Why Minions are EATING GOOD in 0.5
Summary
- Introduction of the Ravens-Flock Perching Staff and its unique “Spiralling Conspiracy” Crow DoT effect.
- The Spiritwalker Huntress’s ability to tame unique endgame beast bosses with massive damage multipliers.
- A potentially game-breaking bug involving Malice Sceptres that allows non-hitting damage-over-time (DoT) effects like Infernal Legion to scale with Critical Strike Multiplier.
- New minion-specific crafting branches in the Genesis Tree (Breach mechanic) providing fresh scaling vectors for rings and other gear.
Ravens-Flock Perching Staff and Spiralling Conspiracy
The Ravens-Flock Perching Staff is a significant addition to the minion archetype. It grants the skill Spiralling Conspiracy, which creates a radius of flying crows around the player that acts as a damage-over-time effect, similar to Righteous Fire.
There are notable trade-offs when using this staff:
- Loss of the off-hand slot (shield or focus).
- Loss of “+ Level of Minion Skills” modifiers usually found on one-handed main-hand weapons.
To compensate, the staff provides:
- Spirit reservation efficiency.
- Gruelling Madness, which amplifies slow effects on enemies.
- A very large minion damage modifier.
Spiritwalker Huntress and Taming Endgame Bosses
The Huntress class features a “Spiritwalker” sub-archetype with the unique ability to tame unique endgame bosses, provided they are classified as beasts.
Key details of this mechanic include:
- A 300% damage increase for the tamed boss.
- The damage bonus likely functions as a hidden modifier that applies to all damage sources originating from the minion, including Infernal Legion.
Infernal Legion and the Malice Sceptre Bug
Infernal Legion is a skill that causes minions to deal a percentage of their maximum life as fire damage-over-time to nearby enemies. This effect normally does not “hit” and therefore cannot critically strike.
However, a current bug involving the Malice Sceptre—originally discovered by 100gr00t—drastically changes this:
- The Malice Sceptre applies Critical Strike Weakness to enemies.
- The game appears to treat the Infernal Legion DoT as “hitting” based on the server tick rate.
- Because it “hits” so frequently, the minion will inevitably land a critical strike within moments.
- This allows the Infernal Legion DoT to scale with Critical Strike Multiplier, leading to exponential damage growth.
If this bug remains unfixed by the 0.5 launch, combining a high-health tamed beast boss from the Spiritwalker Huntress with the Malice Sceptre/Infernal Legion interaction will likely result in one of the strongest builds in the game.
Speed Clearing and Sekhema Trials
For players focused on speed clearing and the Sekhema trials, aggressive flying minions remain the top choice. The “Cocaine Wasp” build from previous leagues is expected to remain highly effective, especially if it can leverage the Critical Strike Weakness mechanics to boost its clear speed even further.
The Genesis Tree: New Crafting Vectors
The 0.5 update introduces the Genesis Tree via the Breach mechanic. This tree includes an entire branch dedicated specifically to minion crafting.
In-game footage has revealed:
- New modifiers for crafting minion-related stats onto rings.
- Additional ways to scale minion efficiency beyond the traditional method of stacking “+ Level of Minion Gems” on weapons.
These new crafting options make items like the Ravens-Flock Perching Staff more viable, as players can now recover the damage and utility lost from the weapon slot by utilizing specialized gear crafted through the Genesis Tree.