New Minions that aren't Undead

I've been playing Path of Exile since the 20th (supporter!) and I've been fooling around with Witches lately. I'm enjoying the class, but was hoping that in the future we could have other minions besides Undead.

I'd really like to build a Druid-type character who summons Beasts that fight alongside him, and Undead don't really fit that aesthetic. In-game there are a couple different Summoners already: Necromancers, Ape Chieftains, and those Squid-spawn guys.

I propose including new Minions that aren't Undead.

This could either be a Cash-Shop Skill Upgrade:
- for example, a cosmetic upgrade that changes "Summon Skeletons" to "Summon Monkey" - the Monkeys are clones of the skeleton minions, same stats and movement speed just a different graphic.

OR

Entirely new skill gems that summon different creatures:
- However, this would need some balancing. A default in-game Monkey attacks and moves faster than a Skeleton. So maybe if there was a "Summon Monkey" skill gem, it would be limited to 1 less minion than a Summon Skeleton gem of equal value; or a different but comparable balancing effect.

I've used Monkey as an example in this post because there are already monkey-summons in the game. Any non-undead minion, in my opinion, would be a welcome change to undead. I don't feel that having living summons would lessen the dark atmosphere of the game in anyway, Druids and Beastmasters can be just as dark as Necromancers.

Yeees!Then it will be possible play like hunter and summon beasts ^^

Nexe idea -different kinds of summon creatures will grant owners to some auras/ bonuses

I'd like to see different minion types and one thing that would help support this is if the game was more generic with different minion classes.

Instead of having Skeletons, Zombies and Spectres it would be more flexible to have 3 general minion classes such as Light, Medium and Heavy each with their own capacity cap. Then you could have any number of minion skills, each assigned to one of those classes. Players could choose to take multiple minions from the same class but their cap for that class would apply to the combined total of their summons.

Perhaps minions could be differentiated like remote skills are, which is by attribute.

The way I see it, the current minion spells are Intelligence-based, and there is room for both Dexterity and Strength minions.

As an example for Strength, I can see a living statue a la the new Act 3 enemies fitting well. You can only summon one, and it uses your alternate weapon set as its own, if melee. Perhaps it could also use a single melee attack skill of your choosing as its "focus skill" by linking it to the living statue gem, and of course the default weapon attack normally. I suppose the Strength minion theme would be bringing inanimate objects to life.

When it comes to Dexterity, I can see, of course, animals and creatures being the theme. This is where I can see the druid equivalent of this game being implemented. For one, I think a type of bird could work well in this situation. The idea is quite simple: a sentient projectile, the crossbreed of Diablo II: Lord of Destruction's Crow skill and the inherent goat magic of Wraeclast. Much like with the living statue gem, you'd link it to a projectile attack skill gem, and it becomes the focus skill, while the default attack could be a Whirling Blades-like attack. Don't forget, these little bros will be flying around and stuff.

And now for Intelligence. I suppose zombies and skeletons could be revamped a little, or their focus of quantity over quality could remain and they stay the same but with an inevitable artificial intelligence improvement. To fit with the other attributes, there would need to be an attack spell skill gem minion of some sort. I know what you're thinking, but skeleton mages seem a little boring in this case. How about the wand phantoms found in Vaal locations and call them acolytes? Seems cool to me.

Well, this was supposed to be a bit shorter of a reply but I got bored.

I like the idea of tying new summons to different skill attributes.

Having animals as DEX minions would also be fitting with a Druid/Beastmaster/Hunter build. It could even give Rangers a nice boost in popularity, asits common for Rangers to have animal companions.

While I'm in favour of new minion types, either as reskins or as entirely different things (preferably the latter), I feel it's a long way from happening.

Caution must be exercised with minions as their power grows exponentially by number.

B.

"

bredin wrote:

Caution must be exercised with minions as their power grows exponentially by number.

B.

I think the growth is polynomial. It's still something extremely difficult to balance properly. Also please note that summon builds behave quite differently. They imply somewhat more of a RTS-game-style as opposed to the usual ARPG-style, thus it's hard to tell what is OP and what is just different.

I'd like to see more abilities to command your minions; maybe there could be a support gem which changes the appearance (e.g. skeletons->apes, zombies->golems etc.), some stats and the behaviour (e.g. "flee on low life to recover", "meat shield" [they try to protect you]).

No, its exponential.

Lets assume that we have to identical critters that have 10HP and do 1DPS

One-on-one they will double kill in 10 seconds (1^2)

Two-on-one will have 20EHP and 2DPS v 10EHP 1DPS, so the mob will deal 10 damage in 5 seconds and take 5 damage in return for 1/4 (5/20) total HP (2^2)

3:1 will have 30EHP and 3DPS, so the mob will deal 10 damage in 3.33 seconds and take 3.33 damage in return for 1/9 (3.33/30) total HP (3^2)

4:1 40EHP 4DPS = kill in 2.5 seconds taking 1/16 total HP damage. (4^2)

put simply 8 zombies are 64 times more powerful than one. Having 9 is 1.26 (81/64) times more powerful again without altering the HP or DPS.

Every critter you add grows its killing power in an exponential curve. This is why they are very hard to balance over the length of the game, since their numbers AND their HP/DPS grow.

In PoE its hard to gauge when these increases will occur: pathing in the skilltree and levelling the gems happen at different times for different players.

B.

The ****.

Your formula, which may be a good approximation, clearly states that the power is proportional to the squared number of minions.

Polynomial: O(X^n), n being a finite number (in this case, 2).
Exponential: O(n^X).

After I got this straight let me state once more that I agree on balance being very tricky.