Animate Guardian

So, with how awesome the new golems look, does that mean GGG might finally be re-visiting this skill for the expansion?

who knows , people have been flatly telling ggg for ages what needs to be done to make guardians viable and so far the closest they have come to implementing it is a pretty pointless mod (on chest armor only) that causes it to drop on guardian death.

you would think it would be an easy thing to do, hell in pvp they already do it and summoners are considered terrible in pvp.

Yet they have remained firm about it.

I am sadly pessimistic.

Yeah, these new golems are really a slap in the face now, since most, if not all, builds will want to run one, summoner or not. I thought this was one of the issues with Animate Guardian that they didn't want players to feel like they "had" to have him?

Hell, they could even slap a "Golem" tag on him, so long as he doesn't have the stupid perma death mechanic and I would be happy at this point (even though he'd still have his retarded AI, non-existent skill set, and survivability issues).

I was trying to make a build where the guardian would be able to use an armor with gems included in the armor (cast on damage taken).
My idea was to make a build with a blood magic/mortal conviction auradin/auracle with as much mana reserve reductions as possible, using many auras to boost its defences and use a heavy life/armor animate guardian with rightous fire cast when damage taken on the guardian.

unfortunatelly the guardian cant use armor when gems are in it 8(.

They should really make an unique jewel that says "animate guardian no longers lose its items on death" . it would be a trade off : a jewel space for an effect that we really need on this gem to make it functional.

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leopower wrote:

They should really make an unique jewel that says "animate guardian no longers lose its items on death" . it would be a trade off : a jewel space for an effect that we really need on this gem to make it functional.

That would be a great idea, or they could simply put a cooldown on him. They could even do a remote mines type deal so you don't accidentally cast it on another piece of gear, put a resurrect guardian spell and put it on a 5 min cooldown or something.

I'm quite happy with the gem as it is right now. Ever since the change came in to minion nodes on the tree, minion %regen and resists, the guardian stays alive in most of my mapping endeavours.

I main summoners, do usually get almost all the minion life nodes on tree and if I can afford to, I give up 2 or 3 links to further buff its hp/resists.

For a few chaos (zandethus' cassock + leer cast + any shield, or leer cast + dying breath), we get to have a walking totem with us and I think that's pretty cool. Are you guys trying to get it to work with more links and a higher investment of gear? is that why you're frustrated? or is it on non-summoner builds that it just keeps getting zerged /dying and you're unhappy?

From my perspective, it might be that gem isn't meant to work without the nodes to support its survivability? The term non-functional is thrown around a lot as well and I'm really curious what people are trying to do with the gem. I thought about doing a 5link/6link, but it always ends up just being one guardian and feels like a waste of gem slots to invest that heavily into it.

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uebelblatt wrote:

I'm quite happy with the gem as it is right now. Ever since the change came in to minion nodes on the tree, minion %regen and resists, the guardian stays alive in most of my mapping endeavours.

I main summoners, do usually get almost all the minion life nodes on tree and if I can afford to, I give up 2 or 3 links to further buff its hp/resists.

For a few chaos (zandethus' cassock + leer cast + any shield, or leer cast + dying breath), we get to have a walking totem with us and I think that's pretty cool. Are you guys trying to get it to work with more links and a higher investment of gear? is that why you're frustrated? or is it on non-summoner builds that it just keeps getting zerged /dying and you're unhappy?

From my perspective, it might be that gem isn't meant to work without the nodes to support its survivability? The term non-functional is thrown around a lot as well and I'm really curious what people are trying to do with the gem. I thought about doing a 5link/6link, but it always ends up just being one guardian and feels like a waste of gem slots to invest that heavily into it.

Were frustrated because

-It dies on loading Screens
-It's AI tells it to run outside of your aura range and die
-The Risk vs Reward is way out of proportion. No other skill casually eats 3~5 Chaos per use, as well as it not filling any particular role very well outside of support with leer cast.
-The new golems are a slap in the face when compared to his ridiculous mechanics. Golems can be recast and used as a 1 gem slot wonder. Animate Guardian requires 2~3 gem slots at least and 3~5 chaos per recast.

Honestly, the random buffs he receives are ridiculous. The healing him when adding/replacing a piece is just dumb because you can't rely on that, especially in boss fights, and you typically don't want to replace gear on him that you've carefully chosen.

The Haku mod that was added doesn't help in any shape, form, or way. Getting to salvage a rare armor on his death (which isn't even a GOOD slot for rare gear for him) is pointless.

The beta has added more base life to him, which again is pointless cause certain maps/bosses are gonna obliterate him anyways.

