another thing people i dont think are talking about with minions is if they die in sequence over a period of time it resets the respawn timer on all your minions
But I can already see it. Ppl are gonna start abusing the timer if once it reaches 0 all minions get revived. Picture this. Low lvl minion/force killing a minion Timer starts Once it ends everyone gets revived Repeat process until boss is dead. Essentially always having the rez timer on at all times. While I personally dont mind, it does involve some sort of skill and timing, plus it keeps you engaged. I dont think GGG has that type of gameplay in mind.
Pigeon holing is also not just minions. This applies all skills and builds. Everything is pigeonholed in their corners and it's very hard to branch out.
ye if you go look at the trees of various ascendancies they more or less all path the same depending on weapon/skill being used feels very "solved" early on, but at the same time if poe2 is to capture the ppl in this genre that arent compatible with poe1, i agree the game needs streamlining - question is how they will strike a balance i am satisfied with a slower, different version! i like the game a lot, but since hitting endgame i've been getting meth-riddled, addict-style neck scratching to play poe1 and i aint even affected by the negative circlejerkers
@@Alias_Fakename the worst part is, they removed stuff that bloated the tree in a good way, like health, regen and other survivability tools, just to fill with insultingly low % buffs and attributes.
Something else about the melee minions is that a number of the support gems that they accept don't actually work for some reason. Like Armour Explosion can be socketed into the skeletal reaver, but it doesn't actually trigger the effect. If it did work, it'd at least give some AoE opportunity, similar to the arsonists.
real minion class is titan. 50% small node effect gives dmg yes but its true worth shines on the defence nodes. it makes semi immortal. even in rare t15 maps my minions very rarely die now.
Interesting thing about the whole "There's no obvious choice for a playstyle" thing is that it really only applies to experienced players since we know about ascendancies. Watched 2 brand new poe players play EA and both wanted to play summons, and both choice Witch because the character select screen shows Witch with the summons. I really like the idea of the warp gate for the passive tree, as it would also give characters more ways to scale armor and evasion as well.
Personally, I dont even consider SRS a minion build, even though I did go with it on PoE2 because I felt that my choices for a good build were REALLY limited now, during the EA. SRS feels more like a skill and that is the reason why I never even tried to play it on PoE1, even though people were saying that it's OP, even while doing bosses. I loved my skelleton army one time that I decided to make a minion build, so I really wish they will find a way and let us have it again, somehow...I also hope that they will give 1-2 ascendancies that will be more "minion friendly", without limiting us to use only fire as an element. I would really love to see cold minion or lightning minion builds! PoE 2 should have everything for everyone, so that all people can find what they really like and enjoy to play.
On the main channel there’s a brief gameplay showing a Scepter that makes your minions freeze everything it was cool to watch th-cam.com/video/pGYR-HOB52I/w-d-xo.htmlsi=zwb12EOgWVvA67Jz
SAME I don't like SRS too. It took me out from the fantasy of actual 'Horde' that they try to implemented, just another spamming summon ability, no actual pay-off.
So GGG don't want to pigeonhole us into a specific subclass to use minions with, but at the same time they gave us Infernalist with 2 minion nodes (1 of which is a free summon), 2 allies nodes and a spirit node for even more summons. I don't see how it's not a pigeonholing. And on top of that they made Infernalist fire coded, with the best minions, at least for now, being fire ones. HUH?
True i honestly wish we could have srs of all elements and for the third witch ascendancy to be "necromancer" with no element or weapon specific /cast specific function. Because necromancer is a class fantasy, like titan, witch hunter, druid, so give us the minion specific ascendency, because otherwise minions just feel awkward and feel forced on other class fantasies.
Even at the character creation screen Witch has tooltips about being bone mage/ minion master/ chaos caster. At the start of the Witch variant of the passive tree she has the same phys/minion/chaos nodes. It's consistency. So the question is WHERE THE HELL FIRE ASCENDANCY CAME FROM?
thing is i understand they dont want minion ascendancy to not pigeonhole, but then minions need more ways to scale. the moment an ascendancy has minion focused nodes its just impossible to not take it
i remember back just before the EA launched, people were talking about the possibility of legionaire being a better choice, because it buffed gem levels and quality, something that, in poe1, was massively important for minion's damage and survivability. it just turns out, legionaire is shait no matter what you use him for because they completely nuked those aspects into such a miniscule aspect of the game those points feel 100% wasted, no matter what you use them for,
It's not just minions that are frustratingly placed on the PST. In a similar vein all the crossbow/grenades stuff are placed right under the mercenary, which makes sense sure but if you want to play a Witch or Sorceress with a crossbow good luck with that. I'm actually trying to do a Gemling Legionnaire summoner on the side and the early game is a bit silly you basically only get attribute stuff and tanky stuff on the way through the warrior area.
the only plus that was theorized about the gemling was the +1 to all skills, but since you can realistically get +8 from gear, it becomes a much weaker ascendancy. For many minions the quality is meh and the rest of the ascendancy nodes of the gemling don't even matter. Also, you waste probably 30ish points just to get to the int side of the tree, which is a MASSIVE opportunity cost.
I'm the guy who started Early Access as a Gemling Legionnaire, and I'm generally feeling pretty good on t15 maps right now. Snipers do enough damage to big mobs and frost mages add a layer of defense. I have a couple of videos if anyone is interested in seeing what it looks like on the maps.
I've been thinking about that for minions just for more skill slots and the double use support gem, to get maximum zoo appeal for every minion type under the sun at once.
I agree with this, I tried to play around unearth for a while but SRS just feels so much more powerful. Zombies felt awful, the mana cost is enormous and you need a corpse so it was hard to even find corpses to use this with to consistently keep them up. I even restarted the campaign after trying a non SRS build for the first 2 acts and replayed them with SRS and it was vastly superior, no question they need to balance this ideally by making the other minion builds better.
Srs is ultra comfortable in campaign but starting from cruel the core of the build becomes arsonist more and more, until in maps srs are there only for inf-legion,fire-exposure,heightened-exposure.
I mean you can't even automatize creating zombies. What is the point of "Cast on minion death" in a minion build? To cast firespells? To cast Contagion/ES without any real damage or power behind? To use a skill without support gems so it's basically useless? I'm pretty let down with PoE2 ngl. I like much more the PoE system a la Final Fantasy 7 approach. I was hopping for an improvement in general and i don't see it outside the feeling that it has a good fundation somehow. (you still need to use the web to trade, you still need to use a browser to manage the guild, etc...)
i just want a giant army of skeleton warriors that aren't that strong individually but they swarm, imagine a support skill where when a warrior dies 2 spawn from his corpse, or when a certain amount of your warriors die in an area all the bones come together and make a giant skeleton!
This so much. I had high hopes for PoE2 but they got crushed pretty quickly. For now I make due with the raging spirits and flame wall and hope for the best.
Such great ideas. Especially the giant skeleton from your minions bones. I'm only in mid act 2 on my witch but I love how many minions I have so far. Makes the game easy mode most the time. Until the boss fights that don't spawn adds. But then I just hit them with solar orb and bone blast over and over. Lol
Also agree with the reservation cost on minions its all over the place. Some of the most crappy minions cost crazy spirit price for no reason. If you pay double at least make them double the power.
@@tavirosu25 yea but where do you get spirit from? head corrupt, neck mod and implicit, body armor mod and implicit, scepter mod and quality, unique shield and 3rd ascension infernalist
the truth is that are one viable minion build: SRS + Arsionists... they need to buff other minions so we can have more options, but what they will do in reality? nerf arsionists D:
I am peeved off, was struggling so bad only in act 3 now, and I just got to 5 minions worth of spirit reservation on arsonists and now it got nerfed to have the same reservation as the rest, felt so good but now it will be a slog again.
It's my first time playing path of exile and I've been enjoying playing minions as my first character, the problem is i'm finding that i'm not really playing the game as much as I could be playing a different class. I can't really party up with people too because I'd just feel sorry for them not having a clue waht's going on because you can't really see anything with the amount of minions haha
PoE 1 has that issue with almost every build. The visual clarity is out of the question but people don't mind it because that is a consequence of fast clearing xD Minions only make it worse but maybe you can find someone who also plays minions for maximum clutter :)
I feel like the minions getting stuck after one another is the only thing keeping a physical based focus for minion builds as an equal alternative for the fire-bases SRS/Arsonist. Skeleton snipers with a gas arrow that strips away armor and vulnerability to reduce physical defense further feels like it could be immensely strong. Add on the rest of your spirit in reavers for more damage and to lock down the mobs and you've got something special going. Hell, throw in a form of corpse generation and you can use unearth/zombies as an alternative for SRS as temporary minion summons too to get cooking with it while levelling and not tax your spirit so heavily.
Dude ... if they made Convocation for PoE 2, it would teleport minions to you, but it would also kill half of them without on death effects, had a 90 minute cooldown, removed all your spirit so you can't have any minions, reduced your movement speed, and reserve 25% of you life. they would also introduce a unique that reduced the cooldown by 2.1%
even at 60 i think it will be worth it. But the pidgeonhole-ing is real. The witch even has bespoke passives that give minion damage and res timer only to her, which is the exact opposite of GGG's words. But honestly, probably druid and inquisitor will have at least one ascendancy each that will be good for minions so that's probably GGG's angle.
