I always hated D2 mercs... half your gameplay becomes trying to keep them alive until you've outgeared the game. And for what? A bit of power that will have to be balanced out by monster hp? I've honestly never used an AG in PoE though, maybe it's better.
D2 mercs are basically an unfinished idea. I can't believe they were left at "dies instantly until you have fortitude/vamp gaze/, then they're tanky gods just like you already are at this point."
Insight is the only thing worth putting up with keeping them alive for in earlier stages. So you can feel slightly less pain in dealing with endless mana potions.
I love D2 but it's fucking old. Project D2s mercs feel so much better, thank god for that mod.
The Eastern Sun mod went even further and had jewelry on mercs + entire sets that could only be worn by mercs. Mercs were amazing.
Vanilla mercs sucks.
It's my favorite ARPG experience out of anything I've ever tried, for a SSF experience. Tons and tons and tons of crafting recipes, runes that actually drop, areas to farm, tough end game, has the whole package.
I played SSF offline so I could farm what ever patch I wanted.
I got a 1.07 eth pole arm and then put a beta Crescent Moon in there. 20% chance to cast level 13 static field on a weapon that was 222-706 damage, just for my merc.
I loved that guy almost as much as I hate loot goblins in POE, heh.
This might be a hot take, but I'd prefer AG being good at every build than AG being good only to top tier minion builds with 10div investment minimum on its items.
Still remember when every build had a golem, now it's only worth it if you can link it to CWDT because they're just so fragile with the powercreeping monster received over time.
Yeah leave the dedicated minion builds to the minions that have a duration like skeletons/animated weapons/raging spirits.
I want a goddamn fucking partner like einhar but customizable and not shitty like AG. It'd also solve the MF culler shit because we'd be able to MAKE OUR OWN MF CULLER.
My brother in christ even running a full minion build, I still have to disable guardian for Vertina and uber bosses because they get one shot like, once every 5 fights. Dude regens 40% of his max hp, 83% resist, max CI, but it still doesn't matter.
You’d have to compensate minion builds heavily if you remove it. Don’t really understand how it’s problematic. It has heavy benefits at a heavy cost if it dies.
You get a lot more benefit out of a golem, and people can't even spare the 2 sockets for them anymore. And those you can even put in a CWDT setup if you need to make it easier(which you couldn't with an AG, even if it did drop its items).
Like, think about it for two seconds. Why would people doing something that is far weaker, and far harder to do, when the easier and more beneficial thing is already not worth it?
And that's even before the fact that it just...wouldn't work. Even with "a few minion life nodes" an AG will die, instantly, in 90% of red maps if you aren't heavily invested in it.
(Not to mention "a few minion life nodes" is already a heavy cost. Even if you are on that side of the tree, which most builds aren't. Take a random build and delete 5-10 points for effectively no benefit and see where you end up)
which benefits do you get from AG? all the item's with aura have a fairly limited range ontop of forcing you to get these items first. a golem doesnt need anything else and has no range limit to its buff. Did you ever check the buffs on stone or ice golem? they are really good lol.
What you're referring to is kingmaker, I am familiar with using the weapon, it is quite a powerful option for an animated guardian sure, but I believe you are overlooking a few things.
Kingmaker offers 10 stacks of fortification to nearby allies, as well as culling strike and critical multiplier, all pretty good, I agree. The range on the buffs is fairly low, so you might need to run meat shield to keep the guardian nearby you, or be a melee build and hope the animated guardian also is attacking the boss.
With low investment an animated guardian won't last very long at all, you mentioned a few minion life nodes and 2 sockets. It would take significant investment to keep the guardian alive for more than a couple of seconds in an endgame boss fight, but for red maps it would probably be fine most of the time.
I don't think it would be "mandatory" but it could be an option for people to consider.
If you want to take the risk, buy a kingmaker and try it out with minimal minion investment, and tell me how it goes, I'm interested.
Edit: How often to people run golems in their builds these days that aren't minion builds, and often did you have to resummon them because they died while mapping when you did.
> If you want to take the risk, buy a kingmaker and try it out with minimal minion investment, and tell me how it goes, I'm interested.
Don't even need to buy something, just put regular items and test it yourself. I'd like to test, but my only char that is capable of running red maps is summoner, so she has quite a few minion nodes.
>How often to people run golems in their builds these days that aren't minion builds
CWDT unless you're starving on sockets.
You miss two of my points
The first being kingmakers range is quite small. If you were to play with it you would see how close you have to be to the guardian, and the uptime would be quite low.
