Animate Guardian

In act 1 normal I feel like Animate Guardian is underpowered to the point that it's not worth casting. It is clunky to cast and dies very quickly.

I see this skill as a micromanagement nightmare that is barely worth casting.

Started off from scratch on Domination as a Scion and tried out the new skills with the new character. I've increased the survival of the minion by using Life Gain on Hit support gem. This works fairly well and my guardian can handle a white mob or two on his own if a fast weapon and shield are used.

I've been using Animate Weapon and Animate Guardian extensively, trying to figure out the mechanics. I've been making rejuv totems almost every battle, even with the life gain on hit just to try and keep him alive. The AI and pathing are horrible. I didn't know about the weapon swap to bring him next to me until I read this thread, that will help with both since I can summon him back to me assuming I'm not attacking anything. Ultimately, I *should* be attacking something right?

My major major complaint is that if I use Animate Weapon, Animate Guardian and/or a totem, all of the lifebars disappear. Throughout closed and open beta I played a summoner but had issues where I'd end up face tanking (Piety start act3 ... and Piety end of act3). So I'm somewhat accustomed to pet AI and this one is bad because he's too aggressive.

The lack of ranged attack on the guardian renders it essentially useless. With life gain on hit I was hoping to have a tank that would be able to distract and survive a little while I do LMP Spectral Weapon all over. That is true until either ranged damage or a magic monster (not even unique named). Even with spammed rejuv totems and the life gain on hit, I can't keep him alive. I think that *is* the point of the skill - an item sink.

I gave the guardian items with life regen, he had life regen. The total amount of health I could guess at because of life gain on hit. I'd see a small increment or a large one based on how much gear he was wearing at the time.

I finally understood this when I kept wanting Animate Weapon to have a longer duration. There is a permanent and persistent version of Animate Weapon - Animate Guardian. It can't guard. It can consistently kill with a 2h weapon of same level. It can consistently tank white mobs with a shield on. The type of armor used drastically affects tanking ability (use +armor for melee, +evasion for ranged damage... always die fast and horrible death vs ranged magic damage)

I've used blues, I've used rares. I consider this skill a waste of time. I spend too much time staring at white gear for it to all go poof a screen or two later. This is a pet for non casters that scales (a little) with map and not your skill level. I spend more time fiddling with the guardian than the time it takes for me to run back to town and sell everything... *several times more* and maybe that will improve as I gain skill as a player - look at the guardian, equip some piece of gear, move on.

The item swap juggle is an effective way to ... micromanage bad AI. I've beaten Vaal and Piety by having an inventory of white 3 or 4 square weapons. I drop them on the ground. I start the fight. I cast Animate weapon during the animation. I charge in with 5-10 weapons and a rejuv totem giving them a few extra seconds of life. That is *useful* micromanagement. Animate Guardian is *not* useful or effective micromanagement.

Here's what I'd like to see to make the pet useful and scale appropriately at least for *normal* difficulty:
Bonus resists for magic items. If you give it a magical item, it should also gain 5 resist to all elements and maybe 1 to chaos too. If you give it a rare, that should be 10 to all resists and maybe 2 for chaos resist.
Adding extremely low level items to the Guardian should *heal* the guardian, not replace items. That reduces some of the "oh crap I had my mouse over the wrong white item!" issue and mitigates some of the "un-fun" of the guardian micromanagement. Did the player *really* want to replace the level 28 gloves with level 4 wool gloves? How much *extra* time should the player spend picking up and sorting white gear to try and make sure the guardian gets the right stuff? I spent about 30%-50% of my time playing playing with white gear and he still dies fast. This skill *distracts* us too much from playing.
Feeding the Guardian unidentified magical and rare items should give a smaller passive resist bonus, the basic item bonus, and not the item bonus that the player would have received if they had ID the item first.
Ranged support should be an option: wands and bows. He's already weak in so many other ways, giving us melee a tad bit of ranged support wouldn't be overpowered in any way. As a summoner witch, I would often pick spectres for ranged damage, curses, and party support (free frenzy for all my skeletons? yes please)
I don't need to see all of his stats, but if you gave me a mouseover with health, ES, DPS, resists that would be great. We can guess at block and evade based on the gear we feed him.
A *chance* for him to drop *some* items on death would be appreciated. He dies fast, he dies often, getting a piece or two of gear back seems like a fair trade off for his 3 seconds of glory against some trash magic mob.

PS if you do add any sort of mouseover, a list of item *levels* would be sufficient to keep me from having to memorize the gear I've used so far.

The animated minions need help from or at least some presence on the passive tree to allow players to specialize as animated weapon/guardian summoners.

