Do minion builds still suck?

[tiamats4esgares]

I want to play this game again, but last I checked minion builds still suck. Have they done anything to address this issue? (And no, I don't mean with PC performance I just mean how viable the build is.) Specifically, there's too many systems in place that require you to stay near your minions even though they like to run off and do whatever they want. They die real easily to AOE's too. Any change to the issues?

[matke587]

After reading the OP original post I decided to start a new necromancer, just to test it out and test myself as it isn't my normal play style. I have gone for a pure minion build consisting of Skeleton warriors, skeleton mages, Bone Golem, Wraiths and Volatile Zombies.

I have made sure to add Minion health, minion health regen, minion damage on all of my gear prefixs. Got the basic level of defence now 75%+ in all my resistances. Passives I have selected nodes which benefit my minions health, damage and survivabilty. I made sure I went all in for minions basically.

At first it was hard work with only 3 skeletons, but I survived with lots of running around and using "A" to control what they where attacking. Now with all the minion skills, it is a really nice build able to do monoliths fairly comfortable. At level 70 now and I am still Deathless. Can't wait to see what 0.9 has to offer for this build.

[Zartanyen]

Origineel geplaatst door matke587:

After reading the OP original post I decided to start a new necromancer, just to test it out and test myself as it isn't my normal play style. I have gone for a pure minion build consisting of Skeleton warriors, skeleton mages, Bone Golem, Wraiths and Volatile Zombies.

I have made sure to add Minion health, minion health regen, minion damage on all of my gear prefixs. Got the basic level of defence now 75%+ in all my resistances. Passives I have selected nodes which benefit my minions health, damage and survivabilty. I made sure I went all in for minions basically.

At first it was hard work with only 3 skeletons, but I survived with lots of running around and using "A" to control what they where attacking. Now with all the minion skills, it is a really nice build able to do monoliths fairly comfortable. At level 70 now and I am still Deathless. Can't wait to see what 0.9 has to offer for this build.

Curious what route did you take with your minions? Such as skeletons did you go one group or a mix? Zombies did you go vomit or explode? Wraiths permanent or decay? You haven't already I would suggest putting 1 point in passive to get the 3 vanguards be a use with zombies your constantly going to be able to get and keep 3 of them.

[tiamats4esgares]

Origineel geplaatst door Koala 4peace:

Origineel geplaatst door tiamats4esgares:

...

My first char was a primalist, did not look anything pu and mostly ignored chat convos about the "meta". Actually have to be explained what "meta" means in video games; that while having been a gamer for 30+ years. My primalist zoo warden worked like a charm.

This game has very intuitive builds. Guides are not needed for workable characters. You only have to avoid trying to cover to many things at the same time.

I literally couldn't be covering less. I have no self damage, no minion spell damage even, I literally focus ONLY on minion damage/minion physical damage (as well as defenses for me and my minions). I don't think that's my issue...I'm starting to think just physical damage minion builds suck.

I literally don't even have any minions that do anything that is NOT physical damage (or maybe very little, can't remember).

Origineel geplaatst door matke587:

After reading the OP original post I decided to start a new necromancer, just to test it out and test myself as it isn't my normal play style. I have gone for a pure minion build consisting of Skeleton warriors, skeleton mages, Bone Golem, Wraiths and Volatile Zombies.

I have made sure to add Minion health, minion health regen, minion damage on all of my gear prefixs. Got the basic level of defence now 75%+ in all my resistances. Passives I have selected nodes which benefit my minions health, damage and survivabilty. I made sure I went all in for minions basically.

At first it was hard work with only 3 skeletons, but I survived with lots of running around and using "A" to control what they where attacking. Now with all the minion skills, it is a really nice build able to do monoliths fairly comfortable. At level 70 now and I am still Deathless. Can't wait to see what 0.9 has to offer for this build.

Well that's nowhere close to my build, I don't use any non-physical (like mages) or any temporary (like zombise). Also, if you aren't lying and you really did get to level 70 that fast (and without dying!) then you clearly have way more experience than I do.

[matke587]

@tiamats4esgares I do have a bit of experience true, and I also have a lot of time on my hands. To be honest your post has got me trying a class and build I haven't played before but I actually like more than my VK Bomber now. Still feels weird though letting all the minions do the damage, whilst I just dodge out of the way of everything like a headless chicken

[tiamats4esgares]

Origineel geplaatst door matke587:

@tiamats4esgares I do have a bit of experience true, and I also have a lot of time on my hands. To be honest your post has got me trying a class and build I haven't played before but I actually like more than my VK Bomber now. Still feels weird though letting all the minions do the damage, whilst I just dodge out of the way of everything like a headless chicken

Well I'm glad you had fun with it! :D I will try out the minion build some more after the patch. I might download the game today or tomorrow before the patch goes live to give people a rough idea of my current build so maybe we can figure out why I struggle.