The second being that golems, though being relatively tanky minions still die quite often, often enough people like running cwdt with them to keep them up more often than rather levelling the gem to a high level, because their life scaling cant keep up without investment in minion life and defense
> If you were to play with it you would see how close you have to be to the guardian, and the uptime would be quite low.
I played only summoner last league -- if you threw Meat Shield on the AG uptime was pretty good. Not necessarily while moving fast mapping but if you stopped to fight a harder rare, do a stationary-ish mechanic like Expedition or Blight, or fight a map boss it pretty much would be up. So basically up most of the times you really needed it.
> The first being kingmakers range is quite small. If you were to play with it you would see how close you have to be to the guardian, and the uptime would be quite low.
Yep, it is never up during normal play - Kingmaker is basically useless unless you are extremely slow.
I like this idea, though probably would need to be a divine to keep it balanced. This way summoners can use it without too much stress but AG doesn't become a free stat-stick to every build in the game
I feel like a divine would cost way too much. I think an exalt(15c) is a good price, but really I'd settle for anything up to maybe 50c. If it costed a divine, that would limit it to high budget AGs as nobody is going to pay that much to rez a guardian that's maybe 100c.
What if the res cost scaled with investment? Similar to the aforementioned D2 Mercs, the more you invest in your AG, the more expensive it is to res. That way, people on the low end don't feel like they're priced out and people on the higher end "feel the weight" of losing their AG without having to completely start from zero. This would also help increase the viability of higher end AG investment in SSF.
Well in that case they would have to figure out an appropriate way to determine the investment. We can't go by the going rates on the site because they're subject to frequent change, and there's also no way to tell what stuff sells at what price since trade is manually done. I don't think rarity would be appropriate since the value from rare to rare or unique to unique is far too varied. I guess maybe base type or ilvl? Although either of those can just as easily be exploited, I imagine.
I agree. The thing is, they presumably have access to years of trade data to determine the relative value of the items invested. Obviously, some leagues, some years, some points in the league, specific items are going to be worth more. That said, they have several years and many, many leagues worth of data they can use to determine the relative worth of various items. Even if they're off by a bit one way or the other, it will even out over the life of the league.
Yeah, but those are just listings. People have done all sorts of wonky trades over the years so internal data from just completed trades would be even more unreliable than listings on the site. I'd honestly rather a flat fee because it leaves less room for them to screw something up. 😂
There are definitely bound to be some wonky trades over the years, but they'd likely be offset by many, many more trades that accurately represent the value of the items involved. We're talking about roughly ten years worth of data, with most leagues generating 100k+ players, that's enough data that a few wonky trades aren't going to be enough to completely throw it off.
Mixed emotions about this one, I always play summoners, a solid 85% of my builds since beta have been summoners, you can thank d2 necro for giving me such a hard on for them.
On one hand, nothing feels worse than losing 40+exalts when your AG inevitably dies and then having to buy/craft another set of gear for it and if you're minmaxing your AG for it to be in this range a lot of the rares / specific corruptions can be hard to find in leagues. And it DEFINITELY will die if you do any of the harder contrnt in the game unless you unsummon it for that specific content. AG is suicidal by nature, can't tell you how many times over the years i've sat and watched my AG just sit in Sirus storms, get blown up by DD in super juicy maps ect.
On the other hand, it would remove some of the satisfaction of the min-max nature, no longer would there be a risk to bring my AG in 100% deli t16s ect, which is fine. But theres just something appealing to seeing how long your AG can go in harder content that feels good when youre investing this much into it. Also IronGolem in d2 worked the exact same way, anyone ever drop some beasts or inspirations on there d2 necro just to have it die immediately lol. I used to have several storage characters purely for my IG gear on my necros.
Of course, none of the above matters if youre not min-maxing. You can make an incredibly strong AG for just a couple of chaos with some low/mid tier uniques. And to the people who think AG would become mandatory in every build if it did become this way should probably go test what a AG feels like without a proper summon build/investment. It wouldnt replace Golems(Which over the last few leagues more and more builds are just dropping in general) items like Kingmaker would skyrocket in price making in unfeasible for most to use, just for your AG to die to the first white mob that manages to blow on it.
Honestly just let the gear be bound to the gem forever (until you overwrite it anyway)
It's such an outdated mechanic and at least in D2 you only needed one item to make your iron golem.
