July 14, offline
Minions snapshot player gear at the time of summon. The snapshot of gear is persistent between zones per minion.
Summoned minions “snapshot” player’s gear at the time of summon. “snapshot” meaning that the summoned minions consider and remember the player’s equipped items at the time of being summoned and do not take into consideration any alteration to player equipped items after being summoned.
Replication:
Have an item that grants “Chance to bleed on minion hit”.
Have skill to summon a minion.
Go to the Champion’s Gate arena.
Locate a training dummy.
Do not have any item equipped.
Summon a minion.
Observe the minion attack a training dummy. Notice it does not proc bleed on the training dummy.
Equip an item with “Chance to bleed on minion hit”
Observe the training dummy being attacked by the previously summoned minion.
Observe that despite the player now having “Chance to bleed on minion hit” on an equipped item the previously summoned minion does not proc bleed.
Summon a second minion at a nearby, but different, training dummy. Each minion should be attacking different training dummy.
Observe the newly summoned minion will proc bleed on it’s target training dummy.
Observe the first summoned minion is still not proc’ing bleed on it’s training dummy.
Use the map to load into a different area.
Use the map to return to Champion’s Gate Arena.
Observe each previously summoned minion attack a different training dummy.
Observe one minion proc’s bleed while the other does not.
Expected: Minion stats and effects should update with any changes to player equipped items.
Actual: Minions only consider and remember player equipped and stats at the time of being summoned.
Additional Information:
I also tested this with Increased minion damage, Increase to minion damage over time, and minion physical penetration for bleed inflicted by minions. All three snapshot at the time of being summoned. In general I suspect minions snapshot everything but I don’t have a good method to test minion health.
This also effects ailment damage inflicted by minions. Specifically in my testing Minion bleed damage is based on the snapshotted gear.
Interestingly “Bone Curse” with points in “merciless” to increase minion damage does appear to accurately increase minion damage and minion inflicted ailment damage. But the minion does not update it’s snapshot.