A couple of things to add as some comments are pretty wild: 1) Storm mages are in the video. You'd know if you watched it. 2) im going through my reasoning of every minion resulting in my personal tier listing 3) minion teleport (convocation) strat has many flaws such as not always working, if minions are dead you still have to wait for the revive, but most importantly the weapon swap has a risk of literally crashing your entire client which when it happens makes you lose the entire map. It's not a new tech. it's an unintended tech that has serious flaws, which is why i dont like it. 4) Frost Mages, Reavers and Brutes, etc, are described in detail as to why they are listed where they are, this is, simmilarily, to everything else im saying: shockingly in the actual video
Did you take in mind the frost mage command skill? I think that one makes frost mages realy nice to. It one of the only command skills that just does an AOE attack with actual instant dmg. And give big freeze %
This is your first RUclips video? You didn't know people just make stupid comments without watching? Lol. I'm a small creator and this happens on 75% of my videos where I have an opinion in title/description
I will say much of what you said in the video I agree with and is from my testing as well very spot on, I do think however when they fix the minion collision issue and getting stuck in doorways and giving melee splash which should be a baseline thing with decent area, reavers are going to be the best performing minion by a large margin, even now in open area maps their clear is just soo much better than all the other minions and the fact you can double dip with pain offering and enrage on bosses makes them the best boss damage as well rn. I hope they get the minions sorted out fairly quickly as its the most enjoyable playstyle for me.
Can I just say how insane it is that you're the first person i've ever seen do a tierlist that LABELS what the hell the images are lmfao. Usually I'm having to squint and tab over to reference pics and solve a puzzle. Maybe I just have old & shitty eyes but this makes a HUGE difference for the flow of watching these videos. Thanks.
I'm currently using reavers (with 2 clerics, 1 sniper for gas cloud armor breaking, and 1 storm mage for shock prolif). It feels amazing. The weapon swap trick works most of the time for narrow passages. The damage feels way higher than when i played arsonists, SRS, and firewall. Protip: using ele focus on the hellhound prevents it from igniting your gas cloud so you can destroy boss armor and still use detonate dead for procing the cloud for clear. Definitely underrated.
could try instead to have the hellhound be the armour breaker instead with envenom+corrosion combo (using ele focus on the hellhound also forces the storm mage to need to constantly reapply shocks due to not being able to use the support that makes shock never expire on ignited enemies)
My main problem with minions was that my FPS was tanking down by A LOT... But I was in love with Reavers, great minions, the only problem besides FPS was constant stacking in corridors, minions need phasing for alies.
I'm loving this period of a new ARPG with all the exploring of builds. That said, I'm running Brutes and snipers, focusing on lowering armor via gas arrow/curse and increasing damge, stun chance, and aftershocks with Brutes. The Brutes clear regular fights almost instantly with their aftershocks, while in boss fights the snipers pull their weight more. Also added bleed to snipers and increased damaged to bleed on brutes. I'm missing 2 perfect and 1 greater jeweller orbs to complete the build but my theory is to use the armor break explosion on snipers and the armor break consume on brutes to increase damage by another 50%. Can't properly test it though without the support slots, but once done i'll hopefully have some more info. them getting stuck in doorways really is annoying, but I love having an army of skele titans slamming everything lol
As an addendum to storm mages I'd add the utility of having a 100% uptime shock just by playing infernalist utilizing stormfire support, so having one in an arsonist or sniper build is definitely worth it for the 35% or so shock you get that'll be up as long as your dog is around (or another source of ignite is on the target).
I bet they are going to release it very late into early access and still with millions of bugs that makes some spectres either very bad or extremely overpowered. This singe skill gem is wild in this game, probably giving devs headaches and nightmares since release of PoE 1.
Mixing and matching minions is the real busted playstyle. Clerics with cast speed Snipers with damage and poison armor break, pin (depends) A brute or 2 with stun gems All phys support on reavers Few warriors on scepter This allows you to build up tons of effects on bosses and theres decent aoe on brutes which already have high base values. Since melee minions have trouble all getting to a single target, spreading out between ranged and melee minions is best so your snipers are always hitting something on screen while your readers and brutes gapclose. This allows for armor break, pin (seriously underrated), poison, stun, ignite prolif from hellhound, and enough body blockers to keep any aggro off you. I noticed if you run ranged minions like snipers or arsonists, they enemies will ignore them and run straight at you, not as much of a problem with melee skeles sprinkled in. Also I will dip into skills screen to up or down the groups for certain scenarios. Like I'll switch out some snipers for brutes if I want more stunning on bosses, or more Reavers on wider maps, etc. Its fun and engaging.
Hey, I really want to do arsonist minions build, but after reading your comment, I'm thinking about adding in melee minions too. What mix would you suggest that would have some melee minions but still have a lot of arsonists? (And maybe even some snipers/a cleric if it's really that good) In order to prevent enemies running straight at me. Some background: I am a new player. I tried poe1 but did not like it. So, all of this is new to me. I am entirely expecting myself to somehow mess up somewhere along the way and brick my character.
@@indigogorge3585 For optimized build you want one type of dmg on your minions - that is why people run Fire setup - Arsonists/SRS/Flammability or Physical setup - Reavers/Snipers/Vulerability. If you spread around multiple diffrent types of dmg on your minions, some will be lacking endgame dmg numbers. Hope this helps.
@@paruwablazifagus Ohh, I see. Thank you for the advice. After hearing more opinions from other players, I think I will most likely be going for an infernalist with reavers + a few clerics.
Have you done any tier 18 maps with this? I doubt you can clear well enough with this approach except if you ignored your defences in the build and have mind over matter or even worse none of it and get oneshot by anything.
I pretty much agree with everything other than Unearth. I use Unearth as a utility emergency skill and is is fantastic at that. I'd never use them as your main damage ability, but I stick it on my bar supported by Brutality, Hourglass, and Area of Effect. I don't care about the 10s cooldown because I rarely use the spell but when I do the little fucks do a crap ton of damage. My main use for it, is for when I'm getting swarmed and my army starts to die say in a Breach encounter or Ritual. Because its a swarm situation I can pretty much guarantee that there will be corpses everywhere so I just shoot out an unearth. Thanks to Area of Effect support its a pretty big AoE and I often will get like 10 minions instantly which body blocks, does damage, and helps me turn the tide back in my favor.
Yea. Imo that ability would have a good main ability rate if they added it summons 1-5 as it scales in level as well. So starting out it would work as is. Then later in levels it would just have a static minion summon regardless of corpses. Then things like overubanace could be used early to add a minion til later on. This could also become a non issue if they add in an ability like in poe 1 where you summon your own corpses. But that'll get shadowed by corpse explosion builds
Yeah there is no reason to dont add unearth on minion build (personnaly i prefer make them pop corn), and for the same reasons there is no reason to dont add detonate dead too.
It's so good in breach to me. Can sometimes get 20 minions in a single cast and they are fast little dudes. Good fodder for my archers to hide behind and their dps combined isn't too bad.
@@Evilewokz It is there. It's called sacrifice. Honestly thinking of having detonate dead build by having warriors and clerics. 1 buffed with hp increasing nodes/skillgems + infernal legions + enemies ignited explode on death. Clerics with cast speed and cd reduction. I have no idea on the clear speed tho since currently my skele mages speedclears with ice bombs. edit: On second thought it may not work well. Detonate dead uses your status instead of minion status
In Poe1 we have a gem called "raise spectre" which allows you summon any basic monster using their corpse. In poe2, we were supposedly to have the same gem, except it could summon mini-bosses with a higher spirit reservation. It was showed in the trailer raising a rare monster which can only be found in rare form(yellow mob) Unfortunately, the gem "raise spectre" was hard to balanced and buggy so they won't be releasing until next year along with 2 other classes as some had speculated.
they were saying they had an idea for a vaal themed shadow ascendency, which should be machine based i think, im expecting something like poe 1 saboteur (which has unique triggerbots), but hopefully actually playable.
