[Prismatic Gems] 12+ new minion skills, supports, and item ideas

EDIT: Path of Exile: Blight is adding minion behavior supports! Yay from 2016!



This thread details 12 suggestions, including 2 skill gems, 5 support gems, 3 unique items, and 2 unique jewels.




New mechanic concepts:
1. Command gems are minion gems that change their AI. Command gems can modify behavior, restrict attack types, and add special abilities.

2. Prismatic gems fit any socket and change effect based on the socket's color. They are functionally colorless, able to be placed into any socket, but they turn off the parts of their effect that do not match the required socket color.


Quicklinks
1. Command gems (Minion Formation, Minion Technique)
2. Skill gems (Condemn, Raise Flesh Golem)
3. Support gems (Minion Instability, Minion Ferocity, Mass Minions)
4. Unique items (Broad Horizon, Husk of Ryslatha, Bone Fletcher)
5. Unique jewels (Feast of Souls, Grave Robber)
6. What's next?

COMMAND GEMS
1. Minion Formation Support - Minions can be set to behave aggressively, defensively, passively, or independently. They're protected against Reflect and Area Damage, receive a small amount of life regen, and have their Monster Level boosted.
2. Minion Technique Support - Minions can be restricted from using certain attack types or spells. They use their other skills more often and reliably. They also receive generalized bonuses from specialized support gems, to help hybrid minions.



Personally, I would love if minions had what Mines have with Detonate Mines, a set of built-in command buttons to toggle your preferred type of AI for the current situation. With so many different types of minions, this could present a UI challenge. To keep the player screen uncluttered, these buttons could be collapsed into the minion count icon at the top left of the screen, expanding out when moused-over. Or they could be below the "Always Attack Without Moving" toggle when you click on a minion skill in your skill bar.

Assuming GGG has no intention of doing so, due to some unstated design goal (e.g. different AI types being part of each minion's identity), I came up with this alternative that utilizes the support gem system. It creates a natural opportunity cost, and falls in line with the intended functionality of support gems: to modify skills in new ways.

• Supports minion skills, modifying their follow and targeting behavior. Effect based on socket color this gem is placed in. -
  
  
• Red: Supported Skills are Aggressive and follow your cursor instead of you -
  
  
• Green: Supported Skills are Defensive and always stay near you -
  
  
• Blue: Supported Skills are Passive and retreat from enemies -
  
  
• White: Supported Skills spread out and independently seek enemies -
  
  
• (Current socket color effect) -
  
  
• Supported Skills follow you -
  
  
• Supported Skills have +(1-6) to Monster Level -
  
  
• Supported Skills take (30-49)% reduced Reflected Damage -
  
  
• Supported Skills take (10-19)% reduced Area Damage -
  
  
• Supported Skills regenerate 1% of Life per second -
  
  
• Requirements -
  

SKILL GEMS
1. Condemn - A holy curse that makes enemies explode with projectiles on death, has a chance to briefly immobilize targets, and helps other curses against bosses.
2. Raise Flesh Golem - A golem that specializes in corpses, storing and spreading them around for you to use, and its buff is somewhat like a Devouring Totem when you yourself consume a corpse.



The fear of Porcupine Goliaths is now yours to inflict on monsters!

Curse Penetration would work just like Elemental Penetration, where monsters with 0% can go into the negatives, effectively making it a small More multiplier for any other curses at the cost of one of your curse slots. Naturally, it is most effective against bosses who have 60-80% Curse Resistance (currently called Less Curse Effect by GGG), becoming a 50% effectiveness multiplier.

40% increased Effect of Curses is available on the tree
4% from Conqueror's Potency jewel (limit: 1)
20% from Atziri's Reflection shield (extremely rare item)
25% from Occultist Ascendancy
10% from Scion Occultist Ascendancy
18% from the Dying Breath staff (on nearby enemies, so it should act as a multiplier)

So the most extreme use would be 89% with an Occultist using Atziri's Reflection shield and Conqueror's Potency jewel, followed by an Animated Guardian wielding a Dying Breath. 1.89 * 1.18 = 123%. So -10% Curse Resistance on Condemn would become -22.3%.

Ignores Curse Resistance is so it doesn't become recursive with itself.

GGG could potentially implement innate curse penetration into other curses as a way to balance out those that are not nearly as overpowering as Temporal Chains and Enfeeble.



The Flesh Golem's ability to spread out Corpse Puddles, which can be targeted as corpses, allows Bodyswap to be used more reactively to dodge bosses.

SUPPORT GEMS
1. Minion Instability Support - Similar to Point Blank, Blood Magic, and Iron Grip, this grants the Minion Instability Keystone effect to a specific minion, which has the advantage of not causing other minions to explode. It also provides a way for the minion to self-detonate, turning its initial 65% life into more damage.
2. Minion Ferocity Support - Minions on the verge of death become extremely fast, and if killed will briefly return as an Apparition.
3. Mass Minions Support - Creates twice as many minions per cast. Boosts minion cap, too, but minions above the normal cap rapidly lose life.

UNIQUE ITEMS
1. Broad Horizon - Body armour that enables and rewards weapon swapping as a means of specializing your main skill from map clearing to boss slaying.
2. Husk of Ryslatha - Parasitic body armour that saps your strength and spreads its children onto worthy hosts, feeding on them should its life be in danger. It grows stronger as its host grows.
3. Bone Fletcher - Gloves that summon enhanced Skeleton archers on kill.







Skeleton Warriors are fantastic single-target damage, but they don't exactly excel at clear speed. Different from Dead Reckoning, these gloves give summoners a new way to leverage their Skeleton cap while mapping.

Skeleton Snipers are intended to be more powerful versions of Skeleton Archers, ideally with a fun bow skill of some kind. They are not the Archer General from Vaal Summon Skeletons, who happens to go by the same name internally. I went with this name despite the conflict because most players wouldn't know about this fact, and Sniper is such a concise name that would be the most effective at communicating relative power (Snipers > Archers). And the name doesn't make a whole lot of sense for a Skeleton General who uses Rain of Arrows, of all skills. That just doesn't say "sniper" to me, so I'm taking the word back, GGG!

UNIQUE JEWELS
1. Feast of Souls - Threshold jewel that causes Offering skills to keep consuming available corpses, topping off its duration and allowing it to last for as long as there are nearby corpses.
2. Grave Robber - Threshold jewel that causes Desecrate to sequentially fill back up to five corpses for as long as its duration persists, allowing you to, say, feed a hungry Offering.

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WHAT'S NEXT?

Some ideas floating around in my head:

1. Vaal Convocation - Send your minions to target location with a substantial buff.

2. Ravenous Swarm - Channeled minion spell. Rapidly releases up to X swarm minions (cloud of insects, plague of rats) who follow and scurry around your cursor. They deal damage to whatever they touch. They consume corpses they pass over, becoming empowered. On release of the channel, they do something special, ideally something only minions are capable of.

3. Vaal Zombies - Raise max zombies from one corpse while also tapping into some Zombie Apocalypse fantasy: Their attacks become Infectious, a debuff that causes kills to create temporary independent zombies who are also Infectious, with enhanced movement speed and aggro range, to spread out on a map like a true outbreak. Maybe a chance on kill to spawn a Mutated Zombie with neat additional skills (like Vaal Skeletons)?

4. Flesh Binder Ascendancy - It'd be nice if the Zombie Caustic Cloud also healed minions, to help prevent or at least stagger successive Zombie deaths.

5. Vaal Dominating Blow - Resurrects your last Rare and Magic Sentinels.

6. Vaal Animated Guardian - Gains crazy skills based on equipped weapon types.