No phasing, it should be that for friendly targets minions would have no hitbox and for enemies viceversa... if minions have phasing, then they would not body tanking and mobs just run through them to you. and if they make them just teleport if you run out, like they did in ultimatum elevators, then you don't need convocation. easy fixes, they already have all the tools
Minions and other players SHOULD NOT have collision. Having to roll past my wife's sorc because we both don't fit in the door is also annoying as hell.
@@toukoenriaze9870 Spamming the button still get them stuck on the doors and it just leads to them either kill the room slowly by only have one or two attack or your minions get nuked and you have to back up by three screen.
This specifically is why I dropped my minion character and RR'd. It was workable in the campaign but once I got to maps and specifically the tower maps I'd had enough of the doorway glitch.
the fact that u have to weapons wap just to make sure ur minions where ther supposed to be is ridiculous. also when u ping them once they should instantly follow you and not fall behind. its really annoying to keep holding keybind to make sure minions not blocking everything
Honestly I put in 300 hrs you would think I’m on tier 15 maps. I’m not even close. I’m stuck on it cause I’m choosing to find my own build, which is impossible currently 😂 an I gotta quit this game … it literally is impossible to play high tier maps without following a build guide…you know how shitty it feels when you play so many hours just to find out it don’t matter what you do bro your not progressing without RUclips an it really makes me sick to my stomach because this game reallly can be amazing but right now it literally poe1 you can’t play the game for yourself no u needa look up a ridiculous build that’s fucking broken that everybody’susing.i really hope ggg actually makes this game good … (there’s endless options for builds , but only one choice)that po2 at the moment just an illusion of build options, man i so upset i put so many hours in an it really makes my skin crawl knowing that i can’t go any further into Maps because I’m literally gate keep by not knowing how to make a broken build I don’t wanna go on RUclips and find a broken build build either 😢 I so fucking done with this trash ass game
I very much do the utility of being able to instantly call minions to you /reposition them is something I grew accustomed too. That said they need to fix the pathing etc too. I found minions very responsive in POE 1 would like it to be how it was before.
The one problem with minion movement is that if two minions both want to go through the same doorway, they _both_ stop because they are blocking each other. This would be almost _trivial_ to fix with a arbitrary priority system where minion A would just push minion B aside and keep moving. The bigger problem with minions is that they have a tiny aggro range, even worse than POE1. And once they do aggro on a target, they will tunnel vision on it, even if they can't attack it, or another target comes closer, also unlike POE1 minions. It's like the whole minion AI was designed with the assumption that you would be 'casting' Direct Minions like it was a damage spell, clicking on every white mob to clear a map, to bring the gameplay experience of minions into parity with other builds, rather than allowing them to have a 'low APM' playstyle. While there are plenty of defensive advantages to a minion build, it's absurd how much 'friction' there is to making them do anything besides standing still and attacking one thing.
I mean yeah, if you haven't picked up on the fact that they don't want there to be low APM builds at this point then I don't know what to tell you. Every single thing they've said about this game has had that on the front label pretty clearly
@@LumpyCrumpets Oh I'm well aware. I just expected it to be things like 'Casting curses manually rather than the 'convenience' of Curse on Hit' not 'Minions stumble around like they are Starcraft 1 Dragoons' as the other commenter put it.
2:38 That is also another thing many seem to be missing. The direc/command button is so shit - once you command them to a point they walk there and then they do nothing for a few seconds before starting to attack.
Legit stopped playing minions for this EXACT reason. They fixed the dodge roll by changing character size. 99% sure they could do the same for minions...
I'm glad you made this video Sub. I'm also a slow, old man and I had high hopes for minions in PoE 2. Seems to me GGG has done nothing to improve the back end there. Disappointed, thanks for speaking my thoughts exactly. Happy New Year!
My first char was infernalist minions. Got to lvl 92 after like hundred or so hours, then realised, fuck I hate minions getting stuck in doorways and having to micromanage them all the time in narrow corridor high tier maps like augery, seepage, crypt, etc and lost towers. Rerolled a spark sorc and life was sooo much better (now lvl 94).
Pretty much every minion in the game needs a ~25% reduction in collision size or more. In one interview a while back, one of the team--I think Jonathan--said something like "at a certain point you have to decide if you want something to look really good, but sometimes feel bad OR have something feel really good, but sometimes look a bit janky. We're happy with things occasionally looking a bit janky if that's the only way for things to feel good to play." It was in regards to attack speed VS gap closing VS moving while attacking, etc. If minions happen to clip with each other, terrain, or enemies a little bit, most players probably wouldn't even notice. There are several places I've caught the Infernal Hound stuck in a pathway that its model was not actually colliding with, but its collision radius was. It was clogging the door and preventing my other minions from moving through. If the hound's collision shape closely matched its dimensions (its 'width', it's longer than it is wide), it should have fit through the door no problem. Just reducing minions' collision size would go a huge way to eliminating these pain points. It still wouldn't fix the AI or other issues, though. In the early game, I felt like bosses' cooldowns perfectly matched the ~8 second timer it takes for minions to respawn to the point where the vast majority of my minions would die in less than a second of reviving. Especially if you're trying to use Warriors. I had Warriors with Meat Shield and even if I stood in melee with the boss (which is not a great idea), opposite of my minions, they would still get killed by attacks that go all the way around the boss. It was pretty much impossible for multiple minions to get more than two attacks off before dying. Occasionally one would survive longer, but that's often a bad thing because it'll reset the respawn timer when it DOES die.
I was playing DD with just 6-7 minions total and brutes get jammed on every...frickin...doorway. Build was very strong at bossing (had some juicy 2 taps against t16 +4 map bosses) and servicable at clearing but oh my god the doors man. The doors! Especially since it feels like 2/3 of the maps are nothing but hallways and doorways. Anyway, leveling a deadeye now because GGG loves bow builds or something.
This is definitely some bugs that need fixing but my problem with minions is that all minion builds revolve around having all of a single kind of minion. They have an army of skeletons to choose from, and the fact that it is inefficient to create a mixed party of minions bugs me. I'd love to have tank warriors with dps backline and priests to heal and keep things moving but it is just super weak compared to just rolling all of one kind of minion.
