Minions Are the Problem

I want to start by making this crystal clear: I love minions. Having lots of them is why I installed this game. In almost every league, what I wind up doing is packing in as many zombies, skeletons, and spectres as I can without hamstringing myself, building a silly poison 6-link to make my weird off-meta spectre choice effective, and then putting phantasms on that link, because then I have even more guys. Literally the only reason I started playing this game is that I saw how many minions you get from Vaal Summon Skeletons, and I immediately teared up and got magic flute voice. It's that important to me. I don't want them taken away.

But there's a problem.

This thread got bumped a little while ago, and before I noticed how old it was, I saw how many pages it was, so I decided to take a look despite it having the worst title on the board. The OP contains a video that is very good commentary on some design flaws that have been sending this game into a death spiral. It's stuff I already knew existed and already thought of as problematic, but I never considered how they were related before. I heavily disagree with him that significant portions of the game shouldn't be possible in solo play, but that's really a minor part of his position. You could fix this balance-wrecking triangle of errors without mandating team play, and for people willing to put up with co-op, (I feel pretty sure that I speak for the majority of this playerbase when I say "put up with") there is always strong incentive in the form of drastically increasing your income.

Except, you can't actually fix it. It all starts with the rate war, and there's a reason the rate war is there which this video doesn't address. That reason is minions.

The most powerful thing about having minions is their presence. This is an incomparable layer of defense. They often taunt, and even if they don't, they're taking up space. Body blocking is the best blocking. When you're playing almost any other kind of build, in order to fight monsters, you have to click on or near them. Similarly, they have to "click" on or near you.

You want to know why bosses in every league are progressively more awful collections of AoE one-shots and stupid big degens? It's because that's the only way to get rid of me other than lag. And I suck. But I roll fifty deep, so I don't care about anything. That bit in the video about how the health meter should go up and down slowly to reflect accumulated mistakes? That's how it works for me except in boss fights, and not really for anyone else. In order to bother me at all, the game has to be rendered borderline unplayable for people who don't have any minions.

The solution to this isn't to nerf them, because you can't. They're by far my main source of damage, but they don't have to be. If you "fix" this by giving them baby arms, I'll just do the same build with a dark pact six-link. In order for them to not serve the core purpose of getting in the way, you'd have to destroy their hp, effectively removing them from the game. Nobody wants that. It's ridiculous.

The actual solution to this is strongly suggested by the game's existing flavor and lore: every build should have minions. It's already possible for every build to have them because of how our skill system works. The problem is ultimately that all of the things on the passive tree that tell players to bring friends are all over on my side of it. We are already essentially at a point where most builds without any minions at all are incorrect. That needs to be made obvious to players of other classes.

There's obviously a wide variety of minion-free builds that work, but because of what minions do, that's ultimately a symptom of the busted systems that we're talking about to begin with. People complain that summoner builds trivialize the game, and I don't really agree; I think it just turns this from a slot machine where half the results are fatal lag into a game. The goal of all builds that are considered effective is to trivialize the game in some sense, and necro basically joins that paradigm in a very newbie-friendly way by trading some clear speed for easy gearing.

If you want players to stop focusing on finding ways to ignore the game, you have to put us all on a level playing field, especially with regard to our defenses. This means that affordances which very strongly suggest the use of minions need to be spread further throughout the skill tree, and every class needs some kind of ascendancy bonus which changes which minions that class will use and how.

Isn't this reducing build diversity? Not really. What people don't appreciate is that "summoner" isn't a build, it's a huge category of them. There's many different minions, and ways to drastically change the function of each kind. Even if you only take spectres, you've got a ridiculous amount of choices, even though the meta usually degenerates to one or two creatures.

Aside from that, this isn't forcing everyone to play "summoner" anyway. Is Loreweave mandatory for all characters? No, you focus on high elemental resists because you choose to. For most characters, just getting to 75% is fine. So, if you just don't like minions... well, tough. I don't like that resists are the most important thing on almost every piece of gear I consider using, but I do what works. You don't have to make your build about them.

A way to make this feel good for people who aren't really interested in having minions is to have more skill synergies. Stuff like dark pact/skeletons and frostbolt/vortex really isn't common enough in general, IMO. For this purpose, imagine if Earthquake and Stone Golem played off each other somehow. Suddenly melee builds that aren't HoP/DomBlow want a couple guys, and even just having one or two is a significant defensive asset if they taunt. Being targeted less is being hit less.

This probably isn't enough to make people who play anything else feel like necro is balanced; what kind of fair is it that there's a class whose whole point is to be way better at one of the most universally applicable mechanics in the game? I couldn't care less, because I think it's supposed to be this way; necro is still slower than most other effective builds, and it lets more casual, planning-oriented players see the whole game. There's a reason why high level players usually picked something else until blight. It's not better, it's just easier.. I don't mind admitting I'm a scrub.

However, there is still something we can do about this that makes some sense. One of the issues with the best minions is that they're a persistent effect with no persistent cost. That's not a problem you can attack directly. If you give them a duration, minion builds are far less fun to play. If you make them reserve mana, you break one of the most important ideas of a summoner build; using an aura to make your guys better.

