On Animate Guardian and D2 Mercenaries

Out of all the skills GGG has released, I feel that Animate Guardian has the most potential... and is doing the worst job of living up to that potential.

Why so much potential?

MERCENARIES! Having a follower whose gear you can customize is an ARPG staple steeped in rich nostalgia. It gives opportunities for further customization and allows even solo players to feel like they're not playing alone.

Naturally, in Path of Exile, things like this aren't free, so having your own personal henchman costs at least one socket, most likely more than that. And yes, your henchman is essentially an invisible man. But what would you expect?

That's what Animate Guardian can be — something which fills that mercenary niche for players. That's what it should be.

Unfortunately, that's not what it is. Here are some key things holding Animate Guardian back:

1) Leeroy Jenkins AI. Seriously, in situations where a pack of zombies has the common sense to wait for further instructions, the dumb old Guardian goes and charges in headlong. While playtesting the skill, over and over again I'd see this behavior, and I simply couldn't get the LEEEROY JENNNNNKINS! battlecry out of my mind, because that's exactly how he works. Considering that you Guardian is one of your costlier minions, costing considerably more than a corpse, it should be the other way around; the Guardian should be a little more cautious than a zombie. Especially important is that the Guardian realizes when you're retreating from a battle and has the sense to run away with you, rather than fighting to the death.

2) Low survivability. Like I just said, the Guardian is one of your costlier minions; as such, it should be able to take a bit of a beating. I'm not saying it should be able to tank anything the game can throw at it, but it should be resilient enough to take a big hit and give the player enough time to react (retreat on foot) and have the Guardian disengage before death. The Guardian's life should be balanced around not having Minion Life support. If this extra survivability means that the Guardian's DPS isn't all that impressive, that is perfectly fine; a Guardian shouldn't be matching DPS with a pack of zombies, it should just be matching them in terms of survivability.

3) Inability to use ranged weaponry. Not everyone wants a "melee mercenary;" especially considering the lack of (non-Spectre) ranged minions and the value of keeping your Guardian alive, there's a lot of value to be had in making an archer Guardian. As such, this kind of functionality should be allowed.

Now I think the reason this functionality wasn't included in the game was due to stuff like LMP+Culling+IIQ+IIR+FasterAttacks, allowing the Guardian to benefit from both your MF gear and its MF gear. This is because all of your Minions get your MF attributes. Well, in all seriousness, keeping that MF rule for Minions is a lot less important than a strong and interesting Animate Guardian skill, so I'd fully support removing MF-transfer to Minions, and instead having minions only benefit from direct support gems. This doesn't mean summoner MF characters can't work, it just means they have to work in a Culling Strike scheme, which isn't too much to ask.

Another topic worth mentioning here is auras. I don't see why a Guardian shouldn't be able to maintain an aura for the group, but it should definitely have a cost of some kind. Perhaps make it so Guardian reservations cost 50% more, so a 60% aura would normally reserve 90% mana on a Guardian.

4) Inability to use skills. Right now, Animate Guardian is basically an invisible Templar (if you look close you can tell it's the Templar model). So giving it the capability to use skills wouldn't be that hard; the animations are already there. So why not? Let players have a Guardian that uses Leap Slam or Spectral Throw or Lightning Arrow... or even a spellcaster Guardian. In order to get that to work, they'd have to socket the skill gems on the items they're going to use, which would make it a nice sink for random gems you happen to find. And once again, if GGG is worried about Guardian DPS getting too high, not a problem, just keep the base Guardian DPS low and assume players will skill out their Guardians. If giving Guardians an initial damage penalty, such as 20% less Attack Speed, is what needs to be done for balance, then do it... but give us the option to customize our Guardians with the skills we'd like them to have.

5) Inability to receive items with microtransactions on them. You should be able to use Microtransactions to pimp out your Guardian, perhaps making him look the same as you, perhaps just looking badass in a style all his own... and if/when the Guardian dies, just have any microtransactions automatically refund back to the microtransaction stash. GGG might even make some serious bank doing this, as players will no longer be afraid to buy microtransactions, not for themselves, but for one of their summons.

Lastly, although any Guardian in PvP is very likely to die, that doesn't mean one shouldn't consider how the skill might be used in such a format. Instead of always being an invisible Templar, the Guardian should be a random class whenever it's summoned. This could allow a player to make a visual clone of himself for distractions with sufficient preparation, or allow players to get the Guardian model they'd prefer eventually, providing they try using the skill often enough.