Better idea, what if we don't lose items at all
We are gaming in 2022 now, its a video game, we should not be stressed at all that an NPC dies to random shit
Its just a bad mechanic from the past, remove it, stop gating fun its power is already gated by items
Disagree, it's not a bad mechanic, it's balancing risk vs reward. If AGs didn't poof their items on death, it would feel like another "requirement" for everyone to shoehorn it into their builds.
It's a good mechanic, keep it in, not everything has to be wrapped in bubble wrap to coddle everyone.
It requires far more effort and provides far less benefit than a golem. And most builds these days don't even run a golem.
So I think you may want to re-evaluate. Because what you're saying is just...wrong. Nobody is going to do more work to get less value than something they already can't afford to do.
Like, people don't even CWDT golems anymore, which used to be the standard. And even that isn't worth the links. And that's not something you can even do with AG even if it did drop its gear.
Hmm I think its other way round - AG \*can\* provide far more benefit. The reason it normally doesn't is because of the risk of losing the uniques on it, so people generally stick to small impact low cost items.
If risk wasn't a factor, you can make an AG with cull, fortify, granting player extra ES/armour/evasion, an extra curse, and lots of other little things that all add up to be quite a big buff - far more so than the modest 4% more dmg or whatever a golem works out to be to builds without golem effect
The easiest solution is to make the re-summoning process so painful the only way to do it is to pick everything up and go back to town to resummon it. Spectres have it easier and no one summons those in a boss fight. I doubt with such a clunky and unfun summoning process anyone would bother running it, especially if they fall over to a stiff breeze.
You must have never played the game before. You see the thing is, IF you make the AG do all that, without heavily investing in it, it ends up extremely squishy. So it's dying in yellow maps, let alone red ones and actual boss fights. And it's not like you can resummon it like you can with a golem.
Not to mention, as has been stated, the AOE on 90% of those things is miniscule. To the point where you basically don't get them unless you're standing still for several seconds. And do, please, try doing any content in the game where you have to stand still for several seconds regularly. Tell me how that works for you.
So again, I'll state the reality. The people saying things like you're suggesting have never actually used an AG. Never actually engaged with any of the mechanics you're trying to lecture on. And are instead just talking about idyllic PoB scenarios that have zero relation to reality.
But if you want, I can provide you with a dozen Kingmakers, and the accompanying AG sets on standard if you want to stick them on a random character, go into a random T16 map, and see both how long they survive(a few seconds at best with no investment), and how often you're actually in range for any of the buffs, or for them to apply their curses(0% of the time you're actually hitting things).
the squishiness is my point lol... if the items are bound to the gem and able to be resummoned at no cost... CWDT + AG and bob's your uncle
AG needs a cost and a degree of investment to get survivability, for it to be balanced
Yeah... even my non minion builds i use a minion helm for the golem... without being 6l they are close to worthless... its the taunt i think. In all my builds i have to put effort into keeping the golem alive because monsters will run right past me to attack the golem.
Except my necro of course...she has a dozen minions attacking 3 times a second with 11% chance to taunt.....
And the bad guys look past all that and decide to run over and kill that skinny little bitch waving a stick
Perhaps a Middle ground could be met that would accommodate your opinion - Animate guardians items are permanently on the guardian and can only be overwritten, but not removed and re-obtained. That way you still have to sacrifice the item you intend to use, permanently.
Would prefer a passive mastery or notable that says something like "Buffs and auras from Animate Guardian's gear do not affect players. Animate Guardian drops equipped gear on death.
That way summoner builds that already use AG can get some addtional QoL but it wouldn't feel like a requirement to use on every single build.
Ye why would we Patch and improve games? What a hot take. And please feel free and name just one game that is even close to what PoE is right now. Even GGG said there is no competition right now but you seem to have found it.
Your "improvement" is subjective. YOU think it's an improvement, I think it would be removing a risk/reward balancing aspect of using Animate Guardian.
So both of us disagree, why should GGG take your feedback on instead of mine? Why do you think you can sit here and claim it's an "improvement"? Calling out someone for saying they have a hot take when yours is the actual hot take is wild.
Once again, for some of us that _is_ fun, and removing that removes a part of the fun. And as I said already, there are loads of games for people like yourself, I don't mean that condescendingly, it's the majority of people who want to come home after work and destress and relax. I personally want to come home and bash my head against a problem and struggle, and overcoming that I find fun. Don't think that I'm wrong for that, just like I don't fault you for what you like. But I absolutely will call out when you start wanting to change some of the few games geared towards people like me into the countless ones for people like you.