@@starscourgeradahn3260 I doubt it since GGG has said that they don't want ascendancies to represent an entire playstyle like necromancers and elementaries back in poe1, guardian being the worst. If GGG releases an ascendancy with Raise spectre - which cost 0 spirit reservation and 0 jeweler orb, it's gonna be worse than poe1. current summoners in poe2 literally have the worse choices for minions
You might hate the screen covering bright flames of flame wall. But honestly I love it. This kind of screen covering shit in combination with everything going boom is the reason I play games like PoE. I understand why you or others might hate it. It does destroy readability. But man is it fun :D
I hope there are minion QoL improvements coming. Minions are a nightmare to steer and keep up with you, due to narrow passages (which are everywhere) and dumn AI. The only work around is the weapon swapping trick to unsummon then resummon and that's an unintended use. Melee minions need an increase to base movement and attack speed to be competitive. Plus there's only one minion movement speed node on the passive tree. And haven't seen any minion movement gear mods yet. Using the move minion command is way too slow and clunky with minions not attacking several seconds after moving.
I actually use Unearth for fast clearing. They scale off +minion level and +spell level, so getting them to an overall +10 is very doable. This puts their single target damage on par with the sniper, I can have 24 of them, and they cost no spirit. Sadly, they are useless outside of clearing. The sniper is actually decent at clearing because of the ability to explode their poison arrows on any ignited enemy. Dropping a 33k AOE every seconds is pretty strong. I use more snipers for clearing than I use arsonists now.
Pretty sure Reavers are designed to be played in combination with Bonestorm. Bonestorm is your clearing skill, with power charges it has good AoE, Reavers are boss destroyers, body blockers and their great attack speed allows them to proc the second damaging part of Bonestorm. Both have the Physical tag so they can be scaled by the same +lvl to physical gems. That's how I play them and it feels good. But on their own, they kinda suck yes. Sniper supported by Corrosion (T1 recommended support gem) allows to dissolve armour extremely fast. In combination with their own damage + Unearth it's actually pretty great. Unearth minions provide meatshield for them as well as good damage since Unearth minions deals low individual damage they suffer the most from armour, so the synergy is there.
I rolled a Witch on 1/7. I was paid beta on PoE, I didn't play as much as a lot of people. But, I was in a regular weekly play group for over a decade. She's still in Act 1, so completely a baby. I had a unique rogue type armor drop that allows an improved bleed, so I have been using Unearth early game to trigger bleeds and pull up cannon fodder for the arsonist to blow up. It's really fun, but I'm still in "pre-game" compared to running maps and whatnot. But yeah, I let let mobs fight trash while they bleed and burn like probably a whole bunch of people. It's still effective early game. In PoE We used to refer to SRS builds as Beekeepers, still a nice fire and forget. But yeah, the Witch can shred pretty easily. She's been getting better drops than a sorc, and warrior I rolled earlier. Nice vid. PoE has always been a shot in time content, as PoE changed so often during it's original run. It is and was a special and very fun game.
I run snipers with lots of crit and fire damage. Using split shot with the snipers' ability causes three explosions on cast due to the hound's ignite, then following up with detonate dead with preserve and recast. I also run corrosion on the snipers to break armor, which still works after the detonation of the gas. It's reallly good.
Storm mages work with Stormfire support. I created a weapon swap setup as you can specify the number of minions and what skill work with each weapon type in the advanced set. You will see the spirit spend. So I have Storm mage on weapon 2 and snipers on 1. This also allows for the tree switching (I don't have that quite set up yet, I don' t know if chance to shock will transfer to minions.) But switching minions at least with weapon swap this way causes the snipers to reset CD so I get their charges back pretty quickly. Its really good for bossing to get a cheap 20% dmg buff from the shock.
Thanks bro!!! I needed this video today like I need air to breathe. I didn’t want to waste my skills upgrading the wrong minions and couldn’t decide If I should unlock a new one with my lvl 9 skill gem.
In the Witch's showcase, Zombies are permanent minions. However, they were nerfed for the release of EA, which completely ruins the minion. GGG really needs to balance things properly.
Something to think about as well, when it comes to leveling. Raging spirits with Envenom and Corrosion just decimates all Rares and Bosses's armour allowing something like Arsonists to melt even faster
@@bladeshorty I know how that part works, the question is how would that even ramp up at all if default max poison stack is 1 and srs has only 30% of it's damage being physical. And then only 80% of the poison counts for armour break. The game doesn't say that minions can stack ailments. And if they do, then ggg did a huge flip from poe1 and never put any info, including the poison on enemies only showing 1 stack.
Melee minion is great when paired with chaos build. Despair:contagion:Totem:Use unearth to spread contagion & spam the chaos drain. Use despair as new enemies approach. New totem if totem dies. This is great for clear. The problem is actually for single enemy bosses etc. with no dead bodies and no extra energy shield.
Solid video. I've personally been loving my little Unearth homies. I slapped Blind-Maim-Culling Strike on them and they feel impactful with a low opportunity cost.
Great information, man I changed my arsonist to storm age and it’s night and day the builder have is completely blown me away just by the difference of changing the type of minion🎉!
i know my build is prob garbage but raise zombie mixed with power siphon and curseing corpses to perpetually have power charge while mapping is just awesome (also they the only minion on the witch that doesn't need spirit besides unearth)
I do like having a couple warriors vs bosses just because they can actually block boss movement abilities (dashes, leaps and rolls)... making the bosses less mobile is unreal vs some bosses.
There is a way to "sorta" convocation, though it's buggy: weaponswap to a set with no minions active, then swap back to summon all minions to you... when it doesn't bug out and put all minions on cooldown instead. Clerics also reduces downtime when using offerings with persistent linked due to a bug with such that causes the revive cooldown to be reset if the offering ends after the revive cooldown ends from sacrificing a minion.
This is a really good review of all the minions options. Now, I have 80 hours of gameplay and I am in my atlas but I have to say that a combo with snipers and frost mages is really deadly (I mean if a monster is frozed he can't get out of the poison cloud right?). I use 2 frost mages, and 2 snipers paired with Uneart and SRS (which I create with Fireball linked with Scattershot. 10 SRS with one single click). Pretty much nothing survive that and than I use Uneart to create even more minion (after every monsters died) to give me a break (and wait for any permanent minion that died to come back). Then it's just around and around we go. It's not fast but it's really secure (since I use the minion ice and poison command from behind). Finally, I know a lot of you will disagree but I like to have a lot of minions and I also use 6 skeletons warriors with culling strike (when culling strike HIT on a unique or rare boss you will be overjoyed). Again, this is very slow but with good gameplay and synchro, I belive that SRS paired with Unheart is the build to generate the biggest number of minions at the same time. It's not about the DPS as much as the defensive layer. The quick 10 SRS and 16 Construct at the same time are easy tro summon and give you an out when all of your minions are dead. I also use Essence Drain (linked with Chaos Mastery, Hinder and Minion Pact), it's really good against boss and single target. My total permanent minions are 1 infernal hound, 6 skeletons warriors, 2 frost mages, 1 brute, 1 cleric and 2 snipers. :o)
I kind of regret transitioning from arsonists to reavers and spending a couple div to do so. While reavers are great at clearing bosses, their mapping is horrendous, the revive timer resets whenever one dies while the other is reviving so I'm running around way more waiting to re engage. They get stuck so often, and feels so clunky to play around this. I've died about 2-3 more times on average when playing reavers compared to arsonists. The playstyle is frustrating and decent at best. I should've done more research before committing.
Zombies can be cast on minions or corpses, so you can have almost full snipers and decent frontline, need a 60 spirit cost gem tho and theyr still slow af and heavy mana cost
You can make skellies leave corpses to I think. But ye zombies are good meat shields. But as ghazzy and you said. They waaayyyy to slow. I not even know why the game suggest duration on temporary minions that dissapear when you to far from them. It's silly.
Zombies also have an inherent less damage taken (52% on the empowered ones) which definitely makes them tanky. Ruins my dreams of popcorn zombies though.
@@adamwilliams5407 if you dont take ele/fire res you can still do popcorn zombies. You can't really use empowered zombies though because of the DR, but they don't gain hp from power charges. Still... I have been trying to make zombies feel okay and they seriously need a buff of some sort.
Unearth is still really good for campaign. They do not need Spirit, so it is just free added minions, and they keep enemies occupied, as if you only have ranged minions, the enemies just rush you instead.
A note on Brutes: they do have pretty good clear once you socket them with impact Shockwave, and they look cool doing it. But obviously they're still not good enough, until we get Convo. Or maybe they even have their own inherent shocks - not sure. Still, it's nothing compared to the clear provided by Storm mages or Arsonists or Snipers.
