Witch Minions, totally unplayable

27 Minion only not having any problems. I am using a level 4 belt, 8 Focus, 10 armor and 11 boots.

Scepter with Meatshield + Last Gasp. Level 8 warrior skeles have 1874 life, 216 armor, 67 evasion rating.

Unearth with Instability

2 Sniper with Comorb + Corrosion. 780 life.

Contag with Persist

2 Frost Skel with Mag Effect + Encumb. 641 life.

Bonestorm with Brutality.

Minions have 40% faster respawn currently.

The only two passives I took for myself are Raw Destruction and Pure Energy. Otherwise literally every node is for minions only.

I went to Power of the Dead, Grave Digger, Living Death (up through Power of the dead first).

Although I can get to Lord of Horrors if I refund, but I don't know if I want to get there that fast or go for Vile Mending / Entropic / Grip of Evil / Regen Flesh.

level 1 to level 10 (act 1)

focus ALL on energy shield in passives (and make sure to add int for attr but also str)
focus on high armor + shield + sceptor that gives you free minion
focus on skeleton with meatshield + last gasp
focus on add +1 level to minion skills
focus on skeleton archer + corobility (or the support gem that add poison damage)
focus on flame wall (no SRS)

play style: roll away from danger, while spam flame wall, and then bash command skeleton archer to shoot poison arrow

GET SRS gem!!!!!



level 10 to level 20 (act 2)

respec passives to minion attacks (follow kripp's guide)
focus on high armor + shield + sceptor that gives you free minion
focus on skeleton with meatshield + last gasp
add skeleton arsonists, follow kripp's guide for the support gems and command key bind
focus on add +1 level to minion skills

retire skeleton archer
focus on flame wall (with SRS)

play style: roll away from danger, while spam flame wall, and then bash command skeleton arsonist to shoot bombs

Lol, it's so sad that anyone that says minions are good are just using SRS. Without that one skill, minions are nothing. It's not that the rest of us need to change how we see minions, it's because there is only one viable play styles with minions.

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Juggernutde#3713 wrote:

Lol, it's so sad that anyone that says minions are good are just using SRS. Without that one skill, minions are nothing. It's not that the rest of us need to change how we see minions, it's because there is only one viable play styles with minions.

Again, I just finished the campaign by using basically nothing but skeletons. In act 1 normal I was struggling, but once I hit act2 and started using first reavers, and then eventually brutes, the game became much simpler.
Brutes with a +minion level gem sceptre, and a mix of feeding frenzy/brutality/minion mastery support deals immense damage, and are able to stun even the hardest of bosses - all while standing in their faces and taking massive damage. And, if the worst comes and they die, you just have to dodge a bit and they come back.

In general the skill set is one archer (for the poison cloud, the damage is massive and it can be used to break armor), rest reavers/brutes, and contagion+hinder/bonestorm/vulnerability as a backup.

I've all but given up on minions, they can be a bit tanky but even with serious investments they don't do any meaningful damage by act 2.

There is so much wrong info in this thread here.

Please check out what I wrote here:
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3614090

And before you say it also has SRS:
You can walk through act maps and defeat bosses with just the Arsonists alone.
You don't even need to do anything, you can AFK.

Showcase vs Jamanra: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0ll-TaXzhU
Showcase Minions Only vs Rattlecage: https://youtu.be/akEabifcBfU
Showcase map progression: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UcU_lgCMFk

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Juggernutde#3713 wrote:

Lol, it's so sad that anyone that says minions are good are just using SRS. Without that one skill, minions are nothing. It's not that the rest of us need to change how we see minions, it's because there is only one viable play styles with minions.

Showcase Minions Only vs Rattlecage: https://youtu.be/akEabifcBfU

I have begun to lose interest in the game but before I switch off completely I want to give an update on where I got my character, using ONLY occult skills.

Currently mid-late? Act 2 have just built the horn, gotten my ascendancy and decided to try out blood mage for an off-meta experience. Have invested some points in to curse skills and might pivot to acquiring more chaos damage along the way.

