An in-depth feedback on Minions and enemy AI + Suggestions.

I mainly play minions builds in any game where that is an option and as such, came to try to analyze and understand the AI of the minions in most games as well as the concept the devs wanted for them in that game.

I've been playing a lot with an infernalist Witch and noticed a few issues with the minions AI, which btw, also affect all monsters AI in a bad way that definitely need adjusting.

I'll also suggest a few mechanics that could be good for control of your minions.


1- The AI:
There are 2 main issues with minions AI currently which also affect monsters.


1.1- Getting stuck on walls or tight bridges.
If 2 minions or monsters try to pass through a door or cross a tight passage at the same time, they get stuck in the doorway, like 2 dumdums bumping shoulders trying to be the first one to cross.

While kinda funny, this is a huge issue, because they will hold every minion behind them from crossing as well and this might leave you as the player defenseless with all your minions stuck on the door by two dummies blocking the passage.

To address this is kinda simple, all they need is to pick who crosses first, being assigned a priority order melee first, then ranged to cross, which means they will conceed way to minions with higher priority or to the minion that was closest or even randomly so that they can cross the passage smoothly.

Currently, you have to manually command minions to go back and forth so that they actually flow through, and this happens a LOT specially in Act 2 as there is a map with several small arches you have to go through.


1.2- Hitting walls and blockades.
Ranged minions will constantly be hitting walls or simple blockades non-stop if there is an enemy behind it.

I noticed this happening a lot with trees in Act 3, where Skeletal Arsonists will just throw bombs at a tree non-stop trying to hit an enemy that is behind it, without repositioning somewhere where the arch of their attack throw will be unblocked.

Same as before, this is kind of simple to be addressed. The AI just needs to check if the arch of attack is unblocked by objects or blockades and, if it is, pick another enemy to whom their arch or attack is unblocked or reposition to the nearest spot where the arch is unblocked.
If neither option is possible (no near attackable enemy with unblocked arch of attack and distance needed to move to attack the nearest enemy is too big) they will idle to simply follow.)


2- Formation
This is a suggestion to be added to the Skill gems window.
When clicking the arrow for advanced information in the DPS of a skill, if it is a minion skill, there is a checkable box to "Always Attack Without Moving" which is meant for casting spells while standing still, but doesn't seem to have a real effect for minions.

I'd suggest that, for minion skills, that would be substituted for a few options of positions in the formation.


2.1- Positions
These would be the checkbox options for where you wish your minions to stand relative to you which also dictates how they try to behave during combat.

2.1.1- Vanguard
Vanguard minions will try to walk ahead of the player and other minions, being at the forefront of the formation.
They will constantly reposition to be in front of the player while the player is walking out of combat, gaining a short burst in movement speed if they are behind the position they should be in.
Useful for: Skeletal Warriors, Infernal Hound & Skeletal Brutes
Units you wish to engage and tank the enemies

2.1.2- Bodyguard
Bodyguard minions will try to walk near the player and in combat, will focus on protecting the player from enemies that approach, always trying to reposition between the player and enemies.
Useful for: Skeletal Clerics & Infernal Hound
Units you wish to protect you from enemies more than attack.

2.1.3- Middleguard
Middleguard minions will try to walk split between the right and left of the player. In combat, they will wait for Vanguard units to approach the enemies first and try to reposition to engage with the enemies after them.
Useful for: Skeletal Reavers & Ranged or support minions
Units you wish to engage enemies after the vanguard already started holding them. Units with high damage but low health or ranged units you wish near you.


2.1.4- Rearguard
Rearguard minions will try to walk behind the player. In combat, they will try to position behind the Middleguard.
Melee units in the Rearguard will stand in the far back of the rearguard and only engage in enemies that come from behind or approach the rearguard.
Useful for: Ranged minions and minions you wish to protect those ranged minions or protect your back.


2.2- Enemies formations
The same AI for formations can also be applied to enemies, which would make the game's combat more interesting seeing enemies try to tactically position themselves against you, not just their attack patterns.

It's a small change to the AI behavior that would actually have a big impact in the game, seeing some enemies try to hold you back, others trying to keep their distance from you and some trying to protect those that try to keep their distance.


3- Conclusion

Correcting the pathing of the minions and enemies AI would go a long way to mitigating the issue of suddenly being alone as a minion build against enemies or seeing enemies suddenly not being able to approach you because they got stuck on a tight corridor.

Similarly, the formation positioning would both have a huge impact on players feeling they have more control over how their minions behave and when fighting against enemies and seeing they are actually employing tactics against you.

Same here, AI from minions are messed up, i made a post myself about that too.

Hope they fix it along the time of EA.

Yeah - the biggest enemy in game are not enemies but doorframes. Its insane. I already reduced the amount of minions i take with me to counter this problem.

"

Tortoruga#0951 wrote:

Same here, AI from minions are messed up, i made a post myself about that too.

Hope they fix it along the time of EA.

The AI definitely needs some improvement.

"

TheOrigin79#2030 wrote:

Yeah - the biggest enemy in game are not enemies but doorframes. Its insane. I already reduced the amount of minions i take with me to counter this problem.

I love having my small army, but I feel like a comedy movie's villain having to manually command my skelletons every time to help the cross a door.

