State of minions right now

Early on all skeletal/reviving minions are pure garbage until you start getting gem levels on them, for SSF this might not happen until maps, for people willing to trade this is around level 30 or so when you can pick up a cheap +2/3 sceptre and a +2 helmet, it isn't until then that they outscale the zones in ACTs enough to actually surivive anything meaningful or deal damage, SRS carries 80% of your damage realistically until you have OK gear are around lvl 70. SRS ends up scaling so awful endgame that I've just removed it to run an extra arsonist+cleric.

Early and mid mapping minions can feel great, because they let you do content that would otherwise be impossible with crappy gear, and they make bosses very comfortable.

The problem is endgame, which I'm going to define here as double corrupt T15 maps with atlas setup for that, and investment into a league mechanic like breach/ritual etc. seeing maps like this:



Minions, or rather infernalist in this case is really good at surviving stuff like that, even without using the absolutely broken grim feast aura which I have no idea how its not escape a nerf yet, my ES bar maybe goes below 100% once every 10 maps or so running those mods linked above with grim feast. And again Infernalist doesn't come online fully in terms of defense until late game where you have the gear/jewels to take advantage of the damage conversion node, health to ES conversion etc. not to mention the 20% DR from the dog which is probably too much, but as it stands thats all he does atm, the dps is absolutely pitiful and hes just an exposure carrier.

BUT minion clear is an in absolutely awful state compared to virtually all the meta builds right now. Without an way to move minions around the map without convocation they will constantly get stuck fighting leftover mobs, getting stuck in doorways, getting stuck on objects etc. and just despawning and then you have to wait 5 seconds to have them back. Weapon swapping to do a scuffed convocation only works if you are within presence range which is like 6? meters, so thats only good for forcing them through doorways, not blasting maps.

Right now at 93 I feel unkillable, but im also playing waiting on minions to spawn/move simulator. Playing with a friend that is spark I can keep up with him shield charging, but before even the first volley of arsonist bombs land on 1 out of 3 packs in front of us hes already wiped the entire screen. I'm just walking around and picking up loot and casting flame wall for him at that point. Minions are just not keeping up at all with self cast builds without a proper way to move them around. I feel like if I just respeced to literally any spell and used demon form or found a way to make pyromatic pact work I would be clearing maps 2x as fast. And ultra endgame PoE2 just like PoE1 how many waystones/maps you can crank out in a timeframe is pretty much the most important metric for most players in terms of enjoyment and currency generation. And im not crying about a small you know oh I dont have tailwind this is awful I have to play deadeye, or slightly smaller clear speeds, its literally twice as slow as any other decent build right now with high investment.