[Koala 4peace]

Origineel geplaatst door tiamats4esgares:

Origineel geplaatst door matke587:

@tiamats4esgares I do have a bit of experience true, and I also have a lot of time on my hands. To be honest your post has got me trying a class and build I haven't played before but I actually like more than my VK Bomber now. Still feels weird though letting all the minions do the damage, whilst I just dodge out of the way of everything like a headless chicken

Well I'm glad you had fun with it! :D I will try out the minion build some more after the patch. I might download the game today or tomorrow before the patch goes live to give people a rough idea of my current build so maybe we can figure out why I struggle.

Maybe is an acolyte thing? That class i did not try yet, but other players said it is kind of OP.
Anyway, let's see if someone can help out with this. Good luck.

[tiamats4esgares]

So for everyone who asked about my build. I'm level 66. Here's some of my stats:

172% increased minion health
25% increased minion health regen
196% increased minion damage
56% increased minion melee attack speed
512% increased minion melee damage (ALL of my minions are melee)
286% increased minion physical damage (ALL of the damage my minions do is physical)

This should effectively be 994% increased minion damage. Almost all of my passives focus on my minions. Same with my gear. But I also make sure I have resistances too.

30% endurance (not sure what this is)
275 endurance threshold
33% critical strike avoidance
1376 health
25 INT
26 VIT
1 STR/DEX/Attunement

35% movement speed
322 armor (17%)
12 dodge (1%)
25 stun avoidance

All resists are 71%+, but specifcially:

71 lightning
73 physical & necrotic
74 fire
75 everything else

I also have a helmet with "0.9% of minion physical damage leeched as health", though I don't see that in the character screen anywhere.

I mostly have problems with my minions dying too fast and so then stuff doesn't die, and then I die. Especially in lightless harbor. In most of the monolith of fate, I do pretty OK. I haven't really done much else. I've done a few of the endless wave thingies to try to get keys for dungeons. I did Soulfire Bastion and it was easy, and then I ran lightless harbor once, and it was horrible. Both only once each. I'm still pretty new to the endgame, as you can see.

In the Monolith of Fate, I finished Fall of the Outcasts, and now moved onto The Black Sun and about halfway through it.

The only unique item I have equipped is Arboreal Circuit (I've never found anything that seems remotely good with my build) and I have 2 pieces of purple gear, the rest are yellow. Purple gear has just started dropping for me recently, most of them I get suck.

I craft on my gear and get it to the fullest potential when I have something new.

By the way, one annoying thing I hate about minion builds is it takes so much time and mana to resummon them every time I log back in. Don't have to do that in PoE...

So for the minions I use, I summon 5 big skeleton warriors and 3 skeleton mages, then eat them with Abomination. Then, I recast the 5 big skeleton warriors. I also have 2 blood golems, and 2 of the permanent wraiths. 10 total permanent minions, and nothing temporary. EDIT: I have the passive that makes the Abomination permanent if I have less than 6 skeletons. The other skill I use is Bone Curse. I just don't like Transplant. I don't need it though.

Like I said, I have no idea what the heck I'm doing and just trying to make a physical minion build work. Before I got this uber spear with 317% minion melee damage, I had archers instead of warriors. But now all melee. And I just recently decided to use abomination because I don't like Transplant.

But it's not ME dying that is the issue, it's my MINIONS dying. I didn't know I could control them by, what, pressing A? So I'll try that. But I'm probably doing something else seriously wrong and don't even know what it is.

[matke587]

@tiamats4esgares your build is somewhat different to mine. I can't log in now to get my exact stats. But one thing I did notice is your minion health is lot lower than mine, think my minion health is at 491%

I normally have;
4 Large melee skeletons (no archers)
4 Death knights (no mage casters)
2 Bone Golems
2 Wraiths (Permanent from skill node)
3 Vanguards( auto cast skill from necromancer passive tree)
0-6 Volatile Zombies (they last for about a minute now before exploding if no enemies around) This is the skill assigned to my mouse RMB

All my Necromancer casts during a fight is volatile zombies. As of yet I have only had to summon two extra skeletons in one boss fight. And the only time I have noticed my minions health go down outside of a boss fight, is during the Ice Giants Avalanche attack.

