Season 2 Minion issues

Necromancer
1

I am having an issue with minion damage and survivability. Just for reference I’m in full 925, 13.4k armor, 70% to all resistance, every minion aspect, full cult leader and hulking aspect boards.

My biggest issue is that the moment more than one elite with a damaging affix stacks, skeletal priests just can’t heal enough. Couple this with the fact that my mages are dealing 11-25k a hit, warriors are dealing 5 - 11k, and golem is doing 55 - 90k. It just isn’t enough damage.

With all of that said here are some things I have tested thanks to the new target dummy along with some opinions as a pure summoner.

  • Bone mages are dealing the same damage numbers as shadow and cold… 40%[x] multiplier?
  • None of the vampiric powers proc from minion damage but some proc from casting raise skeleton “hemomancy and pox”.
  • Changing my own attack speed is not increasing their attack speed and even commanding aspect doesn’t seem to be working as 150% attack speed should not equal out as the same attacks per second.
  • Decompose is not activating basic skill vampiric powers “channeling issue”. I even tried to repeat cast instead of channel to no effect.
  • Minions don’t proc lucky hits except a bugged interaction with abhorrent decrepify and thorns. This is another issue with ring of mendeln and vampiric powers.
  • Shadow mages are still not procing gloom, terror, or darkness/shadow skill effects. Lucky hit or physical damage type issue.
  • Physical, cold, shadow, %damage increases are not affecting minions. The convention of elements aspect does nothing for your army.
  • Skeletal priest heals for less after the duration change from 5 to 8 seconds as it’s the same healing over a longer window.
  • Vulnerable and critical damage nerfs have negatively impacted minions greatly. Season zero my warriors and mages were dealing 45-60k damage. As a reference they are now 12-25k.
  • Attack speed scaling is still broken both for minion only and the 30% inherited from the necromancer.
  • Kalan’s Edict is impossible to keep up in higher nmds where you will take hits regardless of positioning or spacing because minions do too little and there is so much going on. It deactivates on damage to barriers or fortify it doesn’t matter if it hits your health bar.
  • Kalan’s Edict bonus is bugged as attack speed scaling is broken anyways.
  • Minions can’t handle multiple instances of area of effect damage. Sure they can only take a max of 30% of their health in damage but it means nothing when those instances of damage increase. This is the multiple elite issue coupled with nerfed skeletal priest that makes them unable to survive.
  • Paragon boards for minions need to share bonuses with the necromancer! You give up far too much personal survival to run minions.
  • The glyph location in cult leader and hulking monstrosity boards is bad for the new “tears of blood” glyph coming in December 10th. We are getting a 162% at max level additive bonus in place of a much larger bonus to mages and warriors.
  • Mage and warrior glyphs are now mandatory for their minion survival bonuses which is losing much needed multipliers for damage.
  • There is not enough glyph slots in boards for any build let alone minions. I personally would like to see 2 glyph slots per paragon board.
  • Mages need an area of effect or piercing option.
  • All minions need to do AOE damage and the ones that already do like reapers and bone golem should do their job better for choosing that option. Damage is far too low versus damage reduction aura with no way to select damage or focus fire one target.
  • We need the ability to focus fire or select a target for minions if we don’t get an AOE update. It is the only way to deal with a big pack of multiple suppressor and damage reduction aura elites.
  • Ring of mendeln needs to be changed to proc off minions and scale with their damage bonuses. After the changes it is pointless for any other build and far too hard to proc as a pure summoner.
  • Minions should inherit 100% of thorns and their bonuses need to increase its damage. Besides the fact that we can’t afford to double dip affixes into thorns and inherit thorns on gear, thorns is too damn low. In full 925 with a razor plate the necromancer caps out at around 26k but minions cap out at 76-84% of that (depending on if you give up a ring slot for mendeln which doesn’t gives inherit thorns) so their thorns damage is capped at 18-20k.
  • Minions should deal thorns on hit for defenders and bone golem.
  • Thorns needs to deal physical damage, gain bonuses from it, and scale like normal damage.
  • Spiked armor is trash because minion only start out getting 30% of its bonus. Make it give its bonus directly to minions we aren’t playing thorns Necro with no minions ever anyways.
  • The thorns vampiric power jagged spikes like needleflare aspect does not proc on thorns damage from minions… Change this before season 3 or I am going back to filling your dms on Twitter with daily reminders again.
  • The aspects that increase warrior and mage count needs to be magic nodes in the cult leader board. We need more of them and I shouldn’t have to give up two defensive or offensive aspect slots just to gain 20-40k dps.
  • The new curse pants are really nice but we now can’t fit enough aspects for our build. Please rework minion aspects.
  • Skeletal mages are randomly deciding to not attack even on cursed target or with targets in range…

