Minions is still really bad and frustrating to play during campaign and early maps.

Build: I went Titan - rushed the 50% passive node and just took all minion damage nodes and a few life nodes/revive nodes.

The best combo I could muster is snipers with flame wall proc, no raging spirits, feels like a huge waste of spirit. I used them last league with infernal, exposure on ignite + exposure effect but its not even worth it with that. You have to keep spapming flame wall to make use of them but you need to spam your command to kill stuff so you are constantly at odds with what to do during combat.

I would have stopped a few hours into this build but they kept coming up with new patches and fixes but none of it really worked for early minions to make them feel good. I am sure the "numbers" probably look tuned but its such a miserable experience.

Disclaimer, half of my experience was pre-patch and post buff patch.

My issues with minions:
*They lock on to the first thing and will sit there until they die or it dies or you move out of range. Expected behavior but this is such low effort. Yes you can command them but I will get to that in the next point

*Action economy with "combo" game play is too damn high. You have to spam your command to do damage but you can only proc the main damage portion of the gas cloud with ignite. With a 1.25 base cast time that is MODIFIED BY YOUR PLAYERS CAST TIME NOT YOUR MINIONS USE TIME, that is all you are doing is slow walking and spamming this until either your minions die or you run out of minions to use it.

*BUT WHAT ABOUT CLERICS - well ok, yes they are mandatory, you need 4 of them minimum to be able to get through 5 cycles of 1.25 second cast times and you are expected to fit any other skills you want during that time. This means that combat with each pack is either you face roll it or you are running away until your minions spawn.

*I switched frequently to better attack based minions but with the limited amount of sockets, gems, supports and such, I could not optimize them. (SSF BTW) I tried aronist they just don't do any damage and die before they can kill anything. Their activated ability sucks ass because you have to blow up a minion which means you need to spam summon more or use srs which blows.

*I got to maps, tried the first boss and my damage was so ass. No mods on the map. I had about 250% increase minion damage with level 15 minions in t1 maps. 5 archers, 4 clerics, 2 warriors, zombies spam when I can but in a boss battle, your minions just fucking die. They die every time they are up. Its the worst thing about them. i had 140% increased minion life with clerics, they just get killed, Oh and when they spawn in, there is a half second point where they take damage before even appearing, fix that shit.

*I couldn't even get a build going enough to try and find spectres or really any other explore, I was 50 hours in, t1 maps and I rerolled. Hopefulley the act 3 map changes will make that part less time consuming.

*I didn't even get to test the new "stagger" respawn system but I doubt that will fix any of my issues, It might be better but if they just keep fucking dying all the time, there is nothing you can do about it.

*You have no time to micro manage them because you have to spam 1.25 second cast times for them to do damage

*LASTLY IF THERE IS NO MINION IN LINE OF SIGHT YOU PLAY THE ANIMATION BUT NOTHING HAPPENS OVER AND OVER AND OVER UNLESS YOU NOTICE IT - this sent me over as it got me killed many times, while they are struck into a room callling back to point 1, they lock onto the first thing they see, they don't change to your target unless they are commaned but fuck that amount of micromanaging.

The only redeeming thing about minions is the way you get them with the spirit, everything else needs to be revisted because "command" cast times is cancer to the play style. Let us just give them orders and they will follow them out on a timer while we do other shit. Like they can't be so dumb they can't queue up actions. PLEASE PLEASE MAKE THEM FUN