Best Minion Army Witch Build in PoE 2 0.4

The Witch class in Path of Exile 2 offers players the perfect start for minion-based builds. Necromancy is but one of this class’ specialities, and if raising an army of ghosts and skeletons sounds appealing to you, then you might want to check this build out.

The following is a Minion Witch leveling build for PoE 2 that relies almost entirely on using an undead army for DPS and survivability. It’s one of the least-stressful ways to play the game, and even so, it actually clears the campaign decently quickly and without much trouble.

PoE 2 Witch Leveling Build — Minion Army

There are a variety of minions to choose from in Path of Exile 2, and as one would expect, the best ones aren’t available until later in the game. This build evolves a couple of times throughout the campaign, and it’ll only settle once players near the end of Act 3. Thankfully, the gameplay loop itself is quite simple: just shoot a few spells and watch your minions do all the work for you.

In these following sections, we’ll be breaking this build down by Act, focusing on the skills you should be using as you’re leveling up.

Act 1 & 2 — Skeletal Snipers

This setup is a fairly standard minion starting build for Witch. Let your Skeletal Warriors handle the frontline while you stay behind with your Skeletal Snipers while casting Unearth to spawn more bone minions. Don’t forget that you can combo Flame Wall with your Skeletal Sniper’s Command skill to deal big explosive damage.

Once you get Raging Spirits, you’ll be able to spam Flame Wall to spawn fire spirits that’ll add even more damage to your army. This is a much more efficient use of mana during boss fights where Unearth is unable to get any corpses to make minions out of.

Act 3 & Beyond

Your gameplay loop remains mostly the same here, but with a few notable changes:

The Flame Wall and Raging Spirits combo is replaced by Bind Spectre.

Unearth is replaced by Bonestorm for better damage against bosses and other tough targets

Skeletal Sniper is replaced by Skeletal Reaver for a stronger frontline

Bonestorm greatly increases your damage against bosses, especially when they’re already getting melted by your Chaos skills and minions. You’ll lose out on minions, but it’s fine considering how strong Skeletal Reavers are. Use Pain Offering to buff your minions, but as much as possible, try using it on one of your Skeletal Warriors and not your Reavers.

Bind Spectre lets you summon ghosts of enemies to fight for you. They’ll behave exactly like how they did when they were alive, which is why we’re taking Vaal Guards with us (the live ones from Utzaal, not the Undead ones everywhere else). Vaal Guards are good in melee, but they also fling oil bombs and grenades. More importantly, they only cost 50 Spirit to summon.

Infernal Hound comes from the Infernalist Ascendancy, and we’re taking this so because there’s no such thing as too many minions. Your loyal flaming dog will light nearby enemies on fire, and it’s free to summon too. Infernal Hound has no Spirit Cost, so it’s not affected by things like Hulking Minions which decreases Reservation Efficiency.

Passives

The general idea of this passive tree setup is to buff our minion damage and survivability as much as possible while throwing in a few bonuses for our own stats (mainly through Spell Damage and Energy Shield). The image above is for a level 45 character who has gotten most of the free skill points in the campaign.

Here’s a brief explanation of the important Notable Passives used in this build:

Vile Mending grants minions bonus Chaos Resistance, Max Life, and Life Regeeration

Crystalline Flesh gives minions Elemental Resistances

Restless Dead decreases the respawn time for your minions

Entropic Incarnation makes minions hit harder by giving them Chaos damage

Lord of Horrors imrpoves Spirit Reservation Efficiency, allowing us to summon more minions

The rest are self-explanatory. Once you reach level 46+, find and path toward more minion bonuses. Consider taking the Gigantic Following node too for fewer but stronger minions.

Ascendancy

The Infernalist Ascendancy is good for minion builds because of the Beidat’s Will node, which gives you +1 Maximum Spirit for every 25 Maximum Life you have, at the cost of reserving 25% of your health. This passive node only becomes relevant in the endgame where your Maximum Life is high enough to give a good Spirit yield.

For the campaign, it’s best to take Summon Infernal Hound and Bringer of Flame. The latter makes all of your and your minions’ attacks contribute to Igniting enemies. If you want to take this, make sure to equip items with Fire damage.

Gear

Before anything else, keep in mind that minions don’t scale with you unless you use gear with minion-specific bonuses. With that said, you’ll want a good Sceptre that provides stats for nearby allies. Pair this with a Wand that has high Spell Damage so your damaging skills can do work along with your minions.

Perhaps the most important part about gearing a Minion Witch is total amount of Spirit you can get from items. Our build sacrifices defenses to get 358 Max Spirit by Act 3, which allows for 12 summoned reviving minions at a time. The setup uses the following items:

A Rattling Sceptre with 144 Spirit

A Solar Amulet with 44 Spirit

Enfolding Dawn
(provides 100 Spirit)

Enfolding Dawn is great for the Spirit alone. It’ll outlive its usefulness by around Act 4, though, so unless you find a way to get more Spirit by then, you’ll likely have to ditch two of your Vaal Guards for better survivability, especially since enemies in the Interlude chapters hit like trucks. If you have some currency items to spare, consider buying gear from other players.