Thats basicly just like saying sorc should be able to use fire/lightning/cold together and not fixed on one element I mean you can use it, just not gonna be effective, gotta cast all those curse
this is a dumb take, as person above said, it's like asking any other class to be able to use all their abilities too. Builds rotate around 1 skill that they work around. Makes logical sense that summoners must then pick 1 summon they build around.
I like what you say at 1:10 because most of the game feels like that to me. Why is warrior so weak, why is rarity in the game, why are minions so buggy. We have had this problems in POE 1 and have fixed them over the years and somehow in POE 2 we are regressing.
I do think the improvements in PoE1 didn't stick to PoE2, because they split development and all the learnings since ~2021didn't carry over anymore. This will be fixed 100%
@@omegasybers1110 I can see that happening. But they should have stopped and said "Before we hit that EA button, we need to catch up on QoL to at least last years PoE 1 so we don't embarrass ourselves."
@@Sorain1 The numbers speak a clear language. They didn't embarrass themselves and a bunch of people didn't even hit the really problematic point of 100-150 hours into endgame just yet
these are ranged minions also, for none minion players imagine melee minions. They will get stuck in a corridor just the same amount, except only 1 will be attacking. 1/13 of ur damage is going out. about 60% of the maps have a simple 50% reduced damage done for minions players. at this point im hoping spectres are super strong but super costly. that way i can only have 4
I was excited to try playing on controller when I saw the 0 button reavers build. I wanted to pivot from spamming SRS flame wall/skeletal arsonists sacrifice for aoe clear to tons of reavers with pain/bone offering totems. Sometimes it will cast the spell taking the mana but not properly target a minion which gives you no offering. This is really bad if using ablation which makes it additionally cost -15% life, it will take the life without creating the totem multiple times. This is also bad if using Expanse which adds a cooldown, it will put it on CD without creating the offering. XD
My problem and the reason why I ditched my infernalist : point minion to go through the door into the room, I stand right outside just behind the wall; they walk in, do nothing and walk out… guys I cant 😂
Behold, the Anti-Cheese! It's a long standing 'fix' to specific LoS abuse to have minions unable to attack anything that the player can't draw line of effect to from where they are at the moment it's checked. Forcing you to not hide behind a wall or pillar if you want damage from your minions.
Yep, I have a end game minion build and have this issue all the time. Slows the game down as you have to go forward and backward to get them thru narrow gaps.
The biggest issue I have that really dectracts from playing minions even though they're strong, is how quickly they just despawn and you have to wait for them to respawn. It's great I've got 30%+ move speed bonus, but if I try and run through a map my minions usually just get distracted and then disappear and then I hit a rare mob and have to wait a few seconds for my minions to respawn. Happens multiple times every map, even when I am intentionally trying to clear more slowly so as to minimize losing my minions as much as possible. Just feels bad.
Don't forget, if you decide to weapon swap to handhold your minions into a room you risk crashing your game and not only a crash, but one that will make you lose the map and anything you picked up.
And since most summoners who rely on incendiary skulls do not have the goods to build items close to that item, they do not even have the survivability factor. This is because from level 78 and above, that only you can have a scepter with a summon level of +5 and become a dignified dealer, but before that, it is difficult to survive even with a level 5 path stone. You can't even try the Vein event. And even if you meet that level, the scepter alone will sell for as little as 40 Exalted Orbs. Basically, a summoner has virtually no way to overcome a difficult situation. And most sellers know this, so they sell them at even more vicious prices. If you take care of the insufficient resistance and energy shield, you will have some survivability, but the problem is that the amount of damage is still ridiculously limited. But GGG nerfs it anyway just because people play it a lot in the act.
I feel you on this. I was a pretty big minion fan in poe 1 and everyone was saying how op arsonists were so I decided to give it a try. Very quickly by like level 40 I realized I fucking hate minions in poe 2. Swapped her over to a demon form character and I'm actually loving it. Demon form has a bunch of jank but I've done all content on it. +4 breach boss, t16s, etc.
Demon form is legit the poster child of what PoE 2 *can* be and why it separated out from Poe 1. A new style of scaling we haven't quite seen like that from Poe 1, where you lower one resource for maximum potential.
@nextgen3ric it's been pretty awesome. People haven't caught on to life regen and no life on the item is a sellable good item so sourcing some of my gear has been a bit painful and overpaying for meh items but she's fun. Just got her setup with 10k es, ele weak cap, chaos res cap, and 117 rarity today.
Here's a solution and I posted this in reddit a few days ago. The Numpad trick works! Step1: Bind the direct minion command to Num1 Step2: Enter map and make sure that NUMLOCK is ON. Press and hold NUM1 and while holding it down, press NUMLOCK to turn it off, you can now release NUM1. (you need to do this everytime you enter a new map) Step3: This auto spams direct minions. Now your minions go where your mouse pointer is. Point and Kill. (btw, did you know they can open doors and chest too?) Note how i said point and kill? their attack AI will stop if you ask them to move to an empty space. if you're using direct minion, you need to point your mouse to who you want them to kill. Here's another tip for you to clearly see mobs to target - go to OPTIONS > INTERFACE > Show mini life bar above NPC (enemy)
This is a reflection of collisions and restrictions in maps in the game overall. My wife and I like to play together. Many of the maps are very narrow. Our characters frequently collide with each other just navigating the narrow maps. I use my evade more often navigating than I do in combat. When you add in an NPC AI, like Sekhema @ The Dreadnought and the narrow bridges between cars, it's infuriating watching your Sorc not be able to move forward or evade and die.
Minion builds do exacerbate the issue but it is one fundamental to the whole game. My monk's bell body block me, enemies body block themselves, in some scuffles, I get shoved around a lot and the network doesn't seem to be either able to keep up or to show me where I actually am. If at least the momentum of it felt nice, but not really, it feels like vectors pushing one another rather than actually being shoved. I think the ideal fix is a very tough one seeing how it permeates to so many aspect of the game and how it may be baked in the engine in such a way that redesigning it is a challenge. I am curious to see how they approach it, currently it leads to frustration, sometimes it just breaks the immersion when I see 12 mobs standing there like clowns, immobile because two of them are blocking a tight corridor or bridge. Given the amount of work that they already have with more pressing issue, I can't say this is likely to be fixed ''soon''. Thanks for sharing, cheers!
