POE2 Minion Survivability and Enjoyment Feedback

Alright, so for contexts I have just hit mapping in POE2, as a Minion/Bone Blood Witch.

I have focused on using skeletal minions throughout the main game, using bone skills to supplement damage along with curses.

This was very frustrating early game, Skeletons continuously died unless I put point after point into their sustain, this caused me to play through with rather lacking damage. Never so much that I couldn't beat bosses, but some fights in the world against random packs seriously dragged on far longer than necessary, and sudden minion deaths would let a quick dangerous mob through my line to me very commonly. Some of my most frustrating deaths was one skeletal warrior dying and then 3-4 mobs ignore my horde and go straight for me. Ironically bone cage is pretty bad at keeping enemies from swarming you, even with support gem investment.

On many bosses the minions felt less like an army and more like a temporary damage buff. They would just get wiped out constantly and I would be left running away from the boss until the revival counter ticked down, and the fact that time reset each time a minion died made it HORRIBLE sometimes.

That changes once I got skeletal clerics. The entire way my build worked, the reliability of my frontline, the frustration I had almost entirely vanished. Now my death make sense to me more often, its less random and more "I can see where I fucked up".

As such I feel that skeletal clerics are very important for the feel of any skeleton build, I would recommend that if possible they be accessible at an earlier level. I understand they are strong, knowing your squishy mages will come back, or that your reavers will live just a bit longer IS powerful. But they seem vital to the actual enjoyment of a skeleton focused playstyle, and prior to getting them my build felt very pigeon holed into over focusing on minion sustain at the cost of all other options.

TLDR: Consider allowing skeletal clerics to be accessible earlier, this would allow players to focus less on just keeping their minions up and dumping large numbers of skill points early on, and more on expanding their builds capabilities and interacting actively with the game.