Minions Problems.

I'm a Necromancer Player from PoE 1, played a lot of leagues basically the same way and I love the idea of being the master of the undead, controlling an army to do my biddings, cursing and debilitating enemies for my minions to do the dirty work. My main builds were always around Spectres dealing tons of damage, zombies tanking, some Golems for their buffs and an Animate Guardian. Since PoE 1 i dislike the idea of being a "caster necromancer" focusing in the constant summon of SRS or Animate Weapons even if those builds were meta/strong.

PoE 2 in the start of this EA gives us a good variety of permanent minions to use. which is fun in a "build an army" way, but we got some problems with minions that need adjusments.

First: Minion collision and AI, I don't know why my minions are so dumb, they pack themselves in narrow paths or doors and thats it. sometimes I command them to go to some place and they simply stay there, half of them not even attacking the enemies around them. Sometimes we need to put ourselves in danger to despawn the minions and respawn them close to us (convocation, I didn't knew how much I love you).. and very often we don't have enough distance to despawn the minions and have to deal alone with a lot of enemies. in the endgame its a death sentence. (small boss arenas and rituals also can be terrifying)

Second: The lack of value in building an army with different minions. SRS and Arsonists are Strong, ok.. thats not a problem, its not a gameplay for me to be honest, as I said before, I don't want to be a "caster" focusing on spawning more minions. but if you like it, its okay. My problem is that it doesn't feel rewarding to play with a greater range of minions and without SRS. I'm using Arsonists + Arc/Frost Mages + Warriors (from Sceptre) + Brutes + Clerics and a dog.. but, aside the Arsonists, the minions are dissapointing, Brutes alone don't do anything, I feel like they should do some relevant single target damage. Arc Mages are a Shock debuff caster and thats it. Frost mages are a joke, low damage, one of the "worst" sources of freeze build up in the game (based on what i've seen even with friends playing with other classes) and clerics are almost as relevant as my pets from the supporter packs (I know that the cleric part can be unfair, but I think they deserve some improvements).

I feel like GGG should make those minions a lot better, to be viable not to focus in arsonists/SRS and to choose other things.

They cared about to nerf the arsonist, which is ok, but focusing on nerfs and not addressing the problems of the other minions makes me feel like GGG hate minions.

+1

At the moment people still just stack arsonists.

Suggestion: Minions unlock synergy Auras at different break points of # summoned. e.g. x4 Brutes unlocks a minion +%phys resist aura, x4 ice mages %freeze resist.


You know, something at least to give mixed minion loadouts some worth.

91 here and i tried all combinations.

While arsonists are good mid and early endgame, there are atm many strong builds like the lightning mages using the unique to reduce enemy resistances to -150 etc and basically wipe the floor far better than arsonists.

Frost mages mages have similar builds that surfaced recently, and lets not forget about archers that are super cheap and are best boss killers atm you can have like 2x more of them than mages.

Reavers are very strong esp against bosses, but they suffer from brain dead AI and body blocking where they cant attack the same mob as they get stuck behind each other most of the time, stuck in pathways or despawn. Or simply stand there and do nothing. Its a design issue, that esp affects melee units making them not being used by most ppl even if they are strong on paper but not in reality due to other factors.

Other thing is that they can be mixed together, but atm due to how the game is designed mixing minions is very very bad in most cases because if you do that you either massively lower your overall dps, or the other minions are useless as you built your build around 1 element. Not sure how to solve it but i assume spectres could help a lot.

Maybe add buffs to using smaller amount of minions like 2-3 of each type or a percentage based. Or add a support gem that would buff like this ?