Witch Minions, totally unplayable

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Yoluun#7665 wrote:

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.

I'd like to see some gameplay footage of that, along with the passive tree and skills/support gems.

Autobomber is what I'm looking for, that's what necromancers and golemmancers did in PoE1, and I want a similar type of thing in this game.

Sad to see some passive tree nodes show minion damage for witch but same nodes don't for warriors.. its misleading and should be addressed.

Someone should make a thread in feedback sub.

This is the worst minions have ever been in PoE. Damage, survivability, pathfinding are horrible. Nerfed to hell in PoE1, and now PoE2 starts with even worse state of minions. Everyone who plays different build and complains about speed/damage/survivability should take a look Necro.

Tbh you can sort of get some usable minions for clearing.

However, you have to rely on the temporary ones made from corpses. And in boss arenas ... no adds to make corpses out of in most of them.

For Witch at least. Haven't tried SRS + fire skills yet.

I'm L30ish and finding minions to be ok - skelly warriors and a couple of ice/fire mages, use the red curse that shreds armor and fire bonestorm from behind. if the first wave falls use gravetide to get little scorpion skeletons until my main minions respawn

I'm level 62 soon to finish Cruel act 3.

I'm using:
-2 Warriors just so I can boost the rest of the minion with offering
-8 Snipers with multiple projectiles and armor break on poison
-Hellhound to ignite and trigger explosions
-Unearth to make biiiig army when clearing mobs - gem they take 20% max hp dmg / sec and explode on low life (50% max hp gem + loads of nodes with minion hp)
-Scepter with +3 to all minions
-Help with +1 to all minions
-Armor with extra spirit and shield with extra spirit
@1k hp and 2k energy shield, went for energy nodes

waiting for 3rd ascendency to get even more spirit or maybe more energy shield

Bosses die pretty quick with poison spam too.

I feel like there is no reason to have a cooldown on the minions. I hope this idea is explored. Minions should die, but they should come right back, otherwise you are just a defenseless character with no offense = not fun. Something should be done since it otherwise makes a minion solo build untenable for the early start.

Running a gemling summoner and I have to say it seems retarded we have no way to generate corpses or power charges on boss fights. So those who went Zombies basically get screwed and the skeletons get wiped out instantly most of the time so you are left with some garbage spell or something to summon SRS. It feels like a very watered down spell caster over an actual summoner.

This is coming from someone who played POE1 since it had like only 2-3 acts aswell.

Currently in act2 cruel.
I have read a bit of posts and I must disagree. Or rather: I agree that, at the very start, minions are terrible. The archers are mediocre, the ice mages are meh, the skeleton warriors might as well not exist.
This changed for me in act 2. I got a scepter and a helm with + minion skill gem level. I unlocked the Skeleton reavers, which are great and cost much less than the ice mages. Where on the act1 boss I died 8 times, I did the act2 boss with 0 deaths and act3 one with 1 (and it was my fault, I stood in the laser grid). Hell, I even got Balbala which apparently is very problematic for most people without a single death.
Now I'm in cruel. When I reached the count, I got him to 15% before he changed phase, and then I obliterated before he managed to cast any "empowered" abilities. Where before I had multiple adds phase, here I had only one. And now I unlocked the brutes, which, from the ability screen, looks even MORE damaging than the reavers.

Currently running a infernalist, with the life-to-spirit ascendancy. One skeleton archer, one skeleton priest, and five brutes. For defenses... well, MoM and a shield, between the new roll and the shield block I find it ok.
My advice is: get +minion gem level gear, get +spirit gear (they're basically your main dps stats), and endure the first act with a different skill.

I was like everyone here, struggling to make minions work until a little way into act 2 when I spotted it.

There's a sorceress passive that lets fire damage spells create raging spirits. Switching from my initial attempt to use chaos DoT/poison cloud stacking into a fire based summoner has made a HUGE difference. Damage now feels fine, and clearing packs is pretty easy with 2 arsonists throwing volleys of 3 bombs each, with detonate dead cleaning up. Ember Fusilade initially, now Fireball, plus solar orb, all spawn a reasonable amount of raging spirits. They don't do a lot of damage each (Tooltip says 1-22 damage base) but they do inherit all your minion bonuses, can't take damage, and you can have 10 at a time.

With the Hellhound and a couple of skeletons from a scepter holding the front, they do it well enough that the only scare is enemy types that charge at you. Now I'm starting to dig into the big resistance clusters for minons having completed act 2, it should get smoother still.

I don't know if any of this is optimal mind you, I'm sure there's a lot of better ways to do it, but act 2 went by much faster than act 1.