I dunno how this is even possible but after starting up a lightning sorc yesterday, it plays so much better than my minion necro. The same with the earthquake barb. I dunno how, or why, earthquakes and lightning spears can be considered minions, but they do, and they out perform actual minions from necros. I even tried the new necro minion sword and it has no noticeable improvements to minions.
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Class identity is a bit in shambles right now with meta builds. I never thought I’d see the day when Barbarians have the premier minion build, not Druids or Necros who’s class identity is literally built around them.
Alas, here we are.
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H-how is earthquakes considered minions? I find that odd.
Lighting spear is a conjuration and IMO considered minion so that should count. I wish it was up Permanently though, but that would just make the class too easy, -Like the necro-
I’m playing Lighting spear sorc and I’m enjoying the heck out of it. Still kind’a squishy in torment 4 though. Gotta be real careful.
My right arm/wrist/hand is starting to hurt from all the button smashing though. 
Barbs summon minions that cast earthquake, on top of runes that auto cast earthquake. I can literally just walk around shouting and be killing things faster than my minion necro spamming priest, corpse tendrils, and golem attack.
Ohhh I see…
Well, that sounds like a fun/easy character to play as! 
how about boss power? you didn’t put the laser pew pew shooting from your chest?
Yeah I did, I mostly use it for PIT or boss runs but anything else I just walk around and shout and things just die.
The thing your forgetting is that most things are always made stronger than a minion necro because it’s a passive build in blizzards eyes but it still cleared 101 so not too shabby. The new “minion” sword is trash though and I have it in quotes because it’s more of an AOTD sword and not minion.
Yeah, Macro even has a vid about how terrible it still is even after the “buffs”.
and yet minion necros do pit 90+.
dont get me wrong, i love discussions on minionmancers, i love every necromancer build (k bloodwave is a little boring for sure), but what exactly is the issue you want to talk about?
hat feels like your two-handed weapon still has its wrapping and price tag on. 
Sadly minion necro has always been pretty bad in diablo 4. At least there was a time golem was one-shotting stuff and mages dealt damage, but there is always a lot better builds. Maybe at some point minions are playable again, because playing minion necro is very easy and chill.
Boulder Druid is doing over a billion damage with level 15 glyphs somehow flying under the radar. Not as flashy as the barbs and sorcs but getting the job done just the same. Will probably get shadow nerfed at some point it’s been too good for a couple of seasons now.
The LS builds you copy from streamers most likely use the bugged Enlightening passive. If Blizzard fix all the multi dipping and snapshoot bugs, LS performance is going to be slightly better than Season 6 when the build only good for open world farming. LS also gear dependent, you need a Shakro with GA CDR and triple master work it. It is not intuitive to play as you basically spam ball lightning and evade to get LS randomly spawned from Unstable current.
Minions damage is lower than expected due to some bugs hindered its damage output. The minions AI also not too good, the dev already said it is hard to fix as it needs fundamental changes to its programming.
I gave up on my minionmancer this season after I started doing T4 bosses, especially doing Andariel, Duriel and Harbinger. Minions going all over the place during the invulnerability phases and sometimes actually being wiped out because I couldn’t direct them got annoying real quick. It’s all very inefficient. On top of that, corpse generation sometimes stalling was also terrible. Pit clearing speed was fine though.
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Are there any barb builds that do not include earthquake or ancients that are T4 and boss farming viable?
I wish upheaval wasn’t so clunky to play because it slaps pretty hard, problem is even with high attack speed you can get animation locked and so pretty easily. Also enemies can avoid your attacks compared to other builds that are instant cast.
Other builds for Barb lean into dust devils which are significantly weaker than EQ or minions. Most builds these days rely on gimmicks, procs or bugs to do damage because the skills themselves aren’t very good.
IQ-Barb is very dangerous 
Yeah this sucks big time!! Been complaining on Necromancer minions since launch of Diablo 4, each season I play minions and get disappointed every time, and hit that wall, forced to gear for something else.
Now i gotta test if the rune earthquake benefits from primordial…
Edit: Brief testing = no, it does not lol had to try.
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