My solutions Equip 2 weapon sets and select zero minions for it. Before the narrow passage, take the second weapon in your hands, go through the narrow passage, and when a pack of mobs appears, select weapon set 1, where all our minions are (they will spawn all at once) 92 lvl infernalist full asscendancy
Sometimes I'm grateful that I suck since I'm nowhere near anything End Game, but sometimes I'm jealous of all these fireworks people fill the screen with within 4 days of creating a new character. This game pulled me into arpg's so, I am SO new. I'm stuck in Act 2 & just started to mess with 2 other builds. Handling different vehicles seems like where most of my fun with this will come from.
A timer that resets every time another minion dies! The number of times I royally screwed myself because I barely failed to Walmart-convocate my minions too far out of range was a factor in my reroll.
I think the most annoying thing about this is the inconsistency. If SRS despawning from time out isn't them dying, Skellies despawning from getting too far away shouldn't trigger respawn timer.
I think if they gave us a UI like we had in TotA for creating custom formations, on top of allowing the minions phasing with other minions (why can we walk through them but they can't walk through each other?) that would immediately put minions in god-tier spot.
For sure at least the revive counter shouldn't trigger if the dummy minions despawn because of getting stuck and getting out of range. We need convocation badly, maybe as a spirit reservation like blink.
I felt super bored out of my mind using minions in the early game. it was so bad, I deleted my ssf hc witch. she had just cleared Lachlann, and I didn’t want to continue that build nor playstyle, so I dumped her gear/skill gems into the stash. it probably gets better, but only after the hundred of hours I spent taking my casual time on my standard
minions died in an instahit against bosses, or never low health at all against small packs, so arsonist was inconsistent. Unearth existed, but is so clunky aiming for multiple corpses in a group. They also get stuck in narrow tiny hallways. Really annoying
Happy new year! Ps. The solution is easy! We just boycot all which have narrow passages 😆 I found that just keep running is the easiest way to deal with it. Just let them hang back and clear mobs, then despawn so that they spawn back near the next packs. It feels awful, and having to skip so many map types also feels bad. Hopefully they'll fix it soon.
Main the witch as a reaver build, was really fun but cause of all the issues, the damage isn’t the problem, just the AI. Went to pathfinder ranger in the mean time.
minions were and still are super strong but the Ai is why i was really annoyed that they were slightly nerfing them, it wouldn't be a problem if the numbers matched up to how it actually plays out.
People who say convocation would solve this actually worry me a great deal. That would be a bandaid fix at best. Problems with minions go way way deeper and is a huge design flaw issue
Yet another instance of "How the fuck did POE2 make this same mistake as POE1?" Body blocking is already dumb, but no Convocation or range teleporting is beyond baffling. I gave up on EA within the second week because there is just too many examples the game wasn't ready. I have no problem with the lack of content I have massive problems with all the bizarre design decisions and not learning lessons from the original game.
You should look at the community forums and all the people experiencing crashes on loading screens, myself included. The endgame is completely bricked for me because it crashes almost every time I use a rare stone on a map. Then there's the people getting hard crashes where it reboots the PC, this happened to me once. This can seriously damage people's computers
@@mikeb1596 It won't damage your computer. Most likely your pagefile is experience the corruption bug with the latest windows update and a simple regedit fixes it. It's related to NVME drives. If event viewer shows Disk errors leading up to the crash then it is most likely that bug.
The PoE2 team has been doing it's own thing in the background for about 2/3rds of PoE1 lifetime since release. (First showing 5 years ago and that must've been many years of development) Jonathan revealed in an interview years ago he had no idea what was going on in PoE1. They probably branched off back in Essence league days. It honestly just feels like they took most of the resources of the company for PoE2 and gave the middle finger to the fanbase that funded it. PoE1 leagues has had to make do with hand-me-down assets from PoE2 development.
@@vogue43 It was definitely not that early. That's even before POE2 was announced at Exilecon. POE2 was originally supposed to just be a second campaign, the decision wasn't made at least publicly until late 2023 and was likely only made just before that. Which also tracks because Sanctum and Ultimatum were both probably designed for POE2 and backported. Either way it does not excuse ignoring problems being solved by the main team and ignoring fixes like auto-convocating minions that were made before POE2 was even announced.
funny enough, if you'll bind them to only one set of weapons, put the same amount of spirit on the second one with simple double weapon swap you could mimic convocation skill from poe1
My solution to this is a wall of Unearth minions w/ Infernal Legion + Instability. Keeps the heat off of me and my skelemans while they figure out how doors work
I love it. I hope this never gets "fixed" this is exactly how I imagine those hordes of skeletons working in the tight spaces. Class fantasy delivered. Huge W 😂
Zombies also act strange, you can summon zombies but sometimes they just stand around till you attack, in PoE1 if you summon zombies they just start auto running around towards targets. I'm just going to assume they are still a "work in progress" with the pathing for them.
I find s solution to this on my Infernalist. I got myself down to 200 or less HP, grabbed s bunch of regen. Went demon form and started throwing massive amounts of fireballs. Worked great 10/10.
“Early access” implies a modicum of polish towards a finished product. What GGG gave us as “early access” and 30$, is a beta for proof of concept with little to NO (console) polish.
i do see your point and it needs fixing but while we wait for a fix using srs with minion instabillity and cast on minion death DD makes it 100 times better. minions left behin in a door or something, well summon some srs wth firestorm and they kill 1 mob then DD will start a chain reaction and delete the room. no need for any other minions for clearing.
Lol, got the same problem with just 5 skellies and devil dog. I make sure to run behind them when shtf 😋 Doesn't always work out when baddies come from all directions
are you guys having difficulty with the offerings? i have to click it many times, during many seconds, until it finally activate... is there a way to just press it and make it work?
It's annoying as heck, for sure. But there's an EASY fix, for now (not my invention, just sharing the knowledge): - create a #2 weapon/shield set - in skills (default key: g) you can assign which minions to which weapon set (I or II) - assign 0 minions to your 'off' weapon set - use your weapon set switch key to turn off minions at any narrow point, then switch to primary weapon set on other side to re-summon minions Makes it bearable, until they are fixed! ps: you could also take the opportunity to use blink with the off-set, too, since you aren't using spirit for summons.
all you have to do is cast a spell on a monster and they will target that monster. lvl 91 explode summoner minions are OP. some door issues i agree with range casters. all boss maps are wide open. use SRS if shit gets stuck.
