Animate Guardian

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The current AG needs some buffs to become viable.

Problems:
- Requires too much gear to work
- Even if you have alot of gear, it won't do that much
- Extremenely prone to death(wich due to the gear required actually matters, unlike most other minions) due to poor AI
- Useless at lower levels. My 90hp AG I got off Brutus repeatedly easily died to firedogs explosions in the next area
- Is summoning-based skillgem, but STR based. Yet there are no nodes near the STR area to support it. I think it needs some specific nodes of it's own.

Some ideas for possible AG-specific nodes
* AG gains 100% of your resistances. AG's resistance cap is removed.
* Life Link - AG now shares 50% of it's damage taken with you
* AG now gains all the percantage increases to your armour rating, evasion rating, energy shield, life, phys damage and damage
* The usual minion damage/life/lifeleech nodes

Suggestions:
- Make it immune to AoE or elemental damage, or give nodes in tree wich specifically allow it to surprass the 75% cap and gain 100% all ress to offset it's poor AI.
- Increase it's life dramatically, especially at lower levels, and allow it to equip all item slots just like player. This will allow it to survive at lower levels and also deal decent/more damage compared to other minions and the extra effort required to gear him.

These should offset it's weaknesses(poor ai, requirement to gear, losing gear on death) to a significant degree. I don't think it'll ever become viable for high end mapping but at least it would be useable for the leveling process and at least for a good number of other areas in the game.

AG already has the highest base life of any summon last I checked. It already has the best potential defenses of any summon. It already has the highest potential damage of any summon.

It just also requires the most to capitalize on those facts.

Bump to support once again for the "make this like a melee totem" idea. Where he could Cyclone and such if linked to it. For the sake of zazz.

On tangentially related issues: Minions in general.

Blue has a huge share of the mechanics of the game. Maybe it really doesn't need a monopoly on Minions, maybe it could just be the color best at minion swarms. The other two colors could be tertiary in minions.

The ranger pet skills people somewhat expect to see some day. The lack of zazz displayed by the animate guardian displays a bare truth on how they would have to be: They need an inherent special attack, if but only one. Default attack doesn't cut it - that's fine for swarms of zombies and skeletons but not a single solitary summon. Spider Minions should have Viper Strike. Giant Frogs should have Leap Slam. And so on.

And getting way off topic, such hypothetical skills would ideally be mostly drop-only to drive the collector aspect of the skill, and keeping quest reward windows clear of cruft.

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Lynerus wrote:

This seems to make more sense in that once its hp hits 0 the *magic* used to make it alive isn't there anymore so the gear (that makes up the minion) falls to the ground to be summoned again with full power (would have to resummon each part that it had/it drops)

This is problematic since players would then have an incentive to use the golem as storage space. A really awkward stash tab, and inevitable rage if it doesn't work right.

Really looking forward to the day that this is actually useable endgame.

Currently it (and to a much lesser extent Raise Spectre) are not very viable. In Animate Guardian's case, its the risk vs reward. Throwing crap gear on them does no good, because a zombie could do the same thing, and at a much lower cost. Throw good gear on them, and they inevitably die from their suicidal AI and/or against map bosses.

I would love to see it and Raise Spectre get some kind of "imprint" system, such as when you summon them and they die, the game remembers it and revives them the next time you change instances. Would make both of these much more useable endgame, especially since snapshotting was nerfed.

As a sidenote, I feel minions really need an overhaul because right now some of them simply don't cut it. Here's a quick summary of their current status.

Summon Raging Spirits - Still very high DPS even after the nerf, but unfortunately their DPS is so good that it has pushed pretty much all other summons to the wayside despite the fact that they can't tank outside of absorbing some non-peircing projectiles.

Summon Skeletons - Now that Desecrate exists, I'm not sure what the point of these are to be honest. They don't follow you, there is no incentive to choose skeletons over spirits as your casting filler if your trying to play a traditional summoner, and they clog up space that zombies need for melee. Also, they still have the -50% elemental damage, so you can't even use them with auras for some decent damage. Even though they were buffed, they need SOME kind of niche spot, and honestly I don't know what that would be, even for early game its better to cast Raging Spirits.

Animate Weapons - A clunkier version of Summon Raging Spirits to be honest. Useable, but takes a lot more work than spirits. If they could animate ranged weapons that would be interesting, but for some reason there is an extreme lack of ranged minions outside of Raise Spectre.

Animate Guardian - Already coverd, Suicidal AI makes him too much of a liabilty along with perma-death. Completely unnecessary, and hopeful either this gets re-worked, or there is some unique/passive in store in the future for this guy.

Raise Spectre - Snapshotting nerf pretty much did in these guys. Too much of a hassle to get a proper spectre, let alone trying to link him properly. Hopefully there is some kind of tweak for this in the future. Funny that this is the only possibility for ranged minions, but they simply don't make the cut anymore.

Raise Zombie - Still useable, but its overshadowed so much by Raging Spirits at the moment. Pretty much the only minions that can tank for you.