The way I explain it for people is the Staff skill "Sigil of Power" is a 3metre Circle and Presence is 4 of those circles in every direction if the edges are touching. If you get the Alpha Howls Armored Cap that presence radiance is doubled to 24metre circle (12m from you) (so 8 sigil of power circles)
What the *** are you talking about Frost Mages? They can stop the boss so bossing is way easier and since i swapped to them from arsonists my damage doubled. With crit passives on arsonists i had like 6% crit chance and on mages i have 28% currently with +253% crit damage.
Agreed. I've also switched to frost mages and the game has gotten much easier. One thing I hated about arsonists is that their attacks miss if the target moves. Frost mages don't have this issue since the targets are instantly perma-frozen. Frost mages also have a better gem quality effect (reduced reservation) and there is a +1 to all cold skills on the passive tree that benefits frost mages.
If you don’t mind, could you share what guide you’re using? I’m interested in swapping to frost mages but idk how well my gear or passive tree will translate.
Ye pure minion i think frost mage beats all. But with SRS supportn you have the SRS take all beating and maybe storm mages and archer are better when have flame wall. But ye my frost mages stay alive lot more than storm mages. The only downside is frost mage attack range. It feels pretty short. I am using the Scattershot. Pierce and 25% more cast speed gems. Feels realy good. All normal monsters get almost instant freeze. And if you want even more freeze on boss add the 50% freeze gem.
Imagine if there is a gem that allows you to “detonate dead” the zombies you have. So you can stock up on ammo along the way and detonate them in a bind.
I actually think if they ever fix the minion AI Reavers will become meta. They do soooooo much damage and have great support gem options but... they just stand around doing nothing half the time. It's also really nice that with just 1 or 2 snipers you can 100% armor break enemies with the chaos cloud. Here's praying they fix the AI because I'm a bit of a melee-minion enjoyer.
Ive been fighting through the campaign with ED and Cont using Unearth. I would love to see unearth be able to use poison or something to that effect. I have a dream of a Plague Horde running through maps... hopefully the third witch ascendancy will make it possible.
One thing I like about the storm minion is that I just run 1 with increased shock chance and the support gem that makes shock last forever on ignited targets. Since you have a dog igniting everything around him. U can get a nice damage boost from the shock debuff with very minimal cost
I think zombies are awesome in fights with huge mobs. The mobs of enemy all end up serving you! You use them wrong if you make them to follow you walking. Use them during the battle to turn the numbers as the battle goes on. It's awesome in large fights, like the Ascendency 1 sands rooms. Great body blockers you can run through to lose enemy attacking you.
i run same thing but in tier 9 maps i am moving like a snail, i can't clear fast anymore and ritual and breaches is almost sure death as i get stuck in a pack of mobs then die from ritual tornado that i can't move out of while my mobs can't kill fast enough to get me room to move. what tier maps are you on? I paly SSF and i just don't see any gear i could get that will allow me to scale up, if anything i may be able to push further with a lot of grinding but i'll be still so freaking slow to get through maps. i swear i spend a good 10 minutes a map clearing, this build has to be slowest high tier map build in POE 2 at this point.
@zengrath mostly you need more minion skill level. 3 on weapon. 2 on helmet 2 on amulet. After than flat minion damage is huge. Then %damage and attack speed. Cast if makes of course. The flat damage is huge as it scales with your percentile on the passive tree. After 65 your looking at +10-30 damage a hit extra just from a flat dage stack. Most certainly much more as max damage hits will hit hard. After the recent crit changes moving your buuld yo stack critical instead will get alotnof range. This is probably where your at. Stack up to around 35%+ minion crit chance then stack as much crit damage as you can. 300% base damage is massive especially on 10+ minions. Spirit as you must know is your breadwinner. Get 340+ before all the rest
Another note: would be cool to hear your thoughts on using STormies without Doryani: I've seen them do serious damage even without the armor, plus I think the debuff has a slight delay when in range, so not all mobs on the screen are getting their res dumpstered immediately upon contact.
Powered raised undead are extremely strong with infernal army (ignite everything), in end game up to t15 atm with 2 cleric behind them they melt the ennemies extremely quickly. I’m making a titan right now just to see how strong they can be with max life and a boost to the small passive nodes
Not sure if anyone is aware yet but snipers are absolutely crazy right now. Im using a guide i can link here if people want and currently killing everything in T15/16/17/18 instantly and screenwide. The only problem with the build is that it doesnt use ES and you only have 2k Life and 3k Mana with Mom as your defenses, but because of the gravebind and jewel interaction you get % life and mana for each kill so you are always at max hp and mana if you kill stuff (for which you just have to move around with your minions or teleport with blink).
I started PoE1 as a necromancer and it was my first toon in PoE2 as well. Been having fun in Tier 15 maps with my Arsonist build. Kinda been wondering how I could use the Snipers again because "yes" they clap. I'm most interested in the StormMage build though. It seems really cool! I had no idea about the negative resist thing you are doing!
I like ur take on the firewall my solution is firestorm long range and surrounding my skeleton snipers with firewall. Also in closed quarters maps, I spawn 2 reavers.
I would say some sort of spell like convocation is mandatory to circumvent the minion AI issues and behaviour. We NEED to position them so they dont die instantly by a slam or something similar. As of now im not having fun ence for i've abandoned minions for now until something else is introduced to fix these problems.
clerics are pretty bad ass. i use 3 of um, they can revive minions that die to being off screened, a pretty good reason to have a decent amount of them. i have had lots of situations were i run to far away but at least 1 claric is alive, they resummons all. 3 is a good number if you accidently offer them 2 back up clerics is good for that situation. it would be nice if ggg change the ai for them to stay in back, it sucks that they rush forward like a warrior.
I’m doing 6 brutes right now stacking attack speed and I’m on T-10 no problem with fairly quick clear speed. Aftershock support gem I think it’s called can clear whole packs
Hey Ghazzy, i run a Sniper Build which focs on Phys/Crit Damage with the Infernal Hound breaking Armor. I just got a LvL 21 6Link Sniper Gem and i am at +11 with Gear so i can tell 16 Sniper with Fork BLASTS through any Content with easy. Just did T4 Breachlord & alot of Deli/Breach/ect, they are melting the screen 10x faster then any arso build ^^
just a tip, you absolutely do NOT need to use doryani's for storm and their clear speed/dmg is still insane due to their naturally higher crit, instant hit etc. So you can still output great damage and ahve the survivability of your chosen chestpiece & max res
disagree on the unearth SLANDER. sacrifice + contagion + envenom, bursting plague, corrosion, corpse conservation support gems makes it best minion skill trust
does using Brutality prevent this whole thing from working? Brutality says supported skills can't deal chaos, which means also can't apply poison via Envenom?
@@Shajirr_ im not sure i can test it later but id guess so, most of what ive seen is poison counts as chaos dmg but chaos isnt poison dmg if that makes sense
Well i can give a reason to run something else than rattling. Omen scepter is a 40% damage boost from the aura for me. Not like I need it, my bossing speed is fast enough, but... 40% probably beats 2 meat shields.
For casual players looking just to chill, or more likely want to run minions while in co-op, you may be interested in how brutes combo with infernal legion might work like I was. Brutes - stupid high HP minions which can have high enough fire resistance to not die to Infernal Legion even in boss fights Infernal Legion - do ignite damage in AOE around the minion based on % HP of the minion It's stupid slow, but also stupid safe, at least for the acts until end game. The downside is that the damage is painfully slow, at least as far as I have been able to build it, and the gameplay is mostly just waiting around for things to die, including even in boss fights. The upside is that it is crazy safe and chill if that interests you, where you clear maps by escorting an army of raging toddlers slowly through the map or kill bosses by doing little other than dodge rolling to stay alive. Assuming I didn't miss some big trick to dramatically improve their damage, I doubt you will ever see a video for them or anyone ever recommend them though, as they don't make for good content and any experienced POE player is going to laugh at their stupid slow their clear speed is. I know there are quite a few non-POE 1 players out there that are just dipping their toes into maybe even ARPGs for the first time, likely also just in co-op, so this might an option some for them.
@@BaneWilliams My witch is chilling at just the start of end game, T1 maps, level 14 gems. My brutes have an HP of 8,042 HP and my cleric has an HP of 2,886. Even my dog only has a HP of 9,772 if I put the meat shield support gem on him, increasing his HP by 50%, but also lowering his damage by 30% which lowers the burn damage. So, the brutes seem to be the highest HP from what I can see.