As a lvl 75 witch in endgame mapping srs does not compare to the arsonists, srs basically becomes your expose aurabot trough infernal legion, fire exposure, heightened exposure. So the build wouldnt die without them, you just use the dog for exposure if you are an infernalist. Also you kinda stop spamming srs when you realize tou just need a cast every 5ish seconds just for exposure, and its better to spam unheart, wich i started using in endgame realizing they scale much better than expected and having abundance of enemies and corpses in maps, i personally do(Unheart-culling strike-knockback-fire infusion). And they enable you to map faster due to being ultra aggressive and running in front of you
lets be honest, poe1 is not that diferent. most minions are either dead stuff, or golems. with very specific unique cases. like the spectral wolf that requires a ring equiped and doesnt really scale well, or the spiders that require a specific and very expensive knife to even use.
And that means it should stay that way, instead of improoveing them? That is a stupid attitude, being a yesmen, accepting everything someone throws at you.
I really liked Unearth but as I got higher gem levels and went mind over matter, the mana cost became prohibitive and then ended up dropping entirely. There's also the issue with aiming in this game in general, where the spells dont go where your cursor is
@@Linklobo the aming you mentioned is something I when I thought about it again saw aswell that sometimes aiming is a bit weird but I just thought I'm shit tbh
i feel like some kind of auto aim is happening at all times, assuming its meant to be there (and not a bug of like a console feature affecting the pc version) hopefully they give us an option to turn it off.
There really needs to be a spirit gem that somehow generate corpses. Either every X seconds, or on crit or whatever. But not being able to generate corpse is very odd. It's the same problem with a lot of builds PoE2 tends to favour builds for map clearing that suddenly are really bad for bosses because bosses have little to no adds or are very resistant to ailments etc.
Having two or three different "combat style" options for each minion type could solve that alone. IE: Grenades that explode, vs grenades that leave burning ground.. Warriors that taunt, vs warriors that aoe splash, etc.
Lmao sounds like Diablo 4 Literally can make them taunt, +1, crit, etc Ppl shit on D4 so fucking much and yet here we are with minion builds that lack fun and variety and just feel fkin clunky as shit to play when you get swarmed
@droid5785 never played D4 it didnt really make me interested in the game from what I have seen but always find "D4 bad" stuff funny idk why But sounds kinda cool tbh
I'm actually playing a mercenary minion build! I've found that traveling from the bottom of the tree towards the top makes for a good excuse to get a lot of defenses and stats; using Enhanced Effectiveness and Adaptive Capability allowed me to convert most of my stats to strength and then double the life gained from said strength. I achieved 3200 life so far. I also leaned into armor and block. It's more difficult to grab every minion wheel that you want as you said, but I think you simply deal less damage and are more survivable as the trade-off. Not great at the moment, especially since a lot of content end-game seems to one-shot you irrespective of how survivable you are, but I'm at t10 waystones at the moment with only on 4 ascendancy points in ssf.
I saw your comment on Kusnier's reaver clear. I watched his boss showcase, and I'm largely convinced that solving minion collision problems would make it arguably as good as Arsonists. In his boss showcase video, he shreds high tier map bosses near instantly. The problem is that he has around... 14 reavers? Almost 4 or more at any time (I counted like *six or seven at one time)* getting stuck outside the first "layer" of attacking Reavers. I had the same problem with Iron Mass lightning skeletons in Settlers, but i could spawn them around a target in PoE 1. The Brute cost makes me think that you're meant to mitigate this with these hard hitting minions worth 2+ other melee minions (and the heavy stun shockwave hits like a truck, good for clearing), but they're so big by themselves that they can run into the same problems.
I think a fun thing that would make me want to screw around with my minions would be to have 3 different versions of srs. A fire, lightning, and cold version. All with the exact same damage, but just the different elements. Self casting arc to summon lightning srs, or frostbombs summoning chilling ones. Then i would have options. A more defensive freezing setup for minions, a more debuffing shock setup for them, and an aoe one. Popcorning cold SRS's to aoe some frost buildup for the frost minions. 1 step further and maybe the ascendancy pet also having an option for its aura to be chill or shock......
Yeah idk why they didn't add more stuff like that. It seems like a really obvious way to make the infernalist not be so flame centric. They made her really narrow. This has an indirect effect of limiting sorceress and blood mage. I kind don't get why they have this clear idea of 'elemental interplay' on the monk and sort of on the sorceress, yet don't refine it and put it on other aspects of their design. Probably balance issues and maybe they are waiting for Huntress Templar and Druid to take their spots so it's clearer where the holes in the design space are spell wise.
@@smoothiedeluxe7422 i don't think they want all minion builds to play exact same way. summon tank minions+dps. i think there is suppose to be different strategies behind the minion classes but i can't quite tell what is wrong with variety in it. The skeleton mage minions are very fragile and sort of support the idea of front-ling as your character to protect your mages from aggro but realistically, your only weapon combination to have scepter is 1 handed mace and the whole like warrior mace archetype is more in line with using physical damage over elemental's but the whole physical spells in occult tree don't really have much synergy within that gameplay style.
@dodang_9147 i think my point is more so in other games the thing I'm talking about 'different ways to play the same fighting style' is called a spec. It's called that because it requires a specialization into specific things to get a radically different style. Other games put these things in the same class generally. You make new classes when the foundational difference of the style is different. For example in poe mace minion users have totems instead because totems function very differently and strength based weapons have their own set of skills that can pair with totems without interrupting the fighting style of that weapon archtype. This is one of the ways they made a GOOD second minion class, but it's not quite what I mean. I'm complaining that there is no different spec for Witch, not that the str minion caster is a bad thing to have. You cant play 'mage minion' class in a different way if you want to use the minions. The synergy with minions and spells is really bad outside fire spells and some debuffs. This effectively makes the Witch a worse minion user in terms of player experience because it takes the witch outside of any reasonable play loop in order to support her minions. Her minions ARE her playstyle if you use minions. And that's the rub. They also made scepters require strength and made her basically require to be an int/str caster. So over all I'm even more incentivized to use totems. There are ways to fix a lot of these problems but GGG would need to define and support 'spellcaster minion user' play loop a little better and a little more empowering the way they succeeded with 'warrior minion user'. Right now, the differentiation isn't very good and you end up being either a shitty spell caster or a shitty weapon user. I think we'll know better about what GGG really wants when they include specter because they made witch with that ability in mind and just didnt give it to her due to fear of balance issues. Which is fair but still...
One thing you can do with snipers is give them scattershot, pierce and bludgeon support gem. This makes it so they knockback everything they hit. Kinda works with arsenists but the way the grenades slowly arch makes it unreliable at pushing enemies away from you as sometimes it can do the opposite. For convocation rather than giving us the same spell as in PoE I think it would be cooler if they instead give us a skeleton summoner that instead of attacking summons corpses from the map we are currently on. Its activated ability would essentially be convocation but around it though it will always teleport next to us if we go more than a couple of meter away from it.
Or better yet a skeleton banner on our back that does exactly that, while also applying buffs like pain offering with mana without needing to constantly sacrifice a skeleton.
Don't expect arsonists to stay the way they are now. GGG's intention with minion builds in PoE2 is for the caster to use their unique skills actively during combat to increase their effectiveness. Right now arsonists are so good at a base level you can completely ignore their special minion exploding skill entirely, which is what the current strongest minion build does. They will either have their base attack nerfed or the minion explosion buffed, and I know which one I'd put my money on. One way to nerf them might be to remove the shotgun effect with scattershot support. Minion body-blocking needs to be removed or severely reduced to make melee minions effective. All minions need to have some base level of aoe in their basic attacks, either that or a lot more damage. I'd like to see the storm mages get a chaining arc instead of just their single target attack for example. And PLEASE bring back the minions teleporting to you when you get too far mechanic, or convocation, the way it works now is way too punishing for anything that isn't auto-reviving if you don't want to play the game at the speed of molasses, and forces you to spec into revive speed nodes.
I feel like that for most of the archetypes. I'm playing as a pathfinder and I feel absolutely scarce of options to play with. And I'm playing as a cold archetype, is not terrible, I just don't have much options to choose. Ice shot if using bow, Ice strike if using quarterstaff. Other skill are utily.
I tried minions for most of the campaign, but I got sick of so many boss arenas suddenly locking out all but 2 of my summons, and the arena being so small that they either wouldn't respawn or they'd take over 2 minutes before the game realised they were stuck and kill them off. Also it's weird that GGG doesn't want to pigeon hole summoners into one class or ascendancy, but they flag the witch as a summoner class in the character selection scene. I fell for that and only when getting my first ascendancy points on her, I realised there's basically only one node on the infernalist tree that aids minion builds by giving you spirit while reserving life, and nothing else on the blood mage tree.
