In Path of Exile 2 (PoE 2), the complexity and depth of the skill and character customization system allow players to create unique and powerful builds that suit their playstyle. Among the many archetypes available, the Minion Army Shaman build stands out as one of the most exciting and effective options for those who love to let their minions do the heavy lifting. This build revolves around summoning and commanding an army of loyal undead and elemental creatures, while also harnessing the Shaman's innate connection to nature and the divine to bolster their forces.

If you're interested in commanding a minion army that can overwhelm your enemies with sheer numbers and elemental power, the Shaman Minion Army build in Path of Exile 2 is a fantastic choice. In this guide, we'll explore how to create an effective Minion Army Shaman, including recommended passive skill tree routes, key ascendancy choices, gear recommendations, and gameplay tips. During this process, you can consider using Poe 2 trade to help gain a greater advantage.

What is the Shaman Class in Path of Exile 2?

In Path of Exile 2, the Shaman is a class known for its spiritual connection to nature, the elements, and ancestral powers. While the Shaman excels at manipulating elemental forces, they are also capable of summoning powerful creatures to aid them in combat. This makes the Shaman a natural choice for players who want to take control of minions, whether they're reanimating the dead, calling elemental beasts, or channeling divine wrath.

The Minion Army Shaman build capitalizes on the Shaman's inherent abilities to summon minions and enhance them with elemental and divine powers. The key to this build is to balance minion support with Shamanic elemental damage boosts, creating an army of minions that can both overwhelm enemies and deal high damage.

Key Features of the Minion Army Shaman Build

Minion Summoning: The backbone of this build is your ability to summon a variety of minions, including undead monsters, elemental creatures, and totems. Minions in this build do the majority of the damage, so they need to be supported with buffs and proper gear.

Elemental Synergy: The Shaman class offers great synergy with fire, lightning, and cold elements, allowing you to empower your minions with elemental damage. This can be done via skills that add elemental damage to minions or skills that call forth elemental creatures, like Fire Golem, Storm Call, and Frostbite Minions.

Totem Summoning: A Shaman can summon totems that either serve as offensive or defensive units. Totems can increase the damage output of your minions, apply curses, or even provide healing or elemental buffs to nearby allies.

Sustain and Survivability: As a summoner, your survival heavily depends on your minions. The Minion Army Shaman build allows for massive numbers of minions on the screen, providing defense through sheer force of numbers. Additionally, certain Shaman abilities can augment your minions' health, damage, and resistances.

Ascendancy Choices for Minion Army Shaman Build

Choosing the right ascendancy is crucial in optimizing your Minion Army Shaman build. The Shaman Ascendancy focuses on nature-based powers and minion enhancements. Here's a breakdown of some key ascendancy nodes and how they benefit the build:

1. Stormcaller (Elemental Synergy)

The Stormcaller ascendancy provides significant bonuses to elemental damage, which is essential for boosting the elemental-based damage of your minions. This ascendancy node increases the effectiveness of your elemental minions and supports their ability to deal fire, cold, and lightning damage.

Main Benefits: Enhanced elemental damage for your minions, and increased elemental resistances to keep your minions alive longer in high-damage areas.

2. Ancestral Empowerment (Minion Buffing)

The Ancestral Empowerment ascendancy is another powerful option for the Minion Army Shaman. It boosts your minions' health, damage, and resistances, providing more survivability and making your army even more potent. This ascendancy is especially useful for players who want to make sure their minions can tank damage and deal significant damage.

Main Benefits: Increased minion health, elemental resistances, and damage, making this ascendancy ideal for an all-around powerful minion army.

3. Totemic Might (Totem Enhancements)

This ascendancy specializes in summoning totems that provide additional utility and buffs. If you plan to incorporate totems into your Minion Army Shaman build, this ascendancy offers enhancements that make totems more effective.

Main Benefits: Increased totem damage, the ability to summon more totems, and buffs for both minions and totems. This ascendancy also provides you with the ability to raise totems that synergize with your elemental or minion-based strategies.