@@liberalideas8224 Cool, I might give this a try with my setup. Remember that level matters a lot for minion HP, so a +2 trenchtimbre could very much be worth.
Just in case no one knew, but it seems the Unearth Bone Minions can propagate shock as well, not just chaos dots. Idk if it's intended, but I noticed it while leveling with Storm Mages. It was Cruel Act 1 and there were no shock mobs, but I had consistently risen "shocked" bone minions... Hope it's not a bug, it was awesome and made me shift my build a bit, leaning more into shocks & freezing as opposed to the poison gas fire combo. I hope we get more/ different interactions with elemental combos.
@@meowmeow9326 I think that might be possible/ the intention, but effects like Freeze ends in a shatter (no corpse to res), and Poison & Ignite are only effective while the target is alive, as they are like "hp based effects". A burnt corpse is just charcoal... Like... it makes sense, but it also doesn't? The tooltip on Unearth mentions any DoT effects on the corpse, so it "should" work with ignite, but there are no "Enemies you kill/ Corpses you create are ignited" effects/ affixes anywhere in game... nor is there one for corpses remain poisoned, Shocked can make shocked ground though, and cursed based dots are still duration based curses, so they persist on corpses. You can't raise a corpse in a Flamewall and hope for a burning minion... I tried that sadly. I'm just hoping these "interactions" are part of the 50% unfinished PoE2.
raising one zombie at a time without them being permanant is ridiculous in the current state its too annoying to try and summon them you should be able to summon at least 3 of them from nearby corpses at once.
@@JT-yl9yt maybe that should be a support gem. my zombies currently last 1 minute tho with a good chunk of +skill duration, and duration supp gem. u can find some nodes that give skill duration and chaos damage so if u go chaos dmg dots with zombies u get max benefits. skill duration also seems to affect skills that travel thru the air, as they technically have a duration
@@meowmeow9326 I don't care how long they last after a minute I will still be individually summoning them one by one its ridiculous for a temporary minion and this horrific for blood mages.
I swapped from arsonist to snipers today at around lvl 75 and I’m clearing so much easier. I’m doing like 8x my dps and have scattershot and fork and way more snipers bc of cheaper reservation. I really think it’s a coin toss between shock mage and sniper for best witch build right now.
I've got an assumption, and if it's true then an idea. I assume all skeletal creatures at the same level have the same base stats, but different scaling, like a brute or a warrior would have the same base life number, then brute has 120% base life scaling, when warrior has 88%, that's how end result becomes different brute has more life. A brute at 20% has 144% life, warriors 88% but brute cost (take lvl 20 numbers) 49 spirit and warriors cost 20, that means for 2 brutes I can summon 4 warriors, that's 288% vs 352%, the warrior wins and not just that, with a tiny bit of spirit on gear you can fit another warriors in, at least much easier than a brute. This can be useful because of the warbringer ascendancy gives you the ability to explode corpses for 25% of max life, which is like DD right now but higher value and more importantly warcry it's an aoe, which would result in blowing up all the minions in diameter all together, that's when total life combined means more, you can so much more easily fit in as much as warriors as possible and blow up them at once. My build idea would be warbringer DD, you just do usual DD things, archmage and all that, it's not that hard with warbringer to travel up, but when meeting a boss, you switch to weapon set 2, auto un-summon your brutes and summon a shit load of warriors, prbly use splinter on DD to get some armour break first then weapon swap, then blow all of the warriors up at once, you do lose the archmage extra lightning damage, but it's all at once and almost 160% more damage effectiveness just by having more warriors, when archmage inevitably got axed, it's would be more meaningful.
would like to say that brutes still have a use case because of their huge health pool in a minion explode build, i would put them in A tier with that build specifically
If you want pure HP for blowing things up with detonate dead Brutes and Warriors are a lot nicer. Brutes have by far the best raw HP per minion and Warriors likely (I haven't actually mathed it out so bear with me) the best HP per spirit. If they ever solve the pathing issues I wouldn't be surprised if they move up in people's estimation.
Just talking about what I know. When I'm farming in the end game to me ice mages with wildshards at least feels better at clearing maps than arsonist. Just b/c the first 1-3 volley of arsonist will always miss the enemy if the enemy is melee and just charging at you if they are range it feels about the same. I really wish there was a taunt skill I could put in my melee minions to stop this.
A couple of things to add as some comments are pretty wild:
1) Storm mages are in the video. You'd know if you watched it.
2) im going through my reasoning of every minion resulting in my personal tier listing
3) minion teleport (convocation) strat has many flaws such as not always working, if minions are dead you still have to wait for the revive, but most importantly the weapon swap has a risk of literally crashing your entire client which when it happens makes you lose the entire map. It's not a new tech. it's an unintended tech that has serious flaws, which is why i dont like it.
4) Frost Mages, Reavers and Brutes, etc, are described in detail as to why they are listed where they are, this is, simmilarily, to everything else im saying: shockingly in the actual video
Did you take in mind the frost mage command skill? I think that one makes frost mages realy nice to. It one of the only command skills that just does an AOE attack with actual instant dmg. And give big freeze %
This is your first RUclips video? You didn't know people just make stupid comments without watching? Lol. I'm a small creator and this happens on 75% of my videos where I have an opinion in title/description
can you plz tell me support for skeletan snipers single targer your opinion is the best, thanks for videos
Yes, but...Zombie is a minion too ;(
I will say much of what you said in the video I agree with and is from my testing as well very spot on, I do think however when they fix the minion collision issue and getting stuck in doorways and giving melee splash which should be a baseline thing with decent area, reavers are going to be the best performing minion by a large margin, even now in open area maps their clear is just soo much better than all the other minions and the fact you can double dip with pain offering and enrage on bosses makes them the best boss damage as well rn. I hope they get the minions sorted out fairly quickly as its the most enjoyable playstyle for me.
Skeletons don't need a brain, because they comunicate and find targets "Skelepathically"
to bad that doorways block skelepathy completely, so they have to reboot for 5min every time they come close to one...
Reported for causing me cringe induced pain. I hope you drop the soap.
Please leave
Can I just say how insane it is that you're the first person i've ever seen do a tierlist that LABELS what the hell the images are lmfao.
Usually I'm having to squint and tab over to reference pics and solve a puzzle.
Maybe I just have old & shitty eyes but this makes a HUGE difference for the flow of watching these videos. Thanks.
I'm currently using reavers (with 2 clerics, 1 sniper for gas cloud armor breaking, and 1 storm mage for shock prolif). It feels amazing. The weapon swap trick works most of the time for narrow passages. The damage feels way higher than when i played arsonists, SRS, and firewall. Protip: using ele focus on the hellhound prevents it from igniting your gas cloud so you can destroy boss armor and still use detonate dead for procing the cloud for clear. Definitely underrated.
Good tip, thanks
does the weap swap unsummon the warrriors so the minions might pass through the door?
or what is it? thank you
could try instead to have the hellhound be the armour breaker instead with envenom+corrosion combo (using ele focus on the hellhound also forces the storm mage to need to constantly reapply shocks due to not being able to use the support that makes shock never expire on ignited enemies)
I been using frost mages and the ice snap thing from mages.
@@ericbrown1132 is it good? :)
My main problem with minions was that my FPS was tanking down by A LOT... But I was in love with Reavers, great minions, the only problem besides FPS was constant stacking in corridors, minions need phasing for alies.
This happened to me as well, but managed to fix it. Try changing Sound > Channel Count to "Low".
detonate the dead fixed this for me.
they need a mtx for firewall... translucent fire
PTW mtx
@@anirudhgururajan210pay to stay sane mtx
Yea let me just change the color for firewall to invisible 🫥
Ghostfire. Not the pale blue or green. Fire that is faintly there.
I'm loving this period of a new ARPG with all the exploring of builds.
That said, I'm running Brutes and snipers, focusing on lowering armor via gas arrow/curse and increasing damge, stun chance, and aftershocks with Brutes. The Brutes clear regular fights almost instantly with their aftershocks, while in boss fights the snipers pull their weight more. Also added bleed to snipers and increased damaged to bleed on brutes.