Btw Ghazzy, in case you didn't know, you were saying you wanted convocation in poe2, you can use the weapon swap and only assign your minion skills to weapon 1, switching to weapon 2 will unsummon them all, then switch back to weapon 1, and they all instantly get resummoned to your location, if their not dead already. Very useful when they get stuck on a doorway etc.
You should have shown the absolutely bizarre minion clusters at the south side of the tree. They're so hilariously random and waste of points I'm personally just confused who they were even made for in the first place.
Needs to be more viable elements and skills that pair better with minions. It would 100% be a mistake to nerf srs and flamewall, instead the focus for witch should be bringing other damage types up to par to match the only actually viable build we have
I'm liking skeletal brutes. Found a fun way to keep them alive while burning, and blowing them up while also getting them back fast but yeah the body blocking can be a problem, but with this build you can run sacrifice and explode them. It may fit what you are trying to do while being different than srs.
Let us choose the elements for mages. Let us adjust spirit to increase strength of the minion or power to increase the amount of minions. Give us a pack of little imp skeletons that have a theme of sacrificing with faster reviving. Sacrifice should be free.
A very important thing to take note of with the skeletal snipers and skeletal frostmages is that their autoattack's aren't the reason you use them. Their main damage comes from their command skills. These "command" skills have a cooldown per each individual skeleton AND only 1 skeleton uses the ability when you command them to so you'll want to have just enough skeletons to be able to keep using the ability as much as your combined cast speed + cooldown allows you to. Any more than that would just mean they are autoattacking while holding on to their ability which isn't very usefull. The advandage of especially skeletal snipers is that you only need 6 or 7, maybe 8 depending on your cast speed and you can use some other minions as utility or extra damage. In my case I use 2x skeletal warrior with infernal legion to auto-detonate the clouds and 2 healers to keep the skeletons alive. With that setup I do not need a scepter with increased spirit rolls nor do I need a amulet with added spirit. I could use both to run some extra arsonists or so. The big mistake with skelly snipers/frost mages many people seem to make is just to spam as many of those as they can just like you'd do with arsonists but imho that's far from the optimal way to play the frostmages or snipers Even then, with snipers costing half of the spirit as frostmages I while dealing more damage I really hope they'll either increase frostmage damage or lower their cost.
Just started to watch your video, so I'm curious to see what you say, but I think the big reasons minions like variety are: 1) limited synergy with ascendancies (only really infernalist) 2) minion types are locked into single element damage, limiting builds (e.g. infernalist will obviously pick fire minions) 3) they haven't yet added spectres to the game, which would add an impressive level of variety to builds.
I personally would say 30 for the ranged and at most 20 for the melee classes, also massively increase minion speed and give them something else, as of now melee minions (besides srs) are absolute trash Reavers should have lifesteal for example instead of making them do have a slightly increased damage at the cost of now becoming a timed minion when you hit their ability
So many great points here Ghazzy. I don't see how GGG didn't identify the minion body blocking as a problem. Hopefully they will have some fixes for the issues you pointed out.
Zombies felt bad even with extended timer. They either expire before or shortly after you get to the next fight and move significantly slower. They really rely on reliable power charge generation. The sniper gas clouds are nice. They feel really strong. Igniting them is satisfying, but they feel more burst and cooldown compared to arsonists. Warriors are just tanks from sceptres and never worth making a gem for. Lightning mage definitely fell off once the build came together. You're spot on about melee minions. They just dont appeal with all the body block issues. This is absolutely spot on on every single minion in the game. You really feel forced to just play arsonists to even have a mediocre time. Especially with witch having so much support for the build. With all the fire wall and minions, its hard to play with friends because it slows their machines down an incredible amount as well.
I'm playing srs atm but man it's incredibly dull, monsters just run right past my skeletons and i have to fart around till my minions decide to kill the stray. I wish I was caster specced so I could have fun with fireball not hitting like a wet noodle.
I started with Unearth but even at lvl2 I dropped it because: 1. It does nearly zero damage 2. The minions don’t last long enough, it’s just annoying and feels bad
I'm playing a physical chrono minion build. 13 Reavers, a cleric, A brute for Culling, 2 Frost mages for slow and using the 10 SRS to start the bleed, and Zombies for clear, if i want 10 more, but not necessary lol (I'm using a Discipline scepter so no free minions) . The start was slow, and really took off when i got Temporal Rift and Time Freeze. Bosses are froze for half the fight, and just teleport to gain back life if hit for the rest. I'm sitting at 423 spirit, but still a bit of room for improvement. Sometimes they get stuck in a hallway but if you command attack farther along, they usually push through. I guess i have enough out anyway to not really care if a bunch have to respawn. It took 11 skill points rushing to get my first minion node. And missing out on 89% minion damage from the witch tree is kind of a big deal too.
Its all classes. Warrior tree is flanked by Flail- and Axe passive nodes that you would obviously be crazy to pick right now. I would imagine Templar would be the other summoner archetype when he gets released.
They should definetely add some form of gateway node, maybe use create paired jewels that when socketed, once one is activated, the other is too, or just straight what you said.
They could always just allow traveling through the middle part. Connect the left mercenary starting small passive to the right warrior starting node. Maybe add like one small passive for Strength and Dexterity between the classes and now you get to go from the Mercenary to the Warrior in 3 points, then 3 more points to the Templar one, and final 3 to get to the left Witch starting passive. It's still 9 points "wasted" to get to the witch starting location so there's definitely a cost attached to it, but it would be so much better than having to spend 28 points to get restless dead. It would instead be 21 points. Still a lot, but significantly better. The gateway thing would end up costing you quite a lot too after all. It would take 7 points to get to the gateway node and one more passive if you also had to allocate the opposite gateway like you did with atlas trees. So it would be around 18-20 points depending on where the gateway would be on the top side to get to restless dead, though your postioning would be better for the revive nodes on the right saving you a couple more points there. I've been planning on making a Gemling Legionnaire minion build too, but the startup cost is just super daunting. I'm kind of trying to fix it with just insane leveling gear. Will have at least +5, potentially +6-7 gem levels before level 20 so it should be good. And of course, support gems have no level requirement so you can just use the best ones right from the start and all that. I also don't think it's going to be that big of a deal when you're like level 90, but I don't think league starting a mercenary summoner is ever going to be a thing with how godawful the start is. They did put the two minion wheels down at the bottom but those are just completely worthless because of how many points it's going to take to get there and there's no revive time. So yeah, I genuinely think minion builds on the bottom right half third of the tree are going to be very difficult to pull off outside of making them your second character and twink leveling them with OP stuff. Personally I won't mind THAT much so long as we have some good ascendancy options on Witch/Templar/Shadow ascendancies. I can live without the other three being summoners. But since they said they don't want people feeling locked into options I just find it really weird that we're back into being locked to mostly witch/templar just like PoE1.
i thought the same exact thing. the easiest solution would be to have some generic pathing linking all classes starting point requiring no more than 5 points to go from one class to the other. this is what true variety would be needed for them to really give the players options outside the cookie cutter, predefined sludge there is now.
I think unearth was already a great skill, *for actual clearing*, and that was intended by GGG to give different purpose for each gem. Things that I expected was more integrated methods to support non-arsonist build. Maybe all of this problem will solve when more skill gems arrive in the next next patch update. Also love your idea of Gateway Node! That's need to be implemented for sure if they really want to make a creative building path.
As far as I see it, as a level 70 Merc and a level 27 Warrior, you can't stack Spirit without hampering yourself otherwise. Spirit as a mechanic is super limiting for Minion builds. So whether you play minions or not becomes a locked-in choice-either you do, or you don't. And that's it. If I could change something, I would spread more Spirit nodes across the tree or make it the fourth option for stats, like Strength, Dex, Int, or Spirit. This way, every build can lock into Spirit. The only problem is that this would open the door for aura stacking, which I would also argue should be a thing. When fully leveled, you can activate two auras with like one or two supports, but that's it. Fundamentally, I think they don’t know where they’re going with this. They solved one issue with Mana reservation and the high costs of skills but opened the door to a whole host of other issues. I don’t see myself playing anything else but the top-left or the top classes to play minions, as the nodes are there to support the build. Besides this, the main argument for not having a Necromancer class back is the idea that it railroads us into playing that class. But as of now, we have the same result-without the fun fantasy of a Necromancer. They are really, really early access, the more I look. But it's all potential.
They don't have any spirit node on the tree, except the 'reduced spirit cost for minion by 12%', right? Why do we need to add them to the tree while every class can equally get those things in gears anyway?
@@fourth4q118 Because then you only play Spirit builds. Taking up Spirit gear means you have to play either Auras or Minions because this gear blocks lots of slots otherwise needed to use other stuff. The main argument is, "We don't want to implement X because that railroads you," but then they build a whole system that railroads you. Doesn't make any sense.
I think they should just let you start out in whatever direction you want... Your ascendancy icon is already in the middle and the nodes are already attached, just let us go in any direction- or multiple directions
There is no variety right now, they need to have more than just skeletons for summoning, I find it funny they give us a demon Ascendancy with out providing demon summons.