Same goes for dd, I was so happy, I made my own approach for the chaos based but fek me getting stuck at every narrow passage and door when you doing deli is just making it impossible to play as you have timer and you need to wait for the respawn.But however was testing he game before and thought it was acceptable by any standard should be hanged.
the direct minion key actually doesnt stop them from attacking pretty sure ... its just the command you gave them is "come here" not "target and attack this enemy" and thats why they dont attack ... if you actually targt a mob and press the button they will start attacking as soon as they get there BUT 100% ITS CLUNKY AS HECK BEING FORCED TO RELY ON IT INSTEAD OF IT BEING EXTRA
i absolutly dont get this collision shit! why is this in the game? for what purpose? we had this problem in poe 1 heist league where players were blocking the harbor! i get blocked from my own minions. i get blocked from my friends minions. i get blocked from my own friends. i get blocked from enemies that didnt even spawnd yet! there are so many backward mechanics in the game!
Imo as a minion enjoyer and constant player of minions, the issue was never solved in Path of Exile 1. They just gave you convocation, which in a way gave you agency over your minions lack of AI. The unintended consequence of that band aid solution, was that you could drop hoards of mobs on bosses. Now the problem with PoE 2 is it's more boss focused, or a key component of gameplay and they don't want you trivializing the bosses by dropping hoards of mobs onto the bosses, but here's the thing! - They never solved the AI problem, they just took away the gem that was the band aid solution. So we are right back where we started. The problem, lmao.. smh.
Im gonna rr a flamethrower build once i make another div or 2 on my deadeye , i didnt like minions because how they didnt attack/ or theyd run off and target a trash mob instead of the blue/yellow
Yep totally agree im just finishing up act 2 at lv 24 and got like 13 or 14 minions and was doing so good! got kill last night for the first time on trash because my minions decided to go on a lunch break. Pissed me off so much.
This is a minion issue but the larger problem is that this game is inundated with corridors and doorways instead of the more balanced map tiles of poe1 where you could actually get open layouts
Reason I gave up on minions as I cannot even clear the campaign with them I found them very annoying as they are just walking and attacking wherever they want rather then where I want and I always run around trying to lose enemies as my minions are on a break :D but yes hope they fix this soon.
I honestly don't know how to use the 'direct minion' on console. no idea. The AI, it's doable. I would prefer, if you have the puppy, that It stays closer to you to aggro mobs and not trailing too far behind you. The collision I would say is the same problem as the player that was fixed a while back. GGG has stated that you are supposed to be cornered and trapped if you get surrounded by too many mobs. That has been fixed. And that is what needs to be fixed about the minions so that two can fit through a narrow passage with no problems and/or fix the AI so that they travel zig/zag pattern through a door and narrow passage.
completely agree with you, the arsonistns are that good at the moment because they have high range and they do attack even if they are piled at a door. without convocation, I will not touch minions anymore and I beat everything in the game and reached lvl 93 a few weeks ago with minions, their AI is just soo bad.
Helm Breaker's Frost Mage Infernlalist on Maxroll: ruclips.net/video/qZARf61TVas/видео.html
Step 1: Give minions phasing (with other allies)
Step 2: Make it so minions blink to you when u get too far
Step 3: add convocation
Step 2 made minion builds only viable in D2 with teleport or enigma. We are in 2025 god dammit 😅
No phasing, it should be that for friendly targets minions would have no hitbox and for enemies viceversa... if minions have phasing, then they would not body tanking and mobs just run through them to you. and if they make them just teleport if you run out, like they did in ultimatum elevators, then you don't need convocation. easy fixes, they already have all the tools
I don't know why convocation isn't already in the game.
@@TCBabcockIt is, need to weapon swap and they spawn on top of you again
step 4: Give them glasses, so they can see the enemy that they should be attacking a few meters away from them...
Minions and other players SHOULD NOT have collision. Having to roll past my wife's sorc because we both don't fit in the door is also annoying as hell.
Have you considered controlling what you and your minions eat?
Warrior shouldn't have collision, bro is getting blocked by a little skeleton
@@Peanutfiendsblog you can phase through your minions but your minions can't phase through other minions
I disagree, I think collision is fine, what is not fine is that they get stuck way too easily.
Idk what they were thinking! Playing with two friends is utter ass, keep randomly getting blocked and my attacks stop
My favorite part is how they vanish when stuck in any chokepoint and then take 6 seconds to come back.
My favourite part was turning the game off. I felt dumb standing there watching my minions act dumb
The inevitable grim feast nerf is gunna hurt, considering you have to yeet yourself in rooms to get your minions through doorways
you need to spam the minion targeting button and that usually fixes it but its not fun
I would prefer they nerf base ES, as the gameplay of picking stuff in the ground is interactive and should be rewarded.
@@thiganplays then why the heck would you nerf the stuff your picking off the ground
I think the nerf will probably only be increased spirit to use grim feast
@@toukoenriaze9870 Spamming the button still get them stuck on the doors and it just leads to them either kill the room slowly by only have one or two attack or your minions get nuked and you have to back up by three screen.
This specifically is why I dropped my minion character and RR'd. It was workable in the campaign but once I got to maps and specifically the tower maps I'd had enough of the doorway glitch.
Yeah this. same. Bounced the moment I did a map and all my minions got stuck behind my fire dog in a doorway - nope.
yup same lol
Ah yes the immortal enemy of minions....A DOOR!!!!! 😢😢
The door isn't even there to stop them 😂
the fact that u have to weapons wap just to make sure ur minions where ther supposed to be is ridiculous.
also when u ping them once they should instantly follow you and not fall behind. its really annoying to keep holding keybind to make sure minions not blocking everything
Imagine going backward from your original 14 year old minion AI.
