Minion gameplay is too passive and too good for what it is after around lvl 30.

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IonSugeRau1#1069 wrote:

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Pizzarugi#6258 wrote:

OP, how did you manage to get 14 arsonists by the time you reached the act 5 boss, according to the gif?

I only have 5 arsonists and I'm getting close to reaching this point myself. There's no chance in hell an average summoner is going to have that much power unless you get lucky and craft +spirit on your gear before you burn through all of your orbs. Then again, I have no idea the extent of how much spirit you can get on gear to warrant that many minions.

Some simple trading and searching for the stats I want and I know that are powerful. I know what's powerful in PoE1 and it is exactly the same here. I kept my exalts I got along the way and used them for that purpose.. mostly.. I did fall into the trap GGG set out for us and tried to craft twice or so but that was a dumb decision.

To be honest with you, I went to trading pretty late as I was having fun initially without it, would I have done so earlier it would've been worse.

Use the word minion and search on the trade site for everything that is available and you will figure that out shortly.

That's... weird. I don't think trading for leveling gear you're going to throw away by the time you reach mapping, if that, is a good indicator of power. How many people are going out to trade for leveling gear that isn't already wealthy, in mapping, and farming to fund their alts?

I just hopped into trade and looked up gear with +spirit on it. Body armors with +56 spirit for 1 exalt minimum. I've barely got a couple of those that I can't keep blowing those on trade for act content, and I doubt most others do too.

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IonSugeRau1#1069 wrote:

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GoddessTitania#2219 wrote:

You barely played PoE 1 how are you comparing the evolution of Minions in PoE 1 or other Games to PoE 2?

Minions in PoE 2 are absolute dogwater if the boss gets to hit em. They die instantly without hard investment into their survivability. There is no convocation to reposition them either so you need revive speed for them to even feel playable otherwise everytime you run offscreen they need 8 seconds to form again.

Just because they do damage to a single target (which bosskillers like Minions should absolutely do by the way) doesn't mean they are overpowered or too strong.

They aren't super speedy, their clear is average and if density actually comes into play with harder Mobs getting to the minions they will just get obliterated anyways.

At least have the decency to get your Character into high end content and test where it matters most. Act 1 is horrible, act 2 is okay but their survivability isnt great. Act 3-early Maps they feel strong and reliable.

Barely played PoE 1, nice one. I last played in settlers league and did 36 challenges as you can clearly see. And guess what I've played there too? Minions. Get off your high horse as you know nothing about me.

Revive time improvement doesn't require "heavy investment" and that's all you need. I literally got no health improvements for my minions as well so far, as I didn't feel any need for it. And if you would've actually read my initial post you would have seen that revive time is one of the cons I had mentioned related to early gameplay.

Here, since you can't be bothered:

"- minions revive time was a bit too slow, leaving me a sitting duck for too long when they would inevitably die, imo that shouldn't have been a passive talent pick."

Everything else you mention is besides the point or straight up misinformation. If you don't understand my points don't bother posting.

Nothing in this game should be one tap or kill things for you with no input, period. That is if they want actual gameplay. If they want PoE 1 all over again then that is fine, but that wasn't what was advertised.

Oh my you played the most recent League but otherwise your Challenges look rather Dry and it seems like you just didn't touch the game at all :) You have no Idea how Minions evolved in PoE 1, neither have you any Idea what Minions will do in PoE 2 once more stuff is figured out. Just stop trying to make Minions something that fits YOUR Fantasy. If it aint for you, happens. Play something else.

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Pathological#1188 wrote:

You're asking for fundamental changes to an archetype that is easily one of the most popular in PoE1. I get why; you don't like it, and that's fine, but it's never going to happen. Not everything has to, or should, fundamentally change.

What you're asking for is functionally a caster DPS with minions as a flavorful dot. You do the work, the minions enact that work for you. That's not inherently a bad thing, but it has more than enough of its own flaws (for example, significantly increased survivability vs. a regular caster). I agree (and hope) that you're correct that it's too late to do what you want, because it's almost certainly not what most people want out of minions. If you find the minion playstyle too passive there are any number of active options to choose from. It was always a meme to call minions in PoE1 passive too, despite the builds almost universally being completely socket and skill slot starved, but it is what it is.

You say the goal to automate everything is ridiculous to you, and again, that's fine - I totally get the sentiment. But is it not equally ridiculous to you that someone such as yourself knowingly opts IN to playing such builds repeatedly in the first place? Why are you picking the one archetype you know will act this way, not enjoying watching it become true, then creating a thread to change it, instead of playing the myriad other skills that don't?

Getting tired of this so it's probably the last time I answer something here unless it's open minded and more open to discuss solutions rather then pretending everything is perfect as is when it's clearly far from it.

First of all, you're assuming I don't like minions because I don't like them for the reason you like them... (aka passive damage) which I personally think is a shallow reason.

I like minions because they are visually cool, they are more complex since it's an entity with it's own stats and abilities, and most of all I love the spectre type of minions because they are super fun to discover and play with (bind spectre in this case which was sadly not released on launch). I like to feel like I command my units and not that they do whatever and it's just as good as me giving them commands. IMO most guys that defend the passive playstyle don't actually like minions but like the passive playstyle. Maybe not true for everyone but it sure feels like it.

