Animate Guardian

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Kroughfire wrote:

If you put skill gems into a mjollner, and then animate a guardian with it, does the guardian cast the spells on hit like an ordinary character, or are the skill gems consumed when it's equipped?

You can't animate an item with one or more gems socketed in it unfortunately.

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Mokihiki wrote:

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Kroughfire wrote:

If you put skill gems into a mjollner, and then animate a guardian with it, does the guardian cast the spells on hit like an ordinary character, or are the skill gems consumed when it's equipped?

You can't animate an item with one or more gems socketed in it unfortunately.

This makes me very sad. Was looking forward to messing with it :'(

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Baysin wrote:

I just wanted to chime in to agree with the bulk of what others have said here. I'm a relatively new player and have a laundry list of builds I want to play with, one of which is an "alternate" summoner using animate weapon and animate guardian. After starting a new character, getting a few minion passives and minion support gems, I still find animate guardian to be very disappointing. Rather than the build-your-own-pet concept it promises, I instead have to go nuts trying to keep it alive until eventually I run into enough mobs (like, more than 4) that I have to worry about my own health, and the thing dies as soon as I stop babying it. This skill screams out to be a primary skill that provides a different playstyle, but sadly I don't think it's worth messing with at the moment. My alternate-summoner is getting set aside for now until Animate Guardian gets a rework. It's sad because this could probably become my favorite skill of the game if it worked well. Instead it's currently only good for lols and not really even for that.

So, basically, I agree that the combination of off-the-screen aggro range, low survivability, and consumption of items makes this promising skill worthless in practice. Having some way of looking at the current gear of the guardian to see if a new item would be an upgrade or not would also be nice, but sort of pointless right now since they don't live long enough to even get the chance.

uh... my guardian smashes face and rarely needs any babysitting. run auras. it seems that you just need more experience with the game rather than the devs reworking the skill just for you...

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arden03 wrote:

uh... my guardian smashes face and rarely needs any babysitting. run auras. it seems that you just need more experience with the game rather than the devs reworking the skill just for you...

Or maybe a level 64 witch isnt exactly the endgame expertise required to assess that skill. Because i can only imagine a no skill single minion to smash face when running something other than maps or even act 4 merciless.

For my classic summoner he isnt more than an aura item bearer to boost my other minions. Namely Dying Breath and Leer Cast. Also helps with the curses.

Two words: Threshold Jewel.

Ok, so I understand why you lose the items because if you kept them it would be a really good gem. You can also recall it to it's "Pokeball" With two clicks, something I wonder why I see no one discuss.

What I ask for is a Threshold Jewel that increases the base attack time of the Animated Guardian. No one would use it with the gem being red instead of blue and all the support for Animate guardian is in the blue area but I would give me hope none the less.

See, AG can't be a reliable damage source because of its base attack time of 1.0 attacks per second. I don't know the exact amount of a flat increase as this is something I can't test, but I feel like it fits the design of Threshold Jewels. Something that gives great benefit to an underused skill, something that covers a weakness, and something that the player can control how much they want to invest in.

See, every time a see a dev talking about AG they say it is balanced around high level. When I look at it I see double shield, most I see uses the wrong double shield or roll with a two hander. I think it needs double shield of a double Global wRath shield (Sorry to much time with unleashed riddle). This would have it use a one handed weapon. To my knowledge there is no use currently for slow attacking one handed weapons. This A) makes them cheep to give to an animate gaurdian and B) gives them an Actual use. (I have my eyes locked on crab hand in particular for end game use)

I have made chance to flee good, made Heavy Splash good, made Wild Strike good. I want to make AG comfortable to play, but for this I don't think I can do it alone, and am turning to Quarl and Rory for help. (I actually don't know if Rory still works with gems but oh well.)

Please remove the delete gear on death BS.

Also, it would be great if we could give him one skill to use, like ground slam, leap slam, molten strike.. or something. Linked to his gem. the one-target attack scenario is pretty sad.

I am pleased with his survivability, but his utility being limited to auras conflicts with his facetanking AI (which in turn conflicts with his propensity to taunt)

Otherwise this is a potentially great skill!

When I animated for example a Vis Mortis or a Midnight Bargain, do I have the possibility to get more max specters summoned?

It would be great to have a list of some nice combo uniques and modifiers good to combo with animated guardian, seems quite powerful.

Best Regards

Arcanaan, thank you very much for your research!

I'd like to discuss your findings in game at some point. You can send me a message if you see me online.




Animate Guardian is a very awesome skill that could use some serious quality-of-life improvements, and it's good to see some in the community lend their observations to illuminate some of the more black-box outcomes.

My AG at level 66 in THC has about 14k hp, almost never see his health drop, running leer cast,cassock robes and dying breath , with random ele res gloves/boots.