@@MikeyJ28 The old minion AI wasn't build with minion collision in mind and is most likely the same exact AI
@@omegasybers1110when you speak everyone gets dumber
Honestly I put in 300 hrs you would think I’m on tier 15 maps. I’m not even close. I’m stuck on it cause I’m choosing to find my own build, which is impossible currently 😂 an I gotta quit this game … it literally is impossible to play high tier maps without following a build guide…you know how shitty it feels when you play so many hours just to find out it don’t matter what you do bro your not progressing without RUclips an it really makes me sick to my stomach because this game reallly can be amazing but right now it literally poe1 you can’t play the game for yourself no u needa look up a ridiculous build that’s fucking broken that everybody’susing.i really hope ggg actually makes this game good … (there’s endless options for builds , but only one choice)that po2 at the moment just an illusion of build options, man i
so upset i put so many hours in an it really makes my skin crawl knowing that i can’t go any further into Maps because I’m literally gate keep by not knowing how to make a broken build I don’t wanna go on RUclips and find a broken build build either 😢 I so fucking done with this trash ass game
I don't even want Convocation, thats just another button to press. Just fix their pathing considering a lot of maps are narrow corridors.
I very much do the utility of being able to instantly call minions to you /reposition them is something I grew accustomed too. That said they need to fix the pathing etc too. I found minions very responsive in POE 1 would like it to be how it was before.
The one problem with minion movement is that if two minions both want to go through the same doorway, they _both_ stop because they are blocking each other. This would be almost _trivial_ to fix with a arbitrary priority system where minion A would just push minion B aside and keep moving.
The bigger problem with minions is that they have a tiny aggro range, even worse than POE1. And once they do aggro on a target, they will tunnel vision on it, even if they can't attack it, or another target comes closer, also unlike POE1 minions. It's like the whole minion AI was designed with the assumption that you would be 'casting' Direct Minions like it was a damage spell, clicking on every white mob to clear a map, to bring the gameplay experience of minions into parity with other builds, rather than allowing them to have a 'low APM' playstyle.
While there are plenty of defensive advantages to a minion build, it's absurd how much 'friction' there is to making them do anything besides standing still and attacking one thing.
Minions have the same pathing as Starcraft 1 units
I mean yeah, if you haven't picked up on the fact that they don't want there to be low APM builds at this point then I don't know what to tell you. Every single thing they've said about this game has had that on the front label pretty clearly
@@LumpyCrumpets Oh I'm well aware. I just expected it to be things like 'Casting curses manually rather than the 'convenience' of Curse on Hit' not 'Minions stumble around like they are Starcraft 1 Dragoons' as the other commenter put it.
2:38 That is also another thing many seem to be missing. The direc/command button is so shit - once you command them to a point they walk there and then they do nothing for a few seconds before starting to attack.
Trueee, when i direct them to a rare they go to the point and stand there for 2 seconds doing nothing before aggroing to something.
Legit stopped playing minions for this EXACT reason. They fixed the dodge roll by changing character size. 99% sure they could do the same for minions...
I'm glad you made this video Sub. I'm also a slow, old man and I had high hopes for minions in PoE 2. Seems to me GGG has done nothing to improve the back end there. Disappointed, thanks for speaking my thoughts exactly. Happy New Year!
Happy new year! Thank you!
My first char was infernalist minions. Got to lvl 92 after like hundred or so hours, then realised, fuck I hate minions getting stuck in doorways and having to micromanage them all the time in narrow corridor high tier maps like augery, seepage, crypt, etc and lost towers. Rerolled a spark sorc and life was sooo much better (now lvl 94).
Roll a 1 button monk, kill entire screens with 1 skill and nothing to worry about.
Pretty much every minion in the game needs a ~25% reduction in collision size or more. In one interview a while back, one of the team--I think Jonathan--said something like "at a certain point you have to decide if you want something to look really good, but sometimes feel bad OR have something feel really good, but sometimes look a bit janky. We're happy with things occasionally looking a bit janky if that's the only way for things to feel good to play." It was in regards to attack speed VS gap closing VS moving while attacking, etc. If minions happen to clip with each other, terrain, or enemies a little bit, most players probably wouldn't even notice.
There are several places I've caught the Infernal Hound stuck in a pathway that its model was not actually colliding with, but its collision radius was. It was clogging the door and preventing my other minions from moving through. If the hound's collision shape closely matched its dimensions (its 'width', it's longer than it is wide), it should have fit through the door no problem. Just reducing minions' collision size would go a huge way to eliminating these pain points.
It still wouldn't fix the AI or other issues, though. In the early game, I felt like bosses' cooldowns perfectly matched the ~8 second timer it takes for minions to respawn to the point where the vast majority of my minions would die in less than a second of reviving. Especially if you're trying to use Warriors. I had Warriors with Meat Shield and even if I stood in melee with the boss (which is not a great idea), opposite of my minions, they would still get killed by attacks that go all the way around the boss. It was pretty much impossible for multiple minions to get more than two attacks off before dying. Occasionally one would survive longer, but that's often a bad thing because it'll reset the respawn timer when it DOES die.
I was playing DD with just 6-7 minions total and brutes get jammed on every...frickin...doorway. Build was very strong at bossing (had some juicy 2 taps against t16 +4 map bosses) and servicable at clearing but oh my god the doors man. The doors! Especially since it feels like 2/3 of the maps are nothing but hallways and doorways. Anyway, leveling a deadeye now because GGG loves bow builds or something.
This is definitely some bugs that need fixing but my problem with minions is that all minion builds revolve around having all of a single kind of minion. They have an army of skeletons to choose from, and the fact that it is inefficient to create a mixed party of minions bugs me. I'd love to have tank warriors with dps backline and priests to heal and keep things moving but it is just super weak compared to just rolling all of one kind of minion.
Thats basicly just like saying sorc should be able to use fire/lightning/cold together and not fixed on one element
I mean you can use it, just not gonna be effective, gotta cast all those curse
this is a dumb take, as person above said, it's like asking any other class to be able to use all their abilities too. Builds rotate around 1 skill that they work around. Makes logical sense that summoners must then pick 1 summon they build around.
I have played minions for years in PoE1 and almost all other ARPGs, but after getting to maps with one as my first character, I am waiting hopefully.
I like what you say at 1:10 because most of the game feels like that to me.
Why is warrior so weak, why is rarity in the game, why are minions so buggy.
We have had this problems in POE 1 and have fixed them over the years and somehow in POE 2 we are regressing.