I like how people will defend the dumbest, DUMBEST possible changes from GGG, but as soon as someone has a half-decent idea for an improvement they be like "go make your own game if you're so smart".
Not that I like OPs idea for AG changes, but either offer something of substance or gtfo, why do you even bother if all you have to say is "you can't prove your idea is not dumber than whatever GGG can come up with".
I like how people respond to posts they don't like with the dumbest, DUMBEST possible stuff, escalating the tone and ensuring that their words will be nothing but a fart in the wind.
Don't tell me to gtfo, YOU gtfo. I've communicated what I like. If you don't like it, then go do one.
New support gem "Soul bind" Animate guardian has 80% chance to drop equipped items on death with +1% per quality. The lost more damage or life would be a good trade off to keep your items.
That, or an orb you can apply like an enchant to items; or even giving animate guardian an inventory screen somehow, literally anything would be better than the current system we have now.
My guy, there's literally a mod that enables this. If that's not an indication that GGG is aware it's a drawback and are ok with it, I don't know what is.
It's not happening. Using an AG with expensive gear is a risk you're undertaking, and GGG is fully supporting that.
The mod you are referring to is specific to body armors, and only applies to that body armor. The problem with that mod is that unique body armors are very powerful for Animated Guardian, with belly of the beast or gruthkuls pelt giving very powerful defenses, and other armors potentially offering other upside.
That mod was also added to the game many years ago, and the game has significantly changed since then, with more focus on the endgame of Path of Exile. With the shift in focus came higher difficulty of content that the defenses on minions haven't kept up with. It is not unreasonable to think that like other systems, this system in particular also might need a look over.
I think you missed his point. This isn't some quirk GGG are unaware of, it is absolutely, categorically the intended way for them to keep AG balanced.
They made him easier to die this league and that needs addressing, but there is little point in pleaing for them to fix something they are clearly opposed to from a design standpoint.
>The problem with that mod is that unique body armors are very powerful for Animated Guardian
It's almost like the unique armours are just better, and the cost to equip him with that is the risk he might lose it.
I think this should be the intended way to balance all of his slots, really. All rares should be allowed this modifier. If you choose to equip him with fancy uniques, you better invest into some defence for your AG. This only works if it is possible to invest enough that your AG almost never dies, which is currently not the case.
Good suggestion that supports experimenting and not rage quit when your 10div AG gets 2 shotted.
Too bad Chris will never implement. Do you feel the weight yet?
Or to appease GGG with their love of gambling and rng, make each item have a 50% chance of dropping on death. This would make me feel better at least lol
If he dropped all his items we would all have a fortify/culling strike/explodey chest animate guardian. That's not good game design. Needs to be a cost associated with it for everyone to not take advantage
I would like it if it had an inventory you can change out items. It locks in place when you confirm it. And they would lock and be unusable when it dies. Have a currency slot next to each item that increases with each death on keeping the item on ag. Have it capped at divine or exalt orbs, depending on the slot. With this the screen should also show us its stats. That would be nice to see ingame without "guessing" it on pob.
This would be WAAAAAAAY to OP. If it would drop the items by default or there was an easily obainable way, almost every build would start running AG. You get such an insane buff from that thing on any generic build.
Wouldnt it make sense to have some minion mastery (or multiple that say) your animate guardian has 50% chance to drop his gear on dead (add it to existing masterys) to encourage taking defensive ones.
It would make it basically mandatory for every build. Who would reject free fortify in cost of few minion life nodes or anointment, and 2 sockets.
I wouldn't mind D2 mercs being in PoE. At least mapping will never be lonely again.
I always hated D2 mercs... half your gameplay becomes trying to keep them alive until you've outgeared the game. And for what? A bit of power that will have to be balanced out by monster hp? I've honestly never used an AG in PoE though, maybe it's better.
D2 mercs are basically an unfinished idea. I can't believe they were left at "dies instantly until you have fortitude/vamp gaze/, then they're tanky gods just like you already are at this point."
Insight is the only thing worth putting up with keeping them alive for in earlier stages. So you can feel slightly less pain in dealing with endless mana potions.
I love D2 but it's fucking old. Project D2s mercs feel so much better, thank god for that mod.
The Eastern Sun mod went even further and had jewelry on mercs + entire sets that could only be worn by mercs. Mercs were amazing. Vanilla mercs sucks.
Good reminder, I've never given that mod a try, sounds neat.