I know it is a lot but even with all of these big fixes and quality of life updates minions are still going to be the worst build in the game. 30% of stats is never going to equal out to the same amount as 100%. I don’t care if you have a full army of 14 running around. When crackling energy can hit as hard as a warrior or a mage we just can’t keep up. And before anyone says it’s the afk build… Ball lighting and infinimist exist ok? Can we stop talking about play style gripe for a second and acknowledge that there are legit afk builds. Me macroing my entire army struggling to get my mages to even attack, positioning non stop to keep myself alive and do damage, while spamming all of my cooldowns to deal out a fraction of any other builds dps isn’t afk.

At the end of the day they just need to rebalance minions with them receiving 100% of a necromancers stats. We don’t want or need you to try to accomplish this with outlandish 600-1000% additive bonuses. I don’t want to see a future unique or set giving me 12,000% minion damage like in Diablo 3. Look the game and enemies are getting harder in wt5. Ask yourselves as developers how big a number you will have to slap on them to bandaid fix that. It’s less work to just rework them.

It’s a novel so I don’t blame you for not reading all of this. I also do not have the time to test all of this at 100% accuracy. I know macrobioboi is working on a minion testing video soon so check that out if you care about this topic. I will be relaying all this info to the dev team once it’s 100% verified. Thank you for reading and please complain if you feel the same. Let pet builds not only for necromancer but druid and sorceress be a thing moving forward. It is fun and tons of people enjoy the class fantasy.

And to any devs that might read this. I appreciate all you are doing to improve the game. I am not faulting you or belittling your work load. I understand the challenge of working on multiple different people’s codes spread across a multitude of teams working on different projects at the same time. Knowing this it makes sense that the game launch team, season 1 team, season 2 team, season 3 team, and the expansion team, are having some code and or communication issues. It can’t be easy to go in and have to make sense of companions, conjuration, and minion, code being and acting differently of each other. I hope you guys figure out an easy solution for your sanity. Thank you for the hard work you have put in so far and mountain left to climb.

8 Likes
2

Back on S0 and S1, at very high end level, minions tend to die easily due to its squishiness. The gameplay was to nuke/melt all of them before minions get destroyed. On S1, we had Sacrilegious Heart that auto-tendrils. The mobs spent most their time stunned as we had 2x tendrils one after the other. Mobs die even before they start doing damage. I believe S2 should be the same. I will get there. I just started S2 and just spanked the campaign with the same Summoner build.

Base on my previous Season Summoner Minion build experience, the damage would always base on the Unique item you would have. It was all about Ring of Mendeln. On S1, we had Barber plus the Sacrilegious and Decrepit Aura Hearts in addition to Ring of Mendeln. With Barber procs, damage was up to 500k on me. With Barber and Mendeln Proc’d together, it was over Million damages.

On S2, it would be Ring of Mendeln plus the new S2 stuffs. Sorry, I just started S2 but I am on it. Show me all the Uniques that comes from Minions… those should be used. Ring of Mendeln should be replaced. If it still exist on S2, we have no choice but to use it. No other builds except Summoner could use that ring. Good luck if you are still persistent not to use it.

1 Like
3

Pretty much agree on everything.

One thing i should add about the bone mages which i run for a while is that damage reduction from the AOTD ultimate with the aspect that gives 100% attackspeed doesn’t do anything for the self damage so they suicide very fast. Many things give minion attackspeed and because the priest heal only happens after 5 seconds they day way before the heal goes off.
If it gave constant recovery it would help greatly.

Also hellbent commander is “close” to minions which according to the loading screen tooltip that’s melee range. Idk if it’s a damage aura around you or the bonus applies to all minions as long as you have 1 close minion but surviving as summoner while close to melee range skelies/golem that draw a lot of random aggro is just nope. Also butcher just ignores all minions and goes to punch you in the face.

