Minions are Zombies, Skeletons, Spectres and Dominated. Monsters converted using Conversion Trap do not count as minions and are not effected by minion passives.
Minions have their own damage and their actions are treated completely separate from the summoner's. Zombies and Skeletons do physical damage, Spectres and Dominated do whatever damage they did before they died.
Minion damage is affected by Minion Damage passives, support gems linked to the minion skill gem, Auras and Necromantic Aegis. Of particular note, support gems will support the attacks and spells of the minion if the skill is relevant.
Neither passive skills nor stats from your other equipment affect minions unless they specifically say "Minions _____".
Life Flasks with the "of Animation" suffix will heal minions life by 40-60% of the flasks recovery. This effect works even when you have full life or Chaos Inoculation.
When a minion kills an enemy you are partially rewarded with the kill. This means:
- You gain Flask Charges
- Your IIQ and IIR is added to the minion's support gems values to calculate drops.
Totems, Traps and Remote Mines are not counted as minions, they are Remote Skills.
Passives[ | ]
Keystones[ | ]
| Icon | Name | Bonuses |
|---|---|---|
|
Necromantic Aegis | |
|
Minion Instability |
|
Basic Passives[ | ]
The following Basic Passives affect your Minions:
- 8 x Minion Damage (+15%)
- 8 x Minion Life (+10%)
- 4 x Additional Minions (+1 Max Skeletons and +1 max Zombies)
- 1 x Additional Spectre (+1 Max Spectres)
Notable Passive[ | ]
The following Notable Passive affects Minions:
- Lord of the Dead (10% Increased Minion Life, 15% Increased Minion Damage, +1 Max Zombies, +2 Max Skeletons)
Spectre choices[ | ]
As players progress through the game, there are several mobs that present interesting choices to supplement summoner and hybrid-summon builds alike. Even for a non-summoner build, a single curse-casting spectre whose AI helps them stay away can be quite useful. In practice, it's not that easy to keep a sole spectre alive without having other bodies around to shield it - this means parties and hybrid/full-summon builds.
NB: Spectres keep their original monster-level, so you can't take a normal mob into Merciless and expect it to survive 1-hit.
The following short-list are spectres that are compatible with parties in general since they are both useful and have a relatively low graphics load for others' sakes:
- Enduring Cry Bears, various (Act 2)
- Chaos DoT Bears, Waterfall Caves 1 (Act 2)
- Frenzy-inducing Gorillas, Old Fields.
- Curse-specialists
Here is the full-list of potentially useful ones sorted by their abilities + location.
Ranged multi-shot/AoE: High DPS, and generally compatible with traditional ranged/spell supports such LMP, Chain, Faster Projectiles, etc.
- Arc - Barracks mages
- single-target Arc - Solaris lightning mages (slow to cast)
- Spark - Sins-3 skeleton mages
- Spark/Thorns - Crematorium & battlefield lightning mages
- Spark/Shock nova - Prisoner’s Gate goatmen
- Poison Arrow - Upper Prison Archers Sins 1 skeleton Archers, Western Forest archers, etc.
- Poison-Bomb - Chaos Alchemists in Sewers
- Lightning Arrow - many skeleton archers
- Fire-bomb - Flame Alchemist in Crematorium
- Fireballs - Rocky Climb Goatmen, Slums/Marketplace Queens
- LMP/Fork fireballs - Solaris fire mages
- LMP ele projectiles - Pyramid cold mages (NOT Waterfall 2), Crematorium fire mages.
- LMP chaos/phys projectiles - Warehouse Serpents
- LMP chaos bolts - Pyramid constructs
- Flame totem attack - Docks monkeys
- Machinegun fire-bolts - Tentacle Miscreation (Lunaris 2/3)
Combat Support/Distraction: Those that make better tanks and are melee.
- Flicker strike - SGcave pirates, Weaver spiders, Sewer leaders
- Frenzy-inducing cry - Gorillas in the Old Fields
- Leap slam - Melee Goatmen, Sewer Maws
- Whirling blades - various undying crawlers (use Marketplace versions, they come with Puncture too)
- Roll-attacks - golems (doesn’t seem to hit many, use Crematorium versions)
- Fire-rolls - Crematorium Golems.
- Enduring Cry - many Bears in Act 2 (attacking decoy totem).
- Chaos DoT Aura - Waterfall 1 Bears (the DoT itself is not as impressive since monsters have more life).
- Unrighteous Fire - Lunaris mob.
- Temporal Chains/Projectile Weakness/Detonate Dead - Lunaris Mages
- Long-melee Vulnerability-on-hit - Lunaris 2/3 mob
- Raise zombie - Lunaris 1 mage
- Detonate dead - Lunaris 1 and 2 mages
Curse specialists: Because it's cheaper to summon a single spectre . Comes with lvl 20 curses in Merciless.
- Projectile Weakness - Waterfall 1 Skeleton Archers (high cast rate)
- Warlord's Mark - Oak’s Devoted (high cast rate, easy to obtain)
- Elemental Weakness - Church Necromancer
- Flammability - Crematorium Necromancer
- Conductivity - Chamber of Sins Necromancer
- Enfeeble - Lower Prison Necromancers, Lunaris 1 mages
- Vulnerability - (Upper Prison Necromancers)
- Temporal Chains - Shipyard Grave Cave Sirens (low cast rate, prefers Freezing Pulse), Lunaris 1 and 2 mages
- Vulnerability - many Sirens in Act 1 (low cast rate, prefers Freezing Pulse)