Witch Minions, totally unplayable

Its actually embarrassing how bad minions are.

Chaos Arrow damage is much the same
5 minutes for minibosses (round and round the circle we go)
Seems boss fights are too Complex and only certain builds will get thru.
Ruins the game if we are limited.

but it's only Beta :-)
X

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MrSmiley21#1051 wrote:

I barely, and I mean literally by the skin of my teeth beat the act 1 boss. It was like a 10 minute fight. I shouldn't have technically been able to win, but I was pretty good at rolling and dodging attacks. About a 3 minute fight on both warrior and ranger, which is reasonable for an act boss, the issue is no fucking damage on minions.

Did they have no damage because they don't deal enough or because they were dead the entire fight?

I beat Geonor on my 5th or 6th attempt by a combination of using bone shards to stun him and pure luck because he never entered his 3rd phase and died too quickly to transition.

In my opinion that fight is especially miserable because of the mist attack where he summons something like 20 werewolves at you. It is the same lazy attack pattern seen in Tsogoath in POE1 when the siren comes out, the same as act9 act boss. The primary skills available to a level 15-19 necromancer are either DOTs or require wind-up phases.

This game is suffering the same issues as POE1 where the entire bloody screen fills up with AOEs and you spend too much time playing bullet hell and not enough attacking.

I have read up to page 3 and must agree. Minions is pain in my bum. Something needs to change. If GGG is worried about minions becoming too powerful bc they are too tanky then why not tone down the life to damage effect of most minions? Its a simple change that would make playing with tanky minions viable. You don't need to make them OP as all heck but you can certainly make them do something..

You have to waste alot of your spirit to upkeep stuff that just dies in 1 or 2 hits from normal mobs and cannot help you vs rares or bosses at all. Sure you do not need to spend time summoning them but when you have to dedicate so much to them just to make them "meh", your personal power suffers. I find myself doing most of the damage most fights and I am spec into minion damage so thats insane. Crazy that certain spells like frost bomb can delete packs of enemies, meanwhile essence drain is like a wet noodle hitting 1.

Doesn't help you cannot double up on supports for anything. Would be fine if there was like 200 different support gems or at least differing variations of the same support gem, but no you are working with 1 minion set with support gems that also just so happen to overlap with your personal attack making it either/or.

If you put it into minions then you have something to at least fight grey enemies with. If you don't then what is the point of the minions anyway?

Isn't the point to be able to have a small army that does your bidding? Nobody said they have to be smart uber-bosses on their own. Just capable of doing something, after-all they are dumb as a box of rocks and stand in AOE like it feels good. Oh i can tell them to move back sure... Only then I get swarmed so whats the point of the minions again? They hit like imaginary wet noodles so they certainly can't come to your rescue once the front line has abandoned all hope because you misguidedly tried to save one from death so that you can actually utilize it beyond the first wave of its ineffectual hand.

Deleted minion Witch level 24. Character had some resistances and life when possible on gear tree was basic going to minoins circle on the left with life and dmg. Skeleton Warriors die too fast to actually tank. Pathing is horrible - they cant even cross the bridge - in general the game is too narrow for minion play imo. Dealing damage especially to bosses only with Essence drain. Raise zombies requires corpses (so already bad imo) and not usable for bosses. ED only and dodge - repeat. Killing act 1 boss on 6th try with no pot last 15%. Same for the Titan and Keth boss. Had 10% and 15% ms boots and was barely dodging most of A2 bosses aoe space. In short summoner feels like a chore and minions neither tank nor do damage. Will try in the future but for now A1 and A2 with skeletons zombies ED and Contaigon feels like playing with trash hoping to find an old hdd with bitcoin cold wallet maybe in the future ...
Edit:
There is only one minion build infernal raging spirits (they do majority of damage) from watching people and reading stuff and it is not skeletons nor zombies nor witch ...
In general everyone seems to be playing the same stuff - so far build variety per character is either you find the one that works or you reroll to find something that feels a little better. In game character builds might varied and balanced - but so far seemed to observer only the same forced combos required to progress and the FEELING playing anything but that combo skill sequence is not fun. I guess poe2 gameplay can be summarized by synergy or bust.

why is this a surprise to people? the fact that there is no dedicated minion ascendancy was a good indicator that minions will be neglected in this game

There actually is a dedicated minion ascendancy build in the Infernalist tree. +spirit, and the dog.

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AcidLies#4524 wrote:

There actually is a dedicated minion ascendancy build in the Infernalist tree. +spirit, and the dog.

yeah those are the only 2 useful nodes on entire tree. and dog is pure defensive. sorry but its not good enough. a game like this should show more love to an old classic like necro that goes back to the d2 days

yea it's dog water, no damage gonna rerolled a merc now

Is ti really that bad? I've been playing minions and just got to act 2 without problem. Stuff seem to die fairy quickly. But maybe I just don't have anything to compare to