Soo...uhh, is anyone going to actually use Meat Shield?...

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yamface wrote:

Does anyone else feel like the default minion behavior should of been just to be aggressive in the first place? And if the player wants them to be defensive they just slap on the meatshield gem?

Like who wants their minions to be in the neutral they're in now lol, if everyones gonna use one or the other minion ai gems, we might as well just make one of them the default and have another one be an optional support, otherwise everyones just having to sacrifice a support slot for them

It was changed from aggressive originally because zombies kept wandering off and dying all the time making them practically useless. I don't recall if we had aura's that early on, but keeping aggro zombies in aura radius would be a nightmare.

Skeletons would be fine since who cares about the cannon fodder.

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yamface wrote:

Does anyone else feel like the default minion behavior should of been just to be aggressive in the first place? And if the player wants them to be defensive they just slap on the meatshield gem?

Like who wants their minions to be in the neutral they're in now lol, if everyones gonna use one or the other minion ai gems, we might as well just make one of them the default and have another one be an optional support, otherwise everyones just having to sacrifice a support slot for them

You just reminded me of blood and sand.
These new minion gems should be one gem with switching capabilities, or is that too much power?

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GrunkleBob wrote:

You just reminded me of blood and sand.
These new minion gems should be one gem with switching capabilities, or is that too much power?

That would sacrifice your ability to assign different stances to different minions, since you can't be in multiple different stances simultaneously. If you don't want to have to use up a gem slot, a better idea would be to just be able to right-click their overhead icons to assign stances (like Grim Dawn). Note, however, that the new gems have their own bonuses as well, that such a system would lose out on.

You guys realize if you change the gems it kills the minions. . .

Meat Shield support shouldnt give more damage to minions. It should greatly increase their hp/defense instead.
I would love to use couple zombies as a meatshield for Porcupines on... literally every build thats not destroying corpses.

Its been said a couple other places but a proxy shield specter with this would make for a pretty solid defensive gem setup. Maybe even throw a minion life gem in there too.

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gladiatorpie wrote:

Its been said a couple other places but a proxy shield specter with this would make for a pretty solid defensive gem setup. Maybe even throw a minion life gem in there too.

I ran some PoB with proxy spectres (evangelists) and with an Increased Duration gem its bubble has an uptime of about 13-14s on a 18s cool down. Not too bad.

Vaal summon skeletons + meat shield :D

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Shagsbeard wrote:

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Thror2k5 wrote:

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Shagsbeard wrote:

Can some zombies be raise as meat shields while others are raised aggressive?

if you have 2 different zombie links, yes

What happens if I summon 4 with Meatshield socketed, and swap it for the aggressive one and then summon 8 more? Are the first four "snapshotted" with the defensive AI and the 8 others aggressive?

No snapshotting isn't a thing anymore when you remove the support it removes effects. Same idea as support swapping for single target say GMP for Slower Proj.

When you pull the support on the first 4 they will lose the effect and then gain the effect of whatever you swap in its place making all 8 function on whatever support is in slot in real time.

As for Meat Shield.. it will certainly see use on Zombies in Specter setups using them. Especially if it gives them even more significant defenses to be even more durable. Could also see them used on support Spectres for builds running that as well as on your Animated Guardian possibly. Again just depends on what all the support actually gives the minions.

Meatshield could potentially be very good in non-minion builds, like Blood and Sand.