Witch Minions, totally unplayable

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Westwood1121#4481 wrote:

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ian2312#5884 wrote:

I completely disagree with the sentiment of these posts.

I am currently a 42 infernalist minion build and am killing it.
My advice to those that are struggling at the start, the early minion nodes are also spell damage nodes, take ED/Contagion as a starting setup with pets. The pets will act as supplementary damage rather than primary damage.
Once I was able to get spirit skills I got SRS and have never looked back. Just be patient guys, POE2 is supposed to be hard, learn the boss patterns and make adjustments, you will be fine.

This is where I sort of am too. A lot of builds in POE1 didn't kick off until you had a specific item or node at 55+. Using straight up spell damage then switching to minions wasn't uncommon.

in poe 1 minions absolutely clap from start to finish (campaign) without issue.
And have a whole build archtype not be useful until lvl 50 is just ass. Makes little sense why they couldve buff them a little to make it viable.

Second this, I’ve played mainly witch on PoE and poe2 trailers hyped me so much for minion build. But I am lvl 20 and changing to other classes, coz it’s bs. Dont wanna see this char any more..

Just hit cruel diff playing as minions and loving it.

Infernalist Witch focusing on warriors/reavers as bread and butter, using bonestorm with pierce on engage transitioning to unearth as stuff starts dying to roll into the next pack.

Pain offering for bosses/annoying rares, same with Vulnerability. Chuck some armour shred on your meat wall warriors, plus the phys damage buff from bonestorm and you can pump some serious physical hits with minions.

Still pathing towards extra spirit node, and picking up ES survivability on the way.

Future is looking bright.

I don't think you are supposed to let your pets play the game for you in poe2. You have to see them as addition and launching pad for your further skills, which is why they automatically resummon.

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Darqion#3624 wrote:

in poe 1 minions absolutely clap from start to finish (campaign) without issue.
And have a whole build archtype not be useful until lvl 50 is just ass. Makes little sense why they couldve buff them a little to make it viable.

Oh, I wasn't referring to minion builds in POE1 when I said that. I meant some builds kicked off later on.

"GGG wants mor active gameplay". So why put minions in the game? I came from a exhaustive day and want to farm while chill.

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anylius#6626 wrote:

"GGG wants mor active gameplay". So why put minions in the game? I came from a exhaustive day and want to farm while chill.

If you want to play to chill, I think this is the wrong game for you I'm afraid. This was known for quite some time now.

IDK what was the final boss in act 1. now im in act 2. the last boss i remember was the wofl. it was very easy. took some rolls. maybe under 5 minutes.
raging spirit/flame wall/spark/skeleton warrior/bone cage. thats all.
hope this helps.

feel the same level 21 witch here trying to switch to elemental witch now

Yeah, I struggled for about 20 hours, got half way into act 2.
Turned to my poe1 guild to see what other minion players were doing. Several of us got to about the same point and started really struggling.
The exception is srs.

Like we pooled resources, started trading gems and supports. There is 0 ways to play a minion build without srs. You can "have minions" while you do a spell build, or you can do srs... that's it.
2 ascendency points in any class didn't change this. It was still either srs or a spell build.

Also, a lot of us were surprised by srs and actually are currently thinking it's bugged. When we were all talking about potential minion builds we all thought it was 30 spirit per srs. So 10 srs would need 300 spirit. The fact that 10 srs from 2 flamewalls is only 30 spirit means srs damage should be around what 1 skeleton warrior is... but in some testing 8 skeleton warriors with 2 increased damage supports do less damage than 1 flame wall and 6 srs...with 0 supports except fortress on flame wall.

Persistent minions need a serious buff... like triple life and triple damage buff to be close to a viable archtype. Otherwise you are not playing a minion build... your a caster with minions.