Median XL - Game Guide - Minion Mechanics

Minion Mechanics

MINION MECHANICS

Most minion mechanics from classic Diablo II: Lord of Destruction (CLOD) exist as they do in Median XL. In this document, both mechanics from CLOD and Median XL will be listed here.

The Life of a Minion

  • Minions will try to automatically teleport to you when you get too far away (this however does not always work and they may die)
    • This can often occur when a minion tries to teleport from two screens away, but for some reason can't find a valid location to teleport.
    • Generally using a warp skill every once in a while will keep them coralled enough to prevent this from occurring too often.
  • Reanimates are not minions, they do not benefit from your minion related stats. They are basically like the monsters you fight, except on your side.
  • Most summons are melee summons and will target the nearest enemy. The AI of ranged summons is more esoteric, as they will sometimes only attempt to attack their targets at set distances and only if positioned relative to the summoner and their target.
    • This can make using Guardian Spirits or other ranged summons frustrating, as many summons will stand back and simply do nothing while others will correctly attack the enemy.
    • To rectify this, either teleport into an appropriate range or resummon them within the right range.
  • In CLOD, certain bosses will deal a large damage multiplier vs minions. This is maintained in Median XL, however this damage multiplier is reduced by 13%.
  • Minions will die with you.

Minion Stats

Attack Rating

Minions do have Attack rating even if not listed. Most minions are attacks, unless specifically listed as a spell, and therefore check Attack Rating upon hitting an enemy.

General Stats

All minion scaling in Median XL is linear and dependent on skill level, including the maximum Life, damage, attack rating, and mana cost of most minions. The only exceptions are increasing or diminishing custom effects of certain parts of minion skills.

Life

In Median XL, minion health scales as follows: slvl scaling * ulvl * mHP.

Where the elements are respectively:

  • mHP = Minion life modifier, all sources are additive
  • ulvl = 1 + (Character level / 100). Character level scales minion life multiplicatively with minion life
  • slvl scaling = Flat amount of base life, derived from base + levels

Some minions have hidden avoid chance or flat damage reduction to improve their effective life pool.
With Necromancer minions, this is innate to Resurgence. Sources of avoid are designed to not overlap (e.g: Edyrems are not Necromancer minions, so their innate avoid does not stack with Necromancer minion avoid).

Elemental Pierce

Unlike CLOD, all minions inherit the player's pierce with the exception of: Iron Golem, Jinn, Annihilation, Spirit of Vengeance, Assassin Traps, Vine Companion

Procs

Unlike CLOD, most minions inherit the following player procs: "on Attack", "on Kill" and "on Death Blow", affected by an efficiency percentage. The damage of these procs is affected by your stats and not theirs. The efficiency percentage multiplies the source on your character before adding it to the minion, the minimum inherited chance is 1%. These are the current percentages:

  • Fire Elementals: 25% efficiency
  • Summon Familiar: 33%
  • Guardian Spirit: 100% ("on Kill" and "on Death Blow" only")
  • Defender Spirit: 25%
  • Protector Spirit: 25%
  • Veil King: 50%
  • Totems: 100% ("on Kill" and on "Death Blow" only")
  • Blood Skeleton: 25%
  • Abyss Knight: 100% ("on Kill" and on "Death Blow" only")
  • Resurrect: 50%
  • Servants of Valor: 20%
  • Ice Elementals: 33%

Resistances

Unlike CLOD, summons have an innate resistance bonus which scales by skill level and is capped at 75%. They suffer the resistance penalties of Nightmare and Hell, requiring around 50% minion resistance and a full 75% (total res caps at 50% in Hell) from different sources (usually from items) in both difficulties respectively. You can only push their resistances past this with the aura from Champions of the Sun.

Speeds

Summons, exactly like every other entity in Diablo, work from the game's frames per animation and speed breakpoint system. However, all minion speeds and breakpoints are unknown. In addition, most monsters will scale their casting animations from increased attack speed for simplicity's sake.

Summoning

Minion effects are snapshotted at the time of casting and are used to determine the stats of the minion. However, the minion count of a minion is associated with the player and updates whenever the D2 engine has to check the player's gear for action-related player stats. Therefore, if the valid count of a minion decreases (either becomes 0 because the player no longer has the associated skill or decreases because a maximum minion count source was lost), the minion count will also decrease accordingly. This means you cannot have an infinite easy army of summons that last forever then swap to full maximum Life equipment to improve summoner survivability.