Witch Minions, totally unplayable

I'm really not one to come onto forums to comment and complain. However, in this case I really have express how deeply disappointed I am in the development decisions with minions in general. From the obvious lack of support at the ascendancy levels all the way down through their complete and undeniable lack of viability I am absolutely shocked.

Since I get the feeling that the developers are likely to read this thread I'd like to mention that I literally found PoE 1 by searching for games where I could play a Summoner.

I rarely take time off work for anything as I run a (relatively small) tech company myself, but when PoE 2 EA came out I decided to take a few days off. I have to say I adore PoE 2, but I'm having trouble expressing how deeply disappointed I am in the development decisions surrounding minions.

This isn't even a situation where a buff would be a viable solution. Minions need a complete overhaul at this point and a preferably a dedicated ascendancy.

lvl 14 here.

Boss fight is just a run around and wait for it to die! im using Chaos Dot so I make sure its on the boss and just run around for 5min..

Minion should not be wipe by AoE on boss...

Same here. I was really hyped because the way the minions worke looked amazing.
Now I'm kind of disapointed. The only working minion build for me ist a chaos build without the need for caring about the minions.
Every boss is easy, but it's boring running around for minutes and waiting for them to slowly die...

So many complains about minions build and/or use, yet I didn't had single issue with minions, they clear maps/boss like pro. If you wanna complain about something , maybe you should try to play as melee warrior and then go back to minions and check the difference. As minion you just steam roll, as melee its like masochist who loves pain and suffer constantly.

I'm not having a good time with my minion archers, that cast gas clouds which now looks to be nerfed.

They were the only way i was barely surviving the act 3 zones.

Also using flame wall with SRS, and self casting detonate dead.

It's a rough ride for my witch at the moment.

"

pitty#6952 wrote:

I'm not having a good time with my minion archers, that cast gas clouds which now looks to be nerfed.

They were the only way i was barely surviving the act 3 zones.

Also using flame wall with SRS, and self casting detonate dead.

It's a rough ride for my witch at the moment.

probably you doing it wrong because my 5 snipers are doing around 8k dmg per cast, each.
I killed Doriani deathless at a3 without even noticing what is he going to cast there :D

Probably GGG will nerf them as they do for everything else which does more than 500 dmg/cast/hit

"

judikator#2053 wrote:

probably you doing it wrong because my 5 snipers are doing around 8k dmg per cast, each.
I killed Doriani deathless at a3 without even noticing what is he going to cast there :D

Probably GGG will nerf them as they do for everything else which does more than 500 dmg/cast/hit

but which supports are you using with snipers?

I've started the witch for summoner class and what did i get...
Well i have many words to say.

First, summons-only style is unplayable at all unless you wanna ragequid and continue to real life. Skeletons are weak at everything, they do very small damage, they die very fast. On bosses they literally wiped from 1 boss attack.

Second, playstyle with spam time-summons like crazy is != summoner at the true concept. Same for SRS - its even other playstyle. Just to be understanded - in poe1 there were 3 types of summon builds: summoner(zombies/spectres and they live permanently), skeletons(mass summon spawn, fast die, decent damage), SRS(kinda look like skele style but imho its different)

Third, people say when they have problems with skeles and they start adding SRS. Its a failure from developers. If your main concept of permanent(ha-ha dies from 1 boss attack) summons didnt work, players dont have to find solutions for that in other choices. I have a strong feeling that guy which was testing skeletons was like: "well summons die too fast, what should i add, yeah right, make them autorespawn, it will be solution" and then he switched to test them on endgame without re-check.

Third part 2, the time, when player forced to decide make big changes of chosened build while leveling is a critical gameplay/tester mistake. Same happened to me and i've started to ragequit every hour. There is next part.

So i switched to ED+contagion pretty fast, there was no option to comfortly play with only minions and i have to add some personal damage support. And oh boy..
First act was going pretty well and fun, nothing to say. Until wolf. No, Wolf, the man who solves the problem of the Exile's existence. Minions? 1 attack. Damage boss? Only spam ED. Slowly but he can be killed. Next was 2 mechanics which burned my back. The red circle where he jumps and frost beams. He jumps fast and if you dont have any movement boost you always get a hit for almost full health. Then comes big aoe swing which kills you. Frost beams - even with a frost charm its too difficult do dodge all of them. And sometimes they spawn literally around you and you will be damaged. Then they slow you and again spawn around. At this point you die from beams or just end of health potion.
So, one guy helped me to kill him and here comes act 2. And things are started getting worse. The damage of ED started to drop very fast. Now each big pack of mobs started to be "kite untill they slowly die" instead of fun screen kill. Now situations when i get blocked by mobs around are regular. Maybe i got some weak gear or smth but dunno. Bosses starts to die slowly too and one-shot mechanics are triggering me. I forgot name of the boss in act 2: small room, when entering it he cast direct laser on you which insanely hard to dodge by rolling and it takes 80% of hp. Then he run to you with auto-attack combos which have to make you remember each frame of hiss attack to dodge it. Full boss is non-stop taking damage until flask out. In that moment after 20+ deahts on him i ragequit last time.
So it was my gameplay of the first day and im pretty disappointed in current poe2 status. Waiting for balance updates.
P.s. all this wall of text is my personal view, no need to tell 'git gud/craft better gear/etc.' and sorry for bad english.

upd. ED dps is... with all passives on damage, 22 lvl char, 5 lvl ed. ....80 dps. Freaking joke.

Yeah i was excited for minions, but as it stands right now they are complete trash. POE1 and D4 has a much better system. And we STILL can have fluid movement between controller and mouse lol..........WHY? its 2025 already, and D4 has it.

We are also path of reverse kiting. It just feels BAD to paly, the builds are not even in the same universe as POE1, POE2 builds are basically D4 level.

GGG took years to fix minion builds on POE1, but here we are again.

It’s almost like they forgot.