Long post, but this is simply my opinion on the current state of summons.

TL:DR version, animate guardian still isn't useable end game, and other minion types need some serious love thanks to Summon Raging Spirit overshadowing everything.

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Throwing crap gear on them does no good, because a zombie could do the same thing, and at a much lower cost. Throw good gear on them, and they inevitably die from their suicidal AI and/or against map bosses.

Assuming equal levels, their HP should always be higher than Zombies. We are talking about white items here.
I agree that they need something though.

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Raise Spectre - Snapshotting nerf pretty much did in these guys. Too much of a hassle to get a proper spectre, let alone trying to link him properly. Hopefully there is some kind of tweak for this in the future. Funny that this is the only possibility for ranged minions, but they simply don't make the cut anymore.

They work fine. Its just you.

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Starxsword wrote:

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Raise Spectre - Snapshotting nerf pretty much did in these guys. Too much of a hassle to get a proper spectre, let alone trying to link him properly. Hopefully there is some kind of tweak for this in the future. Funny that this is the only possibility for ranged minions, but they simply don't make the cut anymore.

They work fine. Its just you.

K, run around with a 6L raging spirits or Zombies compared to a 6L raise spectre, lemme know which clears faster with far less investment.

If your gonna attack me, better bring something valid other than a vague snide quote. Does nothing to contribute to the conversation and ends up making you look like a fool in the end.

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K, run around with a 6L raging spirits or Zombies compared to a 6L raise spectre, lemme know which clears faster with far less investment.

You only want to run around with 6L zombies if you have an Empower gem, otherwise they are better off on the +2 minion helmet, 4L. It saves you a ton of mana, so resummons wouldn't be too much of an issue in the middle of a fight.

That said, why are you comparing the clear speed of a 6L Raise Spectre vs a 6L Zombie? They take different roles.

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If your gonna attack me, better bring something valid other than a vague snide quote. Does nothing to contribute to the conversation and ends up making you look like a fool in the end.

I am not attacking you. I said they work fine, because they do, it is as simple as that.
You have yet explain why Spectres are bad. Check your comments on Spectre, you are the one being vague. You make generalizations with assumptions as facts.

That said, Animate Guardian is the topic. I am unsure what I would like to see change, but outside of taking hits, they are not very useful at the moment.

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Starxsword wrote:

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K, run around with a 6L raging spirits or Zombies compared to a 6L raise spectre, lemme know which clears faster with far less investment.

You only want to run around with 6L zombies if you have an Empower gem, otherwise they are better off on the +2 minion helmet, 4L. It saves you a ton of mana, so resummons wouldn't be too much of an issue in the middle of a fight.

That said, why are you comparing the clear speed of a 6L Raise Spectre vs a 6L Zombie? They take different roles.

Because both of their roles are to kill stuff? The main reason they were used was because you could 6L zombie/5L spectre. With that option gone, their not even a valid choice for a summoner who wants GOOD clear speed. If your using zombies as pure tanks, then thats fine, but 6L spirits still outshine spectres.

Their not worth the trouble to make them work when any endgame map boss is gonna kill them regardless of what you do, making you have to hunt for a new one with a "proper" level. They simply don't mesh well with current endgame content.

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Starxsword wrote:

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I am not attacking you. I said they work fine, because they do, it is as simple as that.
You have yet explain why Spectres are bad. Check your comments on Spectre, you are the one being vague. You make generalizations with assumptions as facts.

That said, Animate Guardian is the topic. I am unsure what I would like to see change, but outside of taking hits, they are not very useful at the moment.

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Starxsword wrote:

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They work fine. Its just you.

Looks pretty personal to me there. Saying they work fine WITHOUT giving reasons why is vague. I actually gave reasons as to why they are NOT in a good spot right now.

I stated several reasons in the prior post as well as this one as to why they are bad. If you don't understand that I don't know what else to tell you.

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Moose65 wrote:

Summon Skeletons - Now that Desecrate exists, I'm not sure what the point of these are to be honest.

They're the same as Raging Spirits: a damage over time skill. They have slightly more damage each second than a spirit (elemental resist cuts down the spirit's output considerably), last longer than a spirit, and can be spawned close to a monster or anywhere else for that matter, unlike a spirit.

For as long as I've played the game they've done the job of diluting the incoming damage your zombies take pretty well. Against jerks with AoE, you can stagger their positions so they're not immediately wiped out. The Maker of Rain is always good fun.

They are great for so-called "Grinder" damage. Roughly 2.5 skeletons are summoned per potential zombie; equipped with a Supreme Spiked Shield a swarm of skeletons will cause over 10,000 damage to something cycloning through them. Unfortunately this feature isn't well supported yet: we don't have a Thorns Aura. We can't get Tempest Shield on minions so they can reflect non-physical damage.

And they're one of the very few skills you can actually use on the left mouse click. Unless you're holding the shift key, it's Move Only. Which is absolutely freaking wonderful, considering we have zero open skill keys, and why the hell isn't that standard with things like Auras?