Yes.Need more variety for some classes.Don't forget about variety with maybe a few more league mechanics.Miss incursion the most from PoE 1.Was always a fun detour from maps and bosses.A new take on on the incursion mechanic would rock.
Yeah atm body blocking of minions, and constant despawning of them every 5 seconds its really anoying. Its common on open maps when you move fast and its 10x worse in narrow maps where they cant even attack often. They really need to reduce the collision on minions and fix the constant despawn for them. Make them teleport not despawn!
The GAME lacks variety at the moment IMHO. There's like 5-ish viable builds for the absolute end-game right now, and none of them are builds that I enjoy, therefore I'm not having any fun and quitting.
Seems like the whole witch class is pigeonholed. I would like to play srs but not be forced into firewall. Cold,lightning,chaos and poison variant would be extremely fun. The skills/tree definitely feels like D4 in the sense that there is really one way to play a particular build. I don’t really want to use D4 as an example but that’s how minions feel in D4. One way to play them and no variety. Anyway love the video! ❤
Maybe upon creation, instead of forcing a starting point why not just let the player choose the starting node from the ones available to the 12 classes? Would open up every build variety possible.
Surprised when you mentioned sorc starting in the int area of the tree and didn't mention that they lose out on a fair amount of minion nodes. GGG's excuse about not wanting any class to feel like the default one for minions really falls apart when Witch literally has base nodes on the tree for minion damage/life that nobody else does.
unfortunately, outside of a complete revamp of the sphere grid/skill tree, i dont thing it will happen. each class is too pidgeon holled into their main aspect with massive point investment to even get closer to the others, to make it worth. so even if they add more gems, you will still have the same problem of pathing towards a functional build.
Wands getting like half of what scepters could get would a lot of problems. Like wands get 50 spirit or 75. Every class wants spirit and wands giving spirit as well could make so many classes better but I feel nothing crazy.
a true fix to the build diversity would be letting us pick a starting point independent of our class. there is no reason they couldn't do it since we all start in the middle anyways.
Try a curse/chaos dmg blood mage witch. The nodes are all over the place even when starting out as a witch. The serious lack of leech on hit/kill makes the build a massive struggle. Especially when the first node for bloodmage makes you spend life as mana….
Another thing I think is limiting the creativity is the ascendancies. I feel like they don't bring much to the table so you kinda have to choose the one that gives you at least something useful for your build, which is mostly 2 notable. They are very generic in a weird way that is hard to find sinergies between 4 notables + a given archetype.
Like i could play a crossbow char on basically any class because they all give something that actually effects a crossbower ... But minions are strictly tied to minion stats, ally stats, or something that specifically targets the skill gem of the minion itself ... Which means infernalist titan or gemling (and gemling is too far away)
Yea I pretty much agree with all that, I was doing the last ascendancy yesterday and had 7k honour and due to my minions getting stuck on a certain level I was there 5 minutes or so walking back and forth trying to get the portal killed. Which was a real shame as it was a pretty GG sanctum run... But yea convocate and desecrate would be nice for sure.
I haven't even tried minions yet because I was very interested in specters, seems a lot more interesting than skelly boys with the spirit system. Of course people will find the best meta specter and 95% people will use that but I enjoy playing non-meta anyway.
I took the gemling route and its really not that bad but Im also not in endgame yet. I can say having double supports for an exploding minion build feels great. I'm level 60 right now and the content feels easy. With infernal minions they die and basically all respawn at the same time so they are more or less always on the same respawn timer. Also using max respawn cdr with the support that prevents death makes the downtime on respawns to what the spawn animation is. My minions are always alive.
Ive not played a minion build yet but i do love listening to your vidz whilst im playing!!!! I'll def try aa minion build sooon, possibly my next toon!!!
I also noticed that minion AI often gets buggy when you use the order button. My minions get stuck with the move command and don't attack nearby enemies. And yeah the body blocking is really bad with some map layouts.
Agree with most of these, my thoughts: spirit can be improved, at least there should be more quests with permanent Spirit rewards down the story lines; better minion opt ( like 1 death would prolong the 4s cooldown period of revival is really not incredible). Plus I shouldnt say anything more before we have Bind SPectre
Good vid. Wonder if they can make Raise Zombie useful, ever. Have a real solid build in maps with 280 spirit, I want arsonists together with a cleric and the rest skel snipers but there are no more slots to use unless I remove my only CC ability.
I play SSF infernalist farming t15s and ghostwrithe is the solution to my defence. I have 5k ES baseline that goes to 10k in maps, without having done my 4th Ascendancy which would be even more ES. I feel very sturdy, also have capped resistances including Chaos which ghostwrithe makes easy. Lvl 86 atm, not died since 82
Really don't like the flavour of witch, but want a minion build. Excuse me for not wanting to be a cringe goth gf who looks filthy and does nasty things with dead bodies. Miss golems from POE1.
Answer is obvious... ITS BETA. That being said it cant stay like this. Its not only Minion problem. Whole Bloodmage class after cold nerf feels bad because whole class requires big crits and only cold skills have big crits for some reason. Fire spells or lightning spells cant have big crit for some reason. Skills are just too blank atm and they rly need to tune in those numbers to make diverse play possible. Hopefully we can help them and HOPEFULLY they can give us free respec next time so that i dont have to kill act 5 rare mob that i wont name lmao.
So far its clear to me GGG kinda wish they didnt have to bother withe minion meta. Cant tell me otherwise unless we see a minion accendancy in the future. I want my nacromancer back.
The gateway idea would be sick, I too way annoyed by this because I wanted to make a Gemling caster for a specific idea but felt the travel was not realistic
Gateways for regular passive tree sounds like a great idea!
I said this to my friend the other day. Glad other people thought of the idea too
I can see this working extremely well! It's a fantastic idea!
With the amount of classes to come the passive tree is going to change massively.
Gateways would be great or gems that let you jump between sockets.
Send that Idea to GGG pls
Awesome Idea! Hope GGG take notes!
another thing people i dont think are talking about with minions is if they die in sequence over a period of time it resets the respawn timer on all your minions
So that is what was going on!
this is awful.
Dogshit mechanic hopefully a bug
But I can already see it. Ppl are gonna start abusing the timer if once it reaches 0 all minions get revived. Picture this.
Low lvl minion/force killing a minion
Timer starts
Once it ends everyone gets revived
Repeat process until boss is dead.
Essentially always having the rez timer on at all times.
While I personally dont mind, it does involve some sort of skill and timing, plus it keeps you engaged. I dont think GGG has that type of gameplay in mind.
It doesn't reset. They just body block themselves in the respawn queue. :3
Pigeon holing is also not just minions. This applies all skills and builds. Everything is pigeonholed in their corners and it's very hard to branch out.
Yeah, people expected more variety for each class, but it's not really there right now.
Yeah wanted to make a tanky Chronomancer, until I realised how far I had to travel for armour nodes.
ye if you go look at the trees of various ascendancies they more or less all path the same depending on weapon/skill being used
feels very "solved" early on, but at the same time if poe2 is to capture the ppl in this genre that arent compatible with poe1, i agree the game needs streamlining - question is how they will strike a balance
i am satisfied with a slower, different version! i like the game a lot, but since hitting endgame i've been getting meth-riddled, addict-style neck scratching to play poe1 and i aint even affected by the negative circlejerkers
The tree is so grotesquely bloated.
@@Alias_Fakename the worst part is, they removed stuff that bloated the tree in a good way, like health, regen and other survivability tools, just to fill with insultingly low % buffs and attributes.
Also witch have extra nodes for minion damage, and no other class can pick up those nodes
Something else about the melee minions is that a number of the support gems that they accept don't actually work for some reason. Like Armour Explosion can be socketed into the skeletal reaver, but it doesn't actually trigger the effect. If it did work, it'd at least give some AoE opportunity, similar to the arsonists.
I leveled infernalist to level 73 and I hate how minions feel in poe2. The revive timer and minions getting stuck behind you are so bad
I did not have that patience.
real minion class is titan. 50% small node effect gives dmg yes but its true worth shines on the defence nodes. it makes semi immortal. even in rare t15 maps my minions very rarely die now.
Interesting thing about the whole "There's no obvious choice for a playstyle" thing is that it really only applies to experienced players since we know about ascendancies. Watched 2 brand new poe players play EA and both wanted to play summons, and both choice Witch because the character select screen shows Witch with the summons.
I really like the idea of the warp gate for the passive tree, as it would also give characters more ways to scale armor and evasion as well.
waiting for spectres, the spirit cost will probably be non sensical
Personally, I dont even consider SRS a minion build, even though I did go with it on PoE2 because I felt that my choices for a good build were REALLY limited now, during the EA. SRS feels more like a skill and that is the reason why I never even tried to play it on PoE1, even though people were saying that it's OP, even while doing bosses. I loved my skelleton army one time that I decided to make a minion build, so I really wish they will find a way and let us have it again, somehow...I also hope that they will give 1-2 ascendancies that will be more "minion friendly", without limiting us to use only fire as an element. I would really love to see cold minion or lightning minion builds! PoE 2 should have everything for everyone, so that all people can find what they really like and enjoy to play.
