Ancient Guardian anyone?

[PhoeniX Skye]

Hey team,

Anyone tried using Ancient Guardian in Inferno? I was looking through all the Wizard runes to get some new ideas for a build (there doesn't seem to be much variation unless you've got amazing gear), when the Ancient Gudardian rune for Familiar caught my eye:

"Summon a protective Familiar. When you are below 35% Life the Familiar will fully absorb damage from 1 attack every 6 seconds."

Obviously the limitation of below 35% life makes this less than OP, but might work well with FA (after two straight hits you're at 30%). Couple with some life regen and this will most likely save your life quite often (although that hit probably won't trigger Illusionist). I'm using Blizz/Hydra with FA, Duplicates, Fracture, and Force Weapon right now, and will probably try to swap this in for Duplicates.

It would be nice if that 20% familiar damage comes into play as well, but from what I know it only fires when you're firing shots... which I'm not sure how it would work with Blizz/Hydra.

I'll give this a try in Act2 (at Kulle now) later tonight if I have time... only theorycrafting now as I'm at work. Also I'm going to try out Arcane Mines for damage and snare to replace Blizz, not sure how that'll go.

[magicrectangle]

I've used it for specific fights, but not in a regular build. I used it when I did azmodan on inferno, to let me tolerate one extra tic of dark power, giving me an extra half second to get out of it when he spawned it right on me. Dark power tics fast but not hard enough to trigger illusionist, so it gave me a bit of trouble. I suppose another solution would have just been to lower my HP until dark power triggered illusionist, but ancient guardian worked and didn't require a gear swap.

There's no way I'd drop duplicates for ancient guardian in a regular build. I use heck out of duplicates (plus wormhole, with illusionist). I drop duplicates to buy me kite distance, I drop them to absorb ranged attacks, or I drop them to tank trash mobs so I don't have to kite. I love duplicates. Add to that the fact that the most difficult elite packs are generally reflect damage ones, meaning that your ancient guardian absorb every 6 seconds will most likely be wasted on some 250 damage venom hydra reflect or something.

[Deced]

Very useful for specific fights indeed. Only way I managed to beat Inferno Rakanoth.

[magicrectangle]

Very useful for specific fights indeed. Only way I managed to beat Inferno Rakanoth.

How is it helpful there? It isn't going to absorb the teleport strike unless you manage to get your hp low beforehand, which seems awkward.

I did that fight in a group with 2 demon hunters, so I didn't have to worry about it, I just stood further away from him than the DHs, and let them smoke screen the teleport strike. I'd be interested in hearing what your solo strategy was.

[Deced]

This isn't my strategy, someone showed it to me. The original poster of it goes by Wups on the battle.net forums I believe.

Basically you get to the checkpoint, and remove all life regen gear. Take off all your vit gear, exit game, Resume game, and put back on your vit gear. You should then be below 35% HP and forcibly trigger Ancient Guardian.

Storm Armor - Scramble and Venom Hydra are the only important things to use. Glass Cannon and Magic Weapon obviously help.

Fight starts, he teleports and attempts to one shot you, Ancient Guardian absorbs it, you have enough time to drop a Venom Hydra and run the hell away to the other side of the arena. After the teleport hit, he'll attempt to swing at you, then cast his shurikens, but with Scramble, it's crazy easy to outrun both. You can alternatively Wormhole Teleport away, but it's not always up, so be sure to be ready to run.

Basically he'll just sit there eating Hydra damage for awhile. Eventually he'll move toward the middle of the arena, stop, then move a little again (watch on the minimap). This stutter step will telegraph him about to teleport to you. Drop the hydra, run away. Rinse and repeat. So long as you stay far away from him, he'll never attempt to summon his minions. Ancient Guardian will always be up in time to eat the teleport move, and as long as you're paying attention, it's pathetically easy to outrun his melee swing and ranged moves.

[magicrectangle]

lol super cheesy... I'll have to try it

[mickptd]

Basically you get to the checkpoint, and remove all life regen gear. Take off all your vit gear, exit game, Resume game, and put back on your vit gear. You should then be below 35% HP and forcibly trigger Ancient Guardian.

Why do you need to leave the game? Just make sure you dont have life regen, take off vitality items to get below 35%, put them back and don't receive more than 1 hit in 6 secs/

[Deced]

lol super cheesy... I'll have to try it

Super cheesy is pretty much the first thing I thought when I saw the strategy, wholeheartedly agree.

Then again, "super cheesy" also seems to perfectly describe a fight where my Wizard with stacked resists and armor gets one shot through Force Armor in the opening second of the fight. So whatever. Quid pro quo.

Why do you need to leave the game? Just make sure you dont have life regen, take off vitality items to get below 35%, put them back and don't receive more than 1 hit in 6 secs/

For whatever reason, I thought if you took off vit gear you're already wearing, and put it back on, it gives you back current and max HP at the same time. I just fiddled with it again, and it seems I'm mistaken. I stand corrected, no clue why I thought that.

[magicrectangle]

Then again, "super cheesy" also seems to perfectly describe a fight where my Wizard with stacked resists and armor gets one shot through Force Armor in the opening second of the fight. So whatever. Quid pro quo.

With my survival gear I was actually able to take his teleport strike and not die (yay force armor). That gear has 70k hp, 65% armor mitigation, 50% resist mitigation. The hit left me pretty low though, so the tongue fsckers always got me after when I was soloing. It was much easier in a group.

[konfeta]

Yeah, Rakkanoth is about the only place where I felt compelled to use this. Izual's charge can at least be prevented. Rakkanoth's teleport can only be prevented with with a high attack speed, high crit CM build and use of Frost Nova/Impactful Wave (i.e. stunlock him, which I tried, but I simply didn't have enough gear to achieve this reliably - lowest I got him is 10-15% HP before he either spawned rippers or got a teleport off).