Hi everyone! I was new in S3. How i read and heard - minions rework was a… controversial. Someone says minions now are durable and flexible and someone says minions are killed and falconer with bm bear on earthquake only ones working options. Which is it true position? How was minions are REALLY feelings in S3 - clearing, bossing, Shade and usual/uber Aberroth?
Depends entirely on the minion, the only non dogwater minion for necro is abomination but it forces a huge setup time and forces you to sacrifice using skills as the dumb thing will contiue to eat whatever you made it with so you basically waste either one or multiple entire specializations. At most its meh as you can just go with another class (beastmaster) and make bear, scorpion, or saber and still keep all your specializations they also spec easier for the Trex if you want to go that route because of stats.
The changes they made to necro only changed the passives and they really just forced you to put more points into the tree to get the same effect you could get before, the skills themselves except abom are still trash with tons of trap points (dread phalanx) so dont even bother with the smaller minions, they are all super squishy and do basically no damage.
Falconer seems good still, not completely broken as it used to be but still in a good spot.
Basically
Acolyte
Summon skeleton - Below F tier
Summon skele mage - D tier at best
summon zombies - C - D tier
Summon golems - D tier
Summon wraith F tier for non decay or D tier for only the fire wraith
Wraithlord - personally id say B tier others will say A tier
Abomination S- tier
Beastmaster
Wolves - D tier
Squirrels C tier
raptors C tier
Bear S+
saber S
Scorpion S-
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Thanks, that’s what i need to know. Literally the one of those answers without complaining about “NAAAAAH I CANNOT PLAY AS ZOO STYLE!!! EHG BAD BAD BAD :c”
Dudes who complain on minions did you see minion statement in PoE 2? They’re worse in LE. In every aspect. ALL minions are unplayable
Actually, Ghazzy just released a video saying they should all be much better this season and they all got buffs, even the melee ones.
The problem is the only minions worth anything are when you can get a single big minion smaller more numerous minions are trash and not everyone wants to play the one big minion.
Another big thing is devs made this whole show about lich and necro getting reworks. Lich got reworked but necro not only got nerfed passive wise but they didnt bother even touching the skills and most of those were absolute garbage. This was after taking out snapshotting which basically gutted a lot of builds.
The devs entire idea of necro is bad, the whole sacrifice mechanic is slow, clunky, and just not thought out. It forces added steps for a sub par version of what another class already does better.
The skeletons do tickle damage, and have paper hp, the res mechanic is a % chance at 3 seconds… 3 seconds in an arpg to see if something went off is an eternity just recast yourself when something dies and you just saved 2.5 seconds with a 100% chance to see it come up again. They also made it much harder to get more minions so huge investments to even get other skills that sacrifice them up and running. They even have huge trap nodes that for some reason people thing are good but if you look at them they are just put there to nerf them further.
The mages do laughable damage that just does not scale and at mid corruption they just fall off completely. Just like skeletons they have a trap point that ends up being a nerf to the class that actually uses them.
Zombies you have to completely build around and they still end up doing low damage that is completely uncontrollable as they just go wherever and blow up if you put them into a summon loop then you are burning all your mana to keep it going.
Wraiths non decay are possibly the worst minions in the game, they do sub par damage, meh life, and you can only ever have 2 of them. only the decay version is viable and then only if you go change them into fire and root them in place, making them nothing more than a totem.
Wraithlord does ok damage but since all the new items have been added they just cant hold up since they summon additional wraiths that eat up the buff spots for certain items. You are again forced to only have wraithlord as it eats up all other minions.
Golems have so so health, lowest crit of any minion in the game and really slow damage but tricks you with slightly higher hit numbers. Both the item and the skillpoint to get more golems are bad and when put together are nothing more than a noob trap. The item gives you one more golem without investment or 2 with investment so you waste a specialization slot to get 2 extra garbage golems.
So we have playable abomination and skelies with mages for low corrupt and leveling. Decent for me, idk about other (and fr it is doesnt care me - i love abom build and how they still bonking)
Buffs are minor, but you got removing spirit reservation reduce and no one buffs to minion survivability
you are much better off useing something else besides necro for leveling and then when you can finally get abom completely respec
I already using golems mages warriors and dread shade. Decent for me. only what i want it is abomination which can kill Abby/Shade/bosses/Uber Abby/clear Arena. Other whine it is whine imo
For my fellow Minion lovers - I was kind of bummed at the state of necro minions. I gave Abomi a try and found it far too awkward, unwieldly, and clumsy to really be fun or enjoyable. It’s strong but feels like wielding an oversized wiffleball bat when playing ping-pong to me.
However, I have found the new Frog build was exactly what I was looking for. Fully automated, self-recasting pets. They do all the work, even auto-target. All I do is warcry, drop a frenzy totem, and use wolf howl for damage buffs. So while it isn’t a NECRO Minion, I have found Froggy not only to be quite fun and enjoyable, but also very strong as well, even with only basic items. Granted I only just got the froggy helmet last night, but I am blowing through the mono’s so far without even breaking a sweat.