On the main channel there’s a brief gameplay showing a Scepter that makes your minions freeze everything it was cool to watch
th-cam.com/video/pGYR-HOB52I/w-d-xo.htmlsi=zwb12EOgWVvA67Jz
@@Takumawakanda It's not the scepter... only frost mage! Screpter only provide shield.
SAME I don't like SRS too. It took me out from the fantasy of actual 'Horde' that they try to implemented, just another spamming summon ability, no actual pay-off.
lets be honest, srs are just heat seeking missiles... that are on fire.
@@Takumawakanda What is that dot doing in the middle of the URL? 😝Nice try, but I am greek and it's kinda hard to fool a greek! 😉
So GGG don't want to pigeonhole us into a specific subclass to use minions with, but at the same time they gave us Infernalist with 2 minion nodes (1 of which is a free summon), 2 allies nodes and a spirit node for even more summons. I don't see how it's not a pigeonholing. And on top of that they made Infernalist fire coded, with the best minions, at least for now, being fire ones. HUH?
True i honestly wish we could have srs of all elements and for the third witch ascendancy to be "necromancer" with no element or weapon specific /cast specific function.
Because necromancer is a class fantasy, like titan, witch hunter, druid, so give us the minion specific ascendency, because otherwise minions just feel awkward and feel forced on other class fantasies.
Even at the character creation screen Witch has tooltips about being bone mage/ minion master/ chaos caster. At the start of the Witch variant of the passive tree she has the same phys/minion/chaos nodes. It's consistency. So the question is WHERE THE HELL FIRE ASCENDANCY CAME FROM?
thing is i understand they dont want minion ascendancy to not pigeonhole, but then minions need more ways to scale. the moment an ascendancy has minion focused nodes its just impossible to not take it
i remember back just before the EA launched, people were talking about the possibility of legionaire being a better choice, because it buffed gem levels and quality, something that, in poe1, was massively important for minion's damage and survivability.
it just turns out, legionaire is shait no matter what you use him for because they completely nuked those aspects into such a miniscule aspect of the game those points feel 100% wasted, no matter what you use them for,
Don't forget a node on the tree for revive speed but is only available for with other classes only get mana regen.
It's not just minions that are frustratingly placed on the PST. In a similar vein all the crossbow/grenades stuff are placed right under the mercenary, which makes sense sure but if you want to play a Witch or Sorceress with a crossbow good luck with that. I'm actually trying to do a Gemling Legionnaire summoner on the side and the early game is a bit silly you basically only get attribute stuff and tanky stuff on the way through the warrior area.
the only plus that was theorized about the gemling was the +1 to all skills, but since you can realistically get +8 from gear, it becomes a much weaker ascendancy. For many minions the quality is meh and the rest of the ascendancy nodes of the gemling don't even matter. Also, you waste probably 30ish points just to get to the int side of the tree, which is a MASSIVE opportunity cost.
With gemling you scale your phys dmg and spam bonestorm, with Minions triggering It+ corpse exp...at least for leveling
I'm the guy who started Early Access as a Gemling Legionnaire, and I'm generally feeling pretty good on t15 maps right now. Snipers do enough damage to big mobs and frost mages add a layer of defense. I have a couple of videos if anyone is interested in seeing what it looks like on the maps.
I've been thinking about that for minions just for more skill slots and the double use support gem, to get maximum zoo appeal for every minion type under the sun at once.
PROTIP: Just use weapon swap (and set your second weapon to 0 minions) then swap back = CONVOCATION!
@donaldtroll doesn't help when they're dead but yes :)
I agree with this, I tried to play around unearth for a while but SRS just feels so much more powerful. Zombies felt awful, the mana cost is enormous and you need a corpse so it was hard to even find corpses to use this with to consistently keep them up. I even restarted the campaign after trying a non SRS build for the first 2 acts and replayed them with SRS and it was vastly superior, no question they need to balance this ideally by making the other minion builds better.
Srs is ultra comfortable in campaign but starting from cruel the core of the build becomes arsonist more and more, until in maps srs are there only for inf-legion,fire-exposure,heightened-exposure.
I mean you can't even automatize creating zombies. What is the point of "Cast on minion death" in a minion build? To cast firespells? To cast Contagion/ES without any real damage or power behind? To use a skill without support gems so it's basically useless?
I'm pretty let down with PoE2 ngl. I like much more the PoE system a la Final Fantasy 7 approach. I was hopping for an improvement in general and i don't see it outside the feeling that it has a good fundation somehow. (you still need to use the web to trade, you still need to use a browser to manage the guild, etc...)
i just want a giant army of skeleton warriors that aren't that strong individually but they swarm, imagine a support skill where when a warrior dies 2 spawn from his corpse, or when a certain amount of your warriors die in an area all the bones come together and make a giant skeleton!
This so much. I had high hopes for PoE2 but they got crushed pretty quickly. For now I make due with the raging spirits and flame wall and hope for the best.
Yeah,spells are so boring
Right now is spamming srs :( kinda boring end game
Such great ideas. Especially the giant skeleton from your minions bones. I'm only in mid act 2 on my witch but I love how many minions I have so far. Makes the game easy mode most the time. Until the boss fights that don't spawn adds. But then I just hit them with solar orb and bone blast over and over. Lol
Why ARPG devs cannot understand what a Necromancer truly is ?
Also agree with the reservation cost on minions its all over the place. Some of the most crappy minions cost crazy spirit price for no reason. If you pay double at least make them double the power.
The opportunities to enhance my spirit have been quite scarce, which is rather frustrating.
How so? I'm level 65 running 11x arsonists, 1x cleric, 2x warriors on top of the 10x SRS. My whole screen is just minions 🫣
@@tavirosu25 yea but where do you get spirit from? head corrupt, neck mod and implicit, body armor mod and implicit, scepter mod and quality, unique shield and 3rd ascension infernalist
@@tavirosu25 Gear can be hit and miss. Its tough if you get bad rolls on loot for Spirit.
the truth is that are one viable minion build: SRS + Arsionists... they need to buff other minions so we can have more options, but what they will do in reality? nerf arsionists D:
It was so obvious 🤣 already nerfed and no buffs to other minions
I am peeved off, was struggling so bad only in act 3 now, and I just got to 5 minions worth of spirit reservation on arsonists and now it got nerfed to have the same reservation as the rest, felt so good but now it will be a slog again.
It's my first time playing path of exile and I've been enjoying playing minions as my first character, the problem is i'm finding that i'm not really playing the game as much as I could be playing a different class. I can't really party up with people too because I'd just feel sorry for them not having a clue waht's going on because you can't really see anything with the amount of minions haha
PoE 1 has that issue with almost every build. The visual clarity is out of the question but people don't mind it because that is a consequence of fast clearing xD Minions only make it worse but maybe you can find someone who also plays minions for maximum clutter :)
Gateways are a great idea. Like the atlas passive gateways where it's only a 1 ot 2 skill point cost to get to the other side.
I feel like the minions getting stuck after one another is the only thing keeping a physical based focus for minion builds as an equal alternative for the fire-bases SRS/Arsonist. Skeleton snipers with a gas arrow that strips away armor and vulnerability to reduce physical defense further feels like it could be immensely strong. Add on the rest of your spirit in reavers for more damage and to lock down the mobs and you've got something special going. Hell, throw in a form of corpse generation and you can use unearth/zombies as an alternative for SRS as temporary minion summons too to get cooking with it while levelling and not tax your spirit so heavily.
Dude ... if they made Convocation for PoE 2, it would teleport minions to you, but it would also kill half of them without on death effects, had a 90 minute cooldown, removed all your spirit so you can't have any minions, reduced your movement speed, and reserve 25% of you life.
they would also introduce a unique that reduced the cooldown by 2.1%
5:30 im fear that the rebalance GGG will do is increase raging spirit spirit cost to become higher instead of lower other minion.
even at 60 i think it will be worth it. But the pidgeonhole-ing is real. The witch even has bespoke passives that give minion damage and res timer only to her, which is the exact opposite of GGG's words. But honestly, probably druid and inquisitor will have at least one ascendancy each that will be good for minions so that's probably GGG's angle.
As a lvl 75 witch in endgame mapping srs does not compare to the arsonists, srs basically becomes your expose aurabot trough infernal legion, fire exposure, heightened exposure. So the build wouldnt die without them, you just use the dog for exposure if you are an infernalist. Also you kinda stop spamming srs when you realize tou just need a cast every 5ish seconds just for exposure, and its better to spam unheart, wich i started using in endgame realizing they scale much better than expected and having abundance of enemies and corpses in maps, i personally do(Unheart-culling strike-knockback-fire infusion). And they enable you to map faster due to being ultra aggressive and running in front of you
that is the GGG way, cant spell rebalance without nerfs.
The reason minions lack variety is because the devs programmed them to lack variety.
lets be honest, poe1 is not that diferent. most minions are either dead stuff, or golems. with very specific unique cases. like the spectral wolf that requires a ring equiped and doesnt really scale well, or the spiders that require a specific and very expensive knife to even use.