6) Remove the ability to dual-wield. I know this might seem like just adding limitations, but it simply makes equipping items to Guardians too confusing. I've been very frustrated by finding a better weapon for my Guardian, trying to equip it... and having it replace his shield instead of his weapon. Or, if dual-wielding, trying to upgrade Weapon A and instead having the new weapon replace Weapon B. Removing dual-wielding makes the skill very predictable in terms of what it does... we don't really need Dual-Striking Guardians, and with the above suggestions there would already be lots of build diversity for the minion, such as sword & board melee, two-hand melee, bow and quiver, shielded wandslinger, or caster.

TL;DR
Guardian should have/be:

• AI that prevents it from killing itself stupidly
• decent survivability - Minion Life support not required
• able to use ranged weapons
• able to use skill gems
• able to use item-based microtransactions
• more models than Invisible Templar
• predictable item replacement (no dual-wielding)

In exchange, the following points are negotiable:

• Guardian base damage/DPS
• Guardian mana/resource systems
• Minions being able to use caster's IIR/IIQ from gear (as opposed to supports)

Animate Guardian isn't intended to be like a mercenary. It is intended to be like Iron Golem. It's a summon that you can throw junk items into as a fun mechanic. It isn't meant to be a powerful support, it is a dumb melee tank meant to compliment summon builds.

GGG wants this game to be about choices. If Animate Guardian worked like you described it then everyone would have to use it because it would be so good. Just like in d2 you had to have a mercenary unless you were deliberately gimping yourself to up difficulty.

And it looks like the templar because it is a str+int skill.

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mucker wrote:

Animate Guardian isn't intended to be like a mercenary. It is intended to be like Iron Golem. It's a summon that you can throw junk items into as a fun mechanic. It isn't meant to be a powerful support, it is a dumb melee tank meant to compliment summon builds.

Actually, Animate Guardian falls somewhere in between. Iron Golem was just one item, Animate Guardian is a little bit more like a proper mercenary in that you can gear them out in a full set.

And if your idea of the proper use for a skill like Iron Golem is to feed it "junk" — well then, good sir, you played with Iron Golem in a substantially different way than I did. I had an Insight runeword Iron Golem following my Necromancer around in D2, continually providing its awesome Meditation aura. And D2 gave me the tools to keep it alive, by using Enigma's teleport to rescue it from trouble (it teleports with you). I'm not saying PoE should have Enigma runeword, but it should have some kind of support for actually making Guardians out of decent rares, perhaps even legendaries — which means some kind of realistic expectation of keeping it alive.

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mucker wrote:

GGG wants this game to be about choices. If Animate Guardian worked like you described it then everyone would have to use it because it would be so good. Just like in d2 you had to have a mercenary unless you were deliberately gimping yourself to up difficulty.

Nonsense. As you play through the game, you run into monsters that use almost every skill the player can use, use almost every type of weapon, have their own auras, and in some cases some decent/devilish AI, and they're not OP, because the numbers are balanced properly to allow them to have all those things and still be at the right power level (or at least close to it). This is even true for rare monsters, who have significantly more life than most. I have no doubts that there are ways to incorporate every single feature listed in the OP without making Guardian overpowered... although that would likely mean making sacrifices in other areas of the skill, because all giant buffs with no nerfs to compensate probably would make the skill OP.

Agree that AG could probably be buffed without making it mandatory on all builds. I've heard that AG, as it is, is incredibly underwhelming even if you build specifically for it.

Admittedly, I haven't yet used it as anything other than a junk support skill, so I can't speak very much based on experience.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

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mucker wrote:

Animate Guardian isn't intended to be like a mercenary. It is intended to be like Iron Golem. It's a summon that you can throw junk items into as a fun mechanic. It isn't meant to be a powerful support, it is a dumb melee tank meant to compliment summon builds.

Actually, Animate Guardian falls somewhere in between. Iron Golem was just one item, Animate Guardian is a little bit more like a proper mercenary in that you can gear them out in a full set.

And if your idea of the proper use for a skill like Iron Golem is to feed it "junk" — well then, good sir, you played with Iron Golem in a substantially different way than I did. I had an Insight runeword Iron Golem following my Necromancer around in D2, continually providing its awesome Meditation aura. And D2 gave me the tools to keep it alive, by using Enigma's teleport to rescue it from trouble (it teleports with you). I'm not saying PoE should have Enigma runeword, but it should have some kind of support for actually making Guardians out of decent rares, perhaps even legendaries — which means some kind of realistic expectation of keeping it alive.

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mucker wrote:

GGG wants this game to be about choices. If Animate Guardian worked like you described it then everyone would have to use it because it would be so good. Just like in d2 you had to have a mercenary unless you were deliberately gimping yourself to up difficulty.

