PoE 2 Early Access Notes. Played as Minion Witch

Also a Minion Witch, and I would like to add that many enemies simply ignore them and charge at me instead. And they will simply push any Minions between aside.

Being pushed around seems to be a common complaint, maybe a general problem with collision?

was playing as a Fire skill acolyte of chayula hit act 3 and died to every white mob for 3 hours so i rerolled into witch with minions.

i was using a +2 minion sceptre, +1 minion helm and rust king permanently kept my minions on respawn cd, the only way i could damage him was with unearth doing 5 damage a hit.

as soon as that happened i just logged out and rerolled deadeye. minions in this game are absolutely awful, a singular skeleton from an unlinked lvl 1 summon skele in poe1 is more useful than the 6 or so minions i had available to me. lol

"

KB_Enjoyer#5873 wrote:

was playing as a Fire skill acolyte of chayula hit act 3 and died to every white mob for 3 hours so i rerolled into witch with minions.

i was using a +2 minion sceptre, +1 minion helm and rust king permanently kept my minions on respawn cd, the only way i could damage him was with unearth doing 5 damage a hit.

as soon as that happened i just logged out and rerolled deadeye. minions in this game are absolutely awful, a singular skeleton from an unlinked lvl 1 summon skele in poe1 is more useful than the 6 or so minions i had available to me. lol

A single POE1 SRS skull would be more useful than any of the minion skill in POE2.

same minion are completely useless and cant respec coze of absurd cost. really not a fun experience.

disappointed to read this as I want to make a FIre WItch, I guess Ill wait a couple weeks to see if they fix this before forking over my money for Ea..

Yea the writing was on the wall for me in the second area with the wolves. Paper minions, dodge required all the time, pea shooter weapon. 49 minutes in was all it took...uninstalled and after paying my $30 I would normally feel duped, but, I did play a fair bit of PoE 1...maybe my $30 will help the devs make it better....but WAY too difficult as of now...so much so it's just not fun to play, which nukes the primary function of a game in the first place.

I am also struggling to get through Act 2 with minion witch. Minions are made of tissue paper and they just die instantly. Mapping is generally ok, because I can zombie spam through the tougher sections, and I can just flee when things get tough, and let my minions respawn. This isn't possible in boss fights.

The only viable minions I have are the Snipers by detonating their gas bombs. They make up about 60% of my damage, but when they are only alive for 2 seconds before dying to boss AoE - my DPS just straight craters. I came into POE2 with the fantasy of being a general leading my army of minions into battle, but for 90% of my playtime, I have been helplessly rolling around by myself pitifully waiting for my minions to respawn. I am stuck using my spells for 90% of the damage against bosses. Just one problem: I HAVE ZERO PASSIVES ADDING TO MY SPELL DAMAGE. Every boss feels like an absolute slog. However, at least most bosses feel beatable with enough time and patience spent getting good. Generally, I am fine with game difficulty to a degree. Timing dodge rolls and learning attach patterns is a whole genre on it's own.

However, then I ran into the Ascendancy quest. This miserable activity is cap-stoned by a brick wall that I simply can't get past. The boss at the end isn't too tough really. His attacks are fairly easy to avoid, and he doesn't one shot me or anything. However, he has the fun little ability where he shrinks the arena by spawning 2 Volcanoes every 15 to 30 seconds or so. And like every boss, my minions are dead most of the time. So my damage is all dead and on respawn. Thus, I can't kill the boss before the whole area is covered in volcanoes and I die to the honor system, despite having full flasks. Worst part of the whole thing is, I can't just run it back, I have to do the entire ascendancy floor by floor again. So each attempt takes 30 minutes of pain just to get to the boss where I don't stand a fools chance to kill before I run out of arena floorspace and honor.

So, now I am at a crossroads: I can spend a few hours farming gold, exp, skill gems, and gear to re-spec off of my minion build into something more spellcasting heavy; Alternatively, I could maybe reroll into another class that I am not actually interested in playing - but has skill combinations that actually kill bosses easily, or just quit and play another game. And after my time up to this point, I am leaning towards quitting altogether. This is disappointing, because I REALLY wanted to like this game. I was very excited by Witch gameplay previews, but actual gameplay has been a frustrating exercise in futility.

You’re either not building right, not pursuing a mix of defensive/offensive nodes or I don’t know what. Currently playing Infernalist in a4, level 51 and with a combo of fire spells, SRS and arsonists I’m demolishing everything. You have to push for max spirit and minion level on sceptre/helm. My skeles largely live through an entire boss fight now and with offering/flammability I absolutely dump on everything. I never had any real issues on bosses while leveling, think most was 7 attempts on a3 boss and I’m 1x attempting bosses in a4. Something is very wrong if people are having this experience and not reflecting on gear/gems/supports and passives to make this build effective :( focusing minion skill levels I have +3 and 7 arsonists, 10 SRS minions out, 2 skeles from wep and demon dog.

I am like halfway between the OP and the guy above me. My guess is just general dodge skill level, I'm just a tiny bit slower so I'm getting hit too many times and eventually running out of potions after a 20 MINUTE boss fight. The fights take FOREVER because so much of our dps is getting vaporized every few seconds. I have over 900 health, 47% armor reduction. Pretty tanky in the overworld and I just don't have the firepower to bring bosses down. Too many phase, too many mechanics, absolutely zero minions are capable of staying alive for more then 3 seconds.

Minion health is a wasted point, I might as well spec away from it into more damage.

As the game stands right now, it is tuned towards the top players. I am not even a mid level player my hand eye coordination is too shit for that.

And who's bright idea was it to use Sanctum or ultimatum for Trial of ascendancy?, i despise both of those, i don't think i have ever cleared any of them in the years of playing poe1.

I did manage to get to the end boss of the trial but those volcanos covered the arena before it's health reached 1/4 and ran out of honour.

Maybe i'll try playing again in day or 2 but as it stands right now the games to hard.