[Poe2] Any minion specific advice : Gear, leveling and Uniques to farm ?

So been loving poe 2 and so far not even hit maps, just doing lots of fresh start to end of act 3 style runs to fully test out lots of build options.

However I'm wanting to focus on minions now and go all way to end game. So going to do a fresh start HCSSF and first goal is just getting to maps.

I have generally found that sniper gas explode with flame wall is a strong option at act 1 for quickly killing bosses, then arsonists become a bit stronger once you start getting those aoe nodes and snipers look better later again once you can oneshot with supports like fork and chain and have crazy clear.

So I assume the best option is to go either sniper or arsonist for act 1 depending on how much spirit i have, for example 3 snipers > 2 arsonists. Then maybe act 2 we swap to arsonist once we have flamiblity and doggo and stick on that until I feel comfy enough with dmg for snipers to one shot white mobs. I do plan to run flame wall srs on sniper or arsonist, not just for damage but also things like blind and maim.

However I'm not too sure on stats and bases early, like should I be running ES gear right from lv2 or should I take just enough Int for skills then take str nodes for some flat hp and look for other base options ?

I also know items like Trunch and fireflower can be string uniques but seems very rare and hard to get. So any other suggestions like would you ever run a wand with level of fire skills to boost flamiblity and flame wall ?