GGG dropped patch 0.5.2 for Path of Exile 2 on June 11, 2026, and if you are running a minion build right now, this is the best time to be playing. A new crafting item, a doubled aura radius on Bear Spirit, and a bug fix that silently crippled Raven’s Flock builds for weeks all landed in the same patch. The endgame also got a lot easier in several spots, which means your minions can actually reach the content where they shine.

Feature CategoryKey Patches & Stat MetricsSummoner StrategyMeta & Build Verdict

Necrotic Catalyst

(New Craft Item)

• Function: Adds quality directly to Minion Modifiers on Rings and Amulets.

• Refined Variant: Amplifies jewel socket stats on jewelry pieces.

Push Skill Ceilings: Stack these Catalysts with Breach modifiers and fractured bases to elevate your +4/+5 amulets into a massive +6 Minion Skill Level configuration. Re-defines endgame scaling. Reaching +6 radically shifts minion base health and damage multipliers, making jewelry your top craft priority.

Raven’s Flock

(Crucial Bug Fix)

• Resolved a bug where Mist Ravens from The Raven’s Flock staff failed to register as allies. Re-equip the Staff: If you dropped your Raven setup earlier because it felt underwhelming, pick it back up. Your global damage loops are now fixed. Massive hidden buff. All passive tree nodes, auras, and items that scale based on “allies nearby” or “allies in your presence” now correctly apply to your ravens.

Bear Spirit

(Companion Buff)

• Base presence aura radius doubled from 4m ➔ 8m. Passive Screen Cover: At 8 meters, the aura effectively scales to match a full combat screen. You no longer need to micro-manage your positioning. Extreme quality-of-life win. Ensures your frontline minions maintain permanent, uninterrupted uptime on the Bear’s defensive and offensive buffs.

Endgame Bosses

(Hostile Nerfs)

• It That Hates: Chaos Beam damage heavily reduced.

• Diamora: Cut down to a single petrification phase.

• Azmadi: Fixed double-hit dash glitch.

Farm High-Tier Breaches: The nerf to It That Hates removes the primary threat of instant chaos-erasure for pet-heavy archetypes. Smooths out progression. Minion armies are no longer trapped in tedious phase transitions or deleted by un-telegraphed off-screen bursts.

Delirium Maps

(Difficulty Cut)

• Halved Unique enemy toughness scaling inside the fog.

• Halved Normal, Magic, and Rare enemy damage multipliers.

Add Mirrors to Map Loops: Use your triple-buffed minions to safely farm high-depth Delirium layers without your horde getting wiped instantly. Validates Delirium as a premier farming route. Protects fragile summoner health bars by curbing runaway enemy offensive scaling.

Expedition Shifts

(Runes of Aldur)

• Low-tier 3-slot Runic Inscriptions no longer drop in T14+ maps.

• Logbooks guarantee at least 1 Grand Expedition.

Target 8-Slot Nodes: Look out for Runefather’s and Runebinder’s alloys dropping as high-tier 8-slot inscription rewards. Drastically improves the base crafting economy. Safely invest in expensive Logbooks knowing high-value returns are fully hard-locked.

System Nerfs

(Legacy Alerts)

• Transcendent Alloy: Can no longer be applied to Wands or Foci.

• Zarokh’s Gift: Swaps standard slot for a Sinister Jewel Socket.

Check Hybrid Gear: If you utilize hybrid wand skills, your existing alloyed gear is now legacy. Plan replacements for your off-hand items. Caps runaway caster scaling. Simultaneously increases the RNG variance of the Partial Translations Atlas node from a flat 20% to a 0–40% range.

This breakdown covers every change that directly affects summoner builds, what the Necrotic Catalyst actually does and how far it can push your jewelry, how Delirium and boss nerfs change the endgame map, and what to prioritize if you are building a minion character right now.

The Necrotic Catalyst Is the Biggest Minion Buff in Months

The headliner for summoners is the Necrotic Catalyst, a brand new crafting item that adds quality specifically to Minion Modifiers on Rings and Amulets. There is also a Refined Necrotic Catalyst that extends that quality bonus to jewel effects on those same pieces. Both are obtainable through the Genesis Tree in the current league.

The practical ceiling this unlocks is significant. Before this patch, a +4 minion level amulet was what most players were running, with +5 requiring a lucky Sanctify and being far from guaranteed. The Necrotic Catalyst now opens the door to +6 minion skill level amulets, which changes the math on your entire build’s scaling.

It is worth noting that reaching +6 is not a simple one-step process. Based on community testing, getting from +5 to +6 requires specific stacking of quality sources, Breach crafting materials, and fractured modifiers, and even then the RNG can work against you. However, the ceiling existing at all is a major shift for the endgame crafting loop on summoner characters.

