Using Animate Guardian (AG) of Smithing and Elemental Relic to deal damage... but how? By stacking a bunch of Minion Life, Aura Effect, and Fire Resistance

Scaling Minion Life and Fire Resistance

We'll be using the Formless Inferno (Helmet), which scales our minion’s life based on their fire resistance:

• Innate - 40%
• Two Bone Rings - 90%
• Passive Tree - 23%

From Auras:

• Purity of Elements - 39%
• Purity of Fire - 51%

Since we're playing as a Paladin, focusing on Aura Effect and Link Skills, these auras will be greatly amplified:

1. Passive Tree - 16%
2. Hand of Phrecia (Gloves) - 40%
3. Small Ascendancy Node - 20%
4. Absolution (Ascendancy Node) - 40%
5. Rare Chest (Eldritch Mod) - 10%

From Flasks

With Field Medicine (Ascendancy Node), we can stack even more Fire Resistance when using flasks, which also applies to our linked target:

1. Ruby Flask - 40%
2. Bismuth Flask - 35%
3. Flask Affixes - 17%

Converting Fire Resistance into Damage

Now that we have stacked a ton of Fire Resistance, it’s time to make our AG deal damage by turning it into an armor stacking:

1. Equipping Formless Flame (Helmet), which increases armor based on Fire Resistance.
2. Using 2x Replica Dreamfeather (Sword), which grants 2% increased attack damage per 450 armor (1% per sword)
3. We use Flame Link for extra fire damage to AG based on our maximum life.
4. Pyroclast Mine of Sabotage skill for extra Flat damage when near the enemies (For rare/bosses) and combined with a bunch of aura effect + March of the Legion (Boots) for extra level.

This build was inspired by this post from a few months ago. I also made a paint build post for this concept, and thanks to the top comment we see the problem.. 

The Elemental Relic Problem... and Solution

You see our AG is decently tanky now and dealing some DPS, but there’s a problem—the Elemental Valiance (Ascendancy Node) summons an Elemental Relic that provides an Elemental DPS aura.

Why is this a problem?

Because Link Skills are bad for non-permanent minions—they only last 8-20 seconds, and if you accidentally link again, you might connect to the Relic instead. Since relics explode upon death, you could die within 4-7 seconds when their timer runs out.

So do we remove that ascendancy node? Nope! That wouldn’t be fun.

Instead, we turn the relic explosions into a source of damage. Since we’ve stacked so much Minion Life through Fire Resistance, we take advantage of the Elemental Relic’s explosion, which deals 100% of their max life as damage. 

How to Forcefully Explode Elemental Relics

We use:

1. Minion Instability keystone - causes minions to explode at low life, dealing 33% of their max life as Fire Damage.
2. Tukohama’s Fortress (Shield) + Necromantic Aegis keystone- makes our minions wield this shield instead of us.

The key here is Blood Magic, which reserves life instead of mana for auras. When relics cast their auras, they automatically reserve 50% of their life, making them low life and instantly explode upon being summoned.

Now, every time our AG hits a rare/unique enemies, it has a chance to summon a relic (thankfully, relics appear at the location of the one who triggers). The relic then explodes, dealing a total of 133% of minion life as elemental damage (33% as fire damage and 100% as the element of that relic).

We no longer have to worry about manually linking to our AG—though sometimes, if I spam the link skill, I still accidentally connect to a relic and instantly die... (but you can see the relic icon—just don’t press the link skill if you see them.) lol.

Defensive Layers

1. Determination aura - gives a lot of armor.

2. Purity of Element aura - gives immunity to elemental ailments.

3. Flask Effects - with Field Medicine, flasks have 40% increased effect.

4. Tides of Time (Belt) - for flask uptime and grants 25% increased effect.

5. The Traitor keystone - for another flask uptime

6. Spell Suppression - currently at 77% with Lucky Mastery (can go higher with tree adjustments and tatoos).

7. Melding of the Flesh jewel - for the additional max elemental resistances, since we already have a lot of Max Fire Resistance.

8. Watchstone jewel - +chaos resist when affected by purity of elements and additonal physical reduction

Some few considerations:

• TBH, the defense doesn't exist yet, but I’m considering going full Banner mode to get some decent block chance once I snag some Inspirational Forbidden Flesh/Flame jewels. Also, I'm planning to use Light of Meaning for additional chaos resistance.
• I might change my AG gem setup to replace feeding frenzy and use meat shield instead for extra tankyness and proper control of Guardian's AI, and need more attack speed for my AG to proc more relic explodes with bosses. my bone rings doesn't have any minions attack speed yet.
• some proper convoking wand with a total of +2 level for minions(+1 spell) and good minion damage.
• I'll try to use Cloak of Flame (Chest) instead since i have a decent amount of armor and has a good max fire resistance.

WARNING: Just a Silly Build

This isn't a serious build yet since it's too squishy—just another silly variation of a minion Paladin build.

My attempt at mapping: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3uLd0L_Xxs
I even died for some reason, probably because I was still target linked to that stupid relic. LMAO

Here's my initial plan in PoB: https://pobb.in/Bq9KIn__AtwP

That’s it for now! Hopefully someday GGG buffed the QOL of link skills for minions 😊