Minion and Totem Elemental Resistance

I don't think the Minion and Totem Elemental Resistance support gem serves a purpose in the current game.

As of 1.2.4 minion resists have been standardised. With the 16% minion resistance from the passive tree, Zombies have 51% resistance and every other minion has 41% resistance. Both without any other source of resistance.

Taking just the Sovereignty cluster makes a lvl 21 Purity of Elements aura able to cap the elemental resistance of every minion in range. Alternatively, Purity of Elements linked with Generosity is able to do the same well before either is even lvl 20.

Necromantic Aegis is also able to cap the elemental resistance of all minions without the need for MaTER.

However, MaTER is only able to cap the elemental resistance of zombies (with sufficient quality); any of the other available minions cannot be capped by MaTER alone. And when it comes to zombies, using Mon'tregul would cap their elemental resistances without MaTER and so would using Endurance Charge on Melee Stun (provided Zombies get 15% elemental resistance per endurance charge as enemy monsters do).

So when a summoner wants to cap their minions elemental resistances, MaTER is only enough in the case of Zombies and even then it's the worst of several better and cheaper options.

Getting resistance on minions is really easy in ther current game. So easy in fact that I wouldn't even consider using MatER when over-capping minion resistances to deal with curses. It just does so little for so much.

So that leaves totems.

Like minions, totems have 25% base elemental resistance as of 1.2.4. Unlike minions though, they have access to 25% elemental resistance on the tree. This means MaTER is able to cap their resistance.

However, as of 1.3.0 defensive auras like the purity auras now affect totems so again MaTER is the worst choice.


If the gem provided 6% additional elemental resistance at lvl 20 it could cap the resistance of utility spectres on a build that uses mon'tregul zombies and runs no purity auras and doesn't use NA.

That's still pretty niche though. If it's supposed to be a gem summoners actually would consider it probably would have to grant max elemental resistance. How much I don't know, but as long as it only gives something as readily available as elemental resistance I don't think it's gonna see much appriciation.

A totally different option could be to rename it Minion and Totem Defenses or similar and have it grant resistance as it does now but on top of that also grant % increases in Armour/Evasion/Energy Shield or maybe flat additional Armour/Evasion/Energy Shield. Another option is having it grant block/spell block. Or maybe even Dodge/Spell Dodge.

There are a lot of options I feel to make this a much more interesting support.

Mokihiki's post is a well thought out analysis of MaTER (stealing it!) and I agree with mostly everything they stated about the gem. I am primarily at totem player and I struggle to find uses for this gem especially with the resistance standardization in 1.2.4. It just feels underwhelming as a defensive support for totems. Honestly I'd rather have Totem Life support.

I wonder if the fact that both minion and totems are bundled together in the gem is limiting the possibilities of the support by the GGG balancing team. If it would lead to a more beneficial support for each player base (totemer and summoner), I'd be in favor of splitting the minions and totem and creating new defensive gems that deal with specifics of each build.

I might take this gem if I ever get a 6 link and go totally tunnelvision on one minion. Before that, I'm not even thinking about it.

This gem has always been lackluster. However, there are many ways to change the gem in a postive way while still keeping the defensive aspect.

1) Add elemental penetration to the effect. Of course, not a ton, but this would give a lot of interesting options to have a hybrid damage/defensive option. It would also allow tri-ele totem builds something they've never had before.

2) Add max resists for totem/minions. This would allow people to focus on a really tanky minion if they wanted to, but largely wouldn't be that interesting in my opinion.

3) Have minions/totems with this gem somehow transfer a buff to you and/or allies if they are nearby. I feel like a gem which is purely defense for your minions/totems is really not that great. But if it benefited others? Then that would be a really interesting option. It could really help utility totems too, which I think largely don't serve much purpose right now.

4) Expand the gem beyond just ele resistances. ES, life, armor, chaos resist, etc. for totems and minions would make it better if you really wanted to tank out your minions or totems.

Effect should be boosted, not many using this

Great minion support gem for non-summoners.

some issues:
skill tolltip is total mess


additional chaos res or totem life would be very useful.

Just want to confirm the wording of the new damage bonus:

As far as POE goes, does "minion and totem elemental damage" mean "minion damage and totem elemental damage" or "minion elemental damage and totem elemental damage"?

Darn :(

Yeah, figured that was the case, but reddit had me slightly hopeful for a moment.

Goodnight, sweet prince, you're in the army now.