Passive Skill Tree for the Minion Army Shaman Build

The Shaman's passive skill tree has several critical nodes that you should focus on to enhance your minion army and bolster elemental damage. Here's a general path for the passive skill tree:

Minion Damage Nodes: Invest heavily in Minion Damage, Minion Life, and Minion Speed. These nodes will ensure your minions deal high damage, move quickly, and have enough survivability to stay active during fights.

Elemental Damage Nodes: Since your minions will benefit from elemental damage, prioritize nodes that increase fire, cold, and lightning damage. Elemental Damage with Attacks and Elemental Damage over Time nodes will be crucial to boosting your minions' effectiveness.

Minion Life and Defenses: Don't forget to invest in defensive nodes such as Minion Life and Minion Resistances. These ensure your minions can survive longer in tougher encounters.

Totem Enhancement Nodes: If you plan on using totems alongside your minions, invest in the Totemic Mastery and Totemic Focus nodes. These will improve totem placement speed, damage, and effectiveness.

Survivability: Ensure you also allocate points toward life and energy shield to boost your own defenses. Minion-based builds often rely on your minions to handle most of the damage, but being able to take a few hits yourself can make a huge difference.

Active Skills and Support Gems

To complement your minion summoning abilities, you'll need to choose the right active skills and support gems. The Shaman Minion Army build benefits from a variety of support gems that enhance minions' offensive and defensive capabilities. Here's a breakdown:

1. Summon Golem

The Summon Golem skill gem is essential for creating elemental minions that deal significant damage. The Fire Golem or Lightning Golem will deal high elemental damage, while Stone Golem provides additional tanking capabilities for your army.

Support Gems: Use Minion Damage, Elemental Damage, and Greater Multiple Projectiles (if your golem can deal with it) to increase the overall damage output.

2. Summon Raging Spirit (SRS)

Summon Raging Spirit allows you to summon fiery spirits that deal fire-based damage. This gem is particularly useful if you're looking to spam minions quickly and overwhelm enemies with multiple entities on screen.

Support Gems: Spell Echo, Minion Damage, Elemental Focus—these will boost the Raging Spirits' damage while also improving their elemental properties.

3. Raise Zombie/ Spectre

Raise Zombie or Spectre are other solid choices, with Spectres being versatile because you can summon a variety of minions with unique abilities. Spectres can be summoned from other players' graves, so selecting the right ones for synergy with your Shaman build is key.

Support Gems: Minion Life, Minion Damage, Feeding Frenzy (for increased minion aggression).

4. Totem Skills

For Totem summoning, you can use Flame Totem or Ancestral Protector to buff your minions. These will increase minion attack speed and damage, making your army significantly stronger.

Support Gems: Spell Totem, Minion Damage, Empower, and Elemental Focus.

Gear Recommendations for Minion Army Shaman Build

When it comes to gear for the Minion Army Shaman, you'll want to prioritize equipment that enhances minion damage, minion life, and elemental damage. Here are some gear suggestions:

Helmet: Look for a helmet with +1 to maximum number of minions or minion resistances. Also, elemental resistances on the helmet are key.

Body Armour: A high life or energy shield body armour will keep you alive while your minions do most of the damage. Additionally, look for minion damage mods or totem enhancement on your body armor.

Weapon: A wand or sceptre with increased minion damage, spell damage, and elemental damage is ideal. +1 to all minion gems is a great mod as well.

Rings and Amulet: Focus on minion life, minion damage, and resistances on your accessories. An amulet with +1 to all elemental gems or increased elemental damage will complement your minions' elemental synergy.

Conclusion: Mastering the Minion Army Shaman Build in Path of Exile 2

The Minion Army Shaman build in Path of Exile 2 is a powerful and versatile choice for players who want to overwhelm their enemies with a legion of minions while also empowering them with elemental and divine powers. With the right ascendancy, skill tree choices, active skills, and gear, you can create an unstoppable army that will tear through endgame bosses, dungeons, and farming zones with ease. If you want to familiarize yourself with the gameplay faster, you can choose to buy cheap POE 2 Orbs to help you.

As always, remember that PoE 2 is constantly evolving, so it's essential to stay updated on balance changes and item updates to keep your build performing at its best. Good luck, and may your minions lead you to victory!