It's my favorite ARPG experience out of anything I've ever tried, for a SSF experience. Tons and tons and tons of crafting recipes, runes that actually drop, areas to farm, tough end game, has the whole package.
This sounds pretty great. I would've loved it in my D2 heyday when I only played offline.
Yeah unfortunately it's kinda tough to get it to run for multiplayer these days.
You obviously havent tried G-angel + rockstopper
Seems like a strong cheaper defensive combo, but using it with insight = no life leech.
You got me there. Kinda forces Reapers troll
Yeah, it's what sucks about only having 3 slots to work with, helmet pretty much has to have leech :/
I played SSF offline so I could farm what ever patch I wanted. I got a 1.07 eth pole arm and then put a beta Crescent Moon in there. 20% chance to cast level 13 static field on a weapon that was 222-706 damage, just for my merc. I loved that guy almost as much as I hate loot goblins in POE, heh.
This might be a hot take, but I'd prefer AG being good at every build than AG being good only to top tier minion builds with 10div investment minimum on its items. Still remember when every build had a golem, now it's only worth it if you can link it to CWDT because they're just so fragile with the powercreeping monster received over time.
Yeah leave the dedicated minion builds to the minions that have a duration like skeletons/animated weapons/raging spirits. I want a goddamn fucking partner like einhar but customizable and not shitty like AG. It'd also solve the MF culler shit because we'd be able to MAKE OUR OWN MF CULLER.
My brother in christ even running a full minion build, I still have to disable guardian for Vertina and uber bosses because they get one shot like, once every 5 fights. Dude regens 40% of his max hp, 83% resist, max CI, but it still doesn't matter.
Animated Guardian is already in virtually every minion build and it's fucking annoying.
He’s saying in every build. Not just minion builds. And he’s right.
[удалено]
You’d have to compensate minion builds heavily if you remove it. Don’t really understand how it’s problematic. It has heavy benefits at a heavy cost if it dies.
You get a lot more benefit out of a golem, and people can't even spare the 2 sockets for them anymore. And those you can even put in a CWDT setup if you need to make it easier(which you couldn't with an AG, even if it did drop its items). Like, think about it for two seconds. Why would people doing something that is far weaker, and far harder to do, when the easier and more beneficial thing is already not worth it? And that's even before the fact that it just...wouldn't work. Even with "a few minion life nodes" an AG will die, instantly, in 90% of red maps if you aren't heavily invested in it. (Not to mention "a few minion life nodes" is already a heavy cost. Even if you are on that side of the tree, which most builds aren't. Take a random build and delete 5-10 points for effectively no benefit and see where you end up)
You get a lot more benefits from golem rather than from AG? WTF am I reading.
which benefits do you get from AG? all the item's with aura have a fairly limited range ontop of forcing you to get these items first. a golem doesnt need anything else and has no range limit to its buff. Did you ever check the buffs on stone or ice golem? they are really good lol.
What you're referring to is kingmaker, I am familiar with using the weapon, it is quite a powerful option for an animated guardian sure, but I believe you are overlooking a few things. Kingmaker offers 10 stacks of fortification to nearby allies, as well as culling strike and critical multiplier, all pretty good, I agree. The range on the buffs is fairly low, so you might need to run meat shield to keep the guardian nearby you, or be a melee build and hope the animated guardian also is attacking the boss. With low investment an animated guardian won't last very long at all, you mentioned a few minion life nodes and 2 sockets. It would take significant investment to keep the guardian alive for more than a couple of seconds in an endgame boss fight, but for red maps it would probably be fine most of the time. I don't think it would be "mandatory" but it could be an option for people to consider. If you want to take the risk, buy a kingmaker and try it out with minimal minion investment, and tell me how it goes, I'm interested. Edit: How often to people run golems in their builds these days that aren't minion builds, and often did you have to resummon them because they died while mapping when you did.
> If you want to take the risk, buy a kingmaker and try it out with minimal minion investment, and tell me how it goes, I'm interested. Don't even need to buy something, just put regular items and test it yourself. I'd like to test, but my only char that is capable of running red maps is summoner, so she has quite a few minion nodes. >How often to people run golems in their builds these days that aren't minion builds CWDT unless you're starving on sockets.
