After, literally years, it finally clicked that the best use for Minions is to generate Doom for the Toughened and Nemesis. A mob is rolling 5 dice which is usually enough to generate a few points of Doom. So rather than spending it to make the mob more effective I use it for the bigger threats.
No idea why I didn’t see that over the years 
And rolling 5d20 for Minions raises the chance for rolling Complications for NPCs, thus possibly depleting the Doom pool, if you buy them off for 2 Doom.
Buying off Complications is a last resort if I can’t think of anything interesting to do. I may…maybe…do it for a Nemesis but Minions? Nope. They can suffer the vagaries of fate.
But I’ll take the 1 in 20 chance of a Complication for the significantly higher chance of generating Doom.
Thanks for sharing this now self-evident truth that I’d not thought of, either. Good stuff.
I know! I was like…wait a minute here…doh!
Nice! I will definitely try this thx
Especially since you decide the order enemies go in on their turn. Need to apply some pressure? The minions go first, generate some doom and then the Toughened and Nemesis go. Need to lay back a bit, then reverse the order. Overspend doom on a Toughened attack but still have a few mobs left? Intermingle them. Need to set something up? Minions generate Doom then on the next round the GM uses it to Seize Initiative.
This realization dramatically changed how I look at combat in Conan. Especially because while the GM can gain Doom from players buying dice in the dozens of games I’ve run that’s happened less than a handful of times. Player mentality is generally that giving the GM Doom is bad and must be avoided at all costs.
If you use the Minion NPC stats from the published books, even a 5-Minion Mob is not sure to even succeed versus a D1 test, most will not generate the Doom necessary to make them go first.
Most minions in the core book have a TN of 10, usually Agility 9 and Combat 1. The odds of generating Doom are quite good. Not overwhelming certainly, but good enough to provide an effective strategy. They only need 1 doom (page 272) for the entire mob/squad to go first on the next round.
My current game has 5 players, two of which are combat oriented, and even 1000xp in mobs used in this way make combat significantly more dangerous. Not deadly because damage for the mobs is usually quite low, but dangerous.