Secondly, I was torn between different picks but I decided to test minions out first because I was most skeptical of minions in a game that was meant to have superior combat. It's very hard to make minions and active combat work without sacrificing some wide-known beliefs that you've all mentioned. If this went the wrong way I was almost certain the rest might too. Sadly, I was right.

Fair to mention I also tried Monk with a mace and then with a crossbow till about 28 to see how it feels and plays. A little bit of sorcery too on a new Witch till around lvl 15.

Third, I provided my feedback based on what I've played the most so far. However, I am certain things went wrong on all other "classes" as well, from what I've briefly seen on short gifs on reddit or vids and vid titles on youtube. People one shotting or perma freezing bosses and killing them before they even get to react is also not great gameplay.

As of right now, I don't feel inclined to try anything else beyond lvl 30 as endgame combat seems to get in the same state as PoE1 already.

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IonSugeRau1#1069 wrote:

Minion builds don't HAVE to be like this. Think out of the box for a minute... that's how you bring innovation, change, new exciting gameplay. Nothing is set in stone.

- There is NO reason minion survivability should be based on your skill point choice, in fact I think that's also a mistake.

The entire reason Minions become powerful is because of the investment into them. Try making a Minion build while investing everything into projectile damage and tell me how it goes. Otherwise, having minions be strong and useful without any investment would be broken.

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- Minion damage COULD scale off your own damage, thus making them much less limited like they are now. For every other class there's a load of options to pick, not for minions though, it's always around the same couple of nodes. Obviously, if something like that would happen there would have to be some balancing factor between your power and theirs. but my point stands.. it COULD be different. It doesn't have to be this way.

Again, if Minions scaled off of your damage, they'd be too powerful, because then you'd have both strong Minions and a strong character, which would be broken. Imagine a Minion build that was also a full-on cold caster.

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The gas arrow + explode them with another skill currently in the game is exactly along the lines of where their thinking should have gone for everything. But ghosts of the past are still present in the way minions just work. They can't bring real change without reworking them from the ground up.

Now, I do agree that there could be more skill combination use for Minions, which would make their gameplay more interesting and interactive, but I'm not sure what the best way to go about that would be. We can already tailor Minions with Support Gems, we have Curses to debuff enemies, and we have Auras and Offerings to buff Minions, so I'm not sure what else is really needed. Plus, there may be a few uniques that do something interesting with Minions (I haven't really looked into those yet). On top of that, Spectres are not in yet, and those could really shake things up.

So, while I do agree that it would be interesting to make the moment-to-moment gameplay more interesting and engaging for the Summoner, I do not agree that Minions should have no investment or scale off the character.

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Pizzarugi#6258 wrote:

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IonSugeRau1#1069 wrote:

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Pizzarugi#6258 wrote:

OP, how did you manage to get 14 arsonists by the time you reached the act 5 boss, according to the gif?

I only have 5 arsonists and I'm getting close to reaching this point myself. There's no chance in hell an average summoner is going to have that much power unless you get lucky and craft +spirit on your gear before you burn through all of your orbs. Then again, I have no idea the extent of how much spirit you can get on gear to warrant that many minions.

Some simple trading and searching for the stats I want and I know that are powerful. I know what's powerful in PoE1 and it is exactly the same here. I kept my exalts I got along the way and used them for that purpose.. mostly.. I did fall into the trap GGG set out for us and tried to craft twice or so but that was a dumb decision.

To be honest with you, I went to trading pretty late as I was having fun initially without it, would I have done so earlier it would've been worse.

Use the word minion and search on the trade site for everything that is available and you will figure that out shortly.

That's... weird. I don't think trading for leveling gear you're going to throw away by the time you reach mapping, if that, is a good indicator of power. How many people are going out to trade for leveling gear that isn't already wealthy, in mapping, and farming to fund their alts?

I just hopped into trade and looked up gear with +spirit on it. Body armors with +56 spirit for 1 exalt minimum. I've barely got a couple of those that I can't keep blowing those on trade for act content, and I doubt most others do too.

Minions were powerful before that too, if you've read my first post. I've done trading at around lvl 54. The things I bought were relatively inexpensive and if you play games at all you should know it's worthwhile to invest in your character if you want it to perform adequately. Untill lvl 54 my headpiece was a blue level 10 evasion piece with +1 to all minion skills and 35 mana.

Funny that you mention 56 Spirit chestpiece, that's exactly what I went for. And 1 exalt for that wasn't a big deal. I had around 10 exalts total to spend.

Hard disagree...

I came to this game, because Blizzard refuse to turn minion build viable outside mendeln ring (procs) and now in ptr 7, they buffed alot ultimate AofD, which isnt a real minion skill. We are going to play kinda like Rathma build from D3 (where minion just reduct cooldown for AoTD damage).

This is the lame and worst gameplay as minion build...(D3 and D4)

If they nerf minion damage to the ground, will kill the whole concept of a summoner, and probably everyone will be playing Witch class as a "dark mage".

Im having a blast playing PoE2, the class has its flaws but looks like this game is way more balanced than D4, and isnt even finished.

To do good damage, you need to invest almost all nodes in minions, so need to have too equivalent power of a non minion buid.

Hopefully they dont change the concept, will be a big disappointment to me.

PS: the class maybe isnt for you, which is fine, but asking to change the whole concept of the class will ruin the game to major audience which like minion class/build.