Nonsense. As you play through the game, you run into monsters that use almost every skill the player can use, use almost every type of weapon, have their own auras, and in some cases some decent/devilish AI, and they're not OP, because the numbers are balanced properly to allow them to have all those things and still be at the right power level (or at least close to it). This is even true for rare monsters, who have significantly more life than most. I have no doubts that there are ways to incorporate every single feature listed in the OP without making Guardian overpowered... although that would likely mean making sacrifices in other areas of the skill, because all giant buffs with no nerfs to compensate probably would make the skill OP.

I never had an enigma. I played d2 off and on since the day it came out but when that patch that brought those runewords came out (1.09?) my d2 play consisted entirely of pkk and lld. The fact that you needed enigma to keep it alive is quite telling. An item like that will never be in poe. Summons don't even move with you when you lightning warp. Without enigma iron golem died all the time and as a result only got fed vendor junk.

You propose to greatly boost the ai, the life, and the versatility of the spell but you have no doubts it could be done without making it op with some sacrifices in "other areas"? What other areas are left to change? Make it reserve 60% mana maybe? And what do monster skills have anything to do with it? Remember that the first time we saw AG it could use a bow and GGG even took that out. That means one of three things.... either they found a ranged AG to be overpowered, they found it to go against their intended playstyle, or it was too hard to implement effectively. No matter what the reason it doesn't bode well for your suggested changes.

Don't get me wrong, I loved mercs in d2 and would love to have something like that in POE. I actually hoped the 1.0 surprise was going to be mercs and that they'd start in the center of the skill tree.

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mucker wrote:

Animate Guardian isn't intended to be like a mercenary. It is intended to be like Iron Golem. It's a summon that you can throw junk items into as a fun mechanic. It isn't meant to be a powerful support, it is a dumb melee tank meant to compliment summon builds.

GGG wants this game to be about choices. If Animate Guardian worked like you described it then everyone would have to use it because it would be so good. Just like in d2 you had to have a mercenary unless you were deliberately gimping yourself to up difficulty.

And it looks like the templar because it is a str+int skill.

This is just wrong. Everyone would not be able to use it because AG should still require summoner passives to be very good. The problem is EVEN WITH every summoner passive and giving it very good gear its still very bad compared to the other summons. Your telling me that's good design? LOL

animate guardian is garbage even when specced into with lvl81 summoner with almost all +life passives/items

it simply is not worth gemslot.

GGG please a) tell us how do you use it in maps b) remove this item c) buff it so it is slightly better than one zombie

I agree with Scrotie, good post. I would add, beyond a Mercenary style gear interface, it'd be nice if guardians could be resummoned with all their gear. Maybe there should be some punishment for this. Perhaps guardians could reserve some mana but it's not a big deal if guardians themselves can provide auras.

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iamstryker wrote:

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mucker wrote:

Animate Guardian isn't intended to be like a mercenary. It is intended to be like Iron Golem. It's a summon that you can throw junk items into as a fun mechanic. It isn't meant to be a powerful support, it is a dumb melee tank meant to compliment summon builds.

GGG wants this game to be about choices. If Animate Guardian worked like you described it then everyone would have to use it because it would be so good. Just like in d2 you had to have a mercenary unless you were deliberately gimping yourself to up difficulty.

And it looks like the templar because it is a str+int skill.

This is just wrong. Everyone would not be able to use it because AG should still require summoner passives to be very good. The problem is EVEN WITH every summoner passive and giving it very good gear its still very bad compared to the other summons. Your telling me that's good design? LOL

I didn't say AG can't be improved upon. I have a level 77 pure summoner, I've tested it a ton. I've tried all sorts of supports and high level blue items with various mods and stats. Not once in my testing did it survive a single catacombs clear. I only use it now because I have a 6s 5l chest and nothing else to put in the spare socket. I even complained when it first came out. http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/580677/page/2#p5138272

The intent of the skill is to be a melee tank and I'd love for it to actually function as one. I honestly think it needs about 4x the life it has now if the ai stays the way it is. But I don't think there is a chance GGG will buff it any where close to the degree the op suggested.

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Veta321 wrote:

I agree with Scrotie, good post. I would add, beyond a Mercenary style gear interface, it'd be nice if guardians could be resummoned with all their gear.

Oh, most definitely not. That would be like Iron Golems that gave their item back; it's totally unnecessary. Plus, if we're going to give Guardian all these benefits, the drawback should at least be that, if you do get your "merc" killed, you have to pony up more resources to get him back the way he was.

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mucker wrote:

The intent of the skill is to be a melee tank and I'd love for it to actually function as one.

Other than Spectres, are there any minions which aren't in that role? Zombies should be the permanent tanks for summoners, Guardian should be something slightly different.