I really tried getting into a Necromancer, but playing with minions feels awful in Last Epoch.
While the thought behind the mechanics of minion playstyle is undeniably exciting, everything is overshadowed by these issues.
First, the minions have a super long detection range, which makes them engage enemies off the screen all the time.
You then have to follow them and fight, instead of them following you and waiting for you to act first.
Second, while LE has this pretty vibrant and contrasty style to it, somehow minions kind of take effort to notice them.
I turned on the health bars, but itâs still hard to follow them on the screen to see where they are, and what they are doing.
The worst part however is when they get into a big crowd of enemies, and you actually canât tell anything apart.
You then have to both try to find them among the crowd, and look at the upper left corner of the screen to see which minions are around, all the while you also have to look at your character and try to survive and execute the proper minion skills.
Am I approaching this the wrong way? Is this just what minion playstyle is about? Does this mean itâs just not for me, or that the execution is kind of lacking in certain areas in LE and needs improvement?
EDIT: I really want to be taken seriously, so Iâve made a few videos which showcase just how stupid and frustrating having minions around can be.
Video 1:
This one is related to the seemingly random long range detection.
Here I am noticing enemies at the edge of the screen, but the minions stay put.
This by itself is not a problem, but it is inconsistent when in other situations they engage enemies one screen away from you.
Towards the end, when the enemy group is killed, one of the mages notices other enemies outside of the screen and engages them.
Video 2:
Minions do not seem to be âconnectedâ to each other.
Here you can see how at the top of the screen, they are fighting enemies, and even though the fight is still going, one of the mages decides to come back to me and just stand idly.
Video 3:
Here I am engaging enemies, and they are coming towards me, but my minions still donât know I am in combat.
It takes a few seconds for them to go and attack.
Then, towards the end, one of the mages decides to engage some other enemy, not in combat, and just at the edge of the screen, while the others are standing idly by my side. After a second, they also join him.
Video 4:
The skeletons engage an enemy group, while the golem waits 1-2 seconds before also going in.
He then starts doing a slam attack, but the enemies are already dead. He still finishes attacking the ground, which looks stupid.
This by itself is not a problem, but it just contributes towards the feeling of lag, delay and unresponsiveness.
I will agree with the first one especially. I love minions playstyle and itâs always my first choice in pretty much all ARPGs. In LE minions are especially aggressive. As you mention, they often go offscreen to attack stuff. This is especially aggravating when youâre looking for a lull to do something (interact with nemesis, assign skill points, whatever) and they do that while youâre in the middle of this.
What they need is something like the stances in Grim Dawn, where you can assign individual minion types a roll of Defensive, Normal or Aggressive. Where Defensive minions stick near you and only engage enemies that come close, Aggressive are pretty much like what we have now in LE and Normal is a sort of mid-range.
Mike has been asked about this before and itâs something they said theyâd like to do, so I expect weâll eventually get it.
It should be noted that you can use the âAâ key (or whichever button for controller, itâs bindable anyway) to command your minions. So when they go off to attack someone, I usually command them close to me again. I know the mobs they aggroed will also come, but at least that way they wonât keep on aggroing the next pack all the time.
As for the second point, I canât say I really agree because my experience in several games has been that this is pretty much the norm. Especially in games like PoE, where the visual clutter of skills and ground effects is so big that sometimes you canât even see your own spells properly or even your character, not just minions.
Mostly you just trust that your minions are doing what theyâre supposed to do and only try to keep track of the top left icons to see if you need to resummon or do something else to them.
Itâs stupid when you notice how your minions are engaging enemies off the screen, all the while enemies which are almost in your aggro range canât see you!
Yes, now that you mention it, I thought about that, and this could actually be a great solution. Even a global stance setting (and not per-minion) would be awesome.
I know, and sometimes I have to command them several times, because they insist on going to the enemy crowd.
But why? Why not implement something like a distinctive outline, so you can spot your minions with a glance?
Yeah, when that happens you have to let them engage the mobs, command them close to you so that they can then kill the pack and not go off again. Itâs annoying sometimes.
