Minion Build Feedback

Have played 0.1 and 0.3 for a while now and while i love the current patch overall, i have some problems with minion builds.

Minions themselves are in a good spot right now imho, but i have issues with the playstyle.

Since every single debuff is based on damage i cant do anything meaningful myself.

I cant shock, chill, impale, crit weakness (removed from eye of winter), break armour.

The only impactful thing you can do is 1 curse. And then you just watch your minions.
If i wanted to just watch and dont play myself i would play an auto battler.

Give me a keystone, unique or something so minion damage lets me actually apply those debuffs, dont know if that is even possible without letting it buff my own damage.

I want to cast something and not just walk.

There are certain uniques that can allow you to buff your damage according to your spirit.

Other support gems abilities cause freeze buildup on chaos damage. Blackflame covenant is pretty cool too.

Yeah but buildup based on different damage types doesnt work, it still needs you to do damage.

For example you cant even shock a white mob using Ball Lightning which has 700% more shock chance.

In lategame i can stand there and spam that skill for a minute without doing enough damage to overcome the ailment threshold of bosses.

Unfortunately minion builds are in a bad spot because GGG actively and openly despise the play style.

They do not like the passive "minion do everything while you watch" and is one of the reasons they avoided adding a true Necromancer Ascendency.
But at the same time they can't even seem to figure out how to make these builds work in an active and engaging way.

I find it ironic that minion builds have become exactly what GGG didn't want....rough quote: "We don't want people that play minions to be forced in the same exact play style"....this was when asked why no necro.
Well, if you want to play minions now you have to use roughly the same passives, same minion types, same supports and same items or it won't be fun or efficient. Well played GGG.

i am trying to get demon form mix with minion build which mix of spell firepower with minions (frost mage for slow and freeze, storm mage for damage debuff, infernal hound for loyalty and tank). the biggest issues for minions i found and experience is that it is hard to do synergy. e.g. plus damage on spell cannot be apply to plus damage on minions. increase minions attack cannot be apply to your character attack.

i got to t5 mapping atm, and my experience everything until T1 map seem easy i can destroy almost anything. but i start getting into scaling issues for late game.

there are some synergy still can be done and it help me all the way to T1

Important Keystone:
Empowering Remains: any minion die get you damage buff, include short live one like unearth or raging spirit

Blackflame Covenant: I like ember fusilade. you may want to change it to something else. I focus on fire damage as it help with Contagion synergy which Unearth minion get benefit from it

Gigantic Following: I think unearth and raging spirit also get benefit from it

Then I kinda focus on spell and chaos damage.

For feedback:

Ideal improvement i wish to allow damage style minion build is to allow more Synergy between minion passive to players and minions.

e.g. Keystone passive node: Apply 50% of your gear/passive bonus to your minions or opposite way.

another thing is gear stuff also apply both: e.g. plus spell skill level also apply to minion. maybe something like plus skill level. give a trade off that such gear modifier maybe cap at +3 or +4 instead of dedicated one like +5 for fire skill.

we still need to cast offering, command, curse and unearth for damage boost tho

if you feel like you aren't doing anything then maybe its because you have built your character that way

but you do have a point - currently theres no summoner/spellcaster hybrid, but I have no idea how would it work? what role does minions play in a hybrid build?

the closest I have seen was the burst bone golem build in early build of last epoch, where player sacrifice a portion of a minion's life to cast a minion-targeting spell which deals insane damage around said minion. this way it scale from both minion life and spell damage.

My biggest gripe is that I can't do my favourite playstile after t10 maps.
I'd love to be a hybrid build, a spell caster that also has minions, but the scaling just isn't there AT ALL. The synegie definietly is, spells like bonestorm really want you to have minions to extract the impales and there are a few minion + spell damage nodes on the passive tree nowadays, but minions still require to much of an investment to ever make bringing them worth it.

I don't even want them to do damage, but just speccing into spirit and the tiniest amount of survivability is already to much investment to have functional damage, especially since endgame maps just force me to use a critical damage set-up or hit like a wet noodle otherwise.

Also there is not a single minion command skill that has a supportive role. I really enjoyed a combo of using "minion pact" + "minion instability" to blow up skeleton warriors and use storm mage skeletons command skill to apply shock, but that's pretty much all you can do. And storm mages can extract impale so I didn't even really want to bring them .-.