On Animate Guardian and D2 Mercenaries

I would simplify the mechanic a bit. Instead of socketing gems into it (which would again be problematic under certain circumstances... like... PvP with Cast on Death Guardians^^).

Just make Animate Guardian castable on a Skillgem. This can be any Spell (so you could make a Guardian that provides one Aura or one that Curses or one that uses a certain skill). The skill would always be used on the level of the guardian so that you don't have to feed it high-level spells. A guardian summining Skeletons would propably be fun and also useless (since the guardian can't summon many skellies and he does not have minion-passivs :P), but players could do it. Maybe if the Guardian wears a set of Minion-Items he can be an actual summoner.

One thing that should be considered however is that most likely everyone would want to have a guardian, since it is just something cool to have. So it would propably be reasonable to make it happen. Of course dedicated Summoners would have much stronger Guardians, but a Guardian who casts curses you find on your way or provides an aura might be doable also for other chars.

The last thing that guardians lack is any way to reanimate them. When they are dead the items they consist of should normally just drop back on the ground, since they arent transformed into something else (like an iron-golem). It would still be difficult to reanimate the fallen guardian since you need a lot of casts, but it would make the usage of more rare items on guardians more likely and maybe balance the skill out that way.

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Emphasy wrote:

Spoiler

I would simplify the mechanic a bit. Instead of socketing gems into it (which would again be problematic under certain circumstances... like... PvP with Cast on Death Guardians^^).

Just make Animate Guardian castable on a Skillgem. This can be any Spell (so you could make a Guardian that provides one Aura or one that Curses or one that uses a certain skill). The skill would always be used on the level of the guardian so that you don't have to feed it high-level spells. A guardian summining Skeletons would propably be fun and also useless (since the guardian can't summon many skellies and he does not have minion-passivs :P), but players could do it. Maybe if the Guardian wears a set of Minion-Items he can be an actual summoner.

One thing that should be considered however is that most likely everyone would want to have a guardian, since it is just something cool to have. So it would propably be reasonable to make it happen. Of course dedicated Summoners would have much stronger Guardians, but a Guardian who casts curses you find on your way or provides an aura might be doable also for other chars.

The last thing that guardians lack is any way to reanimate them. When they are dead the items they consist of should normally just drop back on the ground, since they arent transformed into something else (like an iron-golem). It would still be difficult to reanimate the fallen guardian since you need a lot of casts, but it would make the usage of more rare items on guardians more likely and maybe balance the skill out that way.

The one-gem idea for Guardian skills isn't a horrible suggestion; it has a lot of convenience factors to it. Not sure whether I like that idea more than self-socketing then dropping, but it's definitely worth some consideration. Perhaps some kind of hybrid where, if you use the skill on an active gem and the Guardian has any empty sockets, it's transferred to an appropriate socket.

I'm still against AG dropping the original gear, I feel that's the price of death — the better the gear is, the higher the price but the less likely the death, if there's any proper balance. I don't mind every mode being Hardcore mode for Guardians, providing that they don't suck in the first place. (And Standard could use a gear sink.)

This include skill gems; gems which go into the guardian shouldn't come out. However, I think that gems which have already been equipped by the Guardian should gain XP and levels, so that a Guardian who has lasted a long time doesn't need gem level upgrades done manually.

I like the idea of animate guardian becoming a support gem, that you attach to a spell/attack, and then by summoning the said guardian, it also gains said attack and supports.

This would allow a lot more customisation.


The biggest issue still remains the AI though, that AI is horrible. I remember testing this up until mid cruel, and found the only way to reliably keep him alive is to use tons of ES gear with good magic ES rolls, and even then found that he would die very quickly, and it didn't help that all the +life passives did not help. Admittedly I wasn't focusing on being a summoner, but if I was skeletons/zombies perform better, and I saw it as more of a 'non summoner helping skill'

Well I would like to allow the guardian to simply die but I doubt that it can be made smart enough that people would actually be willing to invest something in it.

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Emphasy wrote:

Well I would like to allow the guardian to simply die but I doubt that it can be made smart enough that people would actually be willing to invest something in it.

Doesn't need to be that smart. I'd settle for "just enough smarter than a zombie where you can barely tell the difference."

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

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.

That second part was what I was thinking originally. Mercenaries in Diablo 2 can be revived which makes gearing them much more interesting. I wouldn't mind if guardians can be revived as well for the same reason - it'll be more fun to skill and gear them out. Of course a mercenary-guardian may be incompatible with the disposable guardian concept GGG originally sold us. I don't think so, though.

didn't notice this thread, which is interesting; on another one
http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/535768/page/1/#p5799689
i wrote this, which might be helpful? dunno.

imho it would be enough to make "animate guardian" a support skill for spells or attacks, that would be great.

AG + heavy strike + melee splash + multystrike

AG + ice spear + gmp + faster casting

AG + shock nova + knockback + faster casting

AG + reave + knockback/blind + life leech + multystrike

and, since there are no animate guardian passive tree nodes

AG + AG + AG + ...

to have multiple animated guardians, like

AG + AG + reave + life leech + multystrike

and imagine you casting all the dmg auras, with 3 spirits "proj immune aura", a few zombies, and a skele totem

BEST SUPPORT EVER.

And as I said in that other thread: I'm strongly against multiple Guardians. Limit one.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

And as I said in that other thread: I'm strongly against multiple Guardians. Limit one.

+1 similar to totems. You can link multiple spells to totems. But only one totem actually exists

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Real_Wolf wrote:

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

And as I said in that other thread: I'm strongly against multiple Guardians. Limit one.

+1 similar to totems. You can link multiple spells to totems. But only one totem actually exists

It's not just that. There are ways to get multiple totems, and that's fine... but allowing more than one Guardian would be a logistical nightmare. If you have two Guardians with chest armour, and you want to upgrade Guardian A, how exactly would you do that? And how frustrating would it be to have the new chest apply to Guardian B instead, downgrading that one while failing to upgrade the other? Even some kind of Guardian version of Ancestral Bond would simply fail to work.

Speaking of similar logistical nightmares, I've add Point #6 to the OP: removing the Guardian's ability to dual-wield.