I do think the improvements in PoE1 didn't stick to PoE2, because they split development and all the learnings since ~2021didn't carry over anymore. This will be fixed 100%
@@omegasybers1110 I can see that happening. But they should have stopped and said "Before we hit that EA button, we need to catch up on QoL to at least last years PoE 1 so we don't embarrass ourselves."
there have been multiple tests already done and rarity is not broken.
@@Sorain1 The numbers speak a clear language. They didn't embarrass themselves and a bunch of people didn't even hit the really problematic point of 100-150 hours into endgame just yet
@@rnailo rarity is broken af anyone saying otherwise is suffering huge copium induced stockholm syndrome
I use the raise shield on left click it works like direct minion without disabling their attacks.
I started minions and the body blocking was one of the several things I encountered in the game that made me ask "do they even play the game?"
This also shows the insane problem with map design
these are ranged minions also, for none minion players imagine melee minions. They will get stuck in a corridor just the same amount, except only 1 will be attacking. 1/13 of ur damage is going out. about 60% of the maps have a simple 50% reduced damage done for minions players. at this point im hoping spectres are super strong but super costly. that way i can only have 4
I was excited to try playing on controller when I saw the 0 button reavers build.
I wanted to pivot from spamming SRS flame wall/skeletal arsonists sacrifice for aoe clear to tons of reavers with pain/bone offering totems.
Sometimes it will cast the spell taking the mana but not properly target a minion which gives you no offering.
This is really bad if using ablation which makes it additionally cost -15% life, it will take the life without creating the totem multiple times.
This is also bad if using Expanse which adds a cooldown, it will put it on CD without creating the offering.
XD
My problem and the reason why I ditched my infernalist : point minion to go through the door into the room, I stand right outside just behind the wall; they walk in, do nothing and walk out… guys I cant 😂
Behold, the Anti-Cheese! It's a long standing 'fix' to specific LoS abuse to have minions unable to attack anything that the player can't draw line of effect to from where they are at the moment it's checked. Forcing you to not hide behind a wall or pillar if you want damage from your minions.
Yep, I have a end game minion build and have this issue all the time. Slows the game down as you have to go forward and backward to get them thru narrow gaps.
I feel like we just need a convocation ability that you automatically get when you have a minion
The biggest issue I have that really dectracts from playing minions even though they're strong, is how quickly they just despawn and you have to wait for them to respawn. It's great I've got 30%+ move speed bonus, but if I try and run through a map my minions usually just get distracted and then disappear and then I hit a rare mob and have to wait a few seconds for my minions to respawn. Happens multiple times every map, even when I am intentionally trying to clear more slowly so as to minimize losing my minions as much as possible. Just feels bad.
it's like trying to get wet sand through an hourglass...
Don't forget, if you decide to weapon swap to handhold your minions into a room you risk crashing your game and not only a crash, but one that will make you lose the map and anything you picked up.
No idea why half the maps are just 1 character wide corridors.
A lot of the mobs can't even squeeze through them one at a time.
And since most summoners who rely on incendiary skulls do not have the goods to build items close to that item, they do not even have the survivability factor. This is because from level 78 and above, that only you can have a scepter with a summon level of +5 and become a dignified dealer, but before that, it is difficult to survive even with a level 5 path stone. You can't even try the Vein event.
And even if you meet that level, the scepter alone will sell for as little as 40 Exalted Orbs. Basically, a summoner has virtually no way to overcome a difficult situation. And most sellers know this, so they sell them at even more vicious prices. If you take care of the insufficient resistance and energy shield, you will have some survivability, but the problem is that the amount of damage is still ridiculously limited. But GGG nerfs it anyway just because people play it a lot in the act.
I feel you on this. I was a pretty big minion fan in poe 1 and everyone was saying how op arsonists were so I decided to give it a try. Very quickly by like level 40 I realized I fucking hate minions in poe 2. Swapped her over to a demon form character and I'm actually loving it. Demon form has a bunch of jank but I've done all content on it. +4 breach boss, t16s, etc.
Demon form is legit the poster child of what PoE 2 *can* be and why it separated out from Poe 1. A new style of scaling we haven't quite seen like that from Poe 1, where you lower one resource for maximum potential.
@nextgen3ric it's been pretty awesome. People haven't caught on to life regen and no life on the item is a sellable good item so sourcing some of my gear has been a bit painful and overpaying for meh items but she's fun. Just got her setup with 10k es, ele weak cap, chaos res cap, and 117 rarity today.
Convocation would be a good bandaid fix for a lot of these pathing problems while they work on fixing the AI I think.
Here's a solution and I posted this in reddit a few days ago. The Numpad trick works!
Step1: Bind the direct minion command to Num1
Step2: Enter map and make sure that NUMLOCK is ON. Press and hold NUM1 and while holding it down, press NUMLOCK to turn it off, you can now release NUM1. (you need to do this everytime you enter a new map)
Step3: This auto spams direct minions. Now your minions go where your mouse pointer is. Point and Kill. (btw, did you know they can open doors and chest too?)
Note how i said point and kill? their attack AI will stop if you ask them to move to an empty space. if you're using direct minion, you need to point your mouse to who you want them to kill. Here's another tip for you to clearly see mobs to target - go to OPTIONS > INTERFACE > Show mini life bar above NPC (enemy)
This is a reflection of collisions and restrictions in maps in the game overall. My wife and I like to play together. Many of the maps are very narrow. Our characters frequently collide with each other just navigating the narrow maps. I use my evade more often navigating than I do in combat. When you add in an NPC AI, like Sekhema @ The Dreadnought and the narrow bridges between cars, it's infuriating watching your Sorc not be able to move forward or evade and die.
The problem is map design, not minions. every single class has issues with pathing. Minions are fine :)
Minions getting stuck on the other side of the invisible arena wall while fighting some map bosses is annoying as Hell too.
This is in a nutshell the experience i had with minions. Rerolled pretty fast.