And that means it should stay that way, instead of improoveing them? That is a stupid attitude, being a yesmen, accepting everything someone throws at you.
@@istvanjuhasz210 No. It means the devs don't care about minions. They have shown it in the past and expecting anything to change is crazy.
Dude... chill... the other guy didnt say anything you're accusing him of
I really liked Unearth but as I got higher gem levels and went mind over matter, the mana cost became prohibitive and then ended up dropping entirely. There's also the issue with aiming in this game in general, where the spells dont go where your cursor is
@@Linklobo the aming you mentioned is something I when I thought about it again saw aswell that sometimes aiming is a bit weird but I just thought I'm shit tbh
i feel like some kind of auto aim is happening at all times, assuming its meant to be there (and not a bug of like a console feature affecting the pc version) hopefully they give us an option to turn it off.
There really needs to be a spirit gem that somehow generate corpses. Either every X seconds, or on crit or whatever. But not being able to generate corpse is very odd. It's the same problem with a lot of builds PoE2 tends to favour builds for map clearing that suddenly are really bad for bosses because bosses have little to no adds or are very resistant to ailments etc.
Sacrifice allows you to use any skeletal minion as a corpse
there probably is one, but not implemented yet.
@@cbairforce4886true but it costs too much and we need way more
Having two or three different "combat style" options for each minion type could solve that alone. IE: Grenades that explode, vs grenades that leave burning ground.. Warriors that taunt, vs warriors that aoe splash, etc.
Would hobestly love that for a change
That combined with a slightly lower spirit cost would be awesome
Lmao sounds like Diablo 4
Literally can make them taunt, +1, crit, etc
Ppl shit on D4 so fucking much and yet here we are with minion builds that lack fun and variety and just feel fkin clunky as shit to play when you get swarmed
@droid5785 never played D4 it didnt really make me interested in the game from what I have seen but always find "D4 bad" stuff funny idk why
But sounds kinda cool tbh
It's kind of atrocious that they took out all the support gems from poe1 that enabled this kind of customization. melee splash being a huge one.
@@healergirl28 in the end it is still a beta/early access so I just hope we get some more stuff like that some time soon
We are missing over half of the active skills and two-thirds of the ascendancies. Of course things feel like not much variety yet.
I'm actually playing a mercenary minion build! I've found that traveling from the bottom of the tree towards the top makes for a good excuse to get a lot of defenses and stats; using Enhanced Effectiveness and Adaptive Capability allowed me to convert most of my stats to strength and then double the life gained from said strength. I achieved 3200 life so far. I also leaned into armor and block. It's more difficult to grab every minion wheel that you want as you said, but I think you simply deal less damage and are more survivable as the trade-off. Not great at the moment, especially since a lot of content end-game seems to one-shot you irrespective of how survivable you are, but I'm at t10 waystones at the moment with only on 4 ascendancy points in ssf.
I saw your comment on Kusnier's reaver clear. I watched his boss showcase, and I'm largely convinced that solving minion collision problems would make it arguably as good as Arsonists.
In his boss showcase video, he shreds high tier map bosses near instantly. The problem is that he has around... 14 reavers? Almost 4 or more at any time (I counted like *six or seven at one time)* getting stuck outside the first "layer" of attacking Reavers. I had the same problem with Iron Mass lightning skeletons in Settlers, but i could spawn them around a target in PoE 1.
The Brute cost makes me think that you're meant to mitigate this with these hard hitting minions worth 2+ other melee minions (and the heavy stun shockwave hits like a truck, good for clearing), but they're so big by themselves that they can run into the same problems.
I think a fun thing that would make me want to screw around with my minions would be to have 3 different versions of srs. A fire, lightning, and cold version. All with the exact same damage, but just the different elements. Self casting arc to summon lightning srs, or frostbombs summoning chilling ones. Then i would have options. A more defensive freezing setup for minions, a more debuffing shock setup for them, and an aoe one. Popcorning cold SRS's to aoe some frost buildup for the frost minions. 1 step further and maybe the ascendancy pet also having an option for its aura to be chill or shock......
Yeah idk why they didn't add more stuff like that. It seems like a really obvious way to make the infernalist not be so flame centric. They made her really narrow. This has an indirect effect of limiting sorceress and blood mage. I kind don't get why they have this clear idea of 'elemental interplay' on the monk and sort of on the sorceress, yet don't refine it and put it on other aspects of their design. Probably balance issues and maybe they are waiting for Huntress Templar and Druid to take their spots so it's clearer where the holes in the design space are spell wise.
@@smoothiedeluxe7422 i don't think they want all minion builds to play exact same way. summon tank minions+dps. i think there is suppose to be different strategies behind the minion classes but i can't quite tell what is wrong with variety in it. The skeleton mage minions are very fragile and sort of support the idea of front-ling as your character to protect your mages from aggro but realistically, your only weapon combination to have scepter is 1 handed mace and the whole like warrior mace archetype is more in line with using physical damage over elemental's but the whole physical spells in occult tree don't really have much synergy within that gameplay style.
@dodang_9147 i think my point is more so in other games the thing I'm talking about 'different ways to play the same fighting style' is called a spec. It's called that because it requires a specialization into specific things to get a radically different style. Other games put these things in the same class generally. You make new classes when the foundational difference of the style is different.
For example in poe mace minion users have totems instead because totems function very differently and strength based weapons have their own set of skills that can pair with totems without interrupting the fighting style of that weapon archtype. This is one of the ways they made a GOOD second minion class, but it's not quite what I mean.
I'm complaining that there is no different spec for Witch, not that the str minion caster is a bad thing to have. You cant play 'mage minion' class in a different way if you want to use the minions. The synergy with minions and spells is really bad outside fire spells and some debuffs. This effectively makes the Witch a worse minion user in terms of player experience because it takes the witch outside of any reasonable play loop in order to support her minions. Her minions ARE her playstyle if you use minions. And that's the rub. They also made scepters require strength and made her basically require to be an int/str caster. So over all I'm even more incentivized to use totems.
There are ways to fix a lot of these problems but GGG would need to define and support 'spellcaster minion user' play loop a little better and a little more empowering the way they succeeded with 'warrior minion user'. Right now, the differentiation isn't very good and you end up being either a shitty spell caster or a shitty weapon user. I think we'll know better about what GGG really wants when they include specter because they made witch with that ability in mind and just didnt give it to her due to fear of balance issues. Which is fair but still...
One thing you can do with snipers is give them scattershot, pierce and bludgeon support gem. This makes it so they knockback everything they hit. Kinda works with arsenists but the way the grenades slowly arch makes it unreliable at pushing enemies away from you as sometimes it can do the opposite.
For convocation rather than giving us the same spell as in PoE I think it would be cooler if they instead give us a skeleton summoner that instead of attacking summons corpses from the map we are currently on. Its activated ability would essentially be convocation but around it though it will always teleport next to us if we go more than a couple of meter away from it.
Or better yet a skeleton banner on our back that does exactly that, while also applying buffs like pain offering with mana without needing to constantly sacrifice a skeleton.
Don't expect arsonists to stay the way they are now. GGG's intention with minion builds in PoE2 is for the caster to use their unique skills actively during combat to increase their effectiveness. Right now arsonists are so good at a base level you can completely ignore their special minion exploding skill entirely, which is what the current strongest minion build does. They will either have their base attack nerfed or the minion explosion buffed, and I know which one I'd put my money on. One way to nerf them might be to remove the shotgun effect with scattershot support.
Minion body-blocking needs to be removed or severely reduced to make melee minions effective. All minions need to have some base level of aoe in their basic attacks, either that or a lot more damage. I'd like to see the storm mages get a chaining arc instead of just their single target attack for example. And PLEASE bring back the minions teleporting to you when you get too far mechanic, or convocation, the way it works now is way too punishing for anything that isn't auto-reviving if you don't want to play the game at the speed of molasses, and forces you to spec into revive speed nodes.
I feel like that for most of the archetypes. I'm playing as a pathfinder and I feel absolutely scarce of options to play with. And I'm playing as a cold archetype, is not terrible, I just don't have much options to choose. Ice shot if using bow, Ice strike if using quarterstaff. Other skill are utily.
I tried minions for most of the campaign, but I got sick of so many boss arenas suddenly locking out all but 2 of my summons, and the arena being so small that they either wouldn't respawn or they'd take over 2 minutes before the game realised they were stuck and kill them off.
Also it's weird that GGG doesn't want to pigeon hole summoners into one class or ascendancy, but they flag the witch as a summoner class in the character selection scene. I fell for that and only when getting my first ascendancy points on her, I realised there's basically only one node on the infernalist tree that aids minion builds by giving you spirit while reserving life, and nothing else on the blood mage tree.
The skill tree is terrible if you start theory crafting, so much is just not possible
its literally just minion notes and mana regen.
there is zero room to squeeze anything else.
Btw Ghazzy, in case you didn't know, you were saying you wanted convocation in poe2, you can use the weapon swap and only assign your minion skills to weapon 1, switching to weapon 2 will unsummon them all, then switch back to weapon 1, and they all instantly get resummoned to your location, if their not dead already.