Honestly, I canât really tell you.
Probably because players like flashy effects all over the screen and that makes it hard?
Possibly because having an outline detracts from the immersion (even though Iâd say health bars do the same, but tbf many players donât use them, or at least not for minions)?
All I know is that in most games I tend to lose sight of minions in the middle of combat, sometimes I lose track of my skills or cursor, sometimes even where my character actually is (though this is rarer).
Minions have a detection range for entities they consider an enemy target, I assume.
Different minions seem to have different detection ranges.
This is a true 3d game with a camera perspective, so there is perspective distortion. And you have a wide-screen resolution, giving you more range you can see to the sides than north and south. Therefore, one can be misled to believe that minions start to engage at different ranges from occasion to occasion.
Though there might be bugs with the detection range, too, or level geometry affecting it - I have not analysed minion behaviour enough. I usually repeatedly press âAâ in my movement direction when playing minion builds, so they act as a vanguard and pull aggro first.
If your minions move too far away from you, they want to return, even if they are in combat. If three minions have an enemy in detection range, but another has not, only three of your four minions will start to fight.
Iâm 99% sure itâs bound to the right stick on controller. Not like click the right stick but like⌠Literally moving the right stick sends them running around like chickens with their heads cut off. Which is extra annoying because the right stick is also a cursor to navigate menus much easier than the left joystick or D-Pad, so assigning skills, for example, I just have my minions running around behind the skills window.
Honestly between POE, D4, D3, D2 and thisâŚI felt these were pretty âpar for the courseâ. Good Minion AI is more or less just non existent in the genre. Torchlight being the outlier, with amazing minion support.
Like all the valid pointing out of problems, but honestly I was pretty happy w/ this gameâs minions.
Iâll take Aggressive over âMINIONS GET THE FK IN THERE ALREADY HELLO I"M DYINGâ any day.
It really isnât that hard and doesnât require an AI level of complexity:
You are not attacking anything? Minions stay put with you.
You just attacked something? All minions instantly engage that same target.
Some of the minions are still fighting, while others have just killed their targets? Idle minions immediately go to help the in-combat minions, instead of first coming to you.
If you watch the videos I posted above, youâll notice they donât act like Iâve described
What about when you literally donât have an attack button because you have a true minion build.
Unless youâre trying to kill EVERY single mob you stumble across in a mono (yikes), youâre going to be running away from little stragglers or mobs that try to agro you from offscreen for w/e reason. That kind of shenanigans is where the minion AIâs get complicated.
How to account for the realistic situations, without it feeling terrible.
ON TOP of the fact that defensive-style minions are the worst minion experience you can have. If theyâre just following you like bodyguards, youâd have to press A everytime you want them to attack a mob (YIKES). They need some level of aggression.
Iâd be more curious what game you played minions in and LIKED it. Honestly the only one Iâd put above LE is Torchlight, otherwise LE does a good job.
(Except the minion survivability. LE completely Fâing FAILLLLLS at this and ruins the entire experience.)
Never even considered this, because it sounds cosmically braindead. You are handicapping yourself, without even an auto-attack. Simple solution could be disallowing players to remove auto attack hotkey (left click).
Again, could be resolved in a very simple manner - just make minions not engage anything if you also didnât engage (even if you are considered in-combat because something is chasing you)
Haha! I put this build together partially as an F- You to my friend. He gives me shit because I never play minion/turret builds and he loves them and he told me that Iâd never play Necromancer or Beastmaster because theyâre built around minions. So I said âChallenge Acceptedâ and planned a purely minion build (using Wraiths as part of my âmust use the class specific skillâ requirement for all of my first builds).
Itâs strong, but boring as hell. I literally did an arena echo, stood in a corner of the center âplatformâ and just afkâd until it was over.
Agree entirely.
I love playing minions, but playing minions in Last Epoch is stressful.
Every new cycle I try building some Beastmaster, but I drop it very early, because I cannot stand the minions running around like crazy if Iâm not constantly pressing A in-between each new movement input.
