Animate Guardian

I'm necromancer for the last 5 leagues and for my opinion AG is well balanced in general.

I disagree with the people here, that the AG should not loose his items upon death, because in this case it will make AG imbalance.

Just to background - right now the AG can be used only in minion builds, because of the nodes what we are taking, we are also taking the defencive nodes, and defencive links, so we invest to receive the profit from AG, and profit is quite good:

- Constant Fortify
- Damage increase
- reduced resistance of the enemies
- Increased movement speed
- Stats increase.

For that - we invest in expensive items, sockets and passives. If the situations that items will not be lost will happen, than basically 100% of the builds will use it.

because who will refuse from Fortify buff on free of cost basis? It will make this skill completely broken.

So i'm against that AG should have some massive rework.

I will accept only one thing, that the items will not loose if it will be passive skills in the ascendancy of necromancers - than Necromancers if they want that will be pushed to spend very precious necromances ascendancy passive skill, and it will be only available for necromancers, as minions is their main speciality.

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I will accept only one thing, that the items will not loose if it will be passive skills in the ascendancy of necromancers

I agree with this wholeheartedly as someone that just started dabbing into Necro. I have no problem with the gear losing part (as long as item drop becomes a necro passive skill) but it needs to be highlighted in the skill description instead of us finding out later when AG dies. The following are my suggestions to improve this:

1. Have a way to view AG's equipment and stats. It just makes no sense how we have to use pen and paper to keep track of this. With a game already so complex and requires so many micromanagement, something as simple as this can really improve the game's QOL.

2. Currently if AG is out, there is no way to unsummon it. Giving us the option to unsummon it by pressing on the skill button again will help tremendously in saving the gears. I know that the weapon swap trick exists but it just feel clunky and just a bandaid over a recurring problem.

3. This skill actually feels really punishing to players since they can potentially lose their investment out of nowhere. I feel like they should expand the gear drop on death mod from body armor to other gears.

Either way, I hope that the next update will see some improvements/updates to this skill. I do think that there is merit for AG to drop equipment on death which will open up more creative builds instead of just being a cliché utility for auramancers.

+1 for equipment drop on death.
Makes it inconvenient enough for non-minion builds to abuse AG and makes it less punishing for people using AG in their minion builds.
Also saves you from fiddeling around with implementing too many new mechanics (like choosable equipment etc).

The AG taunts awfully much, feel it can toned down or be removed, would be cool if he could walk and taunt at the same time ^^

Personally I really enjoy the skill as it is. I tend to use cheaper gear on it, since there are a few bosses, metamorphs, legion mobs and rogue exiles who can execute your Guardian pretty rapidly. And I think this is a good balancing factor. I'm happy with three auras on my guardians - about 23 chaos in gear total, common uniques. If you want the Kingmaker and more, then you're risking some significant money for your significant power.

A nice trade-off I think.

Animate Guardian works well, and scales as much as you have the nads to run. Once we have more 6-links in PoE2, you'll see more people running them I think. empower, minion life, fortify support, meatshield, elemental army and some minion regen on the tree or gear will keep them up through quite a bit)

My only nit-pick is that I'd love some sort of necromancer MTX for my Guardian so it better matches my skeletons, specters, bone golems, phantasms and raging spirits.

...And a UI to see/replace gear would be excellent. (Not get equipment back mind you - sans the crafting option - dropping things can be clunky, a ui panel accessible by clicking on the skill jewel in the Character Screen would be swell).

Would be nice to see AG utilities to be expanded more, maybe add some MTX for AG as well. AG feels clunky even with the required support gems.

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Sabranic_SilverDeth wrote:

Personally I really enjoy the skill as it is. I tend to use cheaper gear on it, since there are a few bosses, metamorphs, legion mobs and rogue exiles who can execute your Guardian pretty rapidly. And I think this is a good balancing factor. I'm happy with three auras on my guardians - about 23 chaos in gear total, common uniques. If you want the Kingmaker and more, then you're risking some significant money for your significant power.

Just try to imagine that playing an AG build (using Chains of Command).
AG death = see you on next league, you just loose all your ability to make currency and gear him back.
This should be adressed IMO.
But as you say, current AG for a basic summoner build seems fine to me.

Suggestion for Phantasmal quality to be added to AG:

Animated Guardian cannot be consumed by Summoned Reaper
Animated Guardian has 50-40% less life (0.5% per quality)

Still risky, but at least you guarantee it being ignored by reapers.

Dears,

I think the next generation of AG development should be basically:

- AG should have the triggering effect available - will increase the flexibility and variability of the builds :)
- More items to be carried - Belts/Ring/Amulet.

My main idea is follows - AG is basically now an defencive aurabot for the necromancer - which is nice, but really should not be the intention

Im completely okay, that when AG dies - you loose your items - its fair enough, but i want to really have the possibility to make an AG a real minion damage build, when you can focus on him as main damage dealer.

I even would agree as a compensation for that - that he will have less health, so you need more heavily invest in his defences.

I would really love to see that animated guardian can be targeted by Link skills because that might enable a build with the guardian as main carry.

Edit: I just found out you can already do this using a minion mastery node!