On Animate Guardian and D2 Mercenaries

This sounds like a good idea, I haven't used AG at all, but the modifications proposed sound like a really neat skill.

Although, re: dual-wield and similar logistical issues, it would seem to be better to have an interface to replace gear on the guardian rather than remove abilities. Obviously, anything replaced gets deleted.

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jeonitsoc wrote:

AG + AG + AG + ...

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

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

Sure, you could only have one guardian, but I imagined if your guardian could have skills, then you would give your guardian the 'animate guardian' skill, and drop some items for that guardian to raise another guardian that also has the animate guardian skill, etc... ;)

Also would work for other minion skills.

Guardians would not be able to cast Animate Guardian, as this would lead to a kind of infinite loop.

Other Minion skills would be fine.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

Guardians would not be able to cast Animate Guardian, as this would lead to a kind of infinite loop.

Other Minion skills would be fine.

This would be hilarious.

Yea Animate guardian as a "Support" spell is an epic idea, like a totem - but a guardian. Awesome!

I actually want it to remain an active skill, when you need to feed skill gems to the Guardian. Two reasons:
1) A Guardian which only spams one skill is boring. Even the mercs in D2 had at least 2 skills to alternate between.
2) It would act as a gem sink, especially for the massive numbers of no-quality gems one finds.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

I actually want it to remain an active skill, when you need to feed skill gems to the Guardian. Two reasons:
1) A Guardian which only spams one skill is boring. Even the mercs in D2 had at least 2 skills to alternate between.
2) It would act as a gem sink, especially for the massive numbers of no-quality gems one finds.

Actually if you really want to make the mechanic behind it simpler you could allow a primary and a secondary skill. So you could make a Guardian that primarly heavy-strikes but does a leap-slam once every while. You could however also use Arctic Armor, Auras or things like Molten Shell there. You could also make a boring auto-attack guardian that only has two auras (although he could only use 2 40% ones, since for some reason you can't reserve 100% mana, so he would switch between them randomly.

I don't really thing more than 2 skills is necessary and linking certain gems might make him too powerful if he actually is able to survive. A Guardian that spams skeletons is already pretty problematic... a guardian spamming skele-spelltotems would be even more problematic.

Also gemming him would mean that he needs to decide which skills to use. I doubt that he can decide smartly between more than 2 skills.

A big issue with giving a guardian good items is that they cease to exist on every disconnect or log out unlike the d2 iron golem. No one will really bother giving up items that took more time to farm then they plan on playing that day, and with disconnects looming overhead all the time it makes it a constant factor that you may lose that minion seconds after you make it (even it if were unkillable its not worth that risk).



I'd still much prefer the method phantasy star portable 2 infinity (game for psp) handled minions like this with their custom partner cards over this.

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Jiero wrote:

A big issue with giving a guardian good items is that they cease to exist on every disconnect or log out unlike the d2 iron golem.

Did I miss some patch notes or something? Guardians persisted when I tested the skill on Oct 24.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

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Jiero wrote:

A big issue with giving a guardian good items is that they cease to exist on every disconnect or log out unlike the d2 iron golem.

Did I miss some patch notes or something? Guardians persisted when I tested the skill on Oct 24.

They've never persisted for me on a disconnect personally, then again I was frequently hit by rollbacks anyway... might just have to do with the instances I was in crashing I guess. Learned the hardway that spamming linked GMP forking spells with cast on crit is a bad idea when you want to avoid disconnects like that, lol

:/

edit - since when disconnecting like that and all my other minions would vanish I just accepted it as the way its supposed to be, since then though I've moved away from the particle spam as I got tired of the disconnects it caused.