The Raven’s Flock Bug Fix Nobody Talked About Enough

This one flew under the radar in most discussions, but it is genuinely one of the most impactful fixes in the patch for minion builds: Mist Ravens summoned by The Raven’s Flock unique staff were not counting as allies in your presence.

What that means in practice is that every passive node, aura, or effect in your build that scales with “allies nearby” or “allies in your presence” was running at reduced effectiveness any time you were relying on your ravens. The build was not broken in a visible way, it just quietly underperformed. Now that Mist Ravens correctly register as allies, those ally-scaling bonuses apply properly, which is a free effective buff to every build using that staff.

If you tried Raven’s Flock earlier in the league and put it down because it felt weaker than expected, this patch is a solid reason to pick it back up.

Bear Spirit Got Twice the Range

Spirit Walker players got a clean buff too. The Bear Spirit companion’s base presence radius doubled from 4 to 8 metres. The presence aura is what applies the Bear’s bonus effects to nearby minions and allies, so a larger radius means the buff lands more consistently during fast-moving combat, when mobs are spreading out, and during boss encounters where positioning shifts constantly.

At 8 metres, the presence radius is roughly as wide as most combat screens at standard zoom, which means minions stay inside the buff zone almost all the time rather than falling in and out of it. Spirit Walker minion builds benefit from this passively with no gear or tree changes needed.

Minion Splash Bug Is Fixed

A secondary but useful fix: some minions could not be supported by Minion Splash. This was a functional bug rather than a numbers issue, meaning certain minion types were simply not receiving the AoE bounce from the support gem at all. It is now fixed, and Minion Splash should apply correctly across the full range of qualifying minion types.

Delirium Got Nerfed, and That Directly Helps Minion Endgame Farming

Delirium was sitting well above every other league mechanic in terms of raw difficulty, which made it a trap for builds that are strong on paper but crumble under sustained scaling damage. Patch 0.5.2 cut two of the key multipliers:

  • Toughness gained by Unique enemies inside the Delirium fog is halved

  • Increased Damage granted to Normal, Magic, and Rare enemies inside the fog is also halved

Minion builds often struggle in Delirium specifically because the damage scaling hits your minions hard and your personal survivability is usually sacrificed for summon count and minion stats. These nerfs make Delirium-stacked maps a legitimate farming option again for summoner builds that were previously getting erased before hitting meaningful depth.

Delirium mirror shards spawned from hitting depth targets also no longer persist after the encounter ends, cleaning up a mechanic that was creating confusion about shard collection timing.

Boss Nerfs That Open Up the Endgame for Summoners

Several specific bosses got adjusted in this patch. Here is what changed and why it matters for minion players:

Diamora, Song of Death now only has a single petrification phase instead of multiple. This was the fight where lower-damage builds would get stuck waiting through long phase transitions. Summoners running pet-heavy builds without high personal damage no longer get punished as hard here.

Azmadi, the Faridun Prince can no longer hit twice with the dash skill. That double-hit was catching minion builds off-guard when they were close to the boss and not actively dodging.

Siora, Blade of the Mists now has a wind-up time on her Cyclone and Chaos Strike skills, making them easier to read and dodge. This is a quality of life change as much as a difficulty reduction.

It That Hates, the Breach monster with one of the highest kill counts in the game, had its Chaos Beam damage significantly reduced, and its long-range chaos projectile attacks are less punishing. For minion builds running Breach-stacked maps, this was one of the most dangerous individual enemies in the endgame. That threat level is now much more manageable.

Expedition (Runes of Aldur) Changes Improve the Crafting Loop

For summoners grinding gear upgrades, the Runes of Aldur changes improve the efficiency of the league mechanic:

  • Many 3-slot Runic Inscriptions no longer appear in Tier 14 maps and above, increasing the rate of better rewards

  • Runefather’s Alloy and Runebinder’s Alloy are now found as 8-slot Runic Inscription rewards

  • Every section of the Ocean revealed by an Expedition Logbook is now guaranteed to contain at least one Grand Expedition, removing the frustrating outcome where you buy an expensive logbook and get nothing useful from it

What Got Nerfed That Minion Players Should Know About

The patch was not all buffs. Two changes are worth flagging:

Caster gloves and wand crafting: The Transcendent Alloy can no longer be applied to Wands or Foci. If you already had Transcendent Alloy on either of those item types, those items are now legacy. This does not affect minion builds directly, but if you were running a hybrid summoner with a focus on wand-based skills, your existing gear may need replacing.

Partial Translations Atlas Master redesigned: The old version gave a flat 20% chance to double the effect of Tablet Modifiers. The new version randomly grants between 0 and 40% increased effect instead. Over a large sample this averages out similarly, but the variance is higher and you lose the predictability of the flat 20%. If your Atlas strategy was built around that node for consistent output, expect less reliable results.

Zarokh’s Gift now only grants a Sinister Jewel Socket instead of a regular Jewel Socket, making any version with a regular jewel socketed a legacy item.