Minion Box buffs - do they transfer to minions?

[AmishJustice]

I've been enjoying experimenting with a minion army for my engineer, and but I'm a little curious how well the weapon improvements effects carry over to the summons. Does a skill like "Interceptor: Increased damage vs flyers" only effect the melee box attack, or the summoned minions?
Ultimately, is it foolish to waste upgrade resources on the Minion box, or are there particularly beneficial weapon buffs I ought to be looking for?

[pope henry viii]

I've just tested this. The answer appears to be 'no' for most of those affixes - auto-crit chance, damage against enemy-types,damage against marked enemies, etc. work on the box's melee attack, but not on the summons.

Things that definitely do benefit the Minions:
- elemental affixes
- 'Leader' which boosts summons damage
- 'Loaded' which increases alt-fire charges
- 'Turbo' which reducees alt-fire cooldown

These can make them significantly more effective.

There are a few others that I haven't been able to test but I would guess that apart from those that make elemental effects apply faster, they likely don't affect the summons.

[AmishJustice]

Originally posted by pope henry viii:

I've just tested this. The answer appears to be 'no' for most of those affixes - auto-crit chance, damage against enemy-types,damage against marked enemies, etc. work on the box's melee attack, but not on the summons.

Things that definitely do benefit the Minions:
- elemental affixes
- 'Leader' which boosts summons damage
- 'Loaded' which increases alt-fire charges
- 'Turbo' which reducees alt-fire cooldown

These can make them significantly more effective.

There are a few others that I haven't been able to test but I would guess that apart from those that make elemental effects apply faster, they likely don't affect the summons.

This is Excellent work. Many thanks!
Can you also tell me is the leveling up damage bonus to the summons comparable to the melee damage buff of the box? Like, are the summons improved, damage wise, significantly by level improvements? Would you suggest NOT increasing Minion box rarity, since most of the affixes won't improve the summons?

[pope henry viii]

I just tested the level bonus with Buddy Bot (as you can't level up weapons in the testing range and I couldn't get Minion Box to drop) - it applies, and actually it appears to apply a greater bonus (maybe 20% per level instead of the 10% for the player's weapons - Level 1 Buddy Bot summon was dealing 10 damage, Level 2 was dealing 12, and Level 3 was dealing 14; with Sunglasses it was 16, 19, 22 (which also suggests they get double the bonus from that Gadget)).

A lot of the affixes don't improve the summons, but those that do can be quite helpful.

'Loaded' gives a fourth initial Minion, so is essentially an initial 33.33% damage and HP boost for the Minions for the first 4 seconds of a fight, which drops to a 20% bonus for the next 4s, amnd a 16.67% bonus for the next 4s, with no ongoing bonus after 12s.

'Turbo', by contrast, gives an extra Minion between the 3rd and 4th seconds, 6th and 8th seconds, and from the 9th second onwards; for any fight that lasts longer than 12s you essentially get a persistent 33.33% boost as long as you keep placing Minions when the cooldown ends.

Both of these stack multiplicatively (rather than additively) with any other bonus (including 'Leader' and any bonus from levelling up).
Elemental effects can be helpful, including for some extra damage - 'Burn' is the best for pure damage.
I think you can also get a perfume to further reduce alt-fire cooldown.

Considering 'Loaded', 'Turbo', 'Leader', 'Burn', 'Shock' and 'Cryo', from testing rolls on an Epic-grade Minion Box with the microwave in the training range, in 50 trials I got the following results:
4+ affixes: 0
3 affixes: 7
2 affixes: 26
1 affix: 17
0 affixes: 0

Mean: 1.8

Based on these numbers, you appear to be guaranteed (or are very likely to get) at least 1 useful affix, are more likely than not to get 2 useful affixes, and should be able to get 3 useful affixes around half the time with 4 rerolls (initial roll and 4 rerolls gives P(not 3)=0.86^5=0.4704270176, i.e., P(3)= approx. 0.53). 4 rerolls is not very expensive.
It is possible (though unlikely) to get all 3 of 'Loaded', 'Turbo' and 'Leader' and an elemental affix, though it's unlikely.
Fantastic-grade should be better.

The short version:
Level and quality are both worth improving.
As always, improving your levels before your quality is cheaper.
A reasonable number of affix rerolls can give you a good chance at having several useful affixes.