Minion builds are still pidgeonholed into infernalists

If you don't know, the starting nodes of the witch/sorceress areas changed based on your starting class. The minion nodes in the sorceress's starting area are swapped out for nodes providing only pure spell damage.

I was considering starting a minion build with chronomancer but then I realize I can't pick the minion nodes (meaning out lose out ~100% of damage, on an already very limited amount of minion damage nodes) and just get disappointed by this change. It just limits build diversity for no reason.

GGG, could you make it so both trees are the same please? I thought one of your stated goals is not to have one single ascendency for minions.

isn't is that start nodes have +% spell dmg +% minion dmg?

Bow builds are also pigeonholed into playing deadeye right now etc., I don't get why people are mad there is a best choice for ascendency for certain builds. That was always going to be the case.

We dont have the skills/supports/uniques etc. to even have build variety atm and thats the problem. You had marauder bow builds like EA doing extremely well, you aren't going to see that in POE2 in the current state.

I disagree.

Gemling Legionnaire has great minion potential with the 30% less skill cost.
The only issue being - GGG have taken the worst content from PoE1 and forced it into the ascendancy.

Just....the opposite of fun.

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BossOfThisGym#2062 wrote:

Bow builds are also pigeonholed into playing deadeye right now etc., I don't get why people are mad there is a best choice for ascendency for certain builds. That was always going to be the case.

We dont have the skills/supports/uniques etc. to even have build variety atm and thats the problem. You had marauder bow builds like EA doing extremely well, you aren't going to see that in POE2 in the current state.

Yes but in this case, the change is simple: just make the starting nodes for witch and sorceress the same. I read up their reason on this, and it sounds silly: during testing, they found that for some reason sorceres players just don't pick the spell % damage node because they have the word minions in it, so they separated the node. I just don't think it's worth sacrificing build variety just because some people are confused because they don't read the skill points properly...

Nodes? Witch with just 2 asc points is a better minion character than sorc with 8. Those starting nodes are also pretty terrible +8% is nothing id trade them for +5 int/str because you need 200 int 70 str later on to play minions.

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BossOfThisGym#2062 wrote:

Nodes? Witch with just 2 asc points is a better minion character than sorc with 8. Those starting nodes are also pretty terrible +8% is nothing id trade them for +5 int/str because you need 200 int 70 str later on to play minions.

It's like half of all the minion damage nodes on the top side of the current tree...

And the main purpose I see for hound minion right now is just for applying exposure, it doesn't do much damage by itself. There are other ways to apply exposures.

The damage taken conversion node is very meh when you almost cap out resist.

And most minion builds right now play MoM as defense, which is buffed by chronomancer recoup node.

Witch is not that obvious of a choice if you have the same starting tree nodes.

You are severly underestimating flat 20% dr and just how good altered flesh is. You can easily get 84% fire res with 4 jewels, and its like having 15% phy dr on top of the dog when you sort out chaos res.

Dying in this game is awful, you wont progress if you are dying even just once every 5 or so maps.

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BossOfThisGym#2062 wrote:

You are severly underestimating flat 20% dr and just how good altered flesh is. You can easily get 84% fire res with 4 jewels, and its like having 15% phy dr on top of the dog when you sort out chaos res.

Dying in this game is awful, you wont progress if you are dying even just once every 5 or so maps.

Let say endgame you reach 84% fire res, and 78% res for cold and lightning, 31% chaos res (as per current Ghazzy build).

You take cold/lightning damage, without altered flesh you take 0.22 of the damage.

With altered flesh:

0.20 of damage is taken as fire, so 0.20 * (1-0.84) = 0.032 fire damage taken after mitigation

0.80 * (1-0.78) = 0.176 cold/lightning damage taken after mitigation.

In the end you take 0.032 + 0.176 = 0.208 of the original damage, or equivalent to

1- 0.208 = 0.792 damage mitigation. So basically equivalent to +1% max cold and lightning res.


For Phys damage:

Let say you have 0% phys mitigation.

0.2 of phys damage taken is treates as chaos, of those 0.31 is mitigated. So:

0.2 * (1 -0.31) = 0.138 original damge taken as chaos

So damage taken is =
0.138 + 0.8 = 0.938 or equivalent to ~6% reduced phys taken.

So all in all the node means +1% max cold / light ning res, and 6% reduced phys taken for endgame build.

On top of that, all the nodes below that require 25% life reservation, without, imho providing enough upside to justify that. I originally thought I would go the spirit route, but after watching my minions endlessly block each other, die just trying to go through doors and, most importantly, utterly fail to block or even temporarily distract the monsters from me - their MAIN JOB, I am just considering minions to be little more than turrets.

However, I trust GGG will eventually fix the broken pathing and abysmal aggro mechanics and minions will be viable. That's the point here - any discussions of the state of builds are meaningless.

I love my current build, because it's elegant, relying on six interacting skills with minion abilities just gravy on that cake, but so many things will be fixed adjusted over the course of this beta that it is pointless to worry about it. Our role is to provide feedback in the most mature, respectful way possible, without calling this trash or that trash.

That's my take. Let's try to behave like courteous adults and help them fine tune this game into the masterpiece it has the potential to be.