There needs to be a minion movement speed option etc.

I realized how bad and how much of a time waste they were, including posting these feedback threads. I will be sacrificing them for the next 3-4 seasons and maybe replay them if there has been insane levels of buffs which is what they need right now.

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4

Thanks for the great summary of the current state of minions in D4. I can attest that your summary matches mine prior to any changes made for Season 2 as I decided to skip playing this season due to the issues you listed above.

I knew minions were going to be underpowered from the outset when Blizzard revealed that minions only inherited 30% of the Necromancer’s stats. Until this changes, minions will always be underwhelming no matter what other changes are made to minions.

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5

I bet you have zero minion health affixes on your gear. Look to get around 300% minion health. With a bigger health pool, and priest heals being a %, you get a greater return of health per press of the button and your minions don’t die.

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how are your NM dungeons going btw? are u still playing pure minions?

7

Mothballed for the moment while I concentrate on BL sorcerer to try and kill Lilith for the first time on any character. Got around 20 Varshan summons lined up once that project is complete.

As an aside, being able to mow through the mobs quickly with the BL sorc is fun and all, but it’s making me greatly appreciate the slower pace of the minion necromancer.

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Hi! I don’t normally post here (I usually lurk for information) but as someone that has tried several minion variations and has completed a NM 100 and several 90+ dungeons I have noticed a few things. 1st of all in terms of minion survivability % to minion maximum life is by far their best stat. The warrior/mage glyphs help but without the max HP (I’d say about 400% is a sweet spot minimum) they will get shredded. I did an AOTD build w/ cold mages, defenders/bone for increased thorns and ofc mendeln (I know it’s a minion carry but it is what it is and imo it’s still fun despite minions needing a serious dmg buff). I also use wand/shield to max my dmg with them while having some personal survivability but there are many things, some that you’ve even stated here, that need to be addressed or at least considered to make minions more viable. They should be inheriting at least 50% of the necro’s stats since they are an extension of the player and so much investment is required. Also, mages should be able to do dmg through suppressor affix (blizzard aspect works here and even procs mendeln from what I’ve seen). There is so much more I can share here but I didn’t want to make this post even more long winded. Hopefully this will be a good source of intel and spur some solid discussion around minionmancer.

P.S. sorry for the format - this was posted on mobile XD

4 Likes
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No. you did great posting this!

Also, perhaps even more pressing - please give us Minion statistics. We don’t know what the damage, health, resistance actually are! It’s like buying a car that doesn’t an odometer. You’d be driving down the highway and not know your own speed, gas in the tank, RPMs, or engine temperature?!"

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This is a great post, hope it is kept alive and taken seriously by the devs. there is a lot that needs to be done with minions, and the list here is a great overview of where Blizzard can start making necromancer the class they always said it was gonna be.

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that sounds like 90% of drivers on the actual roads, add not knowing breaking distances to that LMAO

but back on topic, yes plz and great analogy!

Assuming my Skeletal warriors only inherit 30% of my armour and after their modifiers, they will have 8910 armour. This is significantly under the NM100 cap of 13300 armour. and honestly I cant really get it much higher. My necro is already way over the NM100 cap with disobedience at 15k.
Their resistances should be 70% capped.
Their life again assuming they are only inheriting 30% of my life is only 12.1k. I would give them way more health, and they did have about 15k till i switched rings to the sacrilegious soul. I also dropped hardened bone, however yes they die more in general in NM100 but my overall DMG is way up which has resulted in my own survival being far superior. Basically the game feels better now then before.

So my conclusion is, yes +% minion life is absolutely brilliant, its completely possible to do it with far under 400%. I am doing it with 76.7% additive and 45% multiplicative (skeletal warriors). Mages and the golem have more life, the golem significantly (it does not die ever).

