Animate Guardian

400 DPS two handed weapons aren't that rare. His damage is only mediocre, worse than a single zombie's DPS. The issue is the bonuses aren't high enough. +70% or so increased physical is not all that impressive. If that was changed to more, then, the damage might keep up.

Compare this to a level 20 Raise Zombie's damage (485 base physical DPS). The Animate Guardian (240%, minion damage, tree, innate bonus) is doing only slightly more than one single level 20 Raise Zombie's (170% minion damage, tree) damage with a 400 DPS weapon.

Part of the problem is his bad accuracy. I noticed this when I use him. His hit rate seems to be kind of low compared to zombies.

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Starxsword wrote:

400 DPS two handed weapons aren't that rare. His damage is only mediocre, worse than a single zombie's DPS. The issue is the bonuses aren't high enough. +70% or so increased physical is not all that impressive. If that was changed to more, then, the damage might keep up.

Compare this to a level 20 Raise Zombie's damage (485 base physical DPS). The Animate Guardian (240%, minion damage, tree, innate bonus) is doing only slightly more than one single level 20 Raise Zombie's (170% minion damage, tree) damage with a 400 DPS weapon.

Part of the problem is his bad accuracy. I noticed this when I use him. His hit rate seems to be kind of low compared to zombies.

well you have to understand he isnt a damage dealer and the whole point of using him if for his ability to equip unique items.

i dont think ggg is interested in having a creature identified as a zombie but wears gear.

he is a guardian .. a tank but you cant really invest the more interesting gear combinations on him because you lose everything if he dies.


all in all we need baby steps , which making his gear persistent between deaths would be.
i can think of a bunch of fun things i would do with the piles of decent uniques rolling around out there.

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Saltychipmunk wrote:

the whole point of using him if for his ability to equip unique items

Considering that items are lost on death, that can't be the point of the skill. A large part of what's wrong with it is that we don't know how it's supposed to be used. The current behavior and stats preclude any real usage and GGG doesn't seem interested in any kind of communication about how it's intended to be used or how their testers have been using it successfully.

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OnmyojiOmn wrote:

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Saltychipmunk wrote:

the whole point of using him if for his ability to equip unique items

Considering that items are lost on death, that can't be the point of the skill. A large part of what's wrong with it is that we don't know how it's supposed to be used. The current behavior and stats preclude any real usage and GGG doesn't seem interested in any kind of communication about it's intended to be used or how their testers have been using it successfully.

Hey man dont look at me I am just paraphrasing GGG's reasoning for not touching him up until this point.


but strictly speaking there is a semi viable roll for him (i say semi because item deletion on death severely limits his options) is as a support minion, which is accomplisehd by the creative use of unique items liek the combination of the crest of perandus and zahndethus cassok which on those items alone causes him to have a 20% chance to spawn an are of effect spell that heals minions by 4% life regen , perfect for dealing with single target enemies that are dangerous to minions.

then there is the use of leer cast for free 15% damage aura.

there are other items too but they are more expensive , hence why no one uses them on guardians.

irst off i love skill and made a new summoner using tabula rasa putting ag in the 6 link

i ripped my last summoner to piety after i started putting mf gear on(i died before him lol) but i think this skill is pretty cool. i equipped him with leer cast and rise of the pheonix with some good rares and he felt extremely tanky(never died once i put good rares on him) using minion life skill gem and all the minion nodes in skill tree. i also had necromantic aegis(this time i dont think i will run this since i lost a lot of my survivability) and had thousand teeth on me and his block chance was very high because i think he gets my block chance with his own shields block

my current ag has 40% resist goldrim helm, 40% block shield forgot name, sudance boots an rest rares

guardian is by far the tankiest minion in the game no doubt, the issue is that he really is not worth the gem space as a main skill.

you can get 15k+ guardians with max block, but you need buffed empower gems and the right items , something that is actually quite expensive for most casual summoners (empower alone is usually 4 characters worth of gem exp to get through).


he is like a rejuvenation totem , a skill that doesn't hurt you explicitly if you put it in a 1 or 0 link just so you can throw it up every now and then. But as a serious skill... there really is not much there to support.

ur right i dont think he should be a main skill and i ended up dropping him from rasa(put him in +2 minion shield) and put a flame totem in there where leer cast(swapped this in for goldrim) gives me some dps boost

i did however try diff things and i just ripped the ag 5 min ago for the first time ever leveling from a pretty low level and im currently lvl 63 in act 3 but wanted to share some of my experience. I think but not sure around act 1 merciless i swapped all my ag gear for oro's sac 2handed sw, gangs momentum boots, infernal mantle armor, hrrthmor?? fire damage helm with cold res. Overall this was a huge mistake imo because i had to babysit him so hard just to get him all the way to general grav only to die in like 2 seconds. On his way there i had to shield swap 10+ times versus various bosses and a couple times to just mobs etc... I knew oro's sac was prob not worth since u take increased damage but i was curious lol

i tried thousand teeth teemu for a sec but wasnt that impressed

i also tried that consecrated ground unique armor and didnt really care for it

ima get another leer cast(i feel very strongly this is mandatory on him along with a shield(unsure on best choice) to make him useful) and just put tank items my new ag

He either needs a taunt or some usefulness offensively. He does nothing besides carry Leer Cast, Dying Breath, and Zanadethus' Cossack/Death's Oath

AI is not good enough to justify him just melee'ing everything.

Needs to function with ranged weapons.

It needs more coding to it and something to make it more than just a way to throw away junk uniques for laughs. It needs to not lose its items.

Needs some serious love, and some serious coding.

put a dying breath on him but one thing i dislike is the aura radius on it feels small although he is usually near my zombies so its not that big a problem

i would love to put a bow on him and give him the ai of a ranged attacker that will kite etc

read through this entire thread and some good ideas in here. A big thing is i would love to see what items he has equipped also but currently i write down every piece of gear he has on to make sure i cap his resists

To fix this, they just need to replace Animate Guardian with Animate Exile (preferably Orra Greengate)!