He can't tank. He can't DPS. His one role is very gimmicky and costly to use him for. I've used him on summoner builds, and unless you keep him in a weapon switch (which again, is even more of a ridiculous limitation) he's extremely difficult to keep up with that suicidal AI. If your not a summoner, you might as well forget about using him. Even if a group stacked him, dying breaths aura/debuff doesn't stack, and all the leer casts at most would add 90% increased damage (assuming you could get within range of all of them). If this is problematic, slap a Golem tag on him (so you can't use him with fire/ice golem for more damage buffs) and/or make leer cast not stack.

All he honestly needs to make him infinitely more useful is a fix to his AI (a leash that won't let him go outside of your aura radius) along with a way to resurrect him (a cooldown would be perfect, or if that's too much, then a resurrect when changing zones) or, while less convenient, him dropping items on death (would much rather see the former, so that choosing items for him locks them permanently instead of just killing him to get them back). He already resurrects in PvP. I don't see why he needs to always be in a Hardcore League while PvE'ing with you.

Honestly I don't even know what the developers really intend for him to be used for, but right now at worst he's a chaos sink, and at best a small buff for easy content (since you wouldn't dare use him in any extremely dangerous areas).

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uebelblatt wrote:

I thought about doing a 5link/6link, but it always ends up just being one guardian and feels like a waste of gem slots to invest that heavily into it.

I find the best way to invest a lot of supports into a guardian is to 5 link it together with my zombies in a 6 link.

With the introduction of Bloodlust, having him in a 4 link and equipping him with a Blood Reaper and then actually 6 linking the zombies is probably gonna be a better idea in most cases though.

The problem with Animate Guardian is that he's mediocre in comparison to the other minions in the game. From my earlier quote you require extremely expensive and rare items, I'd rather not burn with the guardian, in order to keep him up with your other minion damage wise as well as survivability wise. As it stands right now, summoners already have extremely contested socket slots along with Act IV introducing new golem summons which would outright shut down even any thought of running AG anymore.

The one thing keeping back AG from becoming a somewhat used skill is it's terrible mechanic of destroying its items. Not one skill in PoE consumes or uses up people's currencies to create a half decent minion which gets outright outshined by other summons. The many suggestions that preceded me have said, don't let the minion destroy the items on it's death. Instead incur a penalty of cooldown. Whether it be 30 sec to 5 min it doesn't matter because the only thing holding AG back is it's death penalty of item destruction.

Now as you would think: "Wouldn't that make AG a must have for every build?" No, it wouldn't, AG uses a weak standard attack along with a gesture occasionally that hampers its killing potential. In fact, the Act IV golems introduce features of user buffs, especially the fire golem with it's free damage buff. Something that some people feared from a permanent AG, a constant damage buff, free X% damage. And for the argument of simply rolling your way through all the acts with an OP AG, the AG is restricted by it's level for equipping items so you can't simply attach a BoR to the guy at level 1. "What about a friend comes by and helps me with his OP AG?" Well at that point, he himself would be strong enough to do the exact same thing. And if all else fails, the earlier solution of a long respawn timer doesn't allow for constant spamming of the AG onto a boss. The AG can't even tank for you unless you have big investment into minion nodes, gear and your own minion equipment, but even then his AI just attempts to suicide bomb a boss/exile which leaves all the other monsters to go after you. The AG needs real investment in order to be good enough for tanking purposes or damage purposes, but that's a big interference the actual build. I would never consider putting points into minions passives for my tornado shot ranger for one bro or running sidhebreath on my marauder for some extra life on my guy when there's much better options for me. And even if he's fully invested into with complete BiS gear and expensive uniques, he's not gonna be better at clearing than me fully geared out with his exact things, he won't clear faster than crit, than ranged or any current meta builds.

Everytime I used it, I felt like I was wasting sockets that could've been used for much more effecient things.



I ran AG + Minion Life + Multistrike + Life Gained on Hit in these gloves, but I later realized after many AG deaths later, after stacks of chaos later, that the setup in my gloves are much more efficient than my guardian. No matter the amount of defenses I put, with good rares and all 3 purity's auras running along with vitality and his earlier setup, and all my minion passives and gear he always died. I tried to run bone offering and he still managed a death. I slowly started to question my usage of the guardian and ultimately it proved itself worthless. If the guardian simply didn't lose it's items, I might reconsider it's use again... But for now the guardian is something only meant as a gimmick minion.

All in all, the AG's biggest limiting factor preventing use from any use besides gimmicks is it's destroying items on death. So remove that, just give it a long respawn timer, it's not like you can retrieve items from your guardian anyway. There's no reason for the item destruction!!!!!1!11one!