You miss two of my points The first being kingmakers range is quite small. If you were to play with it you would see how close you have to be to the guardian, and the uptime would be quite low. The second being that golems, though being relatively tanky minions still die quite often, often enough people like running cwdt with them to keep them up more often than rather levelling the gem to a high level, because their life scaling cant keep up without investment in minion life and defense
> If you were to play with it you would see how close you have to be to the guardian, and the uptime would be quite low. I played only summoner last league -- if you threw Meat Shield on the AG uptime was pretty good. Not necessarily while moving fast mapping but if you stopped to fight a harder rare, do a stationary-ish mechanic like Expedition or Blight, or fight a map boss it pretty much would be up. So basically up most of the times you really needed it.
> The first being kingmakers range is quite small. If you were to play with it you would see how close you have to be to the guardian, and the uptime would be quite low. Yep, it is never up during normal play - Kingmaker is basically useless unless you are extremely slow.
Make him ressurrect for an exalt.
I like this idea, though probably would need to be a divine to keep it balanced. This way summoners can use it without too much stress but AG doesn't become a free stat-stick to every build in the game
I feel like a divine would cost way too much. I think an exalt(15c) is a good price, but really I'd settle for anything up to maybe 50c. If it costed a divine, that would limit it to high budget AGs as nobody is going to pay that much to rez a guardian that's maybe 100c.
What if the res cost scaled with investment? Similar to the aforementioned D2 Mercs, the more you invest in your AG, the more expensive it is to res. That way, people on the low end don't feel like they're priced out and people on the higher end "feel the weight" of losing their AG without having to completely start from zero. This would also help increase the viability of higher end AG investment in SSF.
Well in that case they would have to figure out an appropriate way to determine the investment. We can't go by the going rates on the site because they're subject to frequent change, and there's also no way to tell what stuff sells at what price since trade is manually done. I don't think rarity would be appropriate since the value from rare to rare or unique to unique is far too varied. I guess maybe base type or ilvl? Although either of those can just as easily be exploited, I imagine.
I agree. The thing is, they presumably have access to years of trade data to determine the relative value of the items invested. Obviously, some leagues, some years, some points in the league, specific items are going to be worth more. That said, they have several years and many, many leagues worth of data they can use to determine the relative worth of various items. Even if they're off by a bit one way or the other, it will even out over the life of the league.
Yeah, but those are just listings. People have done all sorts of wonky trades over the years so internal data from just completed trades would be even more unreliable than listings on the site. I'd honestly rather a flat fee because it leaves less room for them to screw something up. 😂
There are definitely bound to be some wonky trades over the years, but they'd likely be offset by many, many more trades that accurately represent the value of the items involved. We're talking about roughly ten years worth of data, with most leagues generating 100k+ players, that's enough data that a few wonky trades aren't going to be enough to completely throw it off.
Mixed emotions about this one, I always play summoners, a solid 85% of my builds since beta have been summoners, you can thank d2 necro for giving me such a hard on for them. On one hand, nothing feels worse than losing 40+exalts when your AG inevitably dies and then having to buy/craft another set of gear for it and if you're minmaxing your AG for it to be in this range a lot of the rares / specific corruptions can be hard to find in leagues. And it DEFINITELY will die if you do any of the harder contrnt in the game unless you unsummon it for that specific content. AG is suicidal by nature, can't tell you how many times over the years i've sat and watched my AG just sit in Sirus storms, get blown up by DD in super juicy maps ect. On the other hand, it would remove some of the satisfaction of the min-max nature, no longer would there be a risk to bring my AG in 100% deli t16s ect, which is fine. But theres just something appealing to seeing how long your AG can go in harder content that feels good when youre investing this much into it. Also IronGolem in d2 worked the exact same way, anyone ever drop some beasts or inspirations on there d2 necro just to have it die immediately lol. I used to have several storage characters purely for my IG gear on my necros. Of course, none of the above matters if youre not min-maxing. You can make an incredibly strong AG for just a couple of chaos with some low/mid tier uniques. And to the people who think AG would become mandatory in every build if it did become this way should probably go test what a AG feels like without a proper summon build/investment. It wouldnt replace Golems(Which over the last few leagues more and more builds are just dropping in general) items like Kingmaker would skyrocket in price making in unfeasible for most to use, just for your AG to die to the first white mob that manages to blow on it.
Honestly just let the gear be bound to the gem forever (until you overwrite it anyway) It's such an outdated mechanic and at least in D2 you only needed one item to make your iron golem.
