New player requesting help on build.

This is my first PoE game and I've come up with a build I am really enjoying. However as per title I have a question.

The Meat Shield support Gem says that minions deal 35% less damage but have 50% more max life.

Infernal Legion support Gem says that Minions Ignite enemies as though dealing Base Fire Damage Equal to 20% of Minions Maximum Life.

Does Meat Shield decrease this damage even though it's based upon Max Life? Or would it be pure value cause Infernal Legion scales off of Life?

Is Infernal Legion considered AoE? Would it gain benefit from increasing minion AoE damage/range?

I don't know the damage formulas so I'm really asking if adding Meat Shield to an Infernal Legion Minion would add or reduce damage.

Gotta watch some guides on yt brother. This games complicated especially if it's your first time playing so do your work. There are plenty guides out there.

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J_Love#0714 wrote:

Gotta watch some guides on yt brother. This games complicated especially if it's your first time playing so do your work. There are plenty guides out there.

oof what a terrible take.

the dmg reduction should apply to infernal legion together with minion dmg/aoe modifiers also should apply to it, its nice to combine this with minion instability, which should work similarly (unless poe2 handles this case differently since its on-death).

when working this stuff out you can use poe1 wiki:
https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Infernal_Legion_Support

while not everything is the same, the conversions and other such mechanics should carry over to poe2.

I believe the damage reduction is for direct damage, not ignite damage, works the same way for your doggo as infernalist.

The higher your max hp, the higher the ignite damage, it doesn't get reduces by the penalty I don't think, but either way, higher hp the better.

Meat shield is great with that but...it's ALSO great on your doggo, and that takes damage from you. Having meat shield on the dog + elemental resist support etc, can make it very hard for it to die (can toss on the last stand so it sticks around 4 seconds after it croaks, and that counts towards its revive time, so with enough boosts, it'll revive right away after it pops).

You don't need meat shield on the one that makes them do damage, since they take 20% of their max life per second, it's better to put a buncha life regen on them and maybe last stand so they stick around after they die and keep doing nice AoE damage based on their max hp. You wanna take lots of max hp minion mods on your tree anyway for such a build, so you won't miss having meat shield on them that much (and can keep it on your dog.).

IF you are NOT playing infernalist but still going with minions then you might as well use meat shield on em cause you don't have a dog to stick it on, also if you have just finished 2 trials (not the third yet), then you may want to drop the dog for the bonus spirit (honestly don't think it's worth it as you won't have the max hp that early to make it worth the 4 nodes on your ascension tree, losing your doggo, and losing 25% of your max life).

Personally suggest you go doggo first, grab something else second, and then once you finish your third trial you swap everything out to have doggo and hp to spirit conversion. By then you should have 2k+ max health anyway, which converts to 80+ spirit (along with the reduced spirit cost node on the tree etc). THAT is worth the loss of max hp (also you are probably rocking either decent mana and mind over mana by that time, or a decent amount of eshield.

Doggo is quite useful early on just to get your fire exposure on everything, and to prevent a decent amount of damage. Get high resists and a decent amount of mana/eshield and you shouldn't die at all.

Run with fire spells + flamability (eventually snag the 2 curses node on the tree if you can). Fire spells let you keep your SRS going full strength without having to waste time re-casting flame wall (just cast it to start off to get the full 10 out fast).

Lightning and cold are both good alternative damage types to have, lightning causes your minions to do extra damage as well, and cold of course freezes everything while keeps your minions up and running.

Fire is the curse you should go with because of STS/Arsenists/doggo/burning skellies etc.