Feedback on the State of Minions in POE2 (Itemisation, Crafting, Performance and "feel")

Sceptres being "the minion weapon" is fine, honestly. They should juice the army, not turn the summoner into a discount caster with a fancy stick. If sceptres start giving the master a bunch of personal offensive stats, then we're just one balance patch away from "why even have minions".

I do agree on the jewel socket thing though. It's genuinely funny that the tree happily walks left toward Lord of Horrors like it's the promised land... and then there's no nearby socket. Every minion build ends up in that neighborhood, but the socket situation is like "good luck, enjoy the hike".

What I want way more than another band-aid is better command behavior. Give us an "attack move" command. You click a spot, minions path there, and they automatically attack anything they see on the way, then keep going. That one change would make doorways and narrow corridors way less of a "please file into the meat grinder one at a time" situation. I'd actually be commanding an army instead of politely escorting it.

Movement speed is still a real issue because players zip around like they're late for a flight and minions waddle behind like they stopped to read every lore note. I'd love it if player movement speed also affected your own summoned minions as a presence/auralike effect. Not all allies. Just the stuff I personally spawned. The fantasy is "my army keeps up with me", not "my whole party gets a free Uber".

AI aggression, yes. 100%. But I strongly disagree with the "compensation" idea that monsters should auto-focus the summoner just because minions exist. That's backwards. Monsters should aggro whoever is actually being aggressive to them. If my frontliners are chewing on their ankles, they should respond to that. If I personally start throwing support spells or doing something that meaningfully draws attention, then sure, I can take aggro. That gives summoners real control - I can build dedicated tanks, keep backline DPS safer, and choose when I risk myself to support.

Presence range feels mostly OK, but I wouldn't complain if it was a bit wider, especially with melee minions that decide to go sightseeing. That said, I'm biased because I'm running Storm Mages as my main damage, so my "frontline" is basically there to hold aggro and not fall over. I'm not trying to turn my tanks into my DPS - I just want the whole squad to behave like they're on the same team.

Minion's cost is way to punishing for non-spirit builds.