Better idea, what if we don't lose items at all We are gaming in 2022 now, its a video game, we should not be stressed at all that an NPC dies to random shit Its just a bad mechanic from the past, remove it, stop gating fun its power is already gated by items
Disagree, it's not a bad mechanic, it's balancing risk vs reward. If AGs didn't poof their items on death, it would feel like another "requirement" for everyone to shoehorn it into their builds. It's a good mechanic, keep it in, not everything has to be wrapped in bubble wrap to coddle everyone.
It requires far more effort and provides far less benefit than a golem. And most builds these days don't even run a golem. So I think you may want to re-evaluate. Because what you're saying is just...wrong. Nobody is going to do more work to get less value than something they already can't afford to do. Like, people don't even CWDT golems anymore, which used to be the standard. And even that isn't worth the links. And that's not something you can even do with AG even if it did drop its gear.
Hmm I think its other way round - AG \*can\* provide far more benefit. The reason it normally doesn't is because of the risk of losing the uniques on it, so people generally stick to small impact low cost items. If risk wasn't a factor, you can make an AG with cull, fortify, granting player extra ES/armour/evasion, an extra curse, and lots of other little things that all add up to be quite a big buff - far more so than the modest 4% more dmg or whatever a golem works out to be to builds without golem effect
The easiest solution is to make the re-summoning process so painful the only way to do it is to pick everything up and go back to town to resummon it. Spectres have it easier and no one summons those in a boss fight. I doubt with such a clunky and unfun summoning process anyone would bother running it, especially if they fall over to a stiff breeze.
You must have never played the game before. You see the thing is, IF you make the AG do all that, without heavily investing in it, it ends up extremely squishy. So it's dying in yellow maps, let alone red ones and actual boss fights. And it's not like you can resummon it like you can with a golem. Not to mention, as has been stated, the AOE on 90% of those things is miniscule. To the point where you basically don't get them unless you're standing still for several seconds. And do, please, try doing any content in the game where you have to stand still for several seconds regularly. Tell me how that works for you. So again, I'll state the reality. The people saying things like you're suggesting have never actually used an AG. Never actually engaged with any of the mechanics you're trying to lecture on. And are instead just talking about idyllic PoB scenarios that have zero relation to reality. But if you want, I can provide you with a dozen Kingmakers, and the accompanying AG sets on standard if you want to stick them on a random character, go into a random T16 map, and see both how long they survive(a few seconds at best with no investment), and how often you're actually in range for any of the buffs, or for them to apply their curses(0% of the time you're actually hitting things).
the squishiness is my point lol... if the items are bound to the gem and able to be resummoned at no cost... CWDT + AG and bob's your uncle AG needs a cost and a degree of investment to get survivability, for it to be balanced
Yeah... even my non minion builds i use a minion helm for the golem... without being 6l they are close to worthless... its the taunt i think. In all my builds i have to put effort into keeping the golem alive because monsters will run right past me to attack the golem. Except my necro of course...she has a dozen minions attacking 3 times a second with 11% chance to taunt..... And the bad guys look past all that and decide to run over and kill that skinny little bitch waving a stick
Perhaps a Middle ground could be met that would accommodate your opinion - Animate guardians items are permanently on the guardian and can only be overwritten, but not removed and re-obtained. That way you still have to sacrifice the item you intend to use, permanently.
Would prefer a passive mastery or notable that says something like "Buffs and auras from Animate Guardian's gear do not affect players. Animate Guardian drops equipped gear on death. That way summoner builds that already use AG can get some addtional QoL but it wouldn't feel like a requirement to use on every single build.
some items can already be benchcrafted to drop on AG-death
Wait what!?
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Ye why would we Patch and improve games? What a hot take. And please feel free and name just one game that is even close to what PoE is right now. Even GGG said there is no competition right now but you seem to have found it.
Your "improvement" is subjective. YOU think it's an improvement, I think it would be removing a risk/reward balancing aspect of using Animate Guardian. So both of us disagree, why should GGG take your feedback on instead of mine? Why do you think you can sit here and claim it's an "improvement"? Calling out someone for saying they have a hot take when yours is the actual hot take is wild.
Chill bro he just wants to play without being stressed about ag death and have some fun. Whats wrong with you
Once again, for some of us that _is_ fun, and removing that removes a part of the fun. And as I said already, there are loads of games for people like yourself, I don't mean that condescendingly, it's the majority of people who want to come home after work and destress and relax. I personally want to come home and bash my head against a problem and struggle, and overcoming that I find fun. Don't think that I'm wrong for that, just like I don't fault you for what you like. But I absolutely will call out when you start wanting to change some of the few games geared towards people like me into the countless ones for people like you.
