Animate Guardian

Even if it wouldn't work with instability (like CI doesn't work with mana flasks that take some % from your health), it still would be a great gem.

Zarithinor's Review of Animate Guardian:

Introduction:

Getting straight to the point; this skill fits in a very VERY niche part of the game.
Without significant investment, there really is nothing spectacular that this skill brings to the player's arsenal that other skills don't already do. There are several reasons why this is the case.

Pros:

Theoretically build a companion that can dish out significant physical/elemental damage that scales with minion damage and necro aegis(all shield bonuses apply to minions instead of you)(keystone).

Benefits from a lot of support gems including minion support gems/keystones/things like multistrike and therefore saying there is no synergy is incorrect

Works fairly well with "Animate Guardian"

Works with minion instability


Cons:

Terrible skill synergy with something like raise zombie/specter/summon skeletons due to the upkeep nature of the skill

Incredibly hard to keep alive without a chunky investment on gear

Will absolutely get destroyed in high level maps because it has to be in melee range. Ranged mobs and AoE damage will destroy it.

Dependent on armor drops for sustainability

requires some significant micro management skills.

Cast range for upkeep armor is very low


To Elaborate:

The main criticism here is that the player is too focused on upkeeping the Guardian that there will be times where the player is left in a dangerous situation due to the short cast range. Significant micro is required because you have to remember which armor slot is the "crappy white one" so that you can replace that slot instead of other more valuable slots that you might have slotted a decent investment on. The fact that it is melee range poses some problems in addition to it's vulnerability to AoE damage and ranged mobs. You can reduce the disadvantage on both Animate Guardian and Weapon by getting a 20% quality bonus which allows it to have up to 40% increased movement speed. In addition, the guardian has no way to leeching life back besides on the life on enemy hit. This forces the player to run some sort of regeneration aura or have the necro aegis keystone. Once again, by going necro aegis it puts the player in a vulnerable position.

On higher level maps, the mobs do significant damage and really I only see maybe one or two ways this skills could be utilized effectively.

One must have incredible cast speed, damage auras, necro aegis and increasing the life and damage of minions on the passive tree as much as possible. To help the guardian be more effective in combat, using "Animate Weapon" is a good strategy because there are no limits on how many weapons can be summoned at a time, and they can effectively act as tanks to keep the player and the guardian alive. As a result; cast speed is very important due to the amount of micro management there is involved.

The supply of weapons and armor to some players might seem kind of dependent on increased item quantity stats and as well as x # of players in a party. In group play it will definitely see maximum effectiveness, more people to tank the damage means less targeting towards the guardian. Very abundant amount of drops means more chances to keep the guardian alive.

The fact that you have to identify items is a really crappy idea in my opinion, simply because in realistic combat you are putting yourself at risk by sitting there while mobs are on the screen and you're just identifying items, dropping them and then casting whatever you need to cast. Then you gotta take into account that you're wasting precious inventory slots in addition to blowing through wisdom scrolls.


Things I feel GGG could do to improve this skill:

Currently as it stands, if Fire Traps and Spectral Throw were rated as a "10" in terms of quality of a skill; 10 being the highest quality and 1 being the lowest...

Animate Guardian would be probably close to a 1.

I'm not very clear on the resistances/health of animate guardian/weapon. However, I feel that if you have a rare chest attached to the guardian, attaching white chests or blue chests should not replace the rare chest. This makes sustaining the guardian much easier.

In addition to that; remove the need to identify items. For such a fast paced game like PoE being an action rpg, this is very sloppy and clunky to maneuver. In fact this is like multi-boxing. Literally.

Increasing the cast range of both animate guardian weapon. Currently as it stands, it's way too short of a cast range and the player is thrown into dangerous situations in attempt to sustain the guardian.

Zombies and Skeletons are way more reliable to upkeep, while guardian/weapons depend on gear being dropped. This makes solo play challenging at times without the increased item quantity bonus from being in a group. It just feels that Guardian runs into similar problems as specters, except for specters you can choose ranged units while the guardian is fixed as melee.


END.

Hopefully you guys found my review of the skill rather useful.

Hello co-exiles

maybe i haven't searched good enough, had my eyes closed or something, please point me at the right link if i had, however, i did not find a better thread in which the animate guardian was discussed and recieved suggestions.

The gem is a great item sink and really supportive if you go ranged and squishy. However, it would be great if also other stats beside +x to Maximum life or +x% increased Attack Speed would carry over, so that it wont use your defenses.
And yes, if you give it a complete set of rares, you prolly looses a few alterations vendoring it, but it won't die so fast.

Suggestions:
- use item stats from items placed upon it (including movement speed and energy shield)
downside: 1-2 items with no defenses get smashed to bits in miliseconds
downside: it gets expensive
upside: people are actually gonna care about something else beside themselves.
upside: a companion for solo-ers
- size increasing with average item rarity
- colour effects (visual effect)
- skin modifiers like spiked or blurry or corrupted (thick veins all over your guardian) (visual effect)
- different puppets for movement and stances, like undying or birdman or ape. (visual effect)
- some kind of functional script which compares values of new items and overwrites only higher values up to a maximum per gem level with some considerations about evasion/armour/energy shield and a maximum of stat buffs.
- ?allow it to be ranged?
- (toxic) regaining items through vendor recipe, with the first 6 stat buffs on rare items.(this one could create perfect items through an alternative than random use of currency, a friend said it is worth considerations, sorry)

this probably will not be a hot-topic, so be welcome to share your considerations.

regards,

Teriderol

I think the skill by itself is really fine, it requires enormous effort to make it viable, but when it does, you feel sooooooo good, and people are actually amazed to see a good animated guardian at all.

My only problem is the AI of it, as others have already states, it's too suicidal at the moment, i would love if he stayed closer to you or there was any way to give him orders, like when you press D key to blow up mines. Something like rally allies but only for the guardian.

The problem is, that you can't really build around it.

You can make one with good gear that is really good for your build, but if it dies and you don't have another set of items for it, you are left with a useless minion.

I'd say it could be viable with carefully chosen items, but it's only good with that CoD exploit that will be fixed soon. And with "whatever they happen to find" gear it's not even viable.

Not to mention that we players cannot use dev console unlike you guys when we need to find new decent items for AG after its death :)

So the dev's thinking is that if players put a couple of hundred exalts of uniques into this, it will last for.. what, two encounters?

If it was immortal and could be resurrected on a cooldown after death, then I'd go for this.

I'm not sure if this has been brought up or not, but what about the animated guardian being able to use items that have skill gems in them? Since you would lose items, anyway, if your animated guardian is killed, I think it's a fair trade-off so as to allow the animated guardian to use gear that has skill gems.

Imbalance worries shouldn't really be an issue since the guardian is AI and has a higher chance of dying than the actual player.

When PoE's game code recognizes certain skill gems on your animated guardian, it would go about making the guardian use the gems efficiently as possible like those special Exiles do.

On another note, why are projectile weapons restricted from being animated? Just because a weapon is ranged doesn't make them any better than close-ranged weapons.

I think it would be absolutely awesome to have a whole other you (in a sense) to game with if you're not in the mood for people.

Overall, I think the skill gem is really awesome, the idea is there, but the restrictions are a complete disappointment. So much going for it, so little to show...

Yup, don't tell me you guys expect from players to invest high level uniques into a thing that will never give them back and will die eventually due to poor AI if nothing else.

Most people who have enough currency to actually dump it into AG can and will use much more powerful builds than a summoner.