Animate Guardian

Hello GGG team. Please review Animate Guardian and update it into viability. It is one of the most entertaining and unique skills in the game, but he can no longer keep up (if he ever could, i don't know).

As the game has become much, much faster (to my dismay), skills that revolve around interesting mechanics and strategic combat have become less relevant. Animate Guardian is at the top of that list.

-He is too slow and dumb to provide any benefit to you. Maybe when characters were slower and damage was lower, he was able to engage enemies or at least be near you to grant buffs to "nearby allies". But not anymore.

-Gear should be deleted upon Guardian death, not animation. It would be nice to be able to tweak his gear around depending on map mods etc. If he dies due to you mismanaging him you still lose the gear. Why is this not the case? Seriously?

-Triggering skills don't work. Ok, I'm sure I have overlooked a combination of items that would make Guardian triggering completely broken. But my feedback is to fix the break. Don't just ban him from using all trigger skills. This would be SO much fun.


P.S. In my opinion Animate Guardian is near the heart of classic design of PoE. He allows for such interesting and unusual possibilities. I believe his growing irrelevance is evidence that PoE has drifted far from what made it special. Every patch takes it closer to Gauntlet Legends. Sure, there's a massive web of mechanics under the hood. But who cares if every skill destroys content once you get 1 of 10 currently overpowered items? Power creep just seems generally out of hand.

Should Animate Guardian be updated to increase damage with ailments as well?

Just for clarification, the spirit doesn't give Avian's buff to teammates through Saqawal's Nest right?

As in, if the caster is casting the aura, and the spirit wears the armor, the buff doesn't get applied right?

GGG or someone?

Build: The expensive version of Ghazzy's Lich Queen summoner build

Animate guardian is linked to faster attacks+fortify+shield charge. Gear is 2x Dyadus, Leer Cast, Icetomb, Victario's Flight, Southbound. My AG has around 13k hp.

The biggest issue I have with Animate Guardian is the catch 22 of the skill. You either invest heavily in keeping it alive which results in essentially wasted sockets since it doesn't really do anything, or you build it for utility which makes it useful but about as durable as wet tissue paper in most of the harder fights. I've lost my AG twice now and both times I don't even know how it died.

This is a problem because from a utility standpoint, the only place it'd actually matter are those harder fights where it's going to get deleted. For what little you get from having it(in my case more burn damage, 15% increased damage, and increased movement speed about 30-40% of the time because it's usually out of position), the expense is pretty significant. Looking at PoE trade the total is around 4 chaos for the above gear. Having to do that after each uber fight/elder/shaper/high tier bosses puts AG well over its peers in expenses pretty quickly. A 20Q/20L life gain on hit is the most expensive un-corrupted gem at 41 chaos.

It also does poor damage. For something that can equip actual armor, it does abysmal damage and as long as that's the case it will almost universally be used as a utility skill. It's a shame it can't equip bows/wands either, which would help cushion a lot of problems as well.

Things that can be done to address the current issues plaguing the skill as its used now while maintaining balance:
A). No longer loses gear on death, however applies a heavy DoT to the summoner on death.

A2), No longer loses gear on death, however has 1-3 charges that only recover upon map transition.

B). Drops its gear on death, immediately starts a 30 second cooldown, and upon resummoning AG it picks up its gear again.

C). Drop the price of the drop on death enchant to 4 chaos, allow it to be applied to all AG slots.

D). Give it a percentage chance to drop each piece of gear, so its at least not as painful for it to die.

Z). Have a vaal version that does one of the above.

Tl;Dr: A tanky AG is immortal but useless, a utility AG is made of paper, DPS AG isn't a thing, it's far too expensive to maintain, its AI is stupid, can't use bows/wands to compensate for being stupid.

Can Animate Guardian use Vulconus Dagger
and gain Avatar of Fire?? If it were to be used
With the new Chains of Command chest piece,
would the resulting floating weapons also be
able to receive Avatar of Fire?

If I were to use Sanguine Gambol, could Animate
Guardian gain Crimson Dance?

If none of these are currently possibly, can these
please be addressed (along with the fact that Animate
Guardian cannot trigger skills?) since a review of skills
is being done towards next major patch?

Idea of upgrade for animate guardian now that the revamps are coming.
What if guardian would get the skill set of the item set they are wearing.

Example: animating Shavronne armor + boots + ring"maybe". Then guardian would use Shavronnes skills.
Or some other characters items&skills you see fit.

So with Animate Guardian now beeing a "Main Skill" thanks to Chains of Command, could we PLEASE address the Labyrinth Traps?!

I just lost a Lvl21 Guardian due to him Bleeding out like an idiot.

I would also like to suggest an item or Treshold jewel, that sets AG on a cooldown upon death instead of deleting all the gear.

I understand it used to serve another purpose, but honestly it simply only drains time if I need to whisper 10 People per Item to recast him. These Itemds dont cost anything after Day2, so it justs wastes time.

I think traps or guardian are bugged. Last time i was in lab my guardian took a lot of damage from some trap there. Maybe it's fixed now. I am not going to do any testing. Regardless minions should be immune to traps.

Also it would be nice to be able to view his items. Or can we email support and have them tell us what items we gave our guardians?

Cool and unique skill though. More of these special skills would be nice. Thanks.