I've had a few different ideas about costs that could be introduced, but the one that makes the most sense to me is that minions should take up party slots, conferring the risks of co-op play without the increased rewards. This would mean that the game can be made difficult enough to present a challenge to very minion-heavy builds without doing much of anything to everyone else. It obviously shouldn't be one-to-one; having a maximum of like five dudes is how many other games in the genre handled this problem, and that's why I played very few of them after Diablo II. I think each different minion gem that has been activated in the zone taking up a slot is probably enough, but if it turned out to be necessary, you could also limit the number of active casts of skeletons by how much space is left in your party, for instance.

If you have thoughts about other ways to address this issue, please share them.

TL;DR: Necromancer isn't broken, minions are broken. You can't make them not broken. As a result, everyone needs them, and all classes should have minion passives.

I don't know why you're writing a 10 page essay to reinforce something everyone already knows. Zombies got nerfed hard this league anyways so anyone saying minions are overpowered are just upset that they can't build characters correctly. All the top players this league are not summoners.

There is only 1 issue with minions vs any other build. And it's taunt on hit. Not only monsters and bosses basically pay no attention to you while your minions are tanking it down for you but you also receive 10% less damage from a taunt mechanic. It's basically like having a decoy totem but 10x times better. Of course no other build can compete in terms of survivability when you are not the main source of incoming damage from enemies.

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UnholyHanma wrote:

I don't know why you're writing a 10 page essay to reinforce something everyone already knows.

Because I talk about why they're causing the issue, why you can't fix it by nerfing them, and how it might be possible to do something about it.

Maybe you should actually read things. If you even read the tl;dr I put at the bottom, you'd know your post isn't relevant.

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Dr1MaR wrote:

There is only 1 issue with minions vs any other build. And it's taunt on hit.

As I discuss, that's part of it, but it's really not the most important one. I don't think removing that is a good idea, either. I offer some alternatives.

Dunno - I dont think all builds should have minions.
Feels just wrong to me.


It shouldnt be forced onto other builds. That cant be the solution.
Minions have always been strong - but dumb and clunky. This used to be their downside.

Summons got a QoL upgrade and a better AI.
That and the fact that they are strong (as the always have been) combined results in more player being willing to put up with minions.


A friend of mine is playing a miner this league.
We ran exactly one map together and his clearspeed excels mine by a 1000 miles.
His build is safer than mine, because he nukes entire screens in splitseconds. Nothing gets to move or attack, everything dies instantly.

Im not jelly or something.
Im just pointing out, minions arent the strongest nor the cheapest build out there. But its for sure one of the laziest and still gets the job done easily.

If you think the way it is now is fine because there are other builds that can ignore the game faster, you're not understanding the core problem.

The devs increased monster hp across the board, quadrupled boss hp, and made bosses difficult to skip all because clear speed seriously needs to come down hard. Unfortunately, as you've noticed, those changes are only affecting players who weren't breaking the game to begin with.

Watch the video in the post I linked at the beginning of mine; there is a bad design feedback loop that is causing this. My post asserts that minions are the root cause of this feedback loop. Not that they're powerful, but that they exist at all.

Not only can you "force" minions into every build, it's probably the only thing we can do to balance them. Most builds won't need more than one or two, but if you don't have any, your build is just wrong. If the changes I'm suggesting were made, I'm sure there would still be builds without minions, but they'll require more weird specialization, comparable to a CI build.

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007Bistromath wrote:

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No wonder you think necro (minions) is op when your other build is a meme.
The only strong side of minions is that they don't need a lot of investment.
But after certain point it doesn't matter how many shapers per seconds you can kill because your minions will remain stupid while any other build will feel amazing to play.

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007Bistromath wrote:

....The actual solution to this is strongly suggested by the game's existing flavor and lore: every build should have minions.......

This is generally ungood reasoning. By that, I mean you don't fix something that is perceived to be broken by hitting it with a hammer until it is more broken.

The Minion Dilemma is A Real Thing and it's in every game that they appear...

Here's why:

"Minions" do things that other abilities can do, but they do them without direct player interaction.

Minion DPS can be considered as just like any other form of DPS. But, when you have a lot of minions or the ability to have a lot of them, your DPS potential goes up dramatically, right? Eventually you have what can be considered as an AOE ability that can hit every single target on the screen without your direct intervention.

You become and absentee player, mindless pressing a button to clear screens.

In... every game that supports those kinds of mechanics.

And, for Minion Defense? Taunt? Taunt mechanics are why there is Minion defenders like Zombies, right? And, what do they translate to? They translate to a Shield that can absorb xx damage-taunted per minion up to a total of the effectiveness of minion taunt skills.

Added: Just to note, the above aren't good solutions. What IS a good solution, though, is to make the player pay for their uber-minion-powa by being forced to accept limitations that MATTER. PoE and other games do that by limiting the personal abilities of the player's character. That's the only MoB on the screen that matters to the player, right? They can lose bajillions of minions without costs, but suffer when they lose their character because it can't stack other powerful mitigators like armor/es/health/whatever... Want to make running a screen-killing necro difficult? Make them take damage for every Zombie death (Soul Link kind of idea) or force build issues that reduce their personal defenses. (Basically already done.)

