[Minion Rework] As a long-time summoner, here's a few things I hope GGG addresses.

GGG is currently giving minions a dev pass, so I made a Reddit thread to strike while the iron is hot:

[Minion Rework] As a long-time summoner, here's a few things I hope GGG addresses.


Art by Tony Sart

Reflect: Minions have no way to deal with it. This is particularly bad for Spectres, who are difficult to replace. All other build types have access to Reflect mitigation tools if and when they find they need it. Summoners need at least a few options at their disposal to mitigate it. Like a Notable passive node in a minion cluster, an item or two, include minions under Yugul's pantheon, things like that.

Monster Leech: Legion rares with Leech could easily reach leech cap against minions, making the rare a slog to kill. Minions do not dodge, so they have no natural defense against this, let alone access to something like the leech immunity of "Bloodless". The point is how disproportionately this can affect summoners, something to keep in mind when balancing content in the future. In the worst-case scenario we can carry Frost Bomb in our inventory, but it'd be nice to have a few other options for when gem swapping mid-fight isn't practical.

Area Damage: Skeletons and Phantasms are exceptionally vulnerable to AOE. It feels terrible when your minions are immediately wiped out before barely doing anything, even with high investment into minion life. Something like the Solaris pantheon's "20% chance to take 50% less Area Damage from Hits" for minions would do wonders in keeping at least some of our horde alive, as an alternative to Bone Offering. Notable, jewel, enchantment, something. Or what if all pantheons applied to minions as well?

Labyrinth Traps: The bleed from the Chopping Cleaver trap can decimate Spectres. Is there something wrong with the damage reduction minions are supposed to have against Lab traps when it comes to this particular trap? The design intention of giving minions trap protection to begin with should also apply to this trap.

Elemental Equilibrium: Its current design works against PUG play. Other players in a Party can affect the damage types you deal with their auras, like Anger and Wrath. A way to block this damage contamination would be great for the health of party play.

"Minions cannot Taunt Enemies": In my build thread, I get many people confused by this wording. They think it applies to all minions instead of just the Holy Relic, Agony Crawler, or Raging Spirit. The phrase should be changed to a singular "Minion cannot Taunt Enemies" for clarity.

Offering duration: Even when consuming max corpses it barely lasts, and investment into duration just for an Offering isn't feasible. It feels like busywork to use manually, and many summoners end up automating it in some way. Perhaps a higher additive duration per corpse to really reward investing in corpse generation or waiting for more monsters to die?

Summoner Defenses: Much of what gave summoners their advantages, and justified their disadvantages (e.g. poor mitigation and recovery), has been losing ground over time. Meanwhile the disadvantages remain. For example, reflect "immunity" (refer to #1) and lack of leech. Or body-blocking vs. massive enemy AOE, like what many Legion rares have. Or auto-targeting vs. Mirage Archer/Winter Orb/Chain/Heralds etc.

Spectre Viability: One day, I'd love for us to have a way to control the skill types a minion can use, so more monsters can become viable Spectres. Example: Minion Technique Support. Also, given the current status of the game, do Stygian Revenants and Undying Evangelists still need Spectre-specific damage nerfs?

Synthesis Spectre MTX: When? =oD

Stat Transparency: It's a shame we must rely on datamining sites like PoeDB just to find out basic data on our minions. The game doesn't even show how much life the Holy Relic has, or how much regen its boon grants, let alone any other build-defining stat. How can we make informed decisions for our build when so much is obscured for summoners? Path of Building helps, but even that has to have Spectre monsters added individually, and as a result does not have the new Slave Drivers as an option.

Faster Projectiles Support: It's lackluster, but pretty much mandatory on anything that really benefits from it, like Phantasms for their range. It'd be cool if it could get something like Far Shot instead of a paltry 29% increased Damage. Far Shot gives More damage the further away a target is, up to 30%. It would add an actual gameplay element to the gem for skills like Ethereal Knives and Freezing Pulse. Right now, Faster Projectiles Support is like Area Effect Support, but with this change it would be more like Intensify Support.

Animate Weapon could use some love. At the very least, it needs some limited or alternative way to work without weapon drops (Incursions) that isn't centered around another skill (Animate Guardian + Chains of Command).

Lagging Behind: To help out-of-combat minions keep up with their master, what if they acted like the Delve cart when following? Just a thought.

Surgical Challenges: Requiring that we kill certain things in a certain order, or not kill certain things until something else is done, is excruciating for a summoner. Deathmark will give us a measure of AI control, but it won't change minion AOE. GGG, please, the Syndicate does not need your help reviving Vorici.

Please don't nerf summoners after 3.8. Raging Spirit is still traumatized.

Thank you.

Good feedback. I agree with everything.

Ggg mentioned a long time ago that they were planning to rework elemental equilibrium. Haven't heard anything about that since then though.

Faster projectiles support is an old remnant from the times when players used to to extend flame totem range and stuff like that. Haven't used this support for years i think.

Is the lab trap bug not fixed? I remember this one.
D2 fixed it by making minions immune to stuff that summoners had no control over. Like stygian doll explosions and traps.

AAAAAAAAAAAW FUCK MY EYEEES... ITS REDDIT

Seems reasonable

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kompaniet wrote:

Is the lab trap bug not fixed? I remember this one.
D2 fixed it by making minions immune to stuff that summoners had no control over. Like stygian doll explosions and traps.

Still not fixed.

Which means it's presumably a tricky one. And the only tricky bugs that are fixed are the ones that have high visibility.

Since summoner archetypes are not popular, for obvious reasons, they don't have high visibility.

I don't want to accuse GGG of hostile cynicism toward its own players, but I'm sure you can do the math. I'll leave it at that.

That's bad news for summoners going into the lab