[tiamats4esgares]

Origineel geplaatst door matke587:

@tiamats4esgares your build is somewhat different to mine. I can't log in now to get my exact stats. But one thing I did notice is your minion health is lot lower than mine, think my minion health is at 491%

I normally have;
4 Large melee skeletons (no archers)
4 Death knights (no mage casters)
2 Bone Golems
2 Wraiths (Permanent from skill node)
3 Vanguards( auto cast skill from necromancer passive tree)
0-6 Volatile Zombies (they last for about a minute now before exploding if no enemies around) This is the skill assigned to my mouse RMB

All my Necromancer casts during a fight is volatile zombies. As of yet I have only had to summon two extra skeletons in one boss fight. And the only time I have noticed my minions health go down outside of a boss fight, is during the Ice Giants Avalanche attack.

I also have the vanguards! Forgot to mention them.

I have been playing tonight and working on my build. I guess I logged in before the server went down so I can still keep playing. :O

Anyway, I've been looking for adding gear that *specifically* gives me minion health. I caught a huge break when I beat the boss of The Black Sun, and got a permanent +35% void resistance! So that let me swap out some things. All in all, I ended up changing up my belt, top, amulet, AND relic, and NOW I have up to 513% increased minion health! A lot more than I did before. I haven't done any fighting yet because I've already stayed up too late and I need to go to bed. And tomorrow I'm actually excited to try out multiplayer again (yay!) but I will try a little bit more on that character and see how it goes.

Before I got my amulet and relic swapped out, I had 315% increased minion health. Those two gave me a huge boost! Anyway, at 315%, fighting the boss of The Black Sun, it was a pretty epic fight. I had to resummon skeletons a few times and wraiths, all my vanguards died too. I had to resummon the blood golems only ONCE, and the abomination didn't die (though he got close, haha). All in all, it wasn't bad, I never ran out of mana, and I beat him the first try. Now I have a lot more minion health from those 2 new items that I was able to swap out because of that permanent void resistance so I think I'm in a much better place now!

In addition, my minion damage also went up. 36% more minion damage and 37% more minion melee damage for 73% more total.

I didn't die once tonight, my resistances are all about where they were before (most 75, one 74 and one of 'em is 71). So I'm feeling better about playing this game again!

Anyway, like I said, it's bed time! But I will update tomorrow on how things go, before I start a new character in multiplayer!

[friendly]

If you don't feel the minions are powerful enough you can change your gear, build, or wait for bigions

[mahrdol]

I am running rip blood, bone curse, skeletons with archers/fire arrow, mages fire/regular, and a big bone golem. I am level 62 but I feel squishy get one shot a bit. What should I prioritize on for defense to make myself able to take a hit? I am working on level 66 monolith Black sun.

[/dev/pie]

I’m not hard core invested in this game but so far with my minion build I havent had any issues. I have been sweeping the floor with them.

[kekkuli]

I like primalist pets but i find the clearspeed pretty slow compared to most other builds i usually play.

[tiamats4esgares]

Origineel geplaatst door mahrdol:

I am running rip blood, bone curse, skeletons with archers/fire arrow, mages fire/regular, and a big bone golem. I am level 62 but I feel squishy get one shot a bit. What should I prioritize on for defense to make myself able to take a hit? I am working on level 66 monolith Black sun.

Are all your resistances up to 75%? And how much health do you have? I probably would say you should have at least 1300-1400 health when you start doing monoliths.

Resistances and health are the main stats I focus on. Make sure to get some minion health and minion health regen, too, as you will probably die if your minions do. I don't really focus on armor, endurance, or endurance % at all or even chance to ignore critical hit (which is useless if not maxed, IMO).

I found out the hard way that your build probably needs a way to generate a LOT of ward, like HUNDREDS of ward. You should be fine for a while without that, though.

So here's the skills I use, I summon 5 big skeleton warriors and 4 skeleton mages, then eat them with Abomination with the passive to make it permanent. Then, I recast the 5 big skeleton warriors, but otherwise don't use skeleton mages in my build. I also have 3 skeleton vanguards, and 2 of the permanent wraiths. 11 total permanent minions, and nothing temporary. I also use Bone Curse. My final skill, and my ward generator as well as newest addition to my build, is Soul Feast. I can get HUNDREDS of ward quickly with this. Usually around 600-700 is pretty easy, but if there's enough minions, especially rares and maybe a boss, I can get more. I got over 1000 a couple times. It's been REALLY helpful, especially in certain fights. I don't like Transplant. I don't need it though, most of the time, though I did swap out Soul Feast for it for one fight that I didn't particularly need ward as long as I could dodge the boss's mechanics.

Since you're already using fire minions, you could consider trying out Summon Volatile Zombie as your ward generator but I tried it out and it's just not nearly as good as Soul Feast. Maybe if you had enough mana or something, but like, then you could also just spam Soul Feast instead. :P Don't get me wrong, zombies do a lot more damage, but also a lot less ward.