Anyway, just wanted to mention the Froggy build if any other fellow minion lovers felt a little disappointed. If you like the “minons do everything” playstyle then it may be up your alley.
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Froggers are what most minions should be like.
Also on the topic of necro minions, I read that there are still AI issues, that mages will shoot at a wall in the tombs/cemeteries instead of finding line of sight to target, and that golems will sometimes get stuck.
Forged Weapons need to be made permanent too. The FW explode node can trigger on skill use instead of duration end, and Forge Guards will be very happy.
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100% I have been playing zoo Necro minions from day 1. I have MADE my minion army work but only with huge investment and by making my toon a glass cannon.
This season was for Lich. and beast master NOT for Necromancers outside of Abomination… Maybe when they do an imperial age season Necros will see some love.
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Ive been trying for a few days now.
The status quo is still there.
Solo minions are king. While BM zoo got a little better, its still pretty much propped up on either wolves/squirrels being built around having a bunch, or on frogs. A build of a 2-3 companions with 1-2 support skills is just still bad.
its better to all in wolves/frogs with support skills, or do a solo companion.
Necro passive tree got a few good interesting mechanics, like ward per second per minion, with 20 minions and all 5 points you get 200 ward a second, this is quite strong, on top of all the regen stacking minion stacking stuff.
But same issue persists, skeletons die all teh fucking time, its like really annoyingly bad. There is 0 good minion regen investment that does not require finding a decently rare t6 minion regen item. the stuff on the tree is too small, and leech is really not so good for many small hits on weak enemies.
I have not felt the impact of minion power at all when it comes to skeletons. Mages are okay they have built in life on crit. So while still suffering from a pretty boring tree, they atleast are able to go for a mana stacking route.
Normal skeletons however just feel worthless, no aoe, no clear, no proj, terrible life pools and defensive scaling. They feel designed to die which sucks.
So for me the patch even after playing with it a bunch(probably an unhealthy amount) it didnt solve enough of the issues plaguing the archetype. Minion AI is honestly worse on aggressive mode, so I stick to defensive, and even with the improved tree such as letting me scale vit into minion health and int into armor, im able to get something like 5k armor on my skeletons, it means fuck all, they just die multiple times an echo even on pre empowered. Yeah when I have a ton of exalted minion life/life regen they will be fine, what the hell am I supposed to do till then? suffer? it just sucks imo. Beast master also does not have this issue, I ran a 5 companion build to 150c that is still very bad, but it didnt have issues with them dying, and I had far less minion hp investment cause I guessing giving them 50%+ extra dr through bear roar and aspect of boar is a pretty big deal.
I’m making a Fire Zoomancer work (Abomi, Zombies, Wraiths, Mages, Shade) work. Basically I took the abomi node “picky eater” so it wont eat zombies, then I use the 6 zombies to make the abomi, and then summon everything else. So I get both the abomi and everything else, plus I can still spam the zombies since the abomi wont absorb them. Froggys, Bear, and other minion setups will likely be better, but so far this is the best “passive” minion playstyle I have used for Necromancers.
I do want to add and highlight that I only just got to 100 corruption with her today, so I haven’t begun to push very hard at all. The minions are living well (so far) but I don’t know how long it will last. But honestly if I can clear 300 or so with it, I’ll be happy. Not expecting a 800 corruption Zoomancer build, as awesome as that would be.
It just kind of sucks that we can go all out with trees and skills, and BMs can just take 1 head item and do the same thing better. And not just a little better, a LOT better.
I made my own elemental skelly build that hit 600c during release and only now have returned so I am now attempting to recreate and see if I can go further this season. In the mean time im running melee with Trex and enjoying the buffs to rogues.
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Got it to 1000 as physical zoo under T-Rex roar. Warriors, 2 small blood golems, 4 death knights (necro+phys), buffy rip blood, debuff n bubble from infernal shade. Killed Abby few times, but haven’t posted my vid yet (yt troubles…), but I can share build
https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/BGW7XV3B
2 Likes
See that’s a build I would really like. No juggling shades or finicky buffs, no juggling abomination summoning and skill bar swapping. I didn’t realize rip blood had a pet buff option which is really neat. But why infernal shade? Thats just damage and fire, isn’t it? Wouldn’t Decay healing aura or maybe Bone Curse be better? I’m just not seeing the synergy or payout with Infernal Shade? (Guessing I’m just not seeing it in the nodes or gear)
PS - nevermind, I see it on the weapon. A 3 second damage immunity and fraility and slow on enemies. Very nice! I think I have pretty much everything but the weapon, might have to trade for one and give this setup a try.
The frogs are on crack - the good kind. They hop and ribbity everywhere that it drops the fps by a bit.
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How do you heal, is it just rip blood?
if so congrats thats actually a pretty well put together build. I tried something similar but ran into survival issues of my own.
Golems also restore health on hit.
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