I'm missing 2 perfect and 1 greater jeweller orbs to complete the build but my theory is to use the armor break explosion on snipers and the armor break consume on brutes to increase damage by another 50%. Can't properly test it though without the support slots, but once done i'll hopefully have some more info.
them getting stuck in doorways really is annoying, but I love having an army of skele titans slamming everything lol
Use weapon swap to get your minions through corridors.
Man this subathon is making my man's look like a minion, Jesus. He needs sleep
He looks the same
"Hey guys, Ghastly TV here!"
he looks drunk af
One more hit
He needs money. Simple as that
As an addendum to storm mages I'd add the utility of having a 100% uptime shock just by playing infernalist utilizing stormfire support, so having one in an arsonist or sniper build is definitely worth it for the 35% or so shock you get that'll be up as long as your dog is around (or another source of ignite is on the target).
My issue is the storm mage usually takes awhile before it can apply shock and stuff tends to die first
He almost never shocks stuff lol
More chance to shock, shock aoe and shock don't expire on ignited enemies and you have a solid uptime shocking enemies
Melee minions must be Canadian, and every doorway an opportunity for a Canadian standoff.
Cant wait for the Bind Spectre Ghazzy tier list when it drops!
3 hour long tier list incoming
well be switching from poe to pokemon
@@3_14thon7 "Gotta Bind 'em All!"
I bet they are going to release it very late into early access and still with millions of bugs that makes some spectres either very bad or extremely overpowered. This singe skill gem is wild in this game, probably giving devs headaches and nightmares since release of PoE 1.
Mixing and matching minions is the real busted playstyle.
Clerics with cast speed
Snipers with damage and poison armor break, pin (depends)
A brute or 2 with stun gems
All phys support on reavers
Few warriors on scepter
This allows you to build up tons of effects on bosses and theres decent aoe on brutes which already have high base values.
Since melee minions have trouble all getting to a single target, spreading out between ranged and melee minions is best so your snipers are always hitting something on screen while your readers and brutes gapclose.
This allows for armor break, pin (seriously underrated), poison, stun, ignite prolif from hellhound, and enough body blockers to keep any aggro off you.
I noticed if you run ranged minions like snipers or arsonists, they enemies will ignore them and run straight at you, not as much of a problem with melee skeles sprinkled in.
Also I will dip into skills screen to up or down the groups for certain scenarios. Like I'll switch out some snipers for brutes if I want more stunning on bosses, or more Reavers on wider maps, etc.
Its fun and engaging.
Hey, I really want to do arsonist minions build, but after reading your comment, I'm thinking about adding in melee minions too. What mix would you suggest that would have some melee minions but still have a lot of arsonists? (And maybe even some snipers/a cleric if it's really that good) In order to prevent enemies running straight at me.
Some background:
I am a new player. I tried poe1 but did not like it. So, all of this is new to me. I am entirely expecting myself to somehow mess up somewhere along the way and brick my character.
@@indigogorge3585 For optimized build you want one type of dmg on your minions - that is why people run Fire setup - Arsonists/SRS/Flammability or Physical setup - Reavers/Snipers/Vulerability. If you spread around multiple diffrent types of dmg on your minions, some will be lacking endgame dmg numbers. Hope this helps.
> Few warriors on scepter
That's terrible. Malice provides a huge damage boost to all your minions, 2 warriors in comparison will do next to nothing.
@@paruwablazifagus Ohh, I see. Thank you for the advice. After hearing more opinions from other players, I think I will most likely be going for an infernalist with reavers + a few clerics.
Have you done any tier 18 maps with this? I doubt you can clear well enough with this approach except if you ignored your defences in the build and have mind over matter or even worse none of it and get oneshot by anything.
Thanks!
I pretty much agree with everything other than Unearth.
I use Unearth as a utility emergency skill and is is fantastic at that. I'd never use them as your main damage ability, but I stick it on my bar supported by Brutality, Hourglass, and Area of Effect. I don't care about the 10s cooldown because I rarely use the spell but when I do the little fucks do a crap ton of damage.
My main use for it, is for when I'm getting swarmed and my army starts to die say in a Breach encounter or Ritual. Because its a swarm situation I can pretty much guarantee that there will be corpses everywhere so I just shoot out an unearth. Thanks to Area of Effect support its a pretty big AoE and I often will get like 10 minions instantly which body blocks, does damage, and helps me turn the tide back in my favor.
Yea. Imo that ability would have a good main ability rate if they added it summons 1-5 as it scales in level as well.
So starting out it would work as is. Then later in levels it would just have a static minion summon regardless of corpses.
Then things like overubanace could be used early to add a minion til later on.
This could also become a non issue if they add in an ability like in poe 1 where you summon your own corpses. But that'll get shadowed by corpse explosion builds
Yeah there is no reason to dont add unearth on minion build (personnaly i prefer make them pop corn), and for the same reasons there is no reason to dont add detonate dead too.
I think a low level DD would help also.DD doesn't really scale with levels so a low level one won't hurt your mana pool much if your a es build.
It's so good in breach to me. Can sometimes get 20 minions in a single cast and they are fast little dudes. Good fodder for my archers to hide behind and their dps combined isn't too bad.
@@Evilewokz It is there. It's called sacrifice. Honestly thinking of having detonate dead build by having warriors and clerics. 1 buffed with hp increasing nodes/skillgems + infernal legions + enemies ignited explode on death. Clerics with cast speed and cd reduction. I have no idea on the clear speed tho since currently my skele mages speedclears with ice bombs.
edit: On second thought it may not work well. Detonate dead uses your status instead of minion status
Please GGG, Doryani has shown we NEED a machinist class (mechanical summoner) heist and the vaal have so much mecha tech we cant use.
In Poe1 we have a gem called "raise spectre" which allows you summon any basic monster using their corpse. In poe2, we were supposedly to have the same gem, except it could summon mini-bosses with a higher spirit reservation. It was showed in the trailer raising a rare monster which can only be found in rare form(yellow mob)
Unfortunately, the gem "raise spectre" was hard to balanced and buggy so they won't be releasing until next year along with 2 other classes as some had speculated.
they were saying they had an idea for a vaal themed shadow ascendency, which should be machine based i think, im expecting something like poe 1 saboteur (which has unique triggerbots), but hopefully actually playable.
OMG as I went thru A3 I had the same thought. Summons mech, sawblades, traps, etc, etc.
@@leemay3097 I'd bet its an acendency exclusive skill for Necromancer, which is more than likely going to be the Witch's third ascendency
@@starscourgeradahn3260 I doubt it since GGG has said that they don't want ascendancies to represent an entire playstyle like necromancers and elementaries back in poe1, guardian being the worst.
If GGG releases an ascendancy with Raise spectre - which cost 0 spirit reservation and 0 jeweler orb, it's gonna be worse than poe1. current summoners in poe2 literally have the worse choices for minions
You might hate the screen covering bright flames of flame wall. But honestly I love it. This kind of screen covering shit in combination with everything going boom is the reason I play games like PoE. I understand why you or others might hate it. It does destroy readability. But man is it fun :D
I hope there are minion QoL improvements coming. Minions are a nightmare to steer and keep up with you, due to narrow passages (which are everywhere) and dumn AI. The only work around is the weapon swapping trick to unsummon then resummon and that's an unintended use. Melee minions need an increase to base movement and attack speed to be competitive. Plus there's only one minion movement speed node on the passive tree. And haven't seen any minion movement gear mods yet. Using the move minion command is way too slow and clunky with minions not attacking several seconds after moving.
I actually use Unearth for fast clearing. They scale off +minion level and +spell level, so getting them to an overall +10 is very doable. This puts their single target damage on par with the sniper, I can have 24 of them, and they cost no spirit. Sadly, they are useless outside of clearing.
The sniper is actually decent at clearing because of the ability to explode their poison arrows on any ignited enemy. Dropping a 33k AOE every seconds is pretty strong. I use more snipers for clearing than I use arsonists now.
Pretty sure Reavers are designed to be played in combination with Bonestorm. Bonestorm is your clearing skill, with power charges it has good AoE, Reavers are boss destroyers, body blockers and their great attack speed allows them to proc the second damaging part of Bonestorm. Both have the Physical tag so they can be scaled by the same +lvl to physical gems. That's how I play them and it feels good. But on their own, they kinda suck yes.
Sniper supported by Corrosion (T1 recommended support gem) allows to dissolve armour extremely fast. In combination with their own damage + Unearth it's actually pretty great. Unearth minions provide meatshield for them as well as good damage since Unearth minions deals low individual damage they suffer the most from armour, so the synergy is there.