1 Like
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1 thing I should have mentioned is that the 400% modifier is strictly the multiplier found on gear after all other bonuses (sheet HP). You can get away with 300% with some minion management but for less hassle I suggest the 400 base. The Golem is king and 99% of the time you don’t have to worry about its survival. And herein lies another glaring issue imo - almost no unique slots (aside from Ring of Mendeln) provide a bonus to maximum minion life. It’s to the point where I don’t even need to run the 20% dmg reduction affix to minions. From my testing the effective HP still outclasses it. They might as well cut the affix and make minions take a flat 20% less dmg by default. This is troubling (and why 90% of builds sack minions) because the slots that do roll minion life are so valuable for them. For example, Deathspeaker Pendant and Bloobmoon Breeches are so good for a blood surge minionmancer but neither roll minion life in critical slots. Overall, situations like these along with scattered stat distributions and loaded paragon boards make for so much investment for such little gain. A lot of oversight among other issues listed here. No offense to the dev team - they have been working so hard - but they need to make another pass here for such an iconic part of necromancy.

1 Like
13

Nice review, hopefully a dev see it.

The idea of minion do some sort of aoe (cleave like), is better than a focus fire option.

A focus fire option will change too much the game itself, and the colision would turn it useless, with too many mobs around (and the idea of D3 to make skellys rush through mobs isnt cool).

Kalan edict i already did a sugestion which i think is very viable (other post).

Edit:

I forget to mention, what about change the 30% stats (that minions get from you) scale with lvl?

Lets say lvl 1-50 (30%)
Lvl 50-70 (40%)
Lvl 70+ (50%)

This way you dont buff so much low lvl, which is totally fine right now.

This idea can also be implement with paragons/glyphs.

1 Like
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The idea of minions scaling as you level isn’t half bad at all. At this point anything is better than nothing. As far as Kalan’s Edict I have to agree that it’s beyond lackluster. Outside of some specific single target situations it falls wildly short of what Blizzard have themselves described as a “spec defining” capstone talent. There really should be no downside to it, like the 3 other capstone choices, and in my honest opinion it should do more. Something along the lines of “Your minions gain 15% attack speed and 25% more damage. If you have 7 or more minions these effects are doubled.” Still in line with the current interaction without the unjustified punishing downside and a slight bump to minion damage - which they sorely need. It’s little things like this that need to be implemented that will slowly but surely inch the minion spec to a viable non-meme build.

2 Likes
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I’d love a system where the minions gain xp and can level up, gaining power/abilities with each level. But if they are resummoned they go back to zero.

3 Likes
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that would be absolutely sick. just imagine if they added a mini talent tree to pre select what new powers/damage thy get per level. maybe with level 5 being the top.
so they could get things like +% damage or cleave or a charge stun etc etc
i wouldnt even care if they reset on logout

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This post is so important, it would be nice if the devs could acknowledge this topic.

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I’m currently playing a Necromancer in Grim Dawn. I really like their implementation of that class and was really hoping Blizzard would’ve gone in that direction rather than the current version we have.

Like in D4, you can choose to play a Necromancer with or without minions. However in GD, your minions scale off their own stats and are not a much weaker version of your Necromancer. Your minions get stronger as you level up. Your minions have their own branch in your skill tree where you can invest points to make them stronger as well as increase the ceiling of the amount you can summon.

The Necromancer I’m playing in GD is the build I wanted to play in D4, but I gave up trying after Season 1. My minions do all my killing. I can command them where to attack. I can support my minions with buff and debuff skills whenever necessary. The Full Summoning Necromancer is as strong as any build in the game and is not the D tier build it currently is in D4. The full end game of GD is available for me to play unlike in D4.

Thanks to GD, I now have a minimum benchmark for Blizzard to achieve with minions before I ever come back to play D4 again. Until that happens, I’ll continue to follow D4 through the forums, but I won’t reinstall the game.

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I have Grim Down on steam, i played it years ago with the D2 mod, so u could combo 2 classes. I combo’ed summoner druid and necro, was amazing. But I love the Diablo universe, so i always tend to go for diablo games over competitors.
However, I think the new “end game content” coming to D4 will be entirely tuned around ball lightning sorc and other broken classes, so when i get absolutely destroyed on my pure minion summoner I will quit the season and play some GD.
My biggest “mistake” is playing ARPG’s and only playing what I want to play not what they “suggest” you play through poor balancing and “game design”… I mean im a guy who attempted a summoner barb in D3 using the IK set. needless to say it was garbage, but fun for a bit.

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@Bactyrael

Well written write up and I agree with vast majority of it. I’m starting to question why I’m still here suffering whereas I can go somewhere else and not suffer.