Very useful when they get stuck on a doorway etc.
You should have shown the absolutely bizarre minion clusters at the south side of the tree. They're so hilariously random and waste of points I'm personally just confused who they were even made for in the first place.
Needs to be more viable elements and skills that pair better with minions. It would 100% be a mistake to nerf srs and flamewall, instead the focus for witch should be bringing other damage types up to par to match the only actually viable build we have
I'm liking skeletal brutes. Found a fun way to keep them alive while burning, and blowing them up while also getting them back fast but yeah the body blocking can be a problem, but with this build you can run sacrifice and explode them. It may fit what you are trying to do while being different than srs.
Let us choose the elements for mages. Let us adjust spirit to increase strength of the minion or power to increase the amount of minions. Give us a pack of little imp skeletons that have a theme of sacrificing with faster reviving. Sacrifice should be free.
To bring back balance in terms of minions we change srs reservation to be 30 spirit per minion
too real
how about instead of nerfing even more stuff because they do somewhat decent we bring other things up to not be trash?
Yeah I don't really like the minion builds right now. I feel like a hybrid caster and I can't see anything with giant flame circles everywhere.
That's how they want minions to be, you have to throw out stuff to buff and setup combos for your minions
@@jonathangrimes8975 ah yes, carpal tunnel flame wall is very fun indeed
Go to graphics settings and lower the bloom setting to the minimum. U r welcome
@@JaffyChen Did that day one. The skill is annoying. It obscures a ton and I don't find it fun to use.
A very important thing to take note of with the skeletal snipers and skeletal frostmages is that their autoattack's aren't the reason you use them. Their main damage comes from their command skills. These "command" skills have a cooldown per each individual skeleton AND only 1 skeleton uses the ability when you command them to so you'll want to have just enough skeletons to be able to keep using the ability as much as your combined cast speed + cooldown allows you to. Any more than that would just mean they are autoattacking while holding on to their ability which isn't very usefull. The advandage of especially skeletal snipers is that you only need 6 or 7, maybe 8 depending on your cast speed and you can use some other minions as utility or extra damage. In my case I use 2x skeletal warrior with infernal legion to auto-detonate the clouds and 2 healers to keep the skeletons alive. With that setup I do not need a scepter with increased spirit rolls nor do I need a amulet with added spirit. I could use both to run some extra arsonists or so. The big mistake with skelly snipers/frost mages many people seem to make is just to spam as many of those as they can just like you'd do with arsonists but imho that's far from the optimal way to play the frostmages or snipers Even then, with snipers costing half of the spirit as frostmages I while dealing more damage I really hope they'll either increase frostmage damage or lower their cost.
Just started to watch your video, so I'm curious to see what you say, but I think the big reasons minions like variety are: 1) limited synergy with ascendancies (only really infernalist) 2) minion types are locked into single element damage, limiting builds (e.g. infernalist will obviously pick fire minions) 3) they haven't yet added spectres to the game, which would add an impressive level of variety to builds.
Honestly, all minions should be no higher than 30. Allows for a variety of buffs and some minions
I personally would say 30 for the ranged and at most 20 for the melee classes, also massively increase minion speed and give them something else, as of now melee minions (besides srs) are absolute trash Reavers should have lifesteal for example instead of making them do have a slightly increased damage at the cost of now becoming a timed minion when you hit their ability
@@jasonm9425 Would infernal legion, and the explode gem work better with reavers than srs?
@@manilowgamer no bc reavers need to respawn, you can instantly summon more srs
The best way to sort the passive tree issue is add a teleport nodes like in poe 1 atlas.
I hate that I am basically forced to use flamewall if I want to playa SRS or minions in general.
Зачем тебе огненная стена при игре со скелетами жнецами через физический урон?
@@Дмитрий-н1е5э For the projectiles to ignite. You lose out on too much damage if you don´t use it.
To be fair you feel forced to use flamewall almost on any projectile minoon or not because its big flat dmg buff ... Even if its fire
PoE2 diversity is fraction of PoE1's. But that's understandable at this point. I find passive tree ultra boring though
Minions relying on sorcerer and other skills it's the real issue, the witch is just a worse and weaker sorcerer atm
Another easy fix would be for the circle at the center of the passive tree allows connections between all the classes' starting points
So many great points here Ghazzy. I don't see how GGG didn't identify the minion body blocking as a problem. Hopefully they will have some fixes for the issues you pointed out.
I am disappointed we don't have spectres.
Zombies felt bad even with extended timer. They either expire before or shortly after you get to the next fight and move significantly slower. They really rely on reliable power charge generation. The sniper gas clouds are nice. They feel really strong. Igniting them is satisfying, but they feel more burst and cooldown compared to arsonists. Warriors are just tanks from sceptres and never worth making a gem for. Lightning mage definitely fell off once the build came together. You're spot on about melee minions. They just dont appeal with all the body block issues. This is absolutely spot on on every single minion in the game. You really feel forced to just play arsonists to even have a mediocre time. Especially with witch having so much support for the build.
With all the fire wall and minions, its hard to play with friends because it slows their machines down an incredible amount as well.
I'm playing srs atm but man it's incredibly dull, monsters just run right past my skeletons and i have to fart around till my minions decide to kill the stray. I wish I was caster specced so I could have fun with fireball not hitting like a wet noodle.
I started with Unearth but even at lvl2 I dropped it because:
1. It does nearly zero damage
2. The minions don’t last long enough, it’s just annoying and feels bad
It's just as I predicted day 1... in the end everybody will be playing the same build.
This seems to be the case
Try something besides minions maybe?
thats how it is for every arpg. Meta builds will always be there and played by the majority
@@mlogli5638 the problem is that for minions there are no meta and no options... only one way to go
I'm playing a physical chrono minion build. 13 Reavers, a cleric, A brute for Culling, 2 Frost mages for slow and using the 10 SRS to start the bleed, and Zombies for clear, if i want 10 more, but not necessary lol (I'm using a Discipline scepter so no free minions) . The start was slow, and really took off when i got Temporal Rift and Time Freeze. Bosses are froze for half the fight, and just teleport to gain back life if hit for the rest. I'm sitting at 423 spirit, but still a bit of room for improvement.
Sometimes they get stuck in a hallway but if you command attack farther along, they usually push through. I guess i have enough out anyway to not really care if a bunch have to respawn.
It took 11 skill points rushing to get my first minion node. And missing out on 89% minion damage from the witch tree is kind of a big deal too.
Its all classes. Warrior tree is flanked by Flail- and Axe passive nodes that you would obviously be crazy to pick right now. I would imagine Templar would be the other summoner archetype when he gets released.
They should definetely add some form of gateway node, maybe use create paired jewels that when socketed, once one is activated, the other is too, or just straight what you said.
They could always just allow traveling through the middle part. Connect the left mercenary starting small passive to the right warrior starting node. Maybe add like one small passive for Strength and Dexterity between the classes and now you get to go from the Mercenary to the Warrior in 3 points, then 3 more points to the Templar one, and final 3 to get to the left Witch starting passive.
It's still 9 points "wasted" to get to the witch starting location so there's definitely a cost attached to it, but it would be so much better than having to spend 28 points to get restless dead. It would instead be 21 points. Still a lot, but significantly better.
The gateway thing would end up costing you quite a lot too after all. It would take 7 points to get to the gateway node and one more passive if you also had to allocate the opposite gateway like you did with atlas trees. So it would be around 18-20 points depending on where the gateway would be on the top side to get to restless dead, though your postioning would be better for the revive nodes on the right saving you a couple more points there.
I've been planning on making a Gemling Legionnaire minion build too, but the startup cost is just super daunting. I'm kind of trying to fix it with just insane leveling gear. Will have at least +5, potentially +6-7 gem levels before level 20 so it should be good. And of course, support gems have no level requirement so you can just use the best ones right from the start and all that. I also don't think it's going to be that big of a deal when you're like level 90, but I don't think league starting a mercenary summoner is ever going to be a thing with how godawful the start is.
They did put the two minion wheels down at the bottom but those are just completely worthless because of how many points it's going to take to get there and there's no revive time. So yeah, I genuinely think minion builds on the bottom right half third of the tree are going to be very difficult to pull off outside of making them your second character and twink leveling them with OP stuff.
Personally I won't mind THAT much so long as we have some good ascendancy options on Witch/Templar/Shadow ascendancies. I can live without the other three being summoners. But since they said they don't want people feeling locked into options I just find it really weird that we're back into being locked to mostly witch/templar just like PoE1.
i thought the same exact thing. the easiest solution would be to have some generic pathing linking all classes starting point requiring no more than 5 points to go from one class to the other.
this is what true variety would be needed for them to really give the players options outside the cookie cutter, predefined sludge there is now.
I think unearth was already a great skill, *for actual clearing*, and that was intended by GGG to give different purpose for each gem. Things that I expected was more integrated methods to support non-arsonist build. Maybe all of this problem will solve when more skill gems arrive in the next next patch update.
