Animate Guardian

"

Owtwem wrote:

I find it funny that GGG refuse to comment on either this of Weapon, because they're both horrible skills that need to be completely reworked.
Also the fact that you can't use a bow even though it was in the trailer is a complete slap to the face.
Absolutely embarassing

This. The last point you made is something that irked me that I forgot to post about. I want to be able to have it use bows or wands :/

The guardian should have a chance to drop the items it's wearing when it dies, rolled individually for each item. The chance should go from something like 30% at level 1 to 80% at level 20 and 100% at level 23. This would allow people to reliably use uniques and other expensive items with a combination of gem level bonuses on gear and the Empower support, at the cost of a support socket. Players who are content to give it good items, but not great items, would still be able to gear it up pretty well.

Rather than immediately animating an item or adding it to the guardian, there should be a system similar to remote mines. Animated items should be stored and shown as icons in a column on the right side of the screen, with a button/hotkey that animates them or equips them on a guardian all at once. This would eliminate the need to collect a set of items, store them in the inventory, and then animate them all rather than animating them piecemeal only to have a weak guardian killed before it's fully geared out.

Right now ES gear is the only reasonable choice for a guardian. I find this really unfortunate because it removes a lot of the fun and flexibility the skill might have. More importantly, a guardian in pink and purple caster gear looks completely ridiculous. If you were making a preview video for this skill, you would NEVER have a guardian prancing in around in a robe and a tambourine. Some kind of conversion needs to be done, either to convert armor/evasion to ES or to convert ES to something else.

It's also unfortunate that there's so little to differentiate minion builds that use Animate Guardian/Weapon from zombie/skeleton builds. A good way to fix this would be to add minion clusters without additional zombie/skeleton nodes to the int paths near Totemic Mastery in the templar/marauder area and near Charisma in the shadow/ranger area. This would enable a ton of fun hybrid summoner builds.

I don't think Necromantic Aegis should work with Animate Guardian. I like the idea of a strength=based hybrid summon skill that takes its stats from the items you give it, and Aegis waters all of that down. Remove the interaction with Aegis and buff the skill to compensate.

As has been said, guardians have horrible base accuracy. It's really frustrating to watch a guardian miss, and nobody is going to gear a guardian with +accuracy when it's so hard to keep the stupid thing alive. I don't see any reason why a guardian should have to-hit check at all. It's arguable whether accuracy should even be a part of the game for players, let alone a guardian. make them hit with every attack.

I don't mind the skill being limited to melee but I think the guardian should at least be allowed to use ranged weapons at a very short range. There should be one additional item slot for a ring, amulet, or belt, and the gem's quality bonus should increase the mods on the item in this slot multiplicatively.

Thanks for reading.

"

Owtwem wrote:

I find it funny that GGG refuse to comment on either this of Weapon, because they're both horrible skills that need to be completely reworked.
Also the fact that you can't use a bow even though it was in the trailer is a complete slap to the face.
Absolutely embarassing

1) The lack of a dev response does not mean they 'refuse' to comment. The way this Thread is loaded at the moment (with posts like yours for example), I too would refrain to make a careless comment.

If they have something helpfull/informative to say, they will post it.

2) In no trailer does it show the guardian using a bow. The only place you could see that was in footage from interviews etc.. That were snapshots of the pre-release build of the game and everyone knew they werent final. In the video with Gamespot(i think) Chris even says that the skill can still change.

"

Sneakypaw wrote:

2) In no trailer does it show the guardian using a bow. The only place you could see that was in footage from interviews etc.. That were snapshots of the pre-release build of the game and everyone knew they werent final. In the video with Gamespot(i think) Chris even says that the skill can still change.

I don't understand though why they removed the bow afterall?

we have only melee minions (if you exclude specters) so it would have been cool to have a bow guardian.

I want to preface this post by saying that I really enjoy having Summon Guardian in my arsenal, and even with it's obvious weaknesses, it is still enjoyable and I keep putting items aside specifically to see how long I can keep him up. Although this is fun, I feel that many of the folks here are correct in their observation that once he meets with a capable foe, especially in multi-player, he becomes a distant memory quite quickly.

I have some thoughts about Animate Guardian and some ways to give him some staying power, make him more fun, perhaps a bit more powerful, but at a significant cost:


1. Make the Guardian re-summon-able with his last item build intact, perhaps with a cool-down upon death.

2. Give the skill a steep mana reservation, somewhere like 70%, so that even with modifiers, the Guardian comes at a cost. Perhaps even a health reservation could be in order, as well. Something to trade for the Guardian so that he is a limiting commitment, not just an overpowered summon.

3. Add some scaling defenses that modify either the resistances of the caster or the resistances of the items given, or a combination of the two.

4. Give the ability description in the character sheet for Animate Guardian some details about stats, current equipment, and if possible mouse-overs of the equipment.

5. Tighten the leash on this bad boy so he doesn't charge off to his death as often, or even better, give us options on his behavior.

6. Give him some strength gem sockets as he levels up, with links added to them between gem socket attainment. Example 1 red socket at level 3 another red at 5, a link between them at level 7, another red socket at level 9, a link at 11, and so forth. If two or more skills are added, have him alternate between them. If necessary, give the Guardian a small mana pool to work with. Perhaps limit these skills to melee attack gems to keep things like totems and auras from being doubly applied.

7. Perhaps link the guardian's life to the caster, so that damage is mirrored from the Guardian to the caster, or even both ways if you want to offset some of his new-found advantages.

8. Even though it will obviously get better stats along with higher quality gear, giving extra bonuses based on the rarity of the items used to create the Guardian would give it an added layer of complexity and reward players for sacrificing Rares and Legendaries.

The goal would be to increase his effectiveness without making it a must have for every character. Anyhow, thanks for adding this fun skill to the game and keep up the good work!

I wonder how a Guardian with the following setup would work:

Animate Guardian + Multistrike + Added Fire + Life Leech linked into +2 to minions item.

Made out of:

Pillar of the Caged God + Deshret's Vise + Meginord's Girdle + Abyssus + Covenant + Lioneye's Paws

In one of these items there should be a 4+(L)inked Cast when damage Taken + L-1 number of Firestorm.

To keep it alive, Flasks, Necromantic Aegis, Discipline aura, Rejuv Totem.

It would be a shame if it died but it sounds fun.

What a worthless gem.

If you animate him from random whites hes about as strong as a single skeleton or zombie and you only get 1 guardian instead of several zombies/skeletons.

Theres currently no reason to choose him over any other summon.

Supposing you are using MF gear on your charecter, and you give your guardian MF gear.... will the MF stack when the guardian makes the kills?

Need an answer on this!!!!

A fully equiped level 17 animate guardian(with items level 60-67) hit for less damage than a skeleton(less than a pixel in damage per swing!?!), and dies to a single white creature in the library with a level 18 rejuv totem feeding it life.
I must say that this skill is WEAK.
I suggest that guardians:
be given a straight up 300% bonus to defense, damage, and life,
gain 2 base bonus life per level of each armor item they are composed of,
gain 1 base damage bonus per level of each weapon they are composed of,
have them use gems in their weapons/ armor,
have each point of quality reduce damage taken by 2%.

"

Anshu_ wrote:

Supposing you are using MF gear on your charecter, and you give your guardian MF gear.... will the MF stack when the guardian makes the kills?

Need an answer on this!!!!

Naturally, it should (that's true for every other minions we had before 1.0.0). If it really works or not, I don't know.