Minions have only one straight viable build

I think it’s unanimous that the best minion build is Raging Spirit + Skeletal Arsonist. If you search for any minion build, nearly every guide features these two, with only minor variations.

There are two main reasons for this:

1. Minions are very weak in the early game and only start to feel viable with SRS (Summon Raging Spirit).
2. The only ascendancy that interacts with your minions is the Infernalist, which naturally creates synergy with fire-based minions. This leads players to rely on Raging Spirit and Skeletal Arsonist.

Right now, it feels somewhat "claustrophobic" to play with minions, as there’s essentially only one viable direction to go.

They mentioned that they won’t create a "Necromancer" class because it would lead everyone to choose it for minion builds. However, as it stands, everyone is already playing fire-based minion builds because the only option is the Infernalist.

So I played a pure minion build from level 1.

I will have to say it was quite strong early game? You get a sceptre plus summoned undead and can get a pretty large army rolling, just put everything into minion damage and they destroy just about anything. I only really hit somewhat of a roadblock with the colossus boss, even then had to just organize my gear to not be level 10 stuff to defeat him.

One problem I feel like a minion build has (And yeah we should have a necromancer ascendancy... Neither blood mage nor infernalist are for that specifically) is that arsonist is WAY WAY WAY too good. Its a low spirit cost AoE minion. That attacks fairly quickly too! There is no reason to not just spam them and have them carpet bomb an area.

I only started using them in act 2 since I thought they were kind of bad and went for a somewhat balanced composition of warriors, 1 archer and 2 frosties. Which worked well. But arsonists are straight up better than that in every way which doesnt feel right.


And yeah infernalist is basically the go to for a minion build, blood mage doesnt seem good for it if your intent is pure minion and having no direct damage. Its kind of sad we arent likely to get a necromancer class for Witch... which starts as basically a necromancer precursor class. It even works for that class fantasy amazingly well.

You're not supposed to play "pure minion builds", every class relies on comboing skills together. PoE 2 Necromancers are clearly supposed to be like Diablo 2 Necromancers who weren't pure minion builds either. Diablo 2 Necromancers had to summon minions, throw curses and spam Bone Spear, maybe even add Corpse Explosion in there.

There are no real existing minion build as I think nobody is able to down a boss only with the minions.

A real puppet master would be a class that manage minions depending of the encounter, not a class using minions to clear trash in a zone and that must also be a powerfull damage dealer to have a chance to kill the final boss of each map...

There are different builds and i tried them all. Some lack damage but are doable:

1. RS build with focus on fire damage / flame wall
2. Arsonist build with fire damage / crit
3. Sacrifice build with profane ritual and enhanced zombies
4. Sacrifice build with detonate dead
5. Sceletal brutes build with offering (what i run run doing insane damage 12 brutes on the screen with 17k+ dmg/hit)

We don't have all the minions yet or even any unique that benefit them. Of the 3 uniques that even have a minion mod they just buff you and have nothing to do with the minions. They look more for the druid as it's atk speed/dmg buff from minion nodes effect you. They other is a boost to your chaos dmg per undead minion. Missing specters/golems/what ever minions the druid is gonna have access to. And the skill tree is obviously lacking nodes geared to the druid. It's obvious the whole minion ecosystem hasn't been fleshed out yet.

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MEITTI#3999 wrote:

You're not supposed to play "pure minion builds", every class relies on comboing skills together. PoE 2 Necromancers are clearly supposed to be like Diablo 2 Necromancers who weren't pure minion builds either. Diablo 2 Necromancers had to summon minions, throw curses and spam Bone Spear, maybe even add Corpse Explosion in there.

No idea never played Diablo 2. I only played PoE1 many years ago for a few days so cant say much there.

But so far all the way through Act 1 and most of Act 2 I have defeated every boss purely with minions. Enfeeble doesnt count I guess!

Why are you not suppose to play a minion build anyways? People do sillier things, and definitely some that feel like pure unfun cheese. Minion only seems downright proper by comparison.

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Streca#2594 wrote:

There are no real existing minion build as I think nobody is able to down a boss only with the minions.

A real puppet master would be a class that manage minions depending of the encounter, not a class using minions to clear trash in a zone and that must also be a powerfull damage dealer to have a chance to kill the final boss of each map...

I... have? So far my own damage is basically nothing and it's a ton of fun. I'll admit it'll be disappointing if that stops being the case but so far nothing has survived my comp. I dont even use ascendancy class (I accidentally chose blood mage so thats on me)


But my experience is purely act 2 so far. Having soldiers, archers and frost mages works super well. With skele scorps. Unearth does literally no damage as far as I can tell but it spawns 12+ scorps to swarm a zone tops from the corpses so its always good to just hold it down.

I think their big mistake with SRS was making all your passive apply to those little skulls. Just too powerful.

But nothing else works for minion build so...

I have seen someone go COLD, with frost mages, and it looked to be clearing really well. Still half as good as SRS though.

Really just comes down to not that something is effective. But the gap between it and the next most effective thing. And right now that gulf is too big due to a variety of factors.