Oh gosh, I donât even want to imagine trying to play a Necromancer, specially one like Scipo shared.
Thatâs the reason I can only get myself to play Ballista if I want to build minions, because they do not move XD
Thereâs also this Storm Crow build I just discovered recently. It happens to be really powerful and doesnât require pressing A constantly, because I use the crows as traversal skill and they always teleport together with me. I doesnât even feel like playing a minion build actually⌠The crows feels just like an extension of the character, not independent minions, because the crows donât do all much damage themselves, only the companion ability, which I get to choose when to use. Real fun.
Itâs quite simple! You just turn your brain off and walk forward and then realize youâve been walking into a wall for the past⌠Who knows how long because youâve been watching that Letâs Play series on your side monitor because LE requires 0 input other than movement from you at this point.
Edit: in all honesty, Iâd love to redo this build and make it less minion focused while still using Wraiths as part of my self-imposed requirement. I just donât know what Iâd do. I love my Bone Golems, theyâre just the best bois, just happily prancing through the enemy hordes and turning them into meat chunks, so Iâd keep them, maybe add Dread Shade and use it on the Bone Golem to buff the wraiths? Then do Zombies and Infernal Shades? But thatâs still not really any input from me other than wraiths.
Minion builds are historically pretty much braindead. That is their whole point. They are fighting for you. So you donât have to attack anything.
In D2 you just cast Amplify Damage and then twiddled your thumbs until everything died. Your general strategy for progressing the campaign was just run around dodging stuff and letting skellies kill whatever was in the way.
In GD itâs pretty much the same. In PoE as well.
This is because when you have a minion build, youâre going all out on minion damage/health/whatever. If you want to also hit stuff, you have to spread your damage between both, so itâs usually not good.
Most minion builds donât actually have interaction with mobs. You just walk around with them until they kill stuff and sometimes you buff/heal/resummon them.
Pff, thatâs not a trve m1n10n build, youâre using a non-minion skill.
No, but zoo minion builds are the equivalent of self driving cars.
You can also use flame wraiths turret build or wraithlord. Those also donât move (though wraithlord teleports with you on movement skills).
In fact, turret wraiths plays pretty much the same as totem shaman: you just summon the wraiths/totems at the edge of the screen and when you get there everything is dead.
Majority of minion builds dont use an attack key. Not sure why they would? in PoE you dont throw on an attack either. You dont scale your own damage so the attack is pointless and a waste of a hotkey.
A skeleton/Dreadshade/Infernal shade/Aura of Decay/Transplant build is well tuned and isnt bad because it does not have auto attack lol. it would be bad if it had an auto attack.
This is actually where the AI currently struggles actually. Minions generally just all dogpile on a single enemy, and it feels extremely bad because sometimes you want to target multiple decent threat enemies but if you A command on one of the rares you minions will do nothing till that guy is dead. And generally they do that even if you dont A command, they congo line on enemies before moving onto the next.
Thats why melee minions are considered night unplayable in this game, because they run after random trash, and your 10 warriors are now in space doing fuck all, and then have to run all the way back just to get sidetracked by a random stray enemy again.
Mages can engage the trash at range and thus are able to kill it without too much delay as well as having multiple projectiles helping aid clear.
Minions in this game suffer from lack of aoe, and lack of HP, so the good minions are the ones with aoe/that dont die. This is why the meta for necro is big one minion. Allows your minion to live as it generally gets a bunch of more multipliers to health, and then you get your pick of choices, Big mage/Big wraithlord have decent aoe, and abomination has big damage and threat.
This, what he said. All of it. This man is a minion player, the rest of this thread are imposters.
Ty for showing up.
EDIT: Dicedragon too.
I knew thereâd be some actual minion players showing up at some point lol
*You donât need an âattackâ to be always doing/managing something. This is a common misconception with the casual minion player and the min-maxâd ones. Itâs rarely the âbestâ play to ACTUALLY go afk.