1st: paying a life cost so early in to the ascendancy for no real gain is too much to ask. It could instead scale with investment, like every node makes spells cost a certain flat % more life than before, but a 1:1 ratio of mana and life places my character in danger faster than I'd like. It also doesn't boost your damage or give any tradeoff for this penalty. I really don't know what else to say, it's an objectively bad choice to take this ascendancy.

2nd: regular minions have been feeling like a rollercoaster of power, they're strong-ish on some maps and on others they're getting killed too quickly to earn their 'money back'. Blood mage providing leech to minions could keep them alive longer and provide an alternative to infernalist. Regular minion skills advance a little too slowly and don't give you the classic D2 feel of growing an army, POE1 does it better here.

3rd: enemy agro, some enemies in particular will outright ignore minions even when blocked by terrain, their broken pathfinding will not allow them to move around the pillar or blockage to reach you, nor will they react to the skeletons and zombies attacking them. I am guessing this is bugged more than badly designed, of course this isn't DND either where characters get OOPs against anything moving through their threat zone, which would be an interesting use of mechanics if you could fear/attract monsters to run through your minions triggering free attacks.

4th: bosses are still an enduring problem for skeleton minions, they take too much damage and there are some bosses that do not spawn corpses thus removing several options from the pure occultist players. I have heard that there are bosses coming up that are going to be pure torture based on my current experience, and seeing videos of rangers melting bosses with chronic stun locking makes the issue of motivation for me even worse. Because I can't do that, there are no tools available to me to do that, there is not enough compromise to afford me staying power, minion generation or increased damage.

5th: chaos spells are bad, theyre just so bad. They lack damage, no CC and somehow theyre hard to aim. If i try to hit the same enemy with essence drain and contagion my ED will miss most of the time. The DOT isn't very good either. In the passives tree the chaos and minion nodes are very far apart and have no synergy, I am worried that this game will become yet another one-button snoozefest as the passive tree FORCES you to specialise for later content or else you cannot keep up with the DPS and HP checks.

I attempted to play a minion build in POE2 because I wanted to directly compare it against a fresh minion witch in POE1, In terms of performance the witches are built mostly similar but the POE2 witch is a time waster that is struggling to find its place in the campaign and I truly dread progressing any further now. I have about 15 hours played and think it is unacceptable to be pidgeon holed in to SRS infernalist just to have any fun.

I wouldn't be surprised at all if I quit the game by Sunday, I don't need to play the other classes there are already 100,000's of hours of footage out there to show me how they work. Wake me up when they change the passives tree and make skeletons a specialisation in their own right

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Fae_Lyth#6750 wrote:

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Juggernutde#3713 wrote:

Lol, it's so sad that anyone that says minions are good are just using SRS. Without that one skill, minions are nothing. It's not that the rest of us need to change how we see minions, it's because there is only one viable play styles with minions.

Showcase Minions Only vs Rattlecage: https://youtu.be/akEabifcBfU

Not really sure this is proving anything. A boss who you can just walk circles around that does only a few minor attacks hitting minions in the entire fight isn't exactly an argument that non-SRS minions are working fine.

You can literally see the issue in your own non-showcased Jamanra attempts:
https://youtu.be/YkXNVx4LjVo?t=8871

He wipes your regular minion set over and over, and the only reason you are able to actually put out even reasonable damage is because of SRS. When you have no raging spirits out, your DPS is totally gone. Even with the spirits doing the vast majority of the work it's still a three and a half minute fight.

Do not play Minion build early if you want so play with Flamewall and Hell Skull's its just a big time waste to get every chapter done im now on level 47 i got like 350 spirit run around with 12 skelleton archers 10 hellskulls and dealing almost no dmg. Its not even the dmg part its the part where enemies completly skip my Minions and focus on me so i have to move away to let my minions respawn. They have to rework minion path finding and attack pattern why should i use Meele minions if they stuck each other and dont even attack?