Every game that has the sorts of issues you're describing has encountered the same problem. Each "solution" is tailored for the specific game. But, some general ones could apply.

Want to nerf Minion DPS? Attack Slots... So, for any single mob on the map, only xx number of attacks can come from a set threshold of minions. So, maybe three minions at a time, plus the direct damage of the player, could attack a single target. For clearing trash, that's not an issue. For bosskills? A Necro build in PoE would no longer be a matter of "Launch Skellies, pick up the loot."

Defense? Nerfing Zombie Taunt isn't a good idea - Most builds are not built to eat physical damage all day. (That's why they have Zombies.) GGG has implemented a "workable" solution, there - Lower Zombie HP caps. But, if it was still a problem one could reduce taunt effectiveness per taunting unit, for instance. So, as each taunt was answered, the effectiveness would go down over time... That would mean a lot of dead Necros, though.

Any class/build that has a constant source of DPS and Mitigation that does not have to have direct player interaction must be thought of in that respect. It's not just Zombies/Skellies/etc.. These are just "graphics" depicting an isolated instance of mitigation or dps. That's it. A Skelliemancer with a horde of Skellies, Zombies, etc.. isn't much different than an Aurabot except with a ton more damage that is capable of reaching far past the visible screen...

Amplifying that type of problem by giving equal capability to other builds is an ungood idea. Doing so would limit the choices the player has for gameplay.

Added: GGG doesn't care about balance in PoE and neither should you. The "Stoopidly Broken and Overpowered Build" this league will get whomped in the nards with a Nerfbat next League, effectively eliminating the problem until they want to attract new attention to a League by "bringing back overpowered build xxx" again. This is PoE, not some MMO that has to keep players happy all year 'round. Nobody cares about "Standard" league in PoE and there aren't people whining in raids about how broken their build is or complaining that DPS builds have too much fun... Only Quarterly Leagues matter in PoE. What problems there are in one will not translate over to another, so you're going to be worrying about an issue that will only last 90 days?

I already got minions. Skitterbots, they are pretty cute too.

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karoollll2534 wrote:

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007Bistromath wrote:

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No wonder you think necro is op when your other build is a meme.

The other build I have in Metamorph was recommended to me when that 6L Pillar dropped from the first map I finished with my necro, which at the time was popcorn skeletons. The popcorn skeletons were kind of struggling, so I figured I'd try it. It's the first melee build I've ever played, and it worked decently enough to advance my progress a bit and get some currency, but I can tell it doesn't have the boss killing potential to stick it out in later maps. So, I retooled my necro to my usual build.

As for their cheapness being their only strength, you're dead wrong. Minions' very existence is the root cause of the "rate war" the other thread I linked to described. Everything that's broken about the rest of the game was first made to kill necros.

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Morkonan wrote:

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007Bistromath wrote:

....The actual solution to this is strongly suggested by the game's existing flavor and lore: every build should have minions.......

This is generally ungood reasoning. By that, I mean you don't fix something that is perceived to be broken by hitting it with a hammer until it is more broken.

I don't think that's what's going on here. There's nothing broken about minion builds in and of themselves. The issue is they have a kind of defense that others simply don't have access to, meaning that non-minion builds have to do crazy, game-breaking bullshit to overcome difficulties that minion-oriented builds experience as the only real threats in the game.

If you give every build an interesting, synergy-building reason to use at least one type of minion, you can apply that level of difficulty to everyone without then needing to ramp up player power in other ways that contribute to the rate war.

This doesn't need to reduce build diversity at all, and is likely to enhance it, since notables and ascendancies can significantly change which minions are chosen and how they function.

My solution here is not "make everyone play necro." It's "everyone needs a friend." There are no bad builds, only happy exalt sinks.

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Added: GGG doesn't care about balance in PoE and neither should you. The "Stoopidly Broken and Overpowered Build" this league will get whomped in the nards with a Nerfbat next League, effectively eliminating the problem until they want to attract new attention to a League by "bringing back overpowered build xxx" again. This is PoE, not some MMO that has to keep players happy all year 'round. Nobody cares about "Standard" league in PoE and there aren't people whining in raids about how broken their build is or complaining that DPS builds have too much fun... Only Quarterly Leagues matter in PoE. What problems there are in one will not translate over to another, so you're going to be worrying about an issue that will only last 90 days?

This is what I said about how much more powerful necro was made in 3.8, and I stand by it. We needed a buff, we got one, it was a little too much, hopefully we're still better than 3.7 in 3.10.

What I'm talking about in this thread is NOT a three-month problem. It's an ongoing design issue that is causing the difference between "off-meta" and "bad build" to be way too small, and the difference between "competent player" and "top-rank meta chaser" to be way too large. It's causing the game to become more about dodging one-shots every single league. It's been like this for a long time, and it'll only get worse without radical changes to the devs' approach.