Minion builds do exacerbate the issue but it is one fundamental to the whole game. My monk's bell body block me, enemies body block themselves, in some scuffles, I get shoved around a lot and the network doesn't seem to be either able to keep up or to show me where I actually am. If at least the momentum of it felt nice, but not really, it feels like vectors pushing one another rather than actually being shoved. I think the ideal fix is a very tough one seeing how it permeates to so many aspect of the game and how it may be baked in the engine in such a way that redesigning it is a challenge. I am curious to see how they approach it, currently it leads to frustration, sometimes it just breaks the immersion when I see 12 mobs standing there like clowns, immobile because two of them are blocking a tight corridor or bridge. Given the amount of work that they already have with more pressing issue, I can't say this is likely to be fixed ''soon''.
Thanks for sharing, cheers!
My solutions
Equip 2 weapon sets and select zero minions for it. Before the narrow passage, take the second weapon in your hands, go through the narrow passage, and when a pack of mobs appears, select weapon set 1, where all our minions are (they will spawn all at once)
92 lvl infernalist full asscendancy
Sometimes I'm grateful that I suck since I'm nowhere near anything End Game, but sometimes I'm jealous of all these fireworks people fill the screen with within 4 days of creating a new character. This game pulled me into arpg's so, I am SO new. I'm stuck in Act 2 & just started to mess with 2 other builds. Handling different vehicles seems like where most of my fun with this will come from.
It kicks off a 5 second timer. Its actually a more like a 10 second timer but you have 3 minion revival speed nodes
A timer that resets every time another minion dies! The number of times I royally screwed myself because I barely failed to Walmart-convocate my minions too far out of range was a factor in my reroll.
Plus it has a 4 second minimum to it, no matter how much revive speed you get. Yay.
I really really have no clue why convocation is not in the game
This is the exact reason I had to change my build. Was so sick of seeing my minions get stuck at doors and idle and not doing anything. And then I die
the minions bodyblocking each other and waiting at narrow doorways made me drop minions
How did you get all those minions? More spirit?
I think the most annoying thing about this is the inconsistency. If SRS despawning from time out isn't them dying, Skellies despawning from getting too far away shouldn't trigger respawn timer.
I think if they gave us a UI like we had in TotA for creating custom formations, on top of allowing the minions phasing with other minions (why can we walk through them but they can't walk through each other?) that would immediately put minions in god-tier spot.
For sure at least the revive counter shouldn't trigger if the dummy minions despawn because of getting stuck and getting out of range. We need convocation badly, maybe as a spirit reservation like blink.
I felt super bored out of my mind using minions in the early game. it was so bad, I deleted my ssf hc witch. she had just cleared Lachlann, and I didn’t want to continue that build nor playstyle, so I dumped her gear/skill gems into the stash. it probably gets better, but only after the hundred of hours I spent taking my casual time on my standard
minions died in an instahit against bosses, or never low health at all against small packs, so arsonist was inconsistent. Unearth existed, but is so clunky aiming for multiple corpses in a group. They also get stuck in narrow tiny hallways. Really annoying
Looks like minions are functioning as intended. GGG want friction in the game. That is most definately an obvious case of friction I have seen.
😂
Happy new year! Ps. The solution is easy! We just boycot all which have narrow passages 😆 I found that just keep running is the easiest way to deal with it. Just let them hang back and clear mobs, then despawn so that they spawn back near the next packs. It feels awful, and having to skip so many map types also feels bad. Hopefully they'll fix it soon.
Main the witch as a reaver build, was really fun but cause of all the issues, the damage isn’t the problem, just the AI. Went to pathfinder ranger in the mean time.
minions were and still are super strong but the Ai is why i was really annoyed that they were slightly nerfing them, it wouldn't be a problem if the numbers matched up to how it actually plays out.
People who say convocation would solve this actually worry me a great deal. That would be a bandaid fix at best. Problems with minions go way way deeper and is a huge design flaw issue
And remove the refreshing timer when one minion die to another full duration when another one die
It's wild, it's been like this since release. Weird how they work flawlessly in trial and sanctum but 50% of delve maps are unplayable.
OMG that Intro encapsulates my EXACT thought process on why I play Summon Necros / minion builds in APRGs
Yet another instance of "How the fuck did POE2 make this same mistake as POE1?" Body blocking is already dumb, but no Convocation or range teleporting is beyond baffling. I gave up on EA within the second week because there is just too many examples the game wasn't ready. I have no problem with the lack of content I have massive problems with all the bizarre design decisions and not learning lessons from the original game.
You should look at the community forums and all the people experiencing crashes on loading screens, myself included. The endgame is completely bricked for me because it crashes almost every time I use a rare stone on a map. Then there's the people getting hard crashes where it reboots the PC, this happened to me once. This can seriously damage people's computers
@@mikeb1596 It won't damage your computer. Most likely your pagefile is experience the corruption bug with the latest windows update and a simple regedit fixes it. It's related to NVME drives.
If event viewer shows Disk errors leading up to the crash then it is most likely that bug.
The PoE2 team has been doing it's own thing in the background for about 2/3rds of PoE1 lifetime since release. (First showing 5 years ago and that must've been many years of development) Jonathan revealed in an interview years ago he had no idea what was going on in PoE1. They probably branched off back in Essence league days. It honestly just feels like they took most of the resources of the company for PoE2 and gave the middle finger to the fanbase that funded it. PoE1 leagues has had to make do with hand-me-down assets from PoE2 development.
@@vogue43 It was definitely not that early. That's even before POE2 was announced at Exilecon. POE2 was originally supposed to just be a second campaign, the decision wasn't made at least publicly until late 2023 and was likely only made just before that. Which also tracks because Sanctum and Ultimatum were both probably designed for POE2 and backported. Either way it does not excuse ignoring problems being solved by the main team and ignoring fixes like auto-convocating minions that were made before POE2 was even announced.
funny enough, if you'll bind them to only one set of weapons, put the same amount of spirit on the second one with simple double weapon swap you could mimic convocation skill from poe1
My solution to this is a wall of Unearth minions w/ Infernal Legion + Instability. Keeps the heat off of me and my skelemans while they figure out how doors work
That's why you should build a fire spirit/arsonist build.
"stop pressing buttons" *me pressing flame wall ed contagion unearth flammability and the offering* ah yes -i definitely do that-
I love it. I hope this never gets "fixed" this is exactly how I imagine those hordes of skeletons working in the tight spaces. Class fantasy delivered. Huge W 😂
Zombies also act strange, you can summon zombies but sometimes they just stand around till you attack, in PoE1 if you summon zombies they just start auto running around towards targets. I'm just going to assume they are still a "work in progress" with the pathing for them.