PS, you can have a secondary weapon and walk around with it in your hand swapping weapons when you get to combat to walk around without minions and have your minions be summoned instantly for combat, which would allow you to walk with only a few of them but having a small army in combat.

One thing I'd also like to add:

Reimagining Temporary Minions

Something that felt really bad early on in the game and made minions seem even weak in the first few levels were the temporary minions, specially against bosses.

Situation:
You kill enemies, use Unearth to get a good amount of minions, find a group of enemies, as soon as the fight is about to start, all your Unearth minions despawn because their time ran out.

This cycle repeats far too often in the early levels and it is even worse with the Zombie, which is since it only lasts 20 seconds is even worse.

There are two possibilities for Temporary minions that I believe could be good.

1- If their summoning consumes a corpse, they have no timer.
If they die or you move out of the map, that is it for them.
Meaning they are temporary as in they aren't permanent self-resummoning minions, but they aren't on a timer.

2- If their summoning doesn't consume a corpse, they do have a timer, like the Raging Spirits or Skeletons in PoE1, then it is the current timer based minions.
They last a some time, but they can be resummoned easily any time.

I'd say Unearth should be number 2, simply summoning the scorpion bros similar to using a Flame Wall with Raging Spirits. You use the spell and that summons the scorpion bros. The level of Unearth gem would dictate how many are summoned.

Zombies should work like number 1, use a corpse to make a zombie and it follows you around indefinitely. If it dies, you need a new corpse.
To make them more "temporary" zombies should slowly lose health while out of combat. The amount of health per second they lose should grow by 1 every few seconds.
Meaning they still "despawn" with time, but investing in minions health and minions health regen would make your zombies last longer and finding a new fight would reset that health loss per second, as if the zombie "ate" something from their enemies that reset their health loss AND they wouldn't just die to health loss per second in an extended fight against bosses, making them a lot more useful.

Most boss fights have no monsters around, so Unearth and Zombie currently become almost useless against bosses. With these changes, they'd still be useful at the start of a boss fight but you'd need new corpses mid fight as they die.

By all means it is still temporary, but in a different way and a LOT more useful, without being overpowered in any way since this doesn't change anything in the amount of minions or the damage those cause that player will have in the game.

But it will allow minion focused players to walk around with a small army following them as a proper necromancer should, and lets be honest, all of us who like minion builds want the thrill of seeing a few dozen units at our beck and call following us around.
Feels badass.

Oh, another thing I forgot to mention:

The "Raging Spirits" buff should be added to the Occult buffs list as well.

It is crazy good for the witch and I got my first Uncut Spirit Gem, I didn't find it and fought it wasn't in the game, only finding out it was after seeing a streamer using it and going through lengths to acquire a second Uncut Spirit Gem to get it.

It's a minion buff and even if it seems more alligned with the Elementalist's tree, it should also be in the Occult buffs tree, at least so new players that don't even know it exist have a better chance to find it if they are playing a witch, since most new players will pick something from the occult buff gems without even checking the other tabs.

One more thing I thought now, but please GGG, add the stats of the minions to the gems tooltip, specially when levelling up a gem.

Currently, you don't really know how the level up of your minion skill gem will actually affect the minion.
How much wih their stats increase? Their health? Base damage? Armor? Elemental Resistances?

I just faced a choice of either levelling up the "Cast on Minion Death" gem or "Raging Spirits" gem to level 10 since I only had 1 level 10 Uncut Spirit Gem, and while the "Cast on Minion Death" gem was telling me exactly what would change, the "Raging Spirits" gem was only showing what would change regarding the required level and stats to have it equipped.

Without that, as it stands now, you really don't know how much leveling up your minion skill gems is affecting them, and that is honestly a pretty big issue.

"

GabrielJack#5664 wrote:

One more thing I thought now, but please GGG, add the stats of the minions to the gems tooltip, specially when levelling up a gem.

Currently, you don't really know how the level up of your minion skill gem will actually affect the minion.
How much wih their stats increase? Their health? Base damage? Armor? Elemental Resistances?

[...]

Without that, as it stands now, you really don't know how much leveling up your minion skill gems is affecting them, and that is honestly a pretty big issue.

Image for added feedback on this:



Like, tell me, from what you see on the images above:
1- How much is the DPS of those minions?
2- How much damage is the individual basic attack of each of them?
3- How fast do they attack?

The most essential informations of your minion skills is currently really nowhere to be found for the players to check.

Update on the feedback above, the issue is different.

Those informations do exist, but they don't show up when you are in town and the minions aren't summoned. They only show when you are in the field, which is a problem since when you will be messing with your gems, you will be in the city, where you need to actually check that information.

In Town


On the field


Raging Spirits not summoned


Raging Spirits summoned


We really need those informations displayed at all time, specially when we are in town messing with our gems to calculate values and check the effect of support gems.

The issue of minions getting stuck in doorways and corridors actually became a much bigger issue in Endgame than it was in the campaign, specially on tower stages that have several tight corridors.

Even saw a few YTubers telling to carry a second weapon just to set no minions for the second weapon and walk around only with your dog and only summon your minions when fighting by swapping weapons or else you carry the risk of being ganged up by enemies and surrounded while your minions are stuck and not even being able to reach the distance where they are unsummoned, being attacked non-stop while they only watch..