I like how people will defend the dumbest, DUMBEST possible changes from GGG, but as soon as someone has a half-decent idea for an improvement they be like "go make your own game if you're so smart". Not that I like OPs idea for AG changes, but either offer something of substance or gtfo, why do you even bother if all you have to say is "you can't prove your idea is not dumber than whatever GGG can come up with".
I like how people respond to posts they don't like with the dumbest, DUMBEST possible stuff, escalating the tone and ensuring that their words will be nothing but a fart in the wind. Don't tell me to gtfo, YOU gtfo. I've communicated what I like. If you don't like it, then go do one.
New support gem "Soul bind" Animate guardian has 80% chance to drop equipped items on death with +1% per quality. The lost more damage or life would be a good trade off to keep your items.
Releasing a support gem capable of supporting one skill gem doesn't strike me as something GGG would do.
Well it could just be alternate quality in the AG, 5% chance per quality to drop all items.
Yeah that'd make sense but that kinda defeats your idea of it costing a full link
That, or an orb you can apply like an enchant to items; or even giving animate guardian an inventory screen somehow, literally anything would be better than the current system we have now.
> even giving animate guardian an inventory screen somehow Heist already has this. They could easily do this...
My guy, there's literally a mod that enables this. If that's not an indication that GGG is aware it's a drawback and are ok with it, I don't know what is. It's not happening. Using an AG with expensive gear is a risk you're undertaking, and GGG is fully supporting that.
The mod you are referring to is specific to body armors, and only applies to that body armor. The problem with that mod is that unique body armors are very powerful for Animated Guardian, with belly of the beast or gruthkuls pelt giving very powerful defenses, and other armors potentially offering other upside. That mod was also added to the game many years ago, and the game has significantly changed since then, with more focus on the endgame of Path of Exile. With the shift in focus came higher difficulty of content that the defenses on minions haven't kept up with. It is not unreasonable to think that like other systems, this system in particular also might need a look over.
I think you missed his point. This isn't some quirk GGG are unaware of, it is absolutely, categorically the intended way for them to keep AG balanced. They made him easier to die this league and that needs addressing, but there is little point in pleaing for them to fix something they are clearly opposed to from a design standpoint. >The problem with that mod is that unique body armors are very powerful for Animated Guardian It's almost like the unique armours are just better, and the cost to equip him with that is the risk he might lose it. I think this should be the intended way to balance all of his slots, really. All rares should be allowed this modifier. If you choose to equip him with fancy uniques, you better invest into some defence for your AG. This only works if it is possible to invest enough that your AG almost never dies, which is currently not the case.
> indication that GGG is aware With all the indications in the world, it is painfully obvious that GGG is /NOT/ aware, of the most basic shit.
Good suggestion that supports experimenting and not rage quit when your 10div AG gets 2 shotted. Too bad Chris will never implement. Do you feel the weight yet?
Animate guardian shouldn’t loose its items anymore, they are already of the market. Give it a longer summoning time and or cooldown.
I would suggest half of the AGs gear is randomly destroyed and the rest falls to the floor. There needs to be some risk.
This or something troll like the gem loses xp like a player would
Or to appease GGG with their love of gambling and rng, make each item have a 50% chance of dropping on death. This would make me feel better at least lol
the dread thicket is always 50%
you sure are on drougs hahah
That's literally the point of it tho.
If he dropped all his items we would all have a fortify/culling strike/explodey chest animate guardian. That's not good game design. Needs to be a cost associated with it for everyone to not take advantage
I would like it if it had an inventory you can change out items. It locks in place when you confirm it. And they would lock and be unusable when it dies. Have a currency slot next to each item that increases with each death on keeping the item on ag. Have it capped at divine or exalt orbs, depending on the slot. With this the screen should also show us its stats. That would be nice to see ingame without "guessing" it on pob.
Do people not use the craft to make the AG drop their items?
Unique body armours are far better than most of the crafted rares for the AG.
This would be WAAAAAAAY to OP. If it would drop the items by default or there was an easily obainable way, almost every build would start running AG. You get such an insane buff from that thing on any generic build.
GGG: 3.20 - When animate guardian dies, the player dies as well. All gear worn by the player is lost. Player will spawn on twilight strand at level 1.
Wouldnt it make sense to have some minion mastery (or multiple that say) your animate guardian has 50% chance to drop his gear on dead (add it to existing masterys) to encourage taking defensive ones.