Cold ANIMATE WEAPON Summoner | League-Start & Leveling Guide

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ThanatoZGaming wrote:

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MikeDCold wrote:

How does unholy might work with cold based triad grips? I'm kind of tied to necromancer so all I can go for is that or bone barrier. It looks like this may not be viable at all due to the frenzy and power charge changes. I'll see in a few days I guess.

Take Bone Barrier instead, the extra minion HP is helpful and the buff is good to put on left-click.

The new minion gear helps offset the loss from charges. Get some good minion rings with damage and it should still clear fine.

Bone barrier passives do look very nice for a defensive build but all I would get out of it is the 20% regen since I run MS. The minion life would offset the loss from the nerf though. As for gear, unfortunately I'm juggling so much on my rings and shield that I can't replace them. Once the update hits on xbox and if the league continues to be awful I'll have time to try to juggle it all.

It's funny, I've played league start for two leagues. Expedition and now this. And they've decided to hit my standard build twice and make it so league is completely unenjoyable.

I started this game because I wanted some D2(ish) minion play and fell in love with your build. I even got this to level 100 almost completely solo. I appreciate you making this guide. Hopefully it's not the end for this build. I suppose there is always chaos.

Very nice to hear that the build has been a success for you! :)

Maybe I'll update the guide in the future to account for some of the nerfs, chaos version does look good, but that content already exists and I don't want to re-do what other build creators have already made...

I know a lot of people have had fun with this version of Animate Weapon, I've played it a bunch of leagues myself, so I'm sure there's some kind of future for it.

So I'm running Ziz's version of this (posted on his youtube channel) and I was wondering if anyone else has had trouble with the number of skills vs available buttons. I just got up to level 92 and while I think I need some experience playing it, it's been pretty significant damage (taking down a yellow exarch invitation decently quickly, POB says 4.7m dps though I don't know that I believe it).

Buttons:
Animate Weapon 6L
Convocation
Flame Dash
Despair
Withering Step
Malevolence (with Divine Blessing)
Bone Armour
Bone Offering
CTRL Q-T:
Raise Zombie
Envy
Determination
Defiance Banner
Tempest Shield

I'm running Bladefall+Unleash on a weapon swap since I'm just out of slots, I *can* do Consecrate on swap and just get a quick Bone Offering off, but it ends up deleting the corpses when it switches back.

Overall, QOL seems a bit rough because of this though I'm not sure if maybe I shouldn't be trying to run all billion of these lol. Mapping speed is fine, I'm hoping this can be a strong bosser, though I know I need to get a lot more minion life too to make that be more viable. Curious if anyone else is this far in and happy to chat about it too. Thank you!

Edit: Just realized you don't need to keep auras on the keybinds to have them stay on :facepalm:

I'm wondering if Animate Weapon w/ minion instability would work in any way in 3.19/3.20? Any thoughts?

Something like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c79jqUbhtaw

I helped hone and offer some alternate versions of this build and plan on doing it again this league with the new Vaal Animate weapon. My only 'holdback' is I think they're going to make most (if not all) of the minion passives on weapons "Wand" only. I hope that's not the case, I never use wands with Cold Animate weapon for a variety of reasons.

Anyway, I'm here to let you know Cold animate weapon never really went bad, just dipped some since 3.19 -- the poison flavor took over and I personally didn't like it, so heading back to cold as long as I can enjoy the Crucible league mechanic for minions wearing a mace.

Edit: Weapon passives are random but weighted, so that's a good sign. So far the only weapon passive I've seen from the datamine is Lingering blades get + to crit -- still waiting for more info, but I'm def going to rebuild a cold animate this league. Besiudes, want to see what kind of mashup I can make a guardian with new weapon passives as well.

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Psomm wrote:

I helped hone and offer some alternate versions of this build and plan on doing it again this league with the new Vaal Animate weapon. My only 'holdback' is I think they're going to make most (if not all) of the minion passives on weapons "Wand" only. I hope that's not the case, I never use wands with Cold Animate weapon for a variety of reasons.

Anyway, I'm here to let you know Cold animate weapon never really went bad, just dipped some since 3.19 -- the poison flavor took over and I personally didn't like it, so heading back to cold as long as I can enjoy the Crucible league mechanic for minions wearing a mace.

Edit: Weapon passives are random but weighted, so that's a good sign. So far the only weapon passive I've seen from the datamine is Lingering blades get + to crit -- still waiting for more info, but I'm def going to rebuild a cold animate this league. Besiudes, want to see what kind of mashup I can make a guardian with new weapon passives as well.

I am interested in this build for this league, do you still think after all the patch notes and teasers that this will be any good?

Yes - this build should still be fine for 3.22. It didn't get any real nerfs or buffs. As a league starter it should easily carry you up to red maps.

One thing I've been looking at is the Fresh Meat support. Animate Weapon has about ~85 seconds duration with this build with no further investment so 8.5 seconds of Adrenaline/Wakened Fury for a huge damage and crit boost. And then maybe link in Unleash to make it easier to summon minions more quickly, and get some more minion crit on the passive tree. It might be good!

What would you drop from the current links for those supports then?

I'd probably load up the character into PoB once its around level 85 and then see if the new support was worth adding.

It might be that pure Physical is going to be the stronger way, dropping the Triad Grips entirely, because it has more flexible gem sockets to pick from.

Also, Guardian's Blessing - Animate Guardian seems very strong to get an extra aura, as it's unlikely to ever die when you have the "minions recover 5% of life on minion death" allocated.

I am glad that it will be possible to start with this build. I have a question about the skill tree/ascendancy, can I follow it? (leveling guide section) If nothing has changed, I'll be happy! I will carefully and patiently observe the changes and progress on this build! I simply fell in love with this one.