Minions Pathing/Respawning

So just some general feedback and criticism of the minion system in the game currently at the about 120hr mark in the game.

TLDR: Minion pathing is less than ideal in its current form. Melee minion will get stacked up in a doorway and only the front one doing damage. Even in open areas they will stand behind each other sometimes instead of shifting 1 foot to the right to be able to attack the target. De spawning due to outrunning your minions and automatically triggering the respawn timer instead of just teleporting them to you needs to be fixed.

So I have been playing now for about 120ish hours and I will say off the bat I think the game is absolutely phenomenal is numerous ways. That being said I understand the game is in EA and needs some time to cook so I wanted to discuss how you guys feel about the minions right now and discuss potential small fixes. Once again before the white knights of the POE fan boys come in to defend the game with the attitude of the game can do no wrong I UNDERSTAND THE GAME IS IN EA. However, the game needs to be constructively criticized just like any other EA release.

So let’s discuss some of the current issues with minions.

Pathing- Minion pathing is awful right now honestly. There are certain maps that have tight corridors which cause the minions to get stacked up even in non doorways or arches that essentially removes 80% of your dps because only the front minion is attacking.

Yes you can manually move them which is nice but even when commanded sometimes they literally will not move because they think they can’t. The other thing with command move is you must hold the key the entire time to keep them in front of you, if you let go and there are not enemies around they immediately return to you. I don’t want to hold down another button the entire time I’m running a map just to keep my minions from slamming their faces into walls lol Specifically like the spire maps they are god awful lol obviously this issue becomes significantly smaller if using ranged but with the nerf to arsonists I think we are going to see a rise in melee minion builds. I don’t know exactly how to fix this but I think reducing the amount of room minions take up can potentially fix this, allow them to collide less or apply the same philosophy they did with the dodge roll and making the characters footprint smaller during the roll to minions all the time.

Minion Respawn- the automatic respawn at range is great in a lot of situations. If your minions get stuck you can just run away and they come back to you (obviously better pathing fixes this). However, I have 40% movement speed on my character and my minions are at 20% and when empowered they run at my speed. The problem is the pathing problems cause them to get stuck and they respawn on me after the timer.

My personal opinion is that if minion despawn due to range they should immediately bypass the respawn timer and teleport to you. Obviously this could create cheeses of “well then people will just run away to keep their minions alive”. To fix this either make the minions tp to you with the same HP count they had when you left, or only allow them to tp to you when above a certain HP % threshold.

This becomes particularly frustrating with boss encounters. There are MANY encounters in which minion will get stacked on the door entrance which causes you to start the fight and for the first 5+ seconds have zero minions in the arena. If your answer to the problem is sit at the entrance for 30 seconds and command them over and over again until they get through I think that is not ideal and breaks the fun in that moment.

These are just some general observations and criticisms for a game I already think is amazing in its state, but hopefully the minion area gets some polish! How do you guys feel about it? Experiencing the same issues or is there some trick to fixing this I’m not aware of?