I rolled a Witch on 1/7. I was paid beta on PoE, I didn't play as much as a lot of people. But, I was in a regular weekly play group for over a decade.
She's still in Act 1, so completely a baby. I had a unique rogue type armor drop that allows an improved bleed, so I have been using Unearth early game to trigger bleeds and pull up cannon fodder for the arsonist to blow up. It's really fun, but I'm still in "pre-game" compared to running maps and whatnot. But yeah, I let let mobs fight trash while they bleed and burn like probably a whole bunch of people. It's still effective early game. In PoE We used to refer to SRS builds as Beekeepers, still a nice fire and forget.
But yeah, the Witch can shred pretty easily. She's been getting better drops than a sorc, and warrior I rolled earlier. Nice vid. PoE has always been a shot in time content, as PoE changed so often during it's original run. It is and was a special and very fun game.
I run snipers with lots of crit and fire damage. Using split shot with the snipers' ability causes three explosions on cast due to the hound's ignite, then following up with detonate dead with preserve and recast. I also run corrosion on the snipers to break armor, which still works after the detonation of the gas. It's reallly good.
Storm mages work with Stormfire support. I created a weapon swap setup as you can specify the number of minions and what skill work with each weapon type in the advanced set. You will see the spirit spend. So I have Storm mage on weapon 2 and snipers on 1. This also allows for the tree switching (I don't have that quite set up yet, I don' t know if chance to shock will transfer to minions.) But switching minions at least with weapon swap this way causes the snipers to reset CD so I get their charges back pretty quickly. Its really good for bossing to get a cheap 20% dmg buff from the shock.
Thanks bro!!! I needed this video today like I need air to breathe. I didn’t want to waste my skills upgrading the wrong minions and couldn’t decide
If I should unlock a new one with my lvl 9 skill gem.
thanks. started poe2 recently and i was trying to run one of everything >.<
snipers and firewall is very good
In the Witch's showcase, Zombies are permanent minions. However, they were nerfed for the release of EA, which completely ruins the minion. GGG really needs to balance things properly.
Well if they would do that now the fight is over before they arrive XD
@@Syphirioth hahahahha that's why we need a convocation gem
@@Danielbognidigitalart Yep that will fix them slow asses. 🤣
It probably makes them great for boss fights as meat shield for my frost mages.
Ggg are shit devs. Poe 2 has proved that imo
They need to buff zombies and have chance to spawn corpse so you can use skill during boss fight
Something to think about as well, when it comes to leveling. Raging spirits with Envenom and Corrosion just decimates all Rares and Bosses's armour allowing something like Arsonists to melt even faster
Wouldn't that be just one poison from only 30% of the damage, since 70% of phys is converted to fire?
@@Kuzka_ you take it for the armour break. it ramps insanely quick
@@bladeshorty I know how that part works, the question is how would that even ramp up at all if default max poison stack is 1 and srs has only 30% of it's damage being physical. And then only 80% of the poison counts for armour break. The game doesn't say that minions can stack ailments. And if they do, then ggg did a huge flip from poe1 and never put any info, including the poison on enemies only showing 1 stack.
Melee minion is great when paired with chaos build. Despair:contagion:Totem:Use unearth to spread contagion & spam the chaos drain. Use despair as new enemies approach. New totem if totem dies. This is great for clear. The problem is actually for single enemy bosses etc. with no dead bodies and no extra energy shield.
Great video! Really nice and quick to the point. I am currently running Arsonists for everything but will now switch to Snipers for the boss fights :)
Solid video.
I've personally been loving my little Unearth homies. I slapped Blind-Maim-Culling Strike on them and they feel impactful with a low opportunity cost.
Great information, man I changed my arsonist to storm age and it’s night and day the builder have is completely blown me away just by the difference of changing the type of minion🎉!
When you told me to hit the god damn like button. I paused poe and clicked the god damn like button. Cheers
This video was done out of spite to goblin
i know my build is prob garbage but raise zombie mixed with power siphon and curseing corpses to perpetually have power charge while mapping is just awesome (also they the only minion on the witch that doesn't need spirit besides unearth)
Do you have a guide? My build is kind of the same but I’m not endgame. I love zombies so i want to keep buffing with chaos damage too
Running that too. Almost done with campaign.
Who has a really good/strong all around sniper build. The red ring combined with arsonists is hard on the eyes. Very good! But hard on the eyes lol
Lol yea thats was the reason i switched to reavers 😂
I do like having a couple warriors vs bosses just because they can actually block boss movement abilities (dashes, leaps and rolls)... making the bosses less mobile is unreal vs some bosses.
There is a way to "sorta" convocation, though it's buggy: weaponswap to a set with no minions active, then swap back to summon all minions to you... when it doesn't bug out and put all minions on cooldown instead.
Clerics also reduces downtime when using offerings with persistent linked due to a bug with such that causes the revive cooldown to be reset if the offering ends after the revive cooldown ends from sacrificing a minion.
This is a really good review of all the minions options. Now, I have 80 hours of gameplay and I am in my atlas but I have to say that a combo with snipers and frost mages is really deadly (I mean if a monster is frozed he can't get out of the poison cloud right?). I use 2 frost mages, and 2 snipers paired with Uneart and SRS (which I create with Fireball linked with Scattershot. 10 SRS with one single click). Pretty much nothing survive that and than I use Uneart to create even more minion (after every monsters died) to give me a break (and wait for any permanent minion that died to come back). Then it's just around and around we go. It's not fast but it's really secure (since I use the minion ice and poison command from behind). Finally, I know a lot of you will disagree but I like to have a lot of minions and I also use 6 skeletons warriors with culling strike (when culling strike HIT on a unique or rare boss you will be overjoyed). Again, this is very slow but with good gameplay and synchro, I belive that SRS paired with Unheart is the build to generate the biggest number of minions at the same time. It's not about the DPS as much as the defensive layer. The quick 10 SRS and 16 Construct at the same time are easy tro summon and give you an out when all of your minions are dead. I also use Essence Drain (linked with Chaos Mastery, Hinder and Minion Pact), it's really good against boss and single target. My total permanent minions are 1 infernal hound, 6 skeletons warriors, 2 frost mages, 1 brute, 1 cleric and 2 snipers. :o)
It seems that a system that made your minions “somewhat” organize based on which order they’re slotted or something along those lines would be great.
I kind of regret transitioning from arsonists to reavers and spending a couple div to do so. While reavers are great at clearing bosses, their mapping is horrendous, the revive timer resets whenever one dies while the other is reviving so I'm running around way more waiting to re engage. They get stuck so often, and feels so clunky to play around this. I've died about 2-3 more times on average when playing reavers compared to arsonists. The playstyle is frustrating and decent at best. I should've done more research before committing.
Zombies can be cast on minions or corpses, so you can have almost full snipers and decent frontline, need a 60 spirit cost gem tho and theyr still slow af and heavy mana cost
You can make skellies leave corpses to I think. But ye zombies are good meat shields. But as ghazzy and you said. They waaayyyy to slow. I not even know why the game suggest duration on temporary minions that dissapear when you to far from them. It's silly.
Zombies also have an inherent less damage taken (52% on the empowered ones) which definitely makes them tanky. Ruins my dreams of popcorn zombies though.
@@sma999 this was removed in a patch. Cast on x can't have minion creating skills.
@@jeffvest3215 He's talking about sacrifice not cast on x gems.
@@adamwilliams5407 if you dont take ele/fire res you can still do popcorn zombies. You can't really use empowered zombies though because of the DR, but they don't gain hp from power charges. Still... I have been trying to make zombies feel okay and they seriously need a buff of some sort.
Unearth is still really good for campaign.
They do not need Spirit, so it is just free added minions, and they keep enemies occupied,
as if you only have ranged minions, the enemies just rush you instead.
I use fireball for indoor maps for SRS, it summons WAY more on my CoMD setup with a level 4 SRS. It looks way more fun too
A note on Brutes: they do have pretty good clear once you socket them with impact Shockwave, and they look cool doing it. But obviously they're still not good enough, until we get Convo. Or maybe they even have their own inherent shocks - not sure. Still, it's nothing compared to the clear provided by Storm mages or Arsonists or Snipers.
What about warbringer's minion, have or will you test those?