As the passive tree stands now you force players to continue to mainly use zombies and skeletons with animated summons as an afterthought or a slight boost in DPS at best. This is because the summoner-based nodes are the only way to increase their life and yet all these minion life nodes simply lead to nodes that give you more skeletons/zombies.

This may have been the intended design of these skills but I think a few additions to nodes like Lord of the Dead, Death Attunement, and the "Grave ___" nodes would greatly improve their viability and give players a real reason to use the animated summons as opposed to using them, getting frustrated, and continue to use spectres as before release. Simple animated-only additions to these major nodes like "Animated summons armor rating/evasion rating/resistance to all elements increased by 10%" would make these skills more appealing.

Perhaps these buffs would have to be separate nodes from the ones that increase zombies/skeletons for balance purposes but it doesn't fit the overall theme of a summoner build to have two major new skills be completely absent on the passive tree.

I realize I haven't mentioned other ways to mitigate damage for animated summons such as Necromantic Aegis/Vitality/Determination/Purity but when the most effective way to keep your Animated Guardian alive is a weapon swap bug, something needs to change.

Animate Guardian could use...

1) A way to view what items are on it (remembering what the stats are on his gear is a nightmare in micromanagement)

2) A way to "lock" to a weapon style (overwriting my GG rare shield with a crap weapon becaus ethe weapon wasn't better than the one he has equipped shouldn't be happening)

3) A bit more BASE life in the early levels without needing gear.

4) Possibly a way to attach an attack skill to him, one way is to make the gem a support (allowing you to animate a cleave guardian for instance).

Edit: The guardian benefits from current minion nodes, he doesn't need specialized nodes as he's intended as a companion to Str builds.

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he doesn't need specialized nodes as he's intended as a companion to Str builds.

Do you have a quote from the developers on that? Even though the gem is red and Guardian needs Strength to level, I highly doubt this because:

Necromantic Aegis is required to keep him alive.

Lots of other summons around him are required to keep him alive.

The passives that do increase his life/damage are required to keep him alive.

Increase Item Quantity itemization is highly recommended to keep him properly equipped.

In its current state, the Guardian is an extremely piss-poor companion to a strength-based attacker. Also, the Guardian increases the melee damage of other minions, not the players with him.

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In its current state, the Guardian is an extremely piss-poor companion to a strength-based attacker. Also, the Guardian increases the melee damage of other minions, not the players with him.

I'll agree to that. I've been using Dominating Blow and Animate Weapon lately as a way to have other minions. It works out fairly well in terms of "momentum based play" (you need to keep using both skills continuously, and keep killing). Animate Guardian works well in this environment as a few extra DPS. He needs elemental resist shield still and still dies to elemental damage. If I don't happen to have any minions worth keeping or need a break for other reasons, I'll add more gear to him after a battle. This *sort of works* with less micromanagement, and it requires less time. He doesn't "tank" as well as disposable minions. (In the same way your spectre doesn't tank for your skeletons, you want it to be the other way around.)

Is it worth having the skill for melee fighters? Well even with gain life on hit, not really. Is it worth casting instead of one extra Animate Weapon? Yes. Does it still die in a few seconds even with full gear? Yes.

I'm unable to take advantage of weapon switch trick because my weapon is used for other skills. :/

FYI

Question:

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Hello Mark,

can you tell me if the % Life increase on the gem also multiplies the Life on Gear you animate?

Let me phrase that an other way: Is the life on gear you animate added to the base life of the guardian before it is multiplied by the % Increased Life on the Gem?

Thanks in advance.

Cheers.

Answer:

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Yes. Flat additions to a value are always added to the base before any % modifiers apply.

So go and get that life gear for your guardian :D

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bearhammer wrote:

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he doesn't need specialized nodes as he's intended as a companion to Str builds.

Do you have a quote from the developers on that? Even though the gem is red and Guardian needs Strength to level, I highly doubt this because:

Necromantic Aegis is required to keep him alive.

Lots of other summons around him are required to keep him alive.

The passives that do increase his life/damage are required to keep him alive.

Increase Item Quantity itemization is highly recommended to keep him properly equipped.

In its current state, the Guardian is an extremely piss-poor companion to a strength-based attacker. Also, the Guardian increases the melee damage of other minions, not the players with him.

The iron golem increases the damage done by my other minions? So hes basically a walking living aura for minion damage?

I have my animate guardian linked with minion life and resistances, plus determination, discipline and purity auras. When I make him out of armor or es/armor gear he is pretty tanky.

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TheFatChickThriller wrote:

I have my animate guardian linked with minion life and resistances, plus determination, discipline and purity auras. When I make him out of armor or es/armor gear he is pretty tanky.

Your level?
Level of gem?
iLevel of gear?
Mods of gear?
Level of testing area?
Monsters you tested?

Description "Pretty tanky" is not enough when everyone states the opposite.