3.15 Good Animate Guardian Setups

Saw people still often asking for good stuff to equip their Animate Guardians with. So thought I'd share some of the best options I've found, and you guys can pitch in with any of your ideas for great gear to give them as well. Note that this thread isn't about detailing every last thing that works on him, but rather putting together a list of all the stuff that's actually pretty good on him. For instance, Leercast and Dying Breath are not mentioned here - not because they're forgotten, but simply because (imo) there are better options, even on a budget setup. If you guys have any other great ideas, I'll add them to the post and hopefully it can help any exiles who're searching for ideas. :)

First off, it's better to socket AG in boots, if they're rare, cos boots can roll the Fortify gem as an affix. If you're a full-on summoner though, then your +3 and minion life helm is a better option. AG has 40/40/40/20 resists - be sure to give him the remaining resistance via the tree or gear to get him to the res cap. Also Divergent Animate Guardian gives him 40% increased minion life.

There's 3 defensive minion clusters on the tree - Indomitable Army, Sacrifice, Grave Intentions. If you're afraid that your Guardian might still die when fighting endgame bosses, like Sirus, remember that you can always unsocket the gem in order to not lose him - his gear is saved, and you can just use the skill again on open ground to summon him back fully geared up later.


Gloves: Southbound for %max life (cheap, can get more %life on vaaled ones, or an extra curse).


Weapon 1: Sign of the Sin Eater for Ailment Immunity (cheap) or any Stabilising Sceptre with relevant elemental damage for Elemental Equilibrium (cheap) or Kingmaker for its mods (expensive, also its area is very small). Advancing Fortress for block if you just want to make it tanky (cheap).


Weapon 2: Singularity for Hinder aura (cheap) or a shield (see below). Not applicable to Kingmaker.


Chest: Redeemer chest with Blind aura mod and/or Phys Dmg taken as Cold (cheap) or Crusader chest with Consecrated Ground while Stationary and/or Phys Dmg taken as Lightning for making him tankier (cheap), either of which is crafted with the Gravicius mod '%life added as extra ES' or Garb of the Ephemeral for having him grant you crit immunity and also being unaffected by freeze and temp chains (expensive).


Boots: Victario's Flight for granting movespeed (cheap, can get even more %life on corrupted ones), or Wake of Destruction for the shocked ground or Legacy of Fury for the scorched ground (both cheap, but unreliable) or good rare boots that you can craft Rin's '80% chance to avoid freeze' mod on (cheap, for Sin Eater). Windscream if you're using curse on hit gloves and so need an extra curse mod (cheap). Don't forget that boots can be enchanted for life regen.


Shield: Victario's Charity (cheap, can get one corrupted with '%life' or '%reduced extra damage from crits') or a shield with any combination of +max res, +max chaos res (get him chaos res on gear), %life, %life regen, %reduced dmg taken from dmg over time, gain charges on blocking, min. endurance charges, recover life on block, phys reduction. Sentari's Answer (cheap) for some easy extra curses (no need to raise his curse limits).


Helm: Fairgraves Tricorne for shock immunity - this is if you use Sin Eater (cheap, can get ones with %life or %life regen corruptions). Or Eye of Malice for pushing resistance lowering (cheap, only do this if you're already able to get boss resists into the negatives). Or Mask of the Stitched Demon (expensive) for huge regen with Gravicius mod on body armor + Grave Intentions node on the passive tree. Or Warlord helm with %life regen, %phys dmg taken as fire and -9% enemy resists / 9/6%inc. phys/ele dmg taken (cheap). Or Mask of the Tribunal (cheap) for added defences, if you're running a Baron setup yourself. Or Crown of the Tyrant (expensive) for -max res and additional damage.

A lot of these are in fact pretty steep investments, especially in league

A cheap option i've noticed is shitty fire, ice, lightning DELVE rares (usually hats) that you get from the actual delve nodes. Even if they have crap ilvl you can still roll decent +life and they give your dude some percent phys taken as fire, ice, lightning etc. These are probably worse than just ponying up 2c for a leer cast.

Not a cheap chest, but worth a mention: Garb of the Ephemeral cancels crit multi and tempchains/hindering effects. Like Kaoms on a shirt. Last time I had to replace one it was ~10 ex, this may change somewhat with the + availability of cortex instances thanks to atlas ascendancies. It's maybe not as strong as a corrupted gruthkul's or crafted redeemer chest for pure durability, but it's a super outfit for an aurabot's Big Boi, since what it lacks in regen and armour/es can be gotten from the auras.

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crunkatog wrote:

A lot of these are in fact pretty steep investments, especially in league

A cheap option i've noticed is shitty fire, ice, lightning DELVE rares (usually hats) that you get from the actual delve nodes. Even if they have crap ilvl you can still roll decent +life and they give your dude some percent phys taken as fire, ice, lightning etc. These are probably worse than just ponying up 2c for a leer cast.

