Animate Guardian

"

Ravine wrote:

While playing the beta this morning, discussion spawned about the new support and their interactions with minions, and I ended up chatting with a fellow "Guardianite", another player that is trying to make the Guardian be worthy in itself.

I think that many guardian players will agree that it needs some tuning, or at least a new version (the old one is satisfying a lot of people I guess). I've compiled a list of remarks and possible thoughts about the Guardian; I encourage you to add yours and make your voice heard here, if you have ideas or reflexion regarding one of the most interesting minion skills in my opinion.

Animated Guardian

Current Guardian's is a bit underwhelming:
- A "standing there" kind of guy, not really participating in the fight in itself. Means that we have to rely on Zombies/Spectres/SRS to be the main force of impact
- Past videos have shown it being able to do something, but it requires exalts of investment and very specific skills interaction to perform well (the Starforge/Poison - wither targeting dude https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L17oPmP8ORo )
- Unreliable regarding hitting stuff, as it spends lots of time taunting, looking at stuff, wondering around what to do.
-- if you want to rely on Hit effects from it (cursing, or equipped items with chance on hit effects), it's tedious due to the "stop and look at butterflies"
- that usually limits it to the classic Dying Breath / Leer Cast combination
- Basically, a vanilla Stone Golem is more mobile and more efficient as a minion (and grants you regen)
- Invested gear can be wiped on nukes (if your guardian is in the middle of a Bearer group detonating, or I saw it getting some serious Chaos/Burn degen); and since there's no Unsummon it, you have to rely on TPing out, unsocketing. Only because there's the risk of losing all items

Needed
- a better prevision of the stats of the guardian in the skill panel in Character's panel.
- Clarify the interaction that the Guardian has with items with special things (ie. Edge of Madness)
- almost every Guardian player complains about the item destruction on death for a reason.

Possible directions for a rework/threshold jewel
- remove the Taunt animation. Or at least make it actual use the Taunting effects (see Slab Slam from Stone Golem)
- The Primordial jewels give a nice flavour to Golems' behaviour; I guess "guardianites" would love to see that kind of thing applied to the fella
- The item consumption is a definite flavour of the Guardian. We should be able to consult what's equipped by it. And even if there's an Haku mod specifically for that, I believe the items should not be destroyed on Guardian's death (I mean, those golems and zombies and spectres have it easy compared to the lovely guardians)
- Something that gives more power to the guardian, but lower zombies/spectres/other minions (something like 50% less other max spectres, skeletons, zombies, SRS). I'm specific here because I really like the spawned wolves and I'd be happy to see them working with that kind of interaction if it happens. To make a Wolf God Guardian for example :)

Cheers
Ravine

"

PoofySleeves wrote:

Permanently losing items really holds this skill back from its full potential IMO.

Perhaps there could be a threshold jewel that preserves the items used for the guardian in exchange for some other malus when it takes fatal damage. Some ideas:

- Guardian does not die when it takes fatal damage, but instead siphons health/ES from you, possibly killing you instead.
- Guardian does die when it takes fatal damage, but respawns after a period based on the total rarity of items used for the guardian. You cannot create a new guardian while one is respawning.
- While a guardian is summoned, you gain a 'Dismantle Guardian' skill (similar to how mine gems grant us a 'Detonate Mines' skill) allowing you to reclaim items and/or check what you've equipped the guardian with. This disables the Animate Guardian skill for a while to discourage us from dismantling/remaking the guardian just before it dies.


This skill would also feel much better if its idle/taunt animations were either removed or given some clear purpose, like actually applying a taunt effect to nearby enemies.