do0mtrain

State of minions in PoE 2 is 3.15/3.19 PTSD inducing... All we can do as players is provide feedback and hopefully changes will follow. Below is my "rant of frustration": Skeleton minions have such low health even at gem LvL 30+ that non juiced up t15 map bosses wipes your entire army in any of their AoE abilities. Once your minions are back alive they can very much be in radius of the next big AoE attack resulting in your entire dmg output being wiped out the same second it came back. I've had this happen multiple times and it's beyond frustrating. There are plenty of issues such as spectre wisp-form-bug, storm mages not dealing dmg when attacking from maximum range (bug present since EA launch) to name a couple. But, the biggest issue for me is that it reminds me so much of 3.15 and 3.19 both of which I stated how the health changes would severly hurt casual players and frustrate blasters. I said the very same thing reading the 0.2 PN. Low and behold; skeleton minions are falling over against generic non damage modded end-game content. Hell, most useable spectres have literally twice the HP, though, they suffer from the same situation when facing damage modded end-game bosses. Loosing control over your character in an ARPG is the worst feeling a player can experience. For the minion archetype: loosing all your minions on a consistent basis no matter how much gear or investment you put in is the exact same feeling. As much as I love the upcoming minion revive timer change, it will not solve this problem. This is a balance issue. And before people comment saying "just invest more in more minion defenses" I will point out that I have my army either res capped or close to, with all but 1 minion life related node for them. You also have to factor in that this is a lot of investment that's being taken away from offensive scaling and personal defenses. It's also important to point out that boss fight damage seems to be on a pretty good standing. All whilst general efficiency of clearing is held back by severe issues on minion movement speed, general aggressiveness, and AI not being very effective with hallways, doors or tight corridors (specially corners). This is exactly the same state we had in 0.1 if you exclude the health issues. Just like then, comparing minion builds to the meta make the builds feel horrendous and comparing it to the off-meta builds it is only competitive on single-target boss fights (-health problems) as clear-efficiency is more frustrating than enjoyable. Watching other builds be able to move to a pack of enemies, kill them, then move on looks fun! For a minion player we move up to a pack of enemies; then work our asses of to get our minions in range, or even care to agro the enemies in the first place before our damage can be applied. (Assuming they are still alive) Multiple CC's have abandoned the minion archetype as a direct result of these issues and/or balance changes. My only question is: have you? I'm currently at the airport flying home from China, I'll be live again when I get back home to continue exploring the state of minions and optimizing what we've found so far including more spectre testing which I'm very fond of doing. I have no intentions on stopping, instead, I will play-test and provide feedback as we go :)