Not a cheap chest, but worth a mention: Garb of the Ephemeral cancels crit multi and tempchains/hindering effects. Like Kaoms on a shirt. Last time I had to replace one it was ~10 ex, this may change somewhat with the + availability of cortex instances thanks to atlas ascendancies. It's maybe not as strong as a corrupted gruthkul's or crafted redeemer chest for pure durability, but it's a super outfit for an aurabot's Big Boi, since what it lacks in regen and armour/es can be gotten from the auras.

Garb of the Ephemeral is already mentioned. :)

And I've noted which are the cheap and expensive options next to each of them. By cheap I mean you can buy or craft each of them for a handful of chaos. I mentioned the Delve helms as well -

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Or Warlord helm with %life regen, %phys dmg taken as fire and -9% enemy resists / 9/6%inc. phys/ele dmg taken (cheap)

Mind that when it comes to the rare options mentioned, I'm not saying you need to get all the mods I list on them (which is a LOT for shields especially), merely listing all the possible mods that lend themselves well to him.

And I would definitely rate a rare chest with a couple of good influence mods and resists as better than Gruthkul's, which is why why Gruthkul's isn't even mentioned. Crusader chests, for instance, can roll consecrated ground, which provides more regen than even Gruthkul's does (albeit only when he's stationary). Rares can alternately also drop with %life from another influence, which is far better on him than the flat life from Gruthkul's. It's still cheap as you aren't looking for a filled out chest that'd be great on a player, just one or two useful mods - the kind of thing that often drops randomly - and so they aren't priced high as there's a lot of them. I often just go with one with the Redeemer blind mod for instance, preferably with chaos res. Craft the Gravicius' ES mod on that and you're done.

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Exile009 wrote:

Can also get a blind aura from here instead with The Ghastly Theater, but need to keep your Guardian out of trouble.

This doesn't work. I tried equipping The Ghastly Theater on the AG, but the bubble did not appear around him. Also, nearby enemies were not blinded.

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Dark_Nero wrote:

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Exile009 wrote:

Can also get a blind aura from here instead with The Ghastly Theater, but need to keep your Guardian out of trouble.

This doesn't work. I tried equipping The Ghastly Theater on the AG, but the bubble did not appear around him. Also, nearby enemies were not blinded.

Yes, I confirmed this quite some time ago, although I was unable to update the guide till now. Anyway, I've improved and updated it up till patch 3.15 now.

Thanks for the info.

my AG setup on my necro is pretty simple...



yes, i know they are listed but i find it easier sometimes to post the items themselves as some people don't relate the names with items.

this is also just my spare set for when/if it dies lol

also, i get them as drops or from div cards which makes them pretty cheap

Mask of the Stitched Demon and Oskarm on AG and Fleshcrafter on yourself is a fun combo for a super tanky AG
I dont think i have ever even seen his HP bar move down.

Sporguard should be a decent, underused body armour. He'll create Fungal Ground while stationary, granting allies 10% non-chaos damage as extra chaos damage and causing enemies to deal 10% less damage. I've not actually ponied up the resources to see how effective it is, and I don't know if AG benefits from passive allocations. AG down have a tree but can use enchantments. :/

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Aldonés wrote:

Sporguard should be a decent, underused body armour. He'll create Fungal Ground while stationary, granting allies 10% non-chaos damage as extra chaos damage and causing enemies to deal 10% less damage. I've not actually ponied up the resources to see how effective it is, and I don't know if AG benefits from passive allocations. AG down have a tree but can use enchantments. :/

It's a nice idea, but rather underwhelming. The Fungal Ground area is fairly mediocre (about as large as the Ice Nova area in the picture below), and only active when stationary. So it's mainly only suited to melee builds that're facetanking bosses. The power of the benefit also compares poorly against blinding everything nearby (albeit it's fine if you already do that in other ways) or especially against negating crits and slows (albeit that's from the Garb, which is a more expensive option). It is nice that the armor also has chaos resistance and %life, both of which are great mods for him, but a rare can exceed that thanks to a higher chaos res mod and the '%life as extra ES' craft.

It's not a bad choice, but I'd only consider it on a melee build that already blinds enemies (or gains no benefit from blinding enemies). And the blinding aura from a Redeemer chest isn't conditional, so no need to be stationary.

https://pathofexile.fandom.com/wiki/Distance?file=Poe-units-72.jpg

AG doesn't have a tree, yes. So any passive allocations on the armor will do nothing for him. He benefits from enchantments whose effects are inherent, like the boot regen mod, not ones that refer to the passive tree.

It's definitely a small range, but I think it would partner exceptionally well with Skellies or SRS for traditional minion builds, possibly Reaper with good positioning. Some melee builds would be viable, but other than Cyclone I cannot see even melee wanting to stack that close. To ranged 10% less damage is more beneficial than a blind in many cases since blind does nothing against spells.

It's by no means the best option, but just like Mask of the Tribunal is build specific, Sporguard could be BiS except for Garb of the Ephemeral in the right build.