Minion Pathfinding

It's been posted many times, but it's so painful some more visibility on the issue can't hurt.

Anywhere in the game with narrow doorways or long narrow corridors is excruciatingly painful for minion builds, two skeletons will almost always pile up and cause a traffic jam, while the hellhound is a particularly egregious offender managing to get stuck anywhere by himself.

The current solutions are either to run ahead into danger without your minions to get them to re-spawn in a better location after however many seconds of terror; or you get the pleasure of trying to micro them back and forth to unclog the minion jam, during which they are unable to attack which also leaves you exposed to danger.

Would love to see phasing implemented on minions across the board as it would probably solve the entire issue. As others have said, convocation would also be a solution, or perhaps reducing minion collision size, as was done to players while dodge rolling in the most recent patch. Regardless of the fix, here's hoping this pain point for minion gameplay can get worked on relatively soon, my fellow summoners and I would greatly appreciate it.

I don't know what level you are but I also run a minion build and I don't really have an issue.

I actually prefer minions clog the pathway while skeleton archer with piercing projectiles and SRS finish them off safely.

If you're finding that enemies are not clearing fast enough try utilizing curses and exposure support gems to increase your dps so you can move along faster.

Ya its pretty awful in maps, no matter how good minions are you are essentially speed capped for clearing a map by dealing with their horribble pathfinding. I could probably finish a map at least 50% faster if not more if we had convocation from poe 1 to move them around.

Minions getting stuck in tight spots is just painful.
When you get a map without corridors - you are wildly happy

-Minions getting stuck on door ways is very frustrating.

-Minions also get stuck outside of boss rooms all the time, thus needing you to run far enough away to "kill them" and waiting for them to respawn during the encounter.

-Some boss arena's aren't big enough for this to even happen, forcing you to be stuck with less minions, or have to fumble with your gem screen to unsummon/resummon by messing with the counts.

-Why do minions die when out of range instead of teleporting to you like in PoE1? This makes all the above issues worse as you are effectively running around naked half the time if you have any sort of movement speed.

I think some kind of auto convocation would solve all of these problems.

This is really annoying. Hard to understand how this bug managed to pass all control mechanisms.

I think if they just removed minion collisions with each other, it would greatly improve things. I'm also of the opinion they should teleport to you instead of just dying and respawning.

1. make minion move while attacking. minion attacking still follow the master in this case. this could be implemented to with the other boss monster. so the game will be harder. I like this game to be as hard as it can be.

2. increase minion sight but reduce/stay the same minion attack range. increasing sight will help the minion to know where is the enemy. its just basic MMORPG. all monster have different sight and attack range. this is how you will know when to engage the monster. if you are range build.

3. minion should follow the master whenever it moves if it not attacking. AI should be like the monster when attacking the master. so it can find the best path or increase its reliability in finding path.

4. give skill convocation so we can recall our minion or just basically teleport the minion near us. if teleported, user can take damage or minion reduce damage/life.
another option is blink skill. if active. also teleport minion to blink area.

5. make minion push/phase each other if other minion is attacking already. so that minion at the back can attack too. rather than minion find a path circle around the monsters they attacking. in phasing or pushing, movement of minion is reduce to half or the minion, who is attacking stop attacking or move while attacking.

6. make persistent minion have different respawn time when dead. if current respawn time is intended, please dont make offering skill restart the timer. also if the minion is out of range respawn.

7. minion skills update.
a. skel warrior - dash skill 1m range, cd 5-10 sec, no damage just dash near the enemy.
b. sniper - auto gas arrow but gas arrow require spirit. < not necessary to add this auto think. sniper is already good.
c. Arsonist - OP minion. almost all passive node in tree affect this. to nerf. reduce or somewhat change some node to improve other minion.
d. frost mage - lack in damage. to improve. auto attack winter orb maybe. or increase number of projectile like in barrage in POE1. but lessen the frost build up.
e. Reaver - if enrage is on, below 25% hp-stop the enrage and stun for 1 sec. add leap ability. unlike skel warrior dash. leap ability can traverse terrain. still no damage for leap.
f. storm mage - arc attack is basically should be like arc skill. can jump back to same monster if no more target. also u can add skel mage life to user mana cap. meaning if the user cast a skill the skell mage life can be consume. like 10% or 20% of mana cost.
g. brute. shield charge skill = 1.2x -2x basic attack damage. all monster in path are push+gather in front of the shield. like magnus skewer skill in dota2. add auto skill/command take monster aggro. 10 cd and 3sec duration.
h.cleric - improve revive fallen persist minion with half the time u revive it. reviving minion is empowered.

8. Offering skill and command skill. screen wide search for skeleton/requirement. rather than in mouse area. if no skel/requirements is sacrifice. mana and life cost should not be use or just stop the cast if it cant use. its hard for use to track all the requirement of all skill. like explosives demise required low life minion in front of battle then moving the mouse near my arsonist so i can use offering+ablation thus, incorrectly done result to my life reduce to nothing.


I think this is the best option for minion.

want to give my own feedback too as Blood Mage with only Skeletal Reavers and 1 Cleric

1. Minions do stack on each others even without help of other mobs. As many people said here in thighs corridors, hell, even in forests/other biomes when area become a little more narrow. Playing with melee minions only is absolute pain - I love this power fantasy and maybe this is a "skill issue" and I should utilize more of them, but it just doesn't feel right they beheave like this.
I don't think we need phasing - I think setting their size to 0, like player during the dodge roll should be fine, they should just be able to get into any opening possible. Even don't change it globally with monster - make it that their size is 0 only when colliding with other player's minion

2. Because of this collision problem, there is also another one. Not only minions stuck on themselves in corridor, when you have large ammount of melee minions... they sometimes even can't reach their enemy. Even in open field there are lots of situation when minions go to the enemy, they form ring around it to attack and not all minions are able to even reach the enemy - they for inner and outer rings - inner is attacking, outer is just watching rest attack, because they can't fit between other minions to be close enough to the enemy to even attack

3. AI needs a little bit of tweaks too. Sometimes when you are in heat of a battle, you order your minions to attack chosen enemy. And if you miss the enemy and point on the ground, minion will try to move to that place and very often... they will just stand there. Even with enemies around, they will just stand and watch, until you ping them again to attack and this time correctly hit an enemy. I understand in situation like this moving to the target spot is a priority, but after they arrive they should start to attacking nearby enemies, not just stand there and do nothing.

If those issues are addressed, I think playing with perma minion build will be really fun and probably the best one in HnS history up to date