Witch Minions, totally unplayable

I am level 53 now. I am not having damage issues but surviving. I am working on adding block chance. Early game was pain but around act 2-3 it started getting easier with archer/flame wall.

I am only gearing plus level to minions and plus to spirit. I first did a lot of nodes with minion damage. Until mid act 3 then switched. No idea what to build but it is playable...

i managed to reath lvl 38 act 3 with srs/minions.

to me, the changes to minions and srs are proof that ggg always has, and always will hate summoners. there were only two occasions where summoners truely shined, and both times they were nerfed to unusability the moment ggg found out (rip Baron)

I agree. I am trying so hard not to give up on my minion build. I love the game and it's fun but having my minions die so fast and do so little damage is getting old real quick. I don't know how many times I tried to kill the Act 1 boss before I gave up trying to do it by myself and just hopped on a group. I hope they balance things out because right now it's rough.

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Epidot#0550 wrote:

I first tried warrior till level 12. Now I play witch minion build following Kripparians build. In no way are minions weak. Mine are absolutely melting everything and I literally progressed twice as fast than I did with warrior. Perhaps minions won't be as good against bosses but nothing can be great at everything.. follow krips minion fire build and I don't see how you will think they are still weak.

What is Krips build, can you link it?

For me, the fun "started" at around lvl 50 when I switched to Storm Mage Minions and some Warriors from my sceptre.

The damage is okay, I guess, but I didn't take many damage nodes because my priority was surviving, which is still kind of hard.

I feel minions need some more love in POE 2 and also the revive mechanic is really bad. I prefer the POE 1 teleport to you and not die and revive 8 seconds later.

Some maps are also kinda difficult to play for minions. You get stuck and your minions are way behind you looking around and not dealing damage at all.

Also, I'm still not 100% happy with the ascendancy for minions.

You really have to take advantage of certain skill synergies for it to work

Early on, the key is to combine fire damage (ie. firewall + SRS) with archers gas. These explosions do an insane amount of damage.

Invest in minion revive and minion health early so they aren't wet noodles, and look for +spirit on weapon, chest, and amulet

Later on, there are a lot of ways to build. Right now, I'm 49 in Cruel act1 with 240ish spirit. I'm running an autobomber SRS + arsonists. I can literally just afk run through where I'm going and it literally murders everything without trying. Flammability + Incin with exposure gives a lot of +dmg for boss fights.

GGG hates on minion builds and summoners yet again huh? What else is new. Even with every minion +health +damage +etc etc node I can get my grubby hands on, they simple do jack squat for damage and insta die to even a sneeze. Then...then you have to run around waiting 7-10 seconds for them to respawn..only to die instantly again to an aoe attack.

Lets be honest, everyone bought into "wow, they're making minion builds cool and good" when they showcased the witch months ago..but now that we have the game in hand? Terrible. Nothing about minions is good in it's current iteration. Seriously need to go back to the drawing board and fix minion/summoner builds. Even D4 made necro minions way tankier because as a minion build, its not fun to have wet tissue paper minions carrying noodle weapons.

Minions are quite weak the first 1 to 1,5 act then they realy start to shine.

But ye it was hard in the start, im running maps now and i dont have ANY problems.

I just used reavers untill i got Brutes and they granggrape everything.

It's kind of frustrating that spirit gems are so rare. Having read this thread, I now realise I was missing SRS because it's not even in the witch section, and I hadn't checked "all gems", which is obviously my bad.

I am having a similar experience to most. I got through acts 1 and 2 ok, although damage was definitely lacking. In the early stages of act 3 though, with about as many minion nodes selected as I can on the tree - the damage is just severely lacking.

Might have to do a re-roll just to get SRS and see how much difference it makes.

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jdrawmer#4982 wrote:

Might have to do a re-roll just to get SRS and see how much difference it makes.

You could just look to buy an uncut gem off trade, someone will probably sell you one for an orb. I had to pay 1ex for extras. Honestly exalts drop more commonly than spirit gems do for me, so it was a good trade.