After migrating to Doom, I'm spending quite some time waiting for Ivy's buffer list to pop up, then process my input or just the cursor movement keys. Not really seeing the ‘speedier’ part. Haven't yet looked into what's taking it so long.

As for the ‘minimal’ part, indeed Helm has niceties thrown in, like recent files in the buffer list (I happen to been using that), or seeing docs from some completion lists.