should work fine on spectres and converted enemies already. | |
"No. Your passives are things you can do, they don't affect anyone else. Your gear affects you, not your minions, because they aren't wearing it. The minion's stats will be able to affect the damage on the explosion in future, and you can give them such stats by adding support gems to the skill that summons them. So in future you will be able to put added damage or cold to fire or something on your minion skills and have it affect the explosion (As I explained above, that's not possible yet), but your other passives will not affect it, because it's not you doing it. Last edited by Mark_GGG#0000 on Dec 6, 2011, 8:09:33 PM
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"Item mods that affect minions: Flasks with 'of Animation' heal your minions. You can get items with '+1 to socketed Minion Gems' Last edited by FaceLicker#6894 on Dec 6, 2011, 8:17:23 PM
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" Thanks for the info. One thing I would like and I think others would as well. Can there be more info given to raised zombies like their damage and crit rate and the like on the Offense tab of the character panel when selecting Raise Zombie? As of right it only really shows values pertaining to the actual spell and not any minion offensive info. I know under Misc it will show their damage and life increase along with Rarity affected by a person's gear etc, but they're quite vague and don't necessarily give the player a more detailed view of their zombies. |
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"Not possible at the moment. The skill doesn't have that information to show. It's off in a data file somewhere listing all the stats for a zombie of a given level, which is referenced when creating them. The character panel has access only to the skill's stats. It might be possible in the future, but it would be along way off I expect, and would take a redesign of parts of the character panel to be able to effectively display such information alongside information about the actual skill. Also, this can't happen for spectres because you don't know until you cast it what the spectres will be. Last edited by Mark_GGG#0000 on Dec 6, 2011, 8:45:15 PM
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It could happen for spectres in so much as it would display any bonuses that each spectre gains regardless of type (more hp, more damage, etc). Assuming you work it that way...
Zombie Stats HP Total HP Bonuses (All sources) Base HP DPS Total Attacks/Second Actual Value Attacks/Second Bonuses Attacks/Second Base Damage Total Damage Bonuses (Passives, Additional Fire support, etc) Damage Base Explosion Damage Total Explosion Damage Bonuses Explosion AoE Radius Explosion AoE Size Increases Specter Stats HP Bonuses Attacks/Second Bonuses Damage Bonuses etc... |
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Not sure is this on topic or not, but I got into beta few days ago (thanks, and really enjoying the game) and I noticed today there was some dramatic changes to the Zombies!
First of all thank you for that! It was very much needed. However here are a few more concerns/suggestions I have. - Spectres. They still seem really sluggish and it's even more apparent now the Zombies move so fast. They weren't affected by the Zombie buff. Are there any plans to increase their speed as well? - New zones. Every time you zone into a new area you lose your minions. Is it in anyway possible to make it so minions don't despawn all the time? I can understand you don't want to clutter up the 'town' areas but from zone to zone it would be nice if they could stay. - Minions seem to get stuck fighting mobs, if you quickly want to run through an area they get left behind, and you have to resummon. Sometimes I see them teleport on top of me, but at other times they just happily continue fighting whatever they were fighting. I'm not sure how feasible it is to make them follow the player a bit better? |
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