Minion command skills, use time, cast speed and scaling. It's confusing.

I'm a bit confused on how command skills and in particular Ice Bomb for the Skeletal Mage works.

When I look at the details for the skill Ice Bomb there's a cast time of of 0.86s with several minions nodes in cast speed. However, the use time of the command skill is 1.25s. From the wiki I get the following:

"Increased cast speed lowers the use time (duration) that it takes to issue commands"

Since the use time doesn't change with a socketed Arcane Tempo I assume that the use time only scales with player cast speed.

So there are a few questions here:

1. Is use time just cast time? What is the difference? Is use time a cast animation?
2. Does use time indeed only scale with player cast speed?
3. Which cast time is used? Can I cast that skill every 0.86s or every 1.25s?
4. Is a lower cast time on Ice Bomb completely irrelevant if the use time on the command skill is higher?
5. What would happen if my use time on command is significantly lower than the cast time on Ice Bomb?
6. If point 4 is true, doesn't that make minion builds a lot weaker? Since you have to invest in both cast speed and minion cast speed.


This is an incredibly confusing skill, and could all be cleared up by just setting the use time on command the same as the cast time on ice bomb, have it scaled with minion cast speed (which makes the most sense) and remove the detail tab for 'Command'.

So I decided to figure this out myself, and it turns out that the cast speed scales with player cast speed and not minion cast speed. This is very counterintuitive. Especially since the damage details for Ice Bomb increase with higher minion cast speed.

https://youtu.be/ehsNEikcisI?si=h16AhJ5ht6Ef0Mvk

It makes sense to me, because you are commanding your minions to do something. It's using your mana, it's using your cast speed. Additionally, I suspect the reason it uses your cast time is because the devs probably wanted something that would be affected when your character gets debuffed. As it is now in waystones with mods that apply a curse to your character it barely matters because your minions are completely unaffected by it.

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plz#2115 a écrit :

It makes sense to me, because you are commanding your minions to do something. It's using your mana, it's using your cast speed. Additionally, I suspect the reason it uses your cast time is because the devs probably wanted something that would be affected when your character gets debuffed. As it is now in waystones with mods that apply a curse to your character it barely matters because your minions are completely unaffected by it.

It's extremely counterintuitive. Why on earth does Ice Bomb itself then also have a cast time? A cast time that's not ever used? No new player will ever think that this is how it works. It's the complete different way that anything in PoE1 ever used to work as well. And GGG is known for their excellent wording so you know how the mechanic works. Not in this case.

Plus, it also makes no sense at all from a build perspective. You have to skill both minion damage and player cast speed? That's so weird, no other ARPG has ever worked like this, especially not for minion skills. On top of all of this, the cast speed skill gem does not do anything. It literally does nothing. But it's still an option as a support gem.