Cold ANIMATE WEAPON Summoner | League-Start & Leveling Guide

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Sigrosa wrote:

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enasniddg77 wrote:

I'm fine with self casting AW but I don't feel like generating blades.

I think this is a problem not addressed fully in what I have read so far with self cast is I am not sure they get enough cast speed and still go for many utility spells to apply curses and exposure etc.

The "cast triggered spells on using a skill" craft seems like a very, very easy solution.

Almost too easy in fact, I think there's a possibility it gets nerfed. On the official trade site I already see the search tool saying "#% chance to Trigger a Socketed Spell when you Use a Skill" (implying the chance might be nerfed to less than 100%).

The ease of using that craft does make other methods, like complicated Kitava's Thirst / Scold's Bridle setups, seem silly.

If cast speed becomes a really big barrier, I think we can use Haste aura as most SRS builds do. It would be a dip in DPS, and take a few more aura nodes, but not a big deal really.

EDIT:

With reveal of Spellslinger support, possibly new easiest setup -

Poet's Pen - Bladefall; Spellslinger - Animate Weapon.

Reserves a lot of mana so the question becomes whether or not the convenience is worth a lot of lost DPS.

So that spellslinger support seems good, especially if the flat added damage works for the animated weapons. Do a fully linked animated weapon and a bladefall with 0-2 additional supports depending on what your reservation situation looks like and call it a day, way better than the jank automation we had before.

From the looks of it, gems levels are extremely important for AW generated via those knives skill. Those +1 to gems, fortify (or double damage) & +2 to support gems 2-handers would probably be extremely OPOP. Too bad cant use wands for spellslinger though.

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solidghost wrote:

From the looks of it, gems levels are extremely important for AW generated via those knives skill.

We don't know. Current situation, gem levels suck hard for AW. It will probably be better next patch, but to what extend? We don't know.

Edit: I wonder if Mother Embrace + lion's roar can't be a good possibility. It will depend on the duration of AW (if it's 10s base duration, it's shit, if they keep the current base duration, it may be extremely good), but it's a 25% more damage on a belt (with decent life roll) + flask slot.

Bex stated on twitter that there is not enough balance changes to warrant a manifesto, no AW changes then, maybe?

I have never played a minion build before, and although I was thinking of a slightly more defensive tree I am curious about this:

If you put Fortify support on the animate weapons, They'd get the damage reduction buff and the More+increased damage done right?. Even if its not as high potential dps I might do that if it works

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RinoaDH88 wrote:

I have never played a minion build before, and although I was thinking of a slightly more defensive tree I am curious about this:

If you put Fortify support on the animate weapons, They'd get the damage reduction buff and the More+increased damage done right?. Even if its not as high potential dps I might do that if it works

Yes, fortify works. It's a pretty good damage support for phys minions, outclassed a bit for elemental, but it does keep them alive better.

Wouldn't using a 6L staff with the "supported by cast while channeling" mod also work for automating Animate Weapon while only giving up 1 socket?

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Shiek200 wrote:

Wouldn't using a 6L staff with the "supported by cast while channeling" mod also work for automating Animate Weapon while only giving up 1 socket?

If using a 6l staff with cast while channeling, you will lose quite a lot of dps compared to someone using a staff with those +1 to gems, fortify and +2 to support gems.

Have you considereded going Scion fully since the new league introduces all these juicy new jewels that grant some really nice stuff to the builds and having ascendant will mean quite a bit with the extra skill points you get.

Also does chaos damage option seem viable for scaling the damage via united in dream? Since lesser poison adds a lot of flat chaos damage as well as awakened added chaos damage. On top of this it helps keeping weapons alive due to 5% leech against poison enemies. We can also add supercorrupted triad grip as well to add a lot of flat damage from animate weapon gem, although we don't need it since phys damage can poison too but would be benefitial since it will be easier to strip chaos ress rather than armor of bosses.

So basically stack a lot of flat chaos damage to exceed the flat damage threshold we have with animate weapon rework and then use curses and wither totems to further reduce chaos ress of mobs and scale the hit of weapons.

I am also not sure if building around pure poison would be viable since I am not sure how poison dot scales with minions - regardless something to think about.