Witch Minions, totally unplayable

FEEDBACK (for anyone who can use it)

(POE 2) Level 20 Infernalist Witch - SOLO player.

I slowly went through every inch of every area to explore POE 2. I have beaten every boss so far with difficulty.

Current Location: Act 2, Mawdun Mine
/deaths : 61 times
/played : 11 hours, 1 minute, 52 seconds
/killed : 6,253 monsters
Currency: 3 EXA, 2 REG, 16K gold, from drops and selling to vendor
Passive Skill Tree: I selected the nearest minion damage and minion life-related nodes I could reach in the passive skill tree. I probably chose +10 strength so far, the rest went to intelligence.
Gear: magic (blue), a few rares (yellow). All gear are drops from Acts 1, 2.

POE 2 playstyle:

Very early (and difficult): Cast Flamewall, Unearth only. Had only 2 skeleton warriors (from a sceptre). Have to kite the bosses, and spacebar to dodge/roll. Eventually, I had 2 additional skeletal arsonists. The additional minions didn't make much of a difference, I still died a lot (died at least 40 times as of Level 8).

Near the end of Act 1: Cast Flamewall 2x (triggers 10 SRS total), Cast Contagion (or Enfeeble), Unearth, Pain Offering. I still have 2 skeleton warriors plus 2 skeletal arsonists. I still have to kite the bosses, and spacebar to dodge/roll. I also need more support gems (I need uncut support gems) to support the skill gems.

You can obtain SRS by defeating Act 1 King of the Mists. SRS is a game changer - it's a bit easier now, but still requires a lot of support casting on my part.

FEEDBACK as of Level 20: Compared to POE 1, in a previous league, I reached level 40 without dying once. So dying 61 times by Level 20 is very unusual for me. I only play Necromancer (I have 22 characters - all Necromancers). I usually let my zombies/SRS/Skeletons do all the work while I just run around (my preferred playing style, since I am lazy). I can AFK in the PVP Arena with just one zombie (instead of using all 9 zombies, 3 spectres, 5 SRS, skeletons at level 40), which will beat many PVP players. I don't like to click much, because it will hurt my finger(s). So POE 2 is way way way more difficult than POE 1 as a minion-only user. I have to cast a lot of support stuff just to stay alive, move around and avoid attacks to go thru the more difficult content. From the looks of it, at Level 20, SRS is the way to go. You must use a fire spell (like Flamewall) to trigger SRS.

Hope this helps someone. POE 2 is looking pretty good so far.

I just happened to loot a gem this morning and cut it to SRS. What a gamechange THAT was.

I've think I have a system sort of nailed down.

For large packs,

Two Warriors, One Sniper

Contagion on one mob, flame wall, Enfeeble with Doomcast(?), the Sniper with their poison move. The flamewall explodes and clears, summons SRS. Mob that dies, Contagion spreads nicely.

For bosses, Enfeeble, Flamewall for SRS, Snipers, and run.

Flamewall was a nice switch, but SRS changed the build completely.

If SRS is the only option that is just flat out poor design. Witch minions are half baked at best, they should have kept the class out of the game until it was ready like the others they are still working on.

"

telgalad#4727 wrote:

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.

And what happens to builds that actually play active minion builds combining spells with your tripple-buffed minions?


......

"

dyneol#3245 wrote:

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.

then they shouldn't have nodes specifically for minions when they're trash.

Just chiming in to say that SRS flame wall is only spell I've been able to make any headway with. I play in a group with my girlfriend and the last boss we fought in the start of act 1 was Rath Breaker, it took 8 minutes 30 seconds to kill with us both staying alive till the very end with both of us on max minion damage nodes on flame wall SRS.

The boss fights are brutal. They have way too much life. The minions are all useless. They die almost instantly with all the AOE boss damage. Raise zombies requiring corpses and having a short duration means you have no reliable protection and often get overwhelmed by adds in phasing.

It's just severely under powered. I don't even know what to do at this point. I just want us to have fun but nothing is doing any damage. We already had to roll new characters to level 11 to get spirit gem to convert her character to SRS... we were certain heading into act1 that two SRS flamewall witches was the missing ingredient. She thought she just wasn't doing enough damage to compensate for the party inflation on monster health. Nope. Damage is just butt and I just don't know what to play.. so guess I'll research more.

trash balance, rerolled witch, all passives into minion nodes zero dps zero minion survivability, trash game

"

And what happens to builds that actually play active minion builds combining spells with your tripple-buffed minions?


......

You mean the minions you sacrifice for damage and unsummoned with each spell? Not to mention if one minion dies the counter resets. to increase your damage to the point any help they may provide is nearly irrelevant because you killed them for your own spell buffs.

It may be something useful if they add just a minion ascendancy.

"

jpeter38#3798 wrote:

"

dyneol#3245 wrote:

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.

then they shouldn't have nodes specifically for minions when they're trash.

"I don't like active minion playstyle and so therefore nobody should"
Ok.

I've gotta side with the folks saying they're underbaked currently. Been playing witch since hour 1, and despite taking EVERY minion node (build is a complete mess) boss fights are quite simply just dodging for 10 minutes, casting a spell after every roll and hoping for the best. Going to finally re-roll a new character today, and put it on the shelf until they're adjusted. Game is in beta, they'll get it ironed out, I have complete faith, but minions feel entirely underbaked. The level design is too narrow for mass minion builds, minions are NOT grabbing aggro (like at all: do they even aggro? After 30 hours, I don't think so) and the ascendancies seem to have almost no thought to dedicated minion builds beyond infernalist, which basically negates the other minions entirely.

I've tried about every mix of skills at this point, and although I got further with the starting chaos bolt and bone wall, the only thing that seems to work is flame-wall with SRS. I KNOW their intention wasn't to make us all play the same Witch build, so just wanted to lend my voice to the side asking for the buff hammer to come in a swinging! From what I've seen however, it's going to take nearly an entire re-work, not just a buff here or there.

Love the game guys, this is going to be the best AARPG of all time, mark my words.