I got an infernalist to act 5 before rerolling to try something else, and I did not know there is a direct minions key
Direct minions is very clunky, even if you had used it I think you'd have exactly the same feeling - if not worse.
The day I consider making a minion build is the day I uninstall.
"so many steps back from PoE 1" is something I've been hearing again and again... The teams forgot to talk to each other for the last 5 years?
I find s solution to this on my Infernalist. I got myself down to 200 or less HP, grabbed s bunch of regen. Went demon form and started throwing massive amounts of fireballs. Worked great 10/10.
Yep, this is kinda the reason I left my witch in a hiatus and i am leveling other characters to see if I enjoy them...
“Early access” implies a modicum of polish towards a finished product. What GGG gave us as “early access” and 30$, is a beta for proof of concept with little to NO (console) polish.
i do see your point and it needs fixing but while we wait for a fix using srs with minion instabillity and cast on minion death DD makes it 100 times better. minions left behin in a door or something, well summon some srs wth firestorm and they kill 1 mob then DD will start a chain reaction and delete the room. no need for any other minions for clearing.
Lol, got the same problem with just 5 skellies and devil dog. I make sure to run behind them when shtf 😋 Doesn't always work out when baddies come from all directions
are you guys having difficulty with the offerings? i have to click it many times, during many seconds, until it finally activate... is there a way to just press it and make it work?
It's annoying as heck, for sure. But there's an EASY fix, for now (not my invention, just sharing the knowledge):
- create a #2 weapon/shield set
- in skills (default key: g) you can assign which minions to which weapon set (I or II)
- assign 0 minions to your 'off' weapon set
- use your weapon set switch key to turn off minions at any narrow point, then switch to primary weapon set on other side to re-summon minions
Makes it bearable, until they are fixed!
ps: you could also take the opportunity to use blink with the off-set, too, since you aren't using spirit for summons.
It's hard to play minions in tight corners and alleyways, they tend to stucked and not moving
all you have to do is cast a spell on a monster and they will target that monster. lvl 91 explode summoner minions are OP. some door issues i agree with range casters. all boss maps are wide open. use SRS if shit gets stuck.
Also in big boss room if you run to other side, your minions "dead/resummoning" ... lol
Same goes for dd, I was so happy, I made my own approach for the chaos based but fek me getting stuck at every narrow passage and door when you doing deli is just making it impossible to play as you have timer and you need to wait for the respawn.But however was testing he game before and thought it was acceptable by any standard should be hanged.
the direct minion key actually doesnt stop them from attacking pretty sure ... its just the command you gave them is "come here" not "target and attack this enemy" and thats why they dont attack ... if you actually targt a mob and press the button they will start attacking as soon as they get there
BUT 100% ITS CLUNKY AS HECK BEING FORCED TO RELY ON IT INSTEAD OF IT BEING EXTRA
i absolutly dont get this collision shit! why is this in the game? for what purpose?
we had this problem in poe 1 heist league where players were blocking the harbor!
i get blocked from my own minions. i get blocked from my friends minions.
i get blocked from my own friends. i get blocked from enemies that didnt even spawnd yet!
there are so many backward mechanics in the game!
Imo as a minion enjoyer and constant player of minions, the issue was never solved in Path of Exile 1. They just gave you convocation, which in a way gave you agency over your minions lack of AI. The unintended consequence of that band aid solution, was that you could drop hoards of mobs on bosses. Now the problem with PoE 2 is it's more boss focused, or a key component of gameplay and they don't want you trivializing the bosses by dropping hoards of mobs onto the bosses, but here's the thing! - They never solved the AI problem, they just took away the gem that was the band aid solution. So we are right back where we started. The problem, lmao.. smh.
Im gonna rr a flamethrower build once i make another div or 2 on my deadeye , i didnt like minions because how they didnt attack/ or theyd run off and target a trash mob instead of the blue/yellow
Yep totally agree im just finishing up act 2 at lv 24 and got like 13 or 14 minions and was doing so good! got kill last night for the first time on trash because my minions decided to go on a lunch break. Pissed me off so much.
Remove collision on minions and have them snap to you if they reach X amount of yards away from you. Easy fix.
At least there aren't that many tight spaces in the map designs. ... ... wait.
This is a minion issue but the larger problem is that this game is inundated with corridors and doorways instead of the more balanced map tiles of poe1 where you could actually get open layouts
Increase agro range and have mobs not phase through them. Not all but have smaller mobs get blocked. Maybe have brutes block bigger ones.
I have minion move command on left click (through 3rd party tool) and it makes them work a lot better.
I also mainly run sanctum so after watching your vid I can see I don't experience a lot of these issues.
What I think is dumb is the fact you have to run towards the enemy yourself and engage before your minions finally get in front of you
Reason I gave up on minions as I cannot even clear the campaign with them I found them very annoying as they are just walking and attacking wherever they want rather then where I want and I always run around trying to lose enemies as my minions are on a break :D but yes hope they fix this soon.
I honestly don't know how to use the 'direct minion' on console. no idea. The AI, it's doable. I would prefer, if you have the puppy, that It stays closer to you to aggro mobs and not trailing too far behind you. The collision I would say is the same problem as the player that was fixed a while back. GGG has stated that you are supposed to be cornered and trapped if you get surrounded by too many mobs. That has been fixed. And that is what needs to be fixed about the minions so that two can fit through a narrow passage with no problems and/or fix the AI so that they travel zig/zag pattern through a door and narrow passage.
I bounced off minions in act two because of this problem. Obviously it was with less minions but they were not attacking much and falling behind
Yeah playing minions there’s certain maps I just avoid, or use a low tier way stone to clear it. We need more sandspit like maps
So is it the part time position, or that you're moving to a certain place with lots and lots of beautiful scenery?
completely agree with you, the arsonistns are that good at the moment because they have high range and they do attack even if they are piled at a door. without convocation, I will not touch minions anymore and I beat everything in the game and reached lvl 93 a few weeks ago with minions, their AI is just soo bad.
Even on DD where I don't care about them doing anything it is very annoying.
Oh you mean where trying to target your own Brutes makes you depressed