Also love your idea of Gateway Node! That's need to be implemented for sure if they really want to make a creative building path.
As far as I see it, as a level 70 Merc and a level 27 Warrior, you can't stack Spirit without hampering yourself otherwise.
Spirit as a mechanic is super limiting for Minion builds. So whether you play minions or not becomes a locked-in choice-either you do, or you don't. And that's it.
If I could change something, I would spread more Spirit nodes across the tree or make it the fourth option for stats, like Strength, Dex, Int, or Spirit.
This way, every build can lock into Spirit. The only problem is that this would open the door for aura stacking, which I would also argue should be a thing.
When fully leveled, you can activate two auras with like one or two supports, but that's it.
Fundamentally, I think they don’t know where they’re going with this. They solved one issue with Mana reservation and the high costs of skills but opened the door to a whole host of other issues.
I don’t see myself playing anything else but the top-left or the top classes to play minions, as the nodes are there to support the build.
Besides this, the main argument for not having a Necromancer class back is the idea that it railroads us into playing that class. But as of now, we have the same result-without the fun fantasy of a Necromancer.
They are really, really early access, the more I look. But it's all potential.
They don't have any spirit node on the tree, except the 'reduced spirit cost for minion by 12%', right? Why do we need to add them to the tree while every class can equally get those things in gears anyway?
@@fourth4q118 wrong, starting nodes for Witch are different, and they have minion damage there.
@@mewni2956 I'm talking about SPIRIT NODE that OP mention. We don't have any of that in the tree.
Having the option to take Spirit the same way you take Str/Int/Dex would be great.
@@fourth4q118 Because then you only play Spirit builds. Taking up Spirit gear means you have to play either Auras or Minions because this gear blocks lots of slots otherwise needed to use other stuff. The main argument is, "We don't want to implement X because that railroads you," but then they build a whole system that railroads you. Doesn't make any sense.
You sound like someone on twitch with a mustache and short hair, you both said the same thing tho. Ty for build and content!
Once the cool gems come that hopefully will balance it a bit. Although, the spirit costs really nee to be adjusted.
I think they should just let you start out in whatever direction you want... Your ascendancy icon is already in the middle and the nodes are already attached, just let us go in any direction- or multiple directions
There is no variety right now, they need to have more than just skeletons for summoning, I find it funny they give us a demon Ascendancy with out providing demon summons.
The infernalist's hell hound: am I a joke to you?
@smoothiedeluxe7422 yes
It would be nice to have different classifications of summons each with their own advantages.
Yes.Need more variety for some classes.Don't forget about variety with maybe a few more league mechanics.Miss incursion the most from PoE 1.Was always a fun detour from maps and bosses.A new take on on the incursion mechanic would rock.
Yeah atm body blocking of minions, and constant despawning of them every 5 seconds its really anoying. Its common on open maps when you move fast and its 10x worse in narrow maps where they cant even attack often. They really need to reduce the collision on minions and fix the constant despawn for them. Make them teleport not despawn!
The GAME lacks variety at the moment IMHO.
There's like 5-ish viable builds for the absolute end-game right now, and none of them are builds that I enjoy, therefore I'm not having any fun and quitting.
I think giving up 2 ascendancy points to allow starting from another classes start point could work as well.
Seems like the whole witch class is pigeonholed. I would like to play srs but not be forced into firewall. Cold,lightning,chaos and poison variant would be extremely fun. The skills/tree definitely feels like D4 in the sense that there is really one way to play a particular build. I don’t really want to use D4 as an example but that’s how minions feel in D4. One way to play them and no variety. Anyway love the video! ❤
LE did minions the best so far
Maybe upon creation, instead of forcing a starting point why not just let the player choose the starting node from the ones available to the 12 classes? Would open up every build variety possible.
Yes, Gateways please! I was thinking about them a day or two as well. I like Gemling but would like to try him as a caster => the same issue.
Went Gemling legionnaire, the skill-ramage was real. Act 1 and 2 felt brutal
Surprised when you mentioned sorc starting in the int area of the tree and didn't mention that they lose out on a fair amount of minion nodes. GGG's excuse about not wanting any class to feel like the default one for minions really falls apart when Witch literally has base nodes on the tree for minion damage/life that nobody else does.
Not just minions, but in general, there is a lack of choice in PoE 2 so far. But I think that will change with more skills and more development time.
unfortunately, outside of a complete revamp of the sphere grid/skill tree, i dont thing it will happen. each class is too pidgeon holled into their main aspect with massive point investment to even get closer to the others, to make it worth. so even if they add more gems, you will still have the same problem of pathing towards a functional build.
Wands getting like half of what scepters could get would a lot of problems. Like wands get 50 spirit or 75. Every class wants spirit and wands giving spirit as well could make so many classes better but I feel nothing crazy.
Gateway or just have the inner circle spin so you can have whatever start you like. Or both.
a true fix to the build diversity would be letting us pick a starting point independent of our class. there is no reason they couldn't do it since we all start in the middle anyways.
Try a curse/chaos dmg blood mage witch. The nodes are all over the place even when starting out as a witch. The serious lack of leech on hit/kill makes the build a massive struggle. Especially when the first node for bloodmage makes you spend life as mana….
Another thing I think is limiting the creativity is the ascendancies. I feel like they don't bring much to the table so you kinda have to choose the one that gives you at least something useful for your build, which is mostly 2 notable. They are very generic in a weird way that is hard to find sinergies between 4 notables + a given archetype.
Even worse for minions since the pool of abilities that effect minions are very limiting because they get scaled seperate from us
Like i could play a crossbow char on basically any class because they all give something that actually effects a crossbower ... But minions are strictly tied to minion stats, ally stats, or something that specifically targets the skill gem of the minion itself ... Which means infernalist titan or gemling (and gemling is too far away)
Yea I pretty much agree with all that, I was doing the last ascendancy yesterday and had 7k honour and due to my minions getting stuck on a certain level I was there 5 minutes or so walking back and forth trying to get the portal killed. Which was a real shame as it was a pretty GG sanctum run... But yea convocate and desecrate would be nice for sure.
I haven't even tried minions yet because I was very interested in specters, seems a lot more interesting than skelly boys with the spirit system. Of course people will find the best meta specter and 95% people will use that but I enjoy playing non-meta anyway.
I took the gemling route and its really not that bad but Im also not in endgame yet. I can say having double supports for an exploding minion build feels great. I'm level 60 right now and the content feels easy. With infernal minions they die and basically all respawn at the same time so they are more or less always on the same respawn timer. Also using max respawn cdr with the support that prevents death makes the downtime on respawns to what the spawn animation is. My minions are always alive.
Ive not played a minion build yet but i do love listening to your vidz whilst im playing!!!! I'll def try aa minion build sooon, possibly my next toon!!!
I also noticed that minion AI often gets buggy when you use the order button. My minions get stuck with the move command and don't attack nearby enemies.
And yeah the body blocking is really bad with some map layouts.
Agree with most of these, my thoughts: spirit can be improved, at least there should be more quests with permanent Spirit rewards down the story lines; better minion opt ( like 1 death would prolong the 4s cooldown period of revival is really not incredible). Plus I shouldnt say anything more before we have Bind SPectre
Good vid. Wonder if they can make Raise Zombie useful, ever. Have a real solid build in maps with 280 spirit, I want arsonists together with a cleric and the rest skel snipers but there are no more slots to use unless I remove my only CC ability.
Unearth needs a massive buff to make it worth thinking about.
I play SSF infernalist farming t15s and ghostwrithe is the solution to my defence. I have 5k ES baseline that goes to 10k in maps, without having done my 4th Ascendancy which would be even more ES.
I feel very sturdy, also have capped resistances including Chaos which ghostwrithe makes easy. Lvl 86 atm, not died since 82
Really don't like the flavour of witch, but want a minion build. Excuse me for not wanting to be a cringe goth gf who looks filthy and does nasty things with dead bodies. Miss golems from POE1.
Answer is obvious... ITS BETA. That being said it cant stay like this. Its not only Minion problem. Whole Bloodmage class after cold nerf feels bad because whole class requires big crits and only cold skills have big crits for some reason. Fire spells or lightning spells cant have big crit for some reason. Skills are just too blank atm and they rly need to tune in those numbers to make diverse play possible. Hopefully we can help them and HOPEFULLY they can give us free respec next time so that i dont have to kill act 5 rare mob that i wont name lmao.
So far its clear to me GGG kinda wish they didnt have to bother withe minion meta. Cant tell me otherwise unless we see a minion accendancy in the future. I want my nacromancer back.
i cant really blame them, like 70% of my guild are lazy minion builds.
Convocation aura: "If you outrange your Minions, they are summoned arround you instantly"
Why go titan over warbringer ? Totems also count as minions
im trying to build a merc sorcerer rn already feeling that struggle xD those gateways would be dope
wishlist: more spirit = more minion damage, also spectres, also extra game zoom
Is there any reason we cannot just allocate nodes on the Witch start as a Marauder for example?
The gateway idea would be sick, I too way annoyed by this because I wanted to make a Gemling caster for a specific idea but felt the travel was not realistic