So I thought the whole appeal to this game was that you can play any skill effectively?

Clearly some classes have a huge advantage, so what's the point in being able to use that skill if it's ineffective to your class? Clearly no other class at the moment will be as efficient of a summoner as Witch.

If you're smart or creative enough you can build some interesting characters.
But even with the freedom, there will always be classes that excel with certain skills. Freedom is good, but too much freedom isn't good. Add, already shoddy balance to the mix....you get the idea.

Basically, you need to get creative to combine passives, Ascendancy classes, Unique items, and skills to get something you can work with. Isn't always easy.

If you want efficiency, just stick to the meta OP builds; nothing beats those.

It's not clear which passives affect minions except the ones that specifically state it. I want to make a minion build with frost mages and sorceress has access to a lot of elemental nodes in her ascendacy. But people are telling me that the Witch has a clear advantage because her passive tree is riddled with +minion dmg and life nodes. Whereas sorc is replaced with +spell dmg, which I'm told do not affect minions. Yet a lot of meta builds use +elemental dmg nodes in their builds.

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CappsB01#9752 wrote:

It's not clear which passives affect minions except the ones that specifically state it. I want to make a minion build with frost mages and sorceress has access to a lot of elemental nodes in her ascendacy. But people are telling me that the Witch has a clear advantage because her passive tree is riddled with +minion dmg and life nodes. Whereas sorc is replaced with +spell dmg, which I'm told do not affect minions. Yet a lot of meta builds use +elemental dmg nodes in their builds.

Minions are tricky because GGG decided to gut them in POE 2. Even witch barely has any interesting interactions with them aside from obvious minion passives, and maybe some extra spirit in the Infernalist tree.

The only other class that can make a viable minion build is the Titan. Different from the classic minion build though; so wouldn't work for what you are looking for.

As it stands, minions are underwhelming. Still early access so my copium is that they fix it eventually.

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lupasvasile#5385 wrote:

The only other class that can make a viable minion build is the Titan. Different from the classic minion build though; so wouldn't work for what you are looking for.

As it stands, minions are underwhelming. Still early access so my copium is that they fix it eventually.

I would never even give a thought to a warrior with a skeletal army. That would be a strange sight.

I had a minion build and it was the slowest and most awful grind to end game. Got to level 75 and couldn't level up further. Half of the maps have corridors and doors and most of my minions always got stuck.

Even with the new patch, it's still bad. Minion AI is somehow worst than Diablo 2. They really need to fix this, it sucks because minions can be fun but I am completely frustrated with them.

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CappsB01#9752 wrote:

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lupasvasile#5385 wrote:

The only other class that can make a viable minion build is the Titan. Different from the classic minion build though; so wouldn't work for what you are looking for.

As it stands, minions are underwhelming. Still early access so my copium is that they fix it eventually.

I would never even give a thought to a warrior with a skeletal army. That would be a strange sight.

It is odd, but the reason it works is because of the Titan passive: Hulking Form (50% increased effect of small passive skills).

Basically, every small minion passive node on the tree is enhanced. You do need to cover more ground to get those passives though; but surprisingly it works.

Not sure where you're getting that the appeal is that you can play any skill effectively. The whole appeal is:

1) Classless skills meaning you can *combo* skills of any class together freely
2) High difficulty which presents a genuine challenge
3) A satisfying gameplay loop of exploding monsters in exchange for better loot, letting you explode more monsters, etc.

How well they deliver on any of those is up for debate, but at no point was it promised nor did I ever take it as every skill being able to be played effectively by every class and build. Furthermore there have been zero balance patches so far, and currently balance is all over the place in general.

But yes, summoners suck at the moment and minions suck; in general and especially and particularly in the campaign. Witch does the best with them but that doesn't mean they're good during campaign play, they're not. Give it time. Sorceress, Druid, and others may eventually be highly viable for minion centric builds. In addition to Titan having potential, Gemling Legionnaire certainly does thanks to being able to add more skill slots and double up on passives letting more combos come into play; Invoker's Lead Me To Grace has some potential; Chronomancer can potentially eventually get minion command spam going on.

Lots of options may open up down the road, again there's not even been a single balance patch yet so I would not judge viability based on current state whatsoever.

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CappsB01#9752 wrote:

Clearly some classes have a huge advantage, so what's the point in being able to use that skill if it's ineffective to your class? Clearly no other class at the moment will be as efficient of a summoner as Witch.

Gemling is actually the best minion class ironically

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scriptmonkey#2846 wrote:

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CappsB01#9752 wrote:

Clearly some classes have a huge advantage, so what's the point in being able to use that skill if it's ineffective to your class? Clearly no other class at the moment will be as efficient of a summoner as Witch.

Gemling is actually the best minion class ironically

yeah witch has like 1 asc point to benefit summons. but not sure if patching all the way from gemling is worth it neither