Cold ANIMATE WEAPON Summoner | League-Start & Leveling Guide

-You won't regen 1500 ES/s from spirit offering. At best, it will be like 330 ES/s (counting the 1,67 cast/s).
-Kingmaker will be extremely expensive for a quite squishy minion. It's great on PoB, but not very reliable.

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Keyen wrote:

-You won't regen 1500 ES/s from spirit offering. At best, it will be like 330 ES/s (counting the 1,67 cast/s).
-Kingmaker will be extremely expensive for a quite squishy minion. It's great on PoB, but not very reliable.

If you look at how much es chayula gives, it's about 1000es, which is 20% of maximum Life converted to maximum ES. Spirit Offering gives the same from 5 desecrate corpses. Therefore, it's 1000 * .75 * 1.67 ~ 1.5k. Normal necros using spirit offering utilize hybrid setups with large lifepools, but this build just focuses on es, bringing that amount up.

I've used almost the same AG/spectre setup for my zombie baron summoner last league. This animate guardian has the same amount of life and mitigation (due to the specific nodes on the tree and empower, as well as it being socketed in vertex). The AG's life barely budged except to obvious things like phoenix.

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Fire309 wrote:

https://pastebin.com/GvYdHWFL

I think as a low life build it looks fine, no serious criticisms. Pathing out of the witch you probably want stat points rather than the awful ES nodes right there at the start (they're remarkably bad). That saves a few points.

I don't understand the benefit of Poet's Pen as opposed to crafting "trigger on skill use" onto a wand that boosts damage? Using an attack skill costs a gem socket and requires you to stand still while using it, which is bad.

At a more big picture level, I'm not sure that low life is worth it. The only DPS benefit is being able to run extra auras, but the tradeoff in gearing is significant as you have to wear a lot of stuff that's good for casters and not minions.

I use established SRS builds as a model for this one, and the fact that those basically never go low life I think is evidence of something. However, we obviously don't know for sure yet, so I might be wrong!

Hi ang GJ on this very detailed guide.

Would you consider using a Devouring Diadem and go EB/MoM?

This way we could use more juicy auras linked with generosity and have a decent EHP pool with low investment.

Thoughts about this?

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dexxx69 wrote:

Hi ang GJ on this very detailed guide.

Would you consider using a Devouring Diadem and go EB/MoM?

This way we could use more juicy auras linked with generosity and have a decent EHP pool with low investment.

Thoughts about this?

That's a very good point actually.

I've played SRS with Devouring Diadem before and it's very convenient. Can add Haste aura easily in addition to Skitterbots and Anger-Generosity (not going to have space for Skitterbots-Bonechill for cold setup, sadly).

The cost is giving up extra potential minion damage/minion life support from the helmet, losing potential life roll/resists, and standard downsides of EB/MoM where big hits and DoTs can leave you unable to cast.

But, it's definitely worth considering! If mana costs end up being a huge pain to sustain, it may be even more attractive. I'll include it in the guide.

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Fire309 wrote:

https://pastebin.com/GvYdHWFL

I think as a low life build it looks fine, no serious criticisms. Pathing out of the witch you probably want stat points rather than the awful ES nodes right there at the start (they're remarkably bad). That saves a few points.

I don't understand the benefit of Poet's Pen as opposed to crafting "trigger on skill use" onto a wand that boosts damage? Using an attack skill costs a gem socket and requires you to stand still while using it, which is bad.

At a more big picture level, I'm not sure that low life is worth it. The only DPS benefit is being able to run extra auras, but the tradeoff in gearing is significant as you have to wear a lot of stuff that's good for casters and not minions.

I use established SRS builds as a model for this one, and the fact that those basically never go low life I think is evidence of something. However, we obviously don't know for sure yet, so I might be wrong!

If I was running a life or MoM build I'd use a rare convoking wand, but since I want to repeatedly cast spirit offering Poets Pen is better for this specific build.

The only stuff you'd wear in a life build that benefits minions is a convoking wand and a bone helmet. Convoking Wands provide a 10-15% dps boost, and Bone Helmets a bit less than that. Low Life provides a bit higher EHP pool (8.5k), Anger + Wrath + Skitterbots and arctic armour, and a bit higher damage (I think). The build could fit in a haste instead of AA if I had the sockets and took more %mana reserved nodes on tree.

Devouring Diadem EB/MoM would be my other choice to fit in the auras. I really think both Wrath and Anger are necessary, their damage bonuses are too large. EE lowers both fire/light resists anyway.

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Fire309 wrote:

https://pastebin.com/GvYdHWFL
If I was running a life or MoM build I'd use a rare convoking wand, but since I want to repeatedly cast spirit offering Poets Pen is better for this specific build.

The only stuff you'd wear in a life build that benefits minions is a convoking wand and a bone helmet. Convoking Wands provide a 10-15% dps boost, and Bone Helmets a bit less than that. Low Life provides a bit higher EHP pool (8.5k), Anger + Wrath + Skitterbots and arctic armour, and a bit higher damage (I think). The build could fit in a haste instead of AA if I had the sockets and took more %mana reserved nodes on tree.

Devouring Diadem EB/MoM would be my other choice to fit in the auras. I really think both Wrath and Anger are necessary, their damage bonuses are too large. EE lowers both fire/light resists anyway.

You probably do get slightly better DPS out of low life - Wrath is good. However, being able to use something like Skin of the Loyal instead of Shav's, a minion boosting helm and wand... the DPS difference is not going to be dramatic.

Most importantly, Flesh Offering is a make-or-break skill for playing minions with a duration on them. I think it's key to making the build feel good with faster cast and move speed. I'm just not willing to give that up to use Spirit Offering - it's too essential.

I think a low-life build could go a very different direction, with a mana-stacking Guardian style, and that could make sense.

Really happy to see you all talking about exactly what I've been thinking about. EB MoM Guardian, with devouring diadem :P
Well not guardian, but hierophant XD

I was really thinking soulwrest has good potential with it. My gem links and some other things are entirely not figured out but here's what my tree looks like so far. Also any ideas on new spectres that might further buff animated weapons/phantasms instead of doing damage directly?

I like the idea of scaling additional phys with soulwrest, carrion golem but it is hard to make it comparable to necromancer.

https://pastebin.com/kjHZMGG3

Sidenote in PoB how are you correctly making EE show up in the resistance multipliers? I found a way around by simply putting -50 of target resistance but I see other PoB the target hit by checkmarks seem to add it automatically.

edit: I really want phantasms to scale decently because it would be cool getting free phantasms while you trigger bladefall/curse/exposure/offering and then go back to summoning blades but I don't think they will scale even with supports in soulwrest

I think the best bet is going to be guardian or necro but playing around with hierophant was interesting to me at least.

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Sigrosa wrote:

Sidenote in PoB how are you correctly making EE show up in the resistance multipliers?

You must have EE allocated on the build for the related options to show up.

Appreciate all the legwork you did on the leveling section.

One other bit of leveling DPS is you can link Infernal Legion to Skitterbots.