Animate Guardian

Unsure if I think this skill is ok or not. I like my summons to stay alive so survivability wise the skill is ok to me because once I decked one out in good gear he survives pretty well so far in maps (as long as the maps aren't super hard).

Damage is questionable though. I don't really think I can make one have good damage unless I went with some kind of awesome two hander and if I did that then survivability would take a big hit.

All in all this skill might need a buff. I like to use it but since its really just "one more summons" it really doesnt make a big enough of a difference to justify the skill slots. I can't make an argument right now that the guardian is any better than one of my zombies.

Should I be using a skill that is only as good as one zombie??

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Autocthon wrote:

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Percles wrote:

L15 GEM:
56% increased maximum life

Nice, but... wait! Increased life of what? 1 life? 10 life? 100 life?
How much life??????? Instead showing "56% increased", show how much life it is!!!

56% increased life for items he has equipped (and his base life, which is meh).

I think better way is to show how much life it is, like skelettons or zombies.
Anyway, AG is still unusable and can't survive any attacks or can't do real damage. Only in lower monster zone (ie AG with L61 items can be good in L51 zone). So, its unusable and I got skelettons for better damage and guardian.

Am I the only one who thinks the animated guardian is one of the most underpowered minions you can get in the game? How did I come to this conclusion? Look at what you need to make it even noticeably strong, a full set of gear and a weapon (dual wielding or 2h included) and shield. And even with a fully kitted guardian, it's still ridiculously easy to kill!

This problem is made even worse when you actually take the time to invest in a perfect set of equipment for it. Best gear you think would work, and then he wades into a horde of enemies and he's quickly disposed of! Yes, he's designed to tank and try and draw aggro, but its extremely low life and defense values make it hard to actually tank much less do sufficient damage.

Giving it 25% of its health back when giving it new gear was a great start to buff it, but I'd also like to suggest additional ways to buff the minion:
1.) Allow your passives to be mirrored onto the guardian.
- This would benefit anyone regardless of class who uses the guardian. If you're going intelligence and buff ES, you can build the guardian around ES and it'll have more of it to keep fighting. If you go melee, your passives that increase melee damage will pass over to it. Same with armor buffing passives. Etc.
2.) Allow guardians to have ranged weapons, including wands.
- This suggestion also works well with the first suggestion as well as being useful on its own. If the guardian doesn't get more HP or defense buffs later down the road, at least give it the ability to fight from a distance. This would also be swell for animated weapons, but I might be pushing too far.
3.) Enable us to animate unidentified weapons and armor.
- Believe me, if I wanted that blue/yellow gear, I would've picked it up. And I'm certainly not going to bring a full stack of wisdom scrolls to identify stuff on the go, much less to equip my guardian. Instead of letting that stuff go to waste on the ground, let us animate them. Items will be identified when they get animated, but you wouldn't care what the stats were anyway, so long as they are better than the garbage whites.

As it currently exists, animate guardian is by far the worst skill in the game. But i have thought of the perfect solution:
When the guardian dies, have it drop scraps as if its items were vendored.
Walla. It remains a crappy minion but finds a unique niche to fill.

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SkyCore wrote:

As it currently exists, animate guardian is by far the worst skill in the game. But i have thought of the perfect solution:
When the guardian dies, have it drop scraps as if its items were vendored.
Walla. It remains a crappy minion but finds a unique niche to fill.

I like this idea!


Anyway, I want to summon someone from GGG to answer this:
when you use another item to heal your guardian the piece is replaced?
examples:
If I have a full rare geared guardian and I want to heal it with a white chest armor, does the rare chest piece will be replaced by the white and heal the guardian?
If I start building my guardian with white pieces and then I find a rare, will it replace the white item or it will just heal the guardian?
use the same examples with types of item level (level required for the item and/or /itemlevel).

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Valriel wrote:

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SkyCore wrote:

As it currently exists, animate guardian is by far the worst skill in the game. But i have thought of the perfect solution:
When the guardian dies, have it drop scraps as if its items were vendored.
Walla. It remains a crappy minion but finds a unique niche to fill.

I like this idea!


Anyway, I want to summon someone from GGG to answer this:
when you use another item to heal your guardian the piece is replaced?
examples:
If I have a full rare geared guardian and I want to heal it with a white chest armor, does the rare chest piece will be replaced by the white and heal the guardian?
If I start building my guardian with white pieces and then I find a rare, will it replace the white item or it will just heal the guardian?
use the same examples with types of item level (level required for the item and/or /itemlevel).

animating any item attaches it to your guardian, replacing what he currently has equipped.

This has some very weird interaction with wepaon/shield combos, because if the weapon is NOT an upgrade it replaces shield, and if it IS an upgrade it replaces the main weapon. While a shield appears to replace the weakest weapon equipped if the guardian dual wields.

Solution to animate guardian: Increase base life, add defense multipliers.

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Valriel wrote:

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SkyCore wrote:

Anyway, I want to summon someone from GGG to answer this:

prob the most powerful spectre in POE :)

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SkyCore wrote:

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Valriel wrote:

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HaleBopp wrote:

Anyway, I want to summon someone from GGG to answer this:

prob the most powerful spectre in POE :)

prob the worst quote ever :S

The biggest problem with this useless cannonfodder is inability to work with other summons. Guardian attack range is far bigger than zombies/spectres so off it goes to attack some invisible threat beyond screen getting quickly massacred in progress. And while this is happening my zombies swarm around me without noticing any threat. I won't even mention how ridiculously squishy that thing is.

When 1.0.0 was released it was clear that neither Animate Guardian or Animate Weapon was ever tested, and it's clear that the change to Guardian in 1.0.1 wasn't tested either. I don't believe that anyone at GGG has ever built and played a successful character around either of these skills, because if that had ever happened they would not be in the state they're in.