Animate Guardian

Animate Guardian is a Spell, animating weapons and armour on the ground to form an allied minion.

Skill functions and interactions

Using this skill on an identified item on the ground creates an Animated Guardian that moves and attacks similar to a Raise Zombie. Similar to Raise Spectre and unlike other minions, a Guardian stays with you even after logging off and on. If you unequip the skill gem, the Guardian disappears until you equip the gem again, at which point the same Guardian (retaining all its equipment) reappears after casting the spell again. This also holds true when swapping a different AG gem in. Socketing the gem in a weapon or shield slot allows you to recall the Guardian at will by switching weapon sets (default hotkey: X).

You can only have one Guardian at a time. It can be equipped with a Helmets, Body Armours, pair of Gloves, Boots, a Shields, and melee weapons. Ranged weapons cannot be animated, similar to Animate Weapon. Items can be of any rarity, but must be identified and on the ground to be used. Animated items are consumed by the spell and cannot be recovered. Items containing skill gems cannot be animated, so the Guardian cannot use trigger gems.

Items that have modifiers like +x to Maximum life or +x% increased Attack Speed, and even corrupted implicits, apply to the Guardian the same way they apply to player characters; so animating magic or rare equipment can potentially give you a very powerful minion. Unique items can also be used, giving guardians powerful abilities not found elsewhere in the game. Be careful when using valuable items—anything you give to your guardian is gone forever.

The Guardian uses weapons and shields in the same way as player characters, and can dual wield if two one-handed weapons are animated. If you animate an item type that the Guardian is already using (such as a helmet), the new item will overwrite the old one. Equipping an armour piece restores 25% of its life; equipping one-handed weapons or shields will alternate between left and right hand. You cannot equip two shields.

The Guardian does not share your max amount of curses you can apply to enemies, and therefore functions as a player with the default curse limit when applying curses (through corrupted gloves, for example).

Items: The Guardian's items are tied to the character that summoned it, rather than the gem itself. Equipping a level 1 version of the gem will disable any items the Guardian cannot equip, which will be present again once a high enough level gem is equipped.

Items deleted on Death: When a Guardian dies, all its equipment is deleted and cannot be recovered. This makes very risky to use powerful or valuable items on an Animated Guardian. It is possible to prevent a body armour worn by a Guardian from being deleted upon Guardian death by crafting the Equipped Animated Guardian drops item on death mod onto it. Note once more that equipment will not be lost upon de-spawning, only death.

Necromantic Aegis: While using Necromantic Aegis your Guardian benefits from its own shield as well as the one you have equipped, allowing it to gain the benefit of two shields at once. Some unique shields can be quite powerful when doubled up this way. If your Guardian is equipped with a two-handed weapon, it will not benefit from your shield.

Player versus Player: Animated Guardians killed in PvP areas will not lose their items. This does not apply to Hall of Grandmasters, even though the map says "PvP damage scaling in effect". In fact, not only is it possible to lose the Guardian's items here, but death is very likely because of the way PvP damage scaling works. Minor enemies can instantly kill a Guardian with 50000+ life in this map, so it is highly recommended to despawn your Guardian before attempting.

Item-Granted Skills: Animated guardians cannot use skills granted by items. Equipping items like Death's Oath, The Rippling Thoughts, or Bubonic Trail will not allow the Guardian to use their associated triggered skills. Fire Burst granted by Essence of Hysteria, even though having no "trigger" or "granted" in its modifier discription, won't work either. The Guardian is not your party member, and will not be able to use abilities like the one found on Ambu's Charge. Effects that apply to nearby allies or enemies, like Leer Cast, Victario's Flight, or Dying Breath, will apply as normal.

Abyssal Sockets: Animate guardians cannot benefit from abyss jewel modifiers. Equipping items like Tombfist or Bubonic Trail with abyss jewel(s) socketed will not grant their modifiers to animate guardian.

Notable items

Life regeneration and percentage increases to life are especially potent on an Animate Guardian because of its huge innate life pool.

The stats displayed in the skills tooltip only accounts for modifiers the skill has, like from the passive tree, jewels, player-equipped items and support gems. It cannot account for further modifiers from things like being affected by an aura, shields through Necromantic Aegis or modifiers from items the AG has equipped. These will not factor into the skills tooltip but are active nonetheless.

Helmet:

• Ylfeban's Trickery - Chance to curse enemies on hit. The triggered skill to create Shocked Ground won't trigger.
• Leer Cast - Aura that grants increased damage.
• Mask of the Stitched Demon - Massive life regeneration if the AG gets lots of energy shield from other sources like Grave Intentions and Gravicius's signature craft for body armour.
• Mask of the Tribunal - Various bonuses depending on the attributes provided to the Animate Guardian from other equipped items or The Baron.
• Crown of the Tyrant - Huge amount of life for your AG, reduce all elemental resistances of nearby enemies and increase global Fire/Cold/Lightning/Chaos damage to nearby allies. An influenced helmet with Nearby Enemies take 9% increased <Physical/Elemental> Damage or Nearby Enemies have -9% to <Fire/Cold/Lightning> Resistance. Note that these mods also reduce the defenses of the AG.

Body Armour:

• Gruthkul's Pelt - Life, life regeneration and cold resistance.
• Blunderbore - Two Shrines effects on animate Guardian. Free knockback aoe & dmg.
• Belly of the Beast - Massive percentage increase to life and resistances.
• Zahndethus' Cassock - Creates Consecrated Ground when the AG blocks and chaos resistance.
• Ambu's Charge - Life regeneration if the Animate Guardian has been hit recently, life and resistances. The AG has no party members, so it will not share Endurance Charges.
• Garb of the Ephemeral - Cannot be slowed and nearby enemies cannot crit.

Gloves:

• Southbound - Percentage increase to life and cold resistance. Note that the AG can no longer kill non-frozen enemies with hits.
• Meginord's Vise - Life regeneration if the strength requirement is met through other equipped items or the player using The Baron.
• Hunter-influenced gloves with % chance to Intimidate Enemies for 4 seconds on Hit or % chance to Unnerve Enemies for 4 seconds on Hit

Boots:

• Victario's Flight - Aura that grants increased Movement Speed.
• Atziri's Step - Life and Chance to Dodge Spell Hits.
• Kaom's Roots - Life.
• Bubonic Trail - Generally more life then Kaom's Roots, 1-2 abyssal socket version does not matter as mentioned above. Animated Guardian does not trigger Death Walk.

Weapons and/or Shields:

• Singularity - Hinders nearby enemies.
• Dying Breath - Aura that grants increased damage and makes curses more effective against affected enemies.
• Victario's Charity - Chance to grant Frenzy Charges on hit and Power Charges on kill. (The replica version of this shield give Frenzy charge on kill, and Endurance charge on hit)
• The Oak - Massive life regeneration.
• The Anticipation - Intimidate enemies on block.
• Kingmaker - Hugely beneficial aura that grants increased item rarity, Culling Strike, Critical Strike Multiplier and Fortify (note: with a very short range of 30 units).
• Sign of the Sin Eater - Takes Elemental Ailments instead of you and other Minions. In order to survive being shocked or ignited, the Animate Guardian should be sufficiently tanky.
• Oro's Sacrifice - In combination with Chains of Command
• An Influenced weapon with a chance to Intimidate, Unnerver, or inflict Exposure on hit.

Also remember that your Animate Guardian can benefit from Enchantments on Boots and Corruptions.

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