Thank you for your coverage and dedication! Please have some rest and spend Christmas with your daughter🎉
Merry Christmas and a happy New Year! 🎄
The way I explain it for people is the Staff skill "Sigil of Power" is a 3metre Circle and Presence is 4 of those circles in every direction if the edges are touching.
If you get the Alpha Howls Armored Cap that presence radiance is doubled to 24metre circle (12m from you) (so 8 sigil of power circles)
What the *** are you talking about Frost Mages? They can stop the boss so bossing is way easier and since i swapped to them from arsonists my damage doubled. With crit passives on arsonists i had like 6% crit chance and on mages i have 28% currently with +253% crit damage.
Agreed. I've also switched to frost mages and the game has gotten much easier. One thing I hated about arsonists is that their attacks miss if the target moves. Frost mages don't have this issue since the targets are instantly perma-frozen. Frost mages also have a better gem quality effect (reduced reservation) and there is a +1 to all cold skills on the passive tree that benefits frost mages.
If you don’t mind, could you share what guide you’re using? I’m interested in swapping to frost mages but idk how well my gear or passive tree will translate.
@@jw3807 search 800k+DPS Frost Mage&Reavers on Mobalytics build, its experimental, im still testing, recording and comparing dps on citadel bosses
@@jw3807 frost mage&reavers on mobalytics
Ye pure minion i think frost mage beats all. But with SRS supportn you have the SRS take all beating and maybe storm mages and archer are better when have flame wall. But ye my frost mages stay alive lot more than storm mages.
The only downside is frost mage attack range. It feels pretty short.
I am using the Scattershot. Pierce and 25% more cast speed gems. Feels realy good. All normal monsters get almost instant freeze. And if you want even more freeze on boss add the 50% freeze gem.
Super smart and funny take on the meta. Thanks
Imagine if there is a gem that allows you to “detonate dead” the zombies you have. So you can stock up on ammo along the way and detonate them in a bind.
I actually think if they ever fix the minion AI Reavers will become meta.
They do soooooo much damage and have great support gem options but... they just stand around doing nothing half the time. It's also really nice that with just 1 or 2 snipers you can 100% armor break enemies with the chaos cloud. Here's praying they fix the AI because I'm a bit of a melee-minion enjoyer.
Ive been fighting through the campaign with ED and Cont using Unearth. I would love to see unearth be able to use poison or something to that effect. I have a dream of a Plague Horde running through maps... hopefully the third witch ascendancy will make it possible.
Frost mages is easily S tier tbh because scatter shot actually multiplies their damages and wild shards increase mapping ability at no cost whatsoever
One thing I like about the storm minion is that I just run 1 with increased shock chance and the support gem that makes shock last forever on ignited targets. Since you have a dog igniting everything around him. U can get a nice damage boost from the shock debuff with very minimal cost
Storm mages almost never last long enough to shock. Sounds good on papers, sucks in action
I think that raging spirits should be taken on the Sorc persistent buff selection and given to the witch, and the sorc should get a replacement
advice : use warriors with minion instability + culling strike ... for the rest,i totally agree
I think zombies are awesome in fights with huge mobs. The mobs of enemy all end up serving you!
You use them wrong if you make them to follow you walking.
Use them during the battle to turn the numbers as the battle goes on. It's awesome in large fights, like the Ascendency 1 sands rooms.
Great body blockers you can run through to lose enemy attacking you.
Unearth accomplishes all that in a batter way.
Been running arsonist with a few snipers for a while. Igniting the gas clouds does so much damage.
Arsonists + Detonate Dead + SRS has been my wave clearer since it dropped.
Nothing will make me turn my back on the skelebombers lmao.
DD with Brutes kills the endgame bosses in under 6 seconds....its nuts
i run same thing but in tier 9 maps i am moving like a snail, i can't clear fast anymore and ritual and breaches is almost sure death as i get stuck in a pack of mobs then die from ritual tornado that i can't move out of while my mobs can't kill fast enough to get me room to move. what tier maps are you on? I paly SSF and i just don't see any gear i could get that will allow me to scale up, if anything i may be able to push further with a lot of grinding but i'll be still so freaking slow to get through maps. i swear i spend a good 10 minutes a map clearing, this build has to be slowest high tier map build in POE 2 at this point.
@zengrath mostly you need more minion skill level. 3 on weapon. 2 on helmet 2 on amulet.
After than flat minion damage is huge. Then %damage and attack speed. Cast if makes of course.
The flat damage is huge as it scales with your percentile on the passive tree. After 65 your looking at +10-30 damage a hit extra just from a flat dage stack. Most certainly much more as max damage hits will hit hard.
After the recent crit changes moving your buuld yo stack critical instead will get alotnof range. This is probably where your at. Stack up to around 35%+ minion crit chance then stack as much crit damage as you can. 300% base damage is massive especially on 10+ minions.
Spirit as you must know is your breadwinner. Get 340+ before all the rest
@@2fat4airborne44 build pls?
Instead of DD I'm using contagion. All it takes is 1 kill then contagion clears the screen
Another note: would be cool to hear your thoughts on using STormies without Doryani: I've seen them do serious damage even without the armor, plus I think the debuff has a slight delay when in range, so not all mobs on the screen are getting their res dumpstered immediately upon contact.
Powered raised undead are extremely strong with infernal army (ignite everything), in end game up to t15 atm with 2 cleric behind them they melt the ennemies extremely quickly.
I’m making a titan right now just to see how strong they can be with max life and a boost to the small passive nodes
i can’t wait for him to grow his mustache back. he’s a good looking dude no matter what but he lost power without his mustache
Not sure if anyone is aware yet but snipers are absolutely crazy right now. Im using a guide i can link here if people want and currently killing everything in T15/16/17/18 instantly and screenwide. The only problem with the build is that it doesnt use ES and you only have 2k Life and 3k Mana with Mom as your defenses, but because of the gravebind and jewel interaction you get % life and mana for each kill so you are always at max hp and mana if you kill stuff (for which you just have to move around with your minions or teleport with blink).
sounds lit. share please 🙌
this game needs a minions speed support gem pretty bad. more move/cast/attack/action speed
I started PoE1 as a necromancer and it was my first toon in PoE2 as well. Been having fun in Tier 15 maps with my Arsonist build. Kinda been wondering how I could use the Snipers again because "yes" they clap. I'm most interested in the StormMage build though. It seems really cool! I had no idea about the negative resist thing you are doing!
I like ur take on the firewall my solution is firestorm long range and surrounding my skeleton snipers with firewall. Also in closed quarters maps, I spawn 2 reavers.
I would say some sort of spell like convocation is mandatory to circumvent the minion AI issues and behaviour. We NEED to position them so they dont die instantly by a slam or something similar. As of now im not having fun ence for i've abandoned minions for now until something else is introduced to fix these problems.
Stoic Sceptres are number 2 that you could use when in a party
clerics are pretty bad ass. i use 3 of um, they can revive minions that die to being off screened, a pretty good reason to have a decent amount of them. i have had lots of situations were i run to far away but at least 1 claric is alive, they resummons all. 3 is a good number if you accidently offer them 2 back up clerics is good for that situation. it would be nice if ggg change the ai for them to stay in back, it sucks that they rush forward like a warrior.
I’m doing 6 brutes right now stacking attack speed and I’m on T-10 no problem with fairly quick clear speed. Aftershock support gem I think it’s called can clear whole packs
Hey Ghazzy, i run a Sniper Build which focs on Phys/Crit Damage with the Infernal Hound breaking Armor. I just got a LvL 21 6Link Sniper Gem and i am at +11 with Gear so i can tell 16 Sniper with Fork BLASTS through any Content with easy. Just did T4 Breachlord & alot of Deli/Breach/ect, they are melting the screen 10x faster then any arso build ^^
Also: Omen Sceptre gives Malice Aura which has great Synergy with Phys/Crit Sniper ^^
@@WoWSnake1989do you have a link to the build?
Loved the raise zombie section. 💯 accurate
Also ive been using contagion, havent heard many people talk about it
contagion is good early game bad late game
The D4 ads spamming with rhykker on all poe vids is wild
just a tip, you absolutely do NOT need to use doryani's for storm and their clear speed/dmg is still insane due to their naturally higher crit, instant hit etc. So you can still output great damage and ahve the survivability of your chosen chestpiece & max res
In the preview for witch we were suppose to be able to summon the rare / unique minions as a part of our arsenal. Is that in the game yet?
