Path of Exile 2’s minion archetype is unusually well stocked: 45 skill gems carry the Minion tag and 38 support gems carry it too. That is roughly one support for every 1.2 minion skills, a ratio no other tag family comes close to — Attack has 172 skill gems against 108 supports, and Cold has 70 against 25.
The catch is that most of those 45 skill gems are not interchangeable. The Occult weapon group’s cutting ladder hands out exactly one new skeleton per tier, seven tiers deep, and the difference between a tier 1 Skeletal Sniper and a tier 13 Skeletal Brute is the difference between an early campaign and a finished character.
This guide builds a minion setup out of the actual tables: the seven-tier skeleton ladder, the 38 minion supports sorted by band, and the socket math that decides how many of them you can run.
The seven-tier skeleton ladder
The Occult group is the minion cutting family. Each odd tier adds a different summon:
| Cutting tier | New minion | Gem level band |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Skeletal Sniper | 1 |
| 3 | Skeletal Arsonist | 3 |
| 5 | Skeletal Frost Mage | 5 |
| 7 | Bind Spectre | 7 |
| 9 | Skeletal Reaver | 9 |
| 11 | Skeletal Storm Mage | 11 |
| 13 | Skeletal Brute, Skeletal Cleric | 13 |
Note the shape of that ladder. Tiers 1 through 11 add one minion each; tier 13 adds two at once. Skeletal Warrior also exists at band 1 but is not in the Occult cutting pool, which makes it a vendor-or-drop proposition rather than a cut.
The ladder also tells you when your army changes character. Tier 5 gives you a cold-damage summon (Skeletal Frost Mage) alongside the physical Sniper — that is the first point where a minion build can diversify damage types without touching supports. Tier 11 adds lightning. Tier 13 adds a warcry-driven Brute and a Cleric in the same tier, which is the only tier where a single cut can produce two different roles.
The source text for the tier 1 option explains why the archetype is playable from character level 1:
“Skeletal Sniper — Activate to summon long-ranged, Reviving Skeletal Snipers that can fire a gas arrow on Command.” — poe2db.tw skill gem entry, cached in
src/data/poe2-skill-gems.json
“Reviving” is the operative word. A summon that comes back is a summon you do not need to re-cast, which is what makes a two-socket setup at level 1 viable at all.
All 38 minion supports, by band
| Band | Minion supports | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 14 | Meat Shield I, Minion Pact I, Last Gasp, Commandment, Elemental Army, Bidding I |
| 2 | 8 | Deathmarch, Loyalty, Minion Instability, Infernal Legion I, Skittering Stone I |
| 3 | 5 | Meat Shield II, Feeding Frenzy I, Essence Harvest, Muster, Sacrificial Lamb II |
| 4 | 7 | Feeding Frenzy II, Hulking Minions, Crazed Minions, Minion Pact II, Bidding II |
| 5 | 4 | Minion Mastery, Minion Splash II, Infernal Legion II, Bidding III |
By attribute the pool splits 25 blue, 11 red, 2 with no colour. That is a meaningful constraint for a Witch, whose class table entry lists Minions under intelligence-flavoured themes: 25 of the 38 minion supports are blue, so a blue-socketed setup has almost the whole pool available, while a red setup has 11.
The band distribution is front-loaded in the same way the skill pool is. 14 of 38 minion supports are band 1, so a character at gem level 1 already has a real choice of modifiers; band 5 adds only 4. If you are deciding whether to invest in a support line, invest in one whose rank I is band 1 or 2 — the rank II and III versions then arrive as upgrades to a slot you already filled, rather than as new slots you have to find.
Three support lines are worth knowing by name because they show the structure of the pool:
- Meat Shield — rank I at band 1 (red), rank II at band 3 (red). The source text trades minion damage taken against minion damage dealt.
- Feeding Frenzy — rank I at band 3, rank II at band 4, both blue.
- Minion Splash / Infernal Legion / Skittering Stone — red lines with rank I and II in different bands, so a strength-flavoured summoner is not locked out of the pool.
Sockets, and why the count matters more here
The gem ladder is the hard constraint: 2 sockets at gem level 1, 3 at gem level 10 (character 36), 4 at gem level 15 (character 64), 5 at gem level 20 (character 90).
A minion build wants more supports than most archetypes because minion supports are multiplicative on a body you are not controlling. With three sockets at character level 36, a realistic setup is one summon plus two supports. With four at level 64, it is one summon plus three. The fifth socket does not appear until character level 90.
That is why the 14 band-1 minion supports matter so much: they are the ones you can actually fit during the campaign, when you have two or three sockets total.
Scaling order that follows the tables
Level 1 to 10: one summon, one support. Skeletal Sniper or Skeletal Warrior plus a band-1 minion support. Do not try to run two summons; two sockets cannot support both.
Level 10 to 36: add the offering layer. Pain Offering sits at band 5 and Bone Offering at band 11 — both are minion-tagged buffs rather than summons, and both compete for the same sockets. Take one.
Character level 36: the third socket changes the build. This is when a second support becomes possible, and it lines up with gem level 10, which is also the first socket upgrade since level 1.
Character level 52 to 60: the tier 13 decision. Gem level 13 needs character level 52. That is when Skeletal Brute and Skeletal Cleric enter the pool, and when a minion build stops being “a summon” and becomes “a composition”.
Character level 90: five sockets. The last socket is a genuine build change, not an incremental one. Plan the fifth support before you get there.
Companions are a separate pool
Of the 45 Minion-tagged skill gems, 11 carry the Companion tag: Azmerian Wolf, Cackling Companions, Companion: {0}, Manifest Weapon, Mist Raven, Rhoa Mount, Spirit Vessel, Summon Infernal Hound, Tame Beast, Wild Protector and Wolf Pack.
Companions are not skeletons. They overlap with the Minion tag but their band spread is different — most sit at band 1, with Tame Beast at band 7, Wolf Pack at 8 and Rhoa Mount at 14. A build that mixes a skeleton line with a companion is spending sockets on two bodies with different support needs, which is why most minion builds pick one side.
Practical cautions
Do not assume minion supports are interchangeable. Meat Shield I explicitly reads “Cannot support skills which create undamageable Minions” — a keyword match is not a guarantee of a legal link.
Count blue sockets before committing to a Witch. 25 of 38 minion supports are blue, but your gear’s socket colours are the real limit.
Expect the tier 13 cut to be narrow. The Occult tier 13 pool is Skeletal Brute, Skeletal Cleric and Soul Offering — three outcomes, two of them summons.
For the surrounding systems, the support gems guide covers all 557 supports by band and colour, the uncut gems guide explains how the Occult cutting ladder works across its 20 gem levels, and the skill gems database lists every Minion-tagged entry with its tags.
If you are choosing the class first, the Witch class guide covers the three Witch themes, and the ascension guide explains the level 22 gate where the archetype comes online. Spirit and reservation planning is on the spirit auras page.