I love minions and played several Necro’s here and I was super excited for the Rework and it didn’t happen. I was in the build planner last night and had 22 points left and just felt why even bother? All that changed was a few passive nodes and the Minion trees weren’t fixed.
Don’t get me wrong EHG gave some QoL by increasing minion survivability in the passive tree as well as the Necro.
However Necro Minions skills all needed massive reworks. Skeletons, Mages, Wraiths all needed their entire trees redone!!
I just feel like I’m playing the same build as last season but it’s slightly stronger. How is that a Necro Rework? I guess if I want my Necro fix I need to still log into PoE 2 from time to time because they do Zoo armies right.
I just wish EHG could get on board with Necro minions and fix them. Let us have 15 frost mages!! They desperately need love and triple the minion count. I don’t want to make the same build again, I want a new Necro rework of the minions!!!
I guess I just thought the antiquated Necro minion skills were all getting heavy work so you can actually fill the summoner fantasy and it’s just not there. Necro zoo minion builds are still one of the worst classes in the game and the worst minion class. EHG pull the trigger and buff them and rework their skill trees please and thanks.
It’s a real shame too because the T-rex relic looks great but lets be honest Sent or Druid will be using it. Anyhow I’m still looking forward to Season 3 just gonna just not going to play Necro until it gets reworked and EHG actually lets you play a zoo army.
Also just to throw some ideas out there for the Skeletal Mage tree the nodes that convert to Pyro or Chrono Mages have that node also gives +3 mages.
The nodes that increases their damage every 25 mana also add a node that gives +1 mages per 100 mana. Let us create a powerful Mage and Skeleton army.!!!
Let us actually build a powerful zoo and bring pride to the Necromancer name!!
100% agree… I will wait till i get the actual play… but all my theory craft is pointing to a small DPS boost and a marginal defence increase. The biggest boost by far is the promised improved AI. If that can actually get my minion into the fight it may be very significant, but the necro passive tree rework is meh at best.
Yea Necro needed about 5-10 times more power it got a very slight QoL improvement. I’m all for improvements but we need a massive rework to the actual minon trees that signficantly improves their power and changes gameplay.
After some thought I wanted to discuss the very important Minion scaling/progression why it feels so bad in LE compared to other design that has sovled this problem. In order to do this I wanted to highlight a design perspective from another game that handles Minion scaling and progression very well into the End Game with PoE 2.
Main issue with Necro minions in LE I finish the campaign, same number of minions, I progress into Empowered Mono’s (same number of minions) I’m trying to push corruption and get into pinnacle content (same number of minions) with very little power scaling.
Lets take PoE 2, I finish the campaign I might have 8 Mages-archers etc. I get into maps 12 Mages etc. I get into juiced maps 15 Mages etc. I start pushing pinnacle and End game 20+ Mages and zoo with huge scaling potential.
PoE 2 has amazing minion progression because of 2 systems. Minion Level and their Spirit system. These both synergistically work with each other along side the passive tree and gear. Raise your minion level it drastically increases their damage and HP while also lowering their spirit cost (resource to summon more).
Then of course the Spirit system directly allows how many minions you can have so as you progress you attain more and more minions into the End game and resources to customize your Summons/Zoo.
This is why Necro minions are bad in LE because there is no way to scale their numbers or their base damage into the End Game. Now EHG did boost their base power per level and damage reduction as you get too 100 level. (however there needs to be some scalability here) As well as being able to scale the number of minions you have via attaining more of a resource.
(Solutions) - As I quoted in the post one idea of fixing the Mage minion situation by allowing you to scale their numbers via flat mana and nodes with + minions. However we need to address (Minion level) and there needs to be a way to increase their level past 100 via some form of scaling so that way they have that “MORE” damage and reduction base.
We could do this via items or passives. It could be something as simple as +1 minion level per 100 added minion damage. So you have 1,000 minion damage and now you have 110 level minions. This is VITAL to minion progression because this MORE minion power now gives you snyergistic scalability with passives, gear and creating a build.
The base top end Minion level in PoE 2 is 20 level but you can raise that too 25, 30 and 35 as you progress.
The base top end Minion level in LE is 100 and there is no scaling. It’s a problem because there is no progression.
So while I appreciate EHG buffing the base minion level it’s a bandaid until they add scalability so you can have 110, 130 or 140 level minions. Adding much needed progression to them as well as fixing + minion numbers via resources.
When designed correctly this creates an amazing feeling because of rewarding progression from campaign, into monoliths and then pushing pinnacle content. Key word progression.
PS - PoE 2 overall has a lot of game design issues they need to solve in EA but minion progression isn’t one.
I feel like you would be much happier playing a Frogmaster this season. Personally, I have no issues with my Necro. An army of minions is cool and all but for me Abom going ham just feels so much better. Single and full clears, it tears it up.
