Cold ANIMATE WEAPON Summoner | League-Start & Leveling Guide

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Lejvingdude wrote:

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Mecielle wrote:

I edited my comment. He does intent it as a league starter. The gear makes up for the missing life and damage from the unspent passives we might keep for cluster jewels or spend on stuff like Heart of the Warrior. The ghastly jewels and damage on rings try to make up for the fact that the CIP's are not working in PoB yet. Of course +6 levels of AW will actually be a lot more damage than the jewels and rings can simulate.

Alright, fair enough. I didn't mean to attack you personally though. If they are compensations usually they have names to indicate it, or at least "New item". Not "Grim oculus" or "Foe Veil, Bone helmet", that's what threw me off. The PoB was seen from me out of context, and I saw it at face value. I still think that helmet is ridiculous though, and I don't think that's a compensation for anything. My bad.

No problem, I might have been a bit hard in my reply too, sorry.

On the topic of the helmet, it does nothing. He threw that in to show what to aim for if you decide to go for clear speed spectres instead of charge generation spectres. If you don't go for damage spectres, a normal -% phys helmet is the goal, with no gem supports or anything.

I edited my comment above again after you quoted (bad habit). Look at it this way: If we end up with only 30% of the damage the PoB shows at league start with really bad gear, then factor in the Cold iron Points working, and giving us +max number of AWs, we would still have 5-6m Shaper DPS.

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SparkleMotion wrote:

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AndyLovesHisBge wrote:

Excuse me but that PoB is one of the most ridiculous shit I ever saw. 8 ghastly jewels, all 4 rows? Helmet with enchant, +3 to gems, reduced mana reserve, nearby enemies take inc phys dmg, aspect of the spider, and minion life socket, AND life? That's a mirror + mirror fee, especially with nerfed fossils. Multimodded two-toned boots with ridiculous life. Rings+amulet with 35% minion damage on each. Insane stygian belt. 21/23 animate guardian. Even for nolifers this is extremely late game and not achievable by most players in a full league.

Take off all of the gear. Leave the gloves on to fix the accuracy issue since accuracy doesn't scale because we leave the gem at level 1. You're at 500k sDPS with a 20/20 AW.

Now. Add in the +6 from CIP and +2 from Necro it'll probably be significantly higher.

Yea, 500k would leave us at 7m Shaper DPS at AW 20, +8 from CIP and Necro giving us more damage AND more max number of AWs and 10m Shaper DPS is realistic while basically naked and only holding 2 daggers :D

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Mecielle wrote:

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AndyLovesHisBge wrote:

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Mecielle wrote:

I think he already counted the reduced mana cost. At least I end up at around 60 mana cost for my phys version with the new base of 12.

can you post your phy POB link?

Here you go: https://pastebin.com/BYAxBG4s

It is based on Ghazzy's PoB. As usual, keep in mind its all still subject to change. The mana related nodes and especially the 6 points used to get "Potency of Will" might end up being used for something else.

Since the skill got changed so much and I never played AW before, this will be a "learning by doing" build for me, just using that tree as a baseline :D

One question i still have is, how do you clear stuff? You don't use melee splash, and since you use frenzy charges on minions, you use the buff apes spectres, so also no clear there.

This leaves is with no kind of splashing/exploding enemies, are we just hoping that AW Ai is smart enough for each AW to target a different enemy in a pack?

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FelFelFel wrote:

One question i still have is, how do you clear stuff? You don't use melee splash, and since you use frenzy charges on minions, you use the buff apes spectres, so also no clear there.

This leaves is with no kind of splashing/exploding enemies, are we just hoping that AW Ai is smart enough for each AW to target a different enemy in a pack?

The PoB has Melee Splash and Feeding Frenzy in the AW setup, inactive of course, but it should imply that will be the clearing setup. It is just common to set the PoB up for single target.

Melee Phys to Melee Splash is a no-brainer, that will always happen. Minion Damage to Feeding Frenzy is more of a "wait and see" thing right now. The AW AI might be good enough on its own, but maybe it will need the aggressive AI from Feeding Frenzy to really pop off.

And from what we have seen of the damage potential, for normal map bosses, even in high tier red maps, we should be able to just leave the clearing setup in. And just go single target setup for bigger bosses like Guardians, Conquerors and so on.

Other summoners caring about whatever fleshy or eldritch monster, Meanwhile Animate Weapon users care about one thing.

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FelFelFel wrote:

This leaves is with no kind of splashing/exploding enemies, are we just hoping that AW Ai is smart enough for each AW to target a different enemy in a pack?

I'm going off of ghazzys pob. I plan on swapping in melee splash during mapping. And subbing it out during harder bosses.

I have no experience whatsoever with Animate Weapon so im asking more knowledgeable people here,what do you think is going to be better for league starting Animate Weapon and for Chains of Command later,Scion or Witch?

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VenturaD wrote:

I have no experience whatsoever with Animate Weapon so im asking more knowledgeable people here,what do you think is going to be better for league starting Animate Weapon and for Chains of Command later,Scion or Witch?

If you want to play Chains of Command you need to be Scion for the pathfinder flask boosts.

I think the reduced minion count is a pretty big indirect nerf to Chains of Command.

If you want to summon animate weapons and have higher damage, do it as a witch.

Just posted: leveling guide, for those who haven't played a minion build through the early game before. Link in the Videos section.

How do we find the "Greater than 20" level stats for AW?

Is that something that is data mined or does GGG eventually provide it?

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VenturaD wrote:

I have no experience whatsoever with Animate Weapon so im asking more knowledgeable people here,what do you think is going to be better for league starting Animate Weapon and for Chains of Command later,Scion or Witch?

If you want to play Chains of Command you need to be Scion for the pathfinder flask boosts.

I think the reduced minion count is a pretty big indirect nerf to Chains of Command.

If you want to summon animate weapons and have higher damage, do it as a witch.

I've heard that chains of command actually had a separate weapon count from the gem, so you could now actually use both the generated weapons and self cast which could be an overall buff to the build potentially.

But either way I think CoC version will be more expensive. And maybe much higher endgame DPS even if they aren't separate minion counters.

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AndyLovesHisBge wrote:

How do we find the "Greater than 20" level stats for AW?

Is that something that is data mined or does GGG eventually provide it?

Nope, most posts so far have been assuming information based on how other gems scale. That's why the whole discussion about gem leveling with cold iron point THINKS it will scale higher damage because we might get even more weapons than 14 above gem level 20.