Multiple Animated Guardians?

As a summoner lover, I love the Animate Guardian skill and its mechanics. It provides a sort of mini-game while leveling and mapping centering around finding gear for your guardian, and finding good items to pimp out my guardian is one of the best feelings you can feel while being a summoner. This is an area where I feel GGG could really improve, even though it is in a reasonable spot already. Imagine having twice the amount of guardians, keeping track of the items that are on them, and having two super pimped out guardians as your "final bosses" so-to-say. I really feel this could be an amazing addition to the summoner arsenal and I don't think it would badly effect the game. Let's brainstorm how we could introduce "multiple animate guardians" into the game.

We could give "+1 to Maximum Number of Guardians" for free on the tree. Preferably this would be somewhere convenient to the witch and the current summoner pathing. Perhaps somewhere near Chaos Innoculation, or near Ancestral Bond, or even have it added to one of the current minion nodes. The possibilities are endless.

Alternatively, we could add it as a trade-off. Perhaps with the Death Attunement node that gives +1 to maximum number of spectres, we could make it a trade-off so that it would read "+1 to the number of Spectres OR Guardians" This way a player would have to decide whether to have spectres or guardians as their "super soldiers".

It could be added onto a unique. I don't like the idea of needing to use a unique to have multiple animate guardians because summoners are already restricted with gear. Many builds rely on Bones of Ullyr and a +2 to minion gems helm for example. This really restricts choices for a summoner, a problem summoners already face enough. I appreciate that summoners have these choices and it makes them more dynamic, but I fear gear-wise this approach would be more constrictive.

We could introduce a unique jewel that gives +1 to maximum number of Guardians. I like this idea. It isn't invasive to the pathing, and it gives a clear objective of some passive tree nodes investment. It should also have at least one more mod to be in line with other jewels, maybe +x% chance for minions to block, +x% minion damage, or +x% minion life. We could also add something interesting like "Guardians drop a random equipped(or one in specific) item on death" or "guardians take x% of damage for you" but these mods might take a lot of effort to code and implement. I don't know how that works.

Thank you for reading my post and I hope you thought about it thoroughly. Animate Guardian is a lovely skill and I think we could make it even better. These changes could shift Animate guardian from a hipster but fun build option to a popular, fun, and strong build option. Please consider allowing players to have multiple animated guardians GGG.

I would like to see a unique or jewel or whatever that doesn't allow you anymore to have spectres, but the number of spectres you could have without the item is transferred into the number of AG's you can have. That way we could have 3 or 4 Guardians.

Don't forget Guardians can be insanely strong if you are megawealthy. Having multiple of them should come with a serious drawback. Losing all your spectres seems like one.

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Soepkieken wrote:

I would like to see a unique or jewel or whatever that doesn't allow you anymore to have spectres, but the number of spectres you could have without the item is transferred into the number of AG's you can have. That way we could have 3 or 4 Guardians.

Don't forget Guardians can be insanely strong if you are megawealthy. Having multiple of them should come with a serious drawback. Losing all your spectres seems like one.

with ex price as high as it is now, there are fewer megawealthy people every day. Also that's a horrible solution that just shows you never played summoner. Gl getting people to abandon their spectres for animate guard.

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Soepkieken wrote:

Don't forget Guardians can be insanely strong if you are megawealthy. Having multiple of them should come with a serious drawback. Losing all your spectres seems like one.

Isn't having to put on insane gear for them to be insanely strong a drawback? The cost in currency is the drawback.

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Eww wrote:

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Soepkieken wrote:

Don't forget Guardians can be insanely strong if you are megawealthy. Having multiple of them should come with a serious drawback. Losing all your spectres seems like one.

Isn't having to put on insane gear for them to be insanely strong a drawback? The cost in currency is the drawback.

That's actually a bigger drawback than it seems. If you put insane gear on them, you will have to add the ''guard drops items on death'' or make sure you it never gets killed (gl with that). The problem is, what if items drop but you cannot take them because boss keeps one shotting you?Then you lose items either way . The drawback is pretty big in the first place.

for the last time , the items drop mod only affects the items the mod is on , which would be a rare chest.

which is entirely pointless because no guardian will ever be good using bloody rare items

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Saltychipmunk wrote:

for the last time , the items drop mod only affects the items the mod is on , which would be a rare chest.

which is entirely pointless because no guardian will ever be good using bloody rare items

mirror rare items?:D

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Saltychipmunk wrote:

no guardian will ever be good using bloody rare items

I disagree, I use a lot of rare items for my guardian. Sure my guardian doesn't have insane dps, but with some decent rare items with a ton of armor he can be really tanky. Its awesome because the gear might be sub-par for a player making it virtually unsellable, but really good for a guardian, like a chest with 2000 armor but no life or resists.

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Eww wrote:

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Saltychipmunk wrote:

no guardian will ever be good using bloody rare items

I disagree, I use a lot of rare items for my guardian. Sure my guardian doesn't have insane dps, but with some decent rare items with a ton of armor he can be really tanky. Its awesome because the gear might be sub-par for a player making it virtually unsellable, but really good for a guardian, like a chest with 2000 armor but no life or resists.

really tanky , but not immune from 1 hit mechanics. You can risk it if you want, but I've seen 25k guards getting destroyed pretty fast by some nasty mods from some bosses (not often, but it happens)

If the Guardian would do something different than running into the monsters and auto-attacking them to death, maybe I'd be interested in having more than one. But that's his entire skill set, so for me he's just around to wear a Dying Breath and a Leer Cast. Thank you, AG. :)