That spectres which not in the release version yet sadly.
Snipers are fun to set up pools of gas and then use ignite skills to clear mobs in a second. Also their boss dps is crazy for sure
disagree on the unearth SLANDER. sacrifice + contagion + envenom, bursting plague, corrosion, corpse conservation support gems makes it best minion skill trust
does using Brutality prevent this whole thing from working? Brutality says supported skills can't deal chaos, which means also can't apply poison via Envenom?
@@Shajirr_ im not sure i can test it later but id guess so, most of what ive seen is poison counts as chaos dmg but chaos isnt poison dmg if that makes sense
@ yes I’d guess so
Well i can give a reason to run something else than rattling. Omen scepter is a 40% damage boost from the aura for me. Not like I need it, my bossing speed is fast enough, but... 40% probably beats 2 meat shields.
What about the minion from the warbringer ascendency?
For casual players looking just to chill, or more likely want to run minions while in co-op, you may be interested in how brutes combo with infernal legion might work like I was.
Brutes - stupid high HP minions which can have high enough fire resistance to not die to Infernal Legion even in boss fights
Infernal Legion - do ignite damage in AOE around the minion based on % HP of the minion
It's stupid slow, but also stupid safe, at least for the acts until end game. The downside is that the damage is painfully slow, at least as far as I have been able to build it, and the gameplay is mostly just waiting around for things to die, including even in boss fights. The upside is that it is crazy safe and chill if that interests you, where you clear maps by escorting an army of raging toddlers slowly through the map or kill bosses by doing little other than dodge rolling to stay alive. Assuming I didn't miss some big trick to dramatically improve their damage, I doubt you will ever see a video for them or anyone ever recommend them though, as they don't make for good content and any experienced POE player is going to laugh at their stupid slow their clear speed is. I know there are quite a few non-POE 1 players out there that are just dipping their toes into maybe even ARPGs for the first time, likely also just in co-op, so this might an option some for them.
What is your on screen tooltip brute HP? When I needed to scale HP I was able to get clerics to 46k tooltip (LVL 32 minions)
@@BaneWilliams My witch is chilling at just the start of end game, T1 maps, level 14 gems. My brutes have an HP of 8,042 HP and my cleric has an HP of 2,886. Even my dog only has a HP of 9,772 if I put the meat shield support gem on him, increasing his HP by 50%, but also lowering his damage by 30% which lowers the burn damage. So, the brutes seem to be the highest HP from what I can see.
@@liberalideas8224 Cool, I might give this a try with my setup. Remember that level matters a lot for minion HP, so a +2 trenchtimbre could very much be worth.
Was running T16 at level 75 with 14 reavers 2 clerics with hound armor shredding bosses. Reavers S tier
Anyway to make the ancestral minions from totems usable for a warbringer minion build?
reaver is amazing if u are a gemling grenade mercenary, boss, mobs everything focusses ur reavers and u can grenade burst them all..
Just in case no one knew, but it seems the Unearth Bone Minions can propagate shock as well, not just chaos dots. Idk if it's intended, but I noticed it while leveling with Storm Mages. It was Cruel Act 1 and there were no shock mobs, but I had consistently risen "shocked" bone minions... Hope it's not a bug, it was awesome and made me shift my build a bit, leaning more into shocks & freezing as opposed to the poison gas fire combo.
I hope we get more/ different interactions with elemental combos.
i think unearth and zombies should be able to be risen with any of the elements attached, frost psn chaos fire shock zombies =s
@@meowmeow9326 I think that might be possible/ the intention, but effects like Freeze ends in a shatter (no corpse to res), and Poison & Ignite are only effective while the target is alive, as they are like "hp based effects". A burnt corpse is just charcoal... Like... it makes sense, but it also doesn't?
The tooltip on Unearth mentions any DoT effects on the corpse, so it "should" work with ignite, but there are no "Enemies you kill/ Corpses you create are ignited" effects/ affixes anywhere in game... nor is there one for corpses remain poisoned, Shocked can make shocked ground though, and cursed based dots are still duration based curses, so they persist on corpses. You can't raise a corpse in a Flamewall and hope for a burning minion... I tried that sadly.
I'm just hoping these "interactions" are part of the 50% unfinished PoE2.
raising one zombie at a time without them being permanant is ridiculous in the current state its too annoying to try and summon them you should be able to summon at least 3 of them from nearby corpses at once.
@@JT-yl9yt maybe that should be a support gem. my zombies currently last 1 minute tho with a good chunk of +skill duration, and duration supp gem. u can find some nodes that give skill duration and chaos damage so if u go chaos dmg dots with zombies u get max benefits. skill duration also seems to affect skills that travel thru the air, as they technically have a duration
@@meowmeow9326 I don't care how long they last after a minute I will still be individually summoning them one by one its ridiculous for a temporary minion and this horrific for blood mages.
Excellent tier list, I’m using snipers and just have to contend with their decent clear, but their boss damage is insane. Still hoping for convocation
I've tried them all, but I keep going back to Reavers. They just dominate everything.
Could a case be made for storm mages without using the doriyani chest? Like for leveling or mid campaign to early endgame?
I'm still in early game but I'm using unearth to spawn walking time bombs for my arsonist. Going well for now
The skeletal warriors ranking is a bit cooked. They are probably the best corpse explode minion currently until they fix ignite/bleed interactions.
I swapped from arsonist to snipers today at around lvl 75 and I’m clearing so much easier. I’m doing like 8x my dps and have scattershot and fork and way more snipers bc of cheaper reservation. I really think it’s a coin toss between shock mage and sniper for best witch build right now.
You combine snipers with raging spirits and boots that decompose corpses. Now you got the clear and good boss fights
Why can't I use my Storm Mage skill? The skill is grayed out and I can't use it
Sounds like you havent got any storm mages minions out.
this video was depressing.... but i greatly appreciate you making it, bc gg is listening
I've got an assumption, and if it's true then an idea. I assume all skeletal creatures at the same level have the same base stats, but different scaling, like a brute or a warrior would have the same base life number, then brute has 120% base life scaling, when warrior has 88%, that's how end result becomes different brute has more life. A brute at 20% has 144% life, warriors 88% but brute cost (take lvl 20 numbers) 49 spirit and warriors cost 20, that means for 2 brutes I can summon 4 warriors, that's 288% vs 352%, the warrior wins and not just that, with a tiny bit of spirit on gear you can fit another warriors in, at least much easier than a brute.
This can be useful because of the warbringer ascendancy gives you the ability to explode corpses for 25% of max life, which is like DD right now but higher value and more importantly warcry it's an aoe, which would result in blowing up all the minions in diameter all together, that's when total life combined means more, you can so much more easily fit in as much as warriors as possible and blow up them at once.
My build idea would be warbringer DD, you just do usual DD things, archmage and all that, it's not that hard with warbringer to travel up, but when meeting a boss, you switch to weapon set 2, auto un-summon your brutes and summon a shit load of warriors, prbly use splinter on DD to get some armour break first then weapon swap, then blow all of the warriors up at once, you do lose the archmage extra lightning damage, but it's all at once and almost 160% more damage effectiveness just by having more warriors, when archmage inevitably got axed, it's would be more meaningful.
Great list. I enjoy the utility unearth gives me when doing t15+ breech etc when being over run.
would like to say that brutes still have a use case because of their huge health pool in a minion explode build, i would put them in A tier with that build specifically
Breaking all armor on a heavy stun works amazing when paired with snipers since they do physical damage
Do you have a build planned out for lightning mage with the end goal of using the uniques you spoke about ?
Detonate dead is ridiculously strong. I use it on my sorc as just an extra way to blow up an entire room in one shot lol.
If you want pure HP for blowing things up with detonate dead Brutes and Warriors are a lot nicer. Brutes have by far the best raw HP per minion and Warriors likely (I haven't actually mathed it out so bear with me) the best HP per spirit. If they ever solve the pathing issues I wouldn't be surprised if they move up in people's estimation.
Just talking about what I know. When I'm farming in the end game to me ice mages with wildshards at least feels better at clearing maps than arsonist. Just b/c the first 1-3 volley of arsonist will always miss the enemy if the enemy is melee and just charging at you if they are range it feels about the same. I really wish there was a taunt skill I could put in my melee minions to stop this.