Cold ANIMATE WEAPON Summoner | League-Start & Leveling Guide

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IchiMorghulis wrote:

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Aloiwa wrote:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1XMGFizyQXm-zqpKg9z2Oe9sdg2ue6HiifWsnM7dBVoM/edit?usp=sharing

This is a very simplified spreadsheet comparing the dps of old AW and new AW, assuming glass shank as weapons and not even factoring in the as changes, which will further buff raw dmg on new AW,
Disclaimer: the better the weapon base dmg, the better old AW gets. However it was previously stated that AW from blade skills were glass shanks, so with the new change, apart from particular bossing scenarios, it will be very unlikely that we use another weapon type.

I may be misunderstanding you, but the only time we will be animating Glass Shanks is in the beginning of the zone and the boss fight. We will otherwise be animating weapons that drop from monsters.

Just a heads up for everyone, don't forget to make an animate weapon loot filter.

This confuses me a bit as I am unsure I understand the mechanics correctly.

If bladefall is being automatically casted every 4 seconds, won't we be much more likely to be animating those blades instead of monster weapons?

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IchiMorghulis wrote:

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Aloiwa wrote:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1XMGFizyQXm-zqpKg9z2Oe9sdg2ue6HiifWsnM7dBVoM/edit?usp=sharing

This is a very simplified spreadsheet comparing the dps of old AW and new AW, assuming glass shank as weapons and not even factoring in the as changes, which will further buff raw dmg on new AW,
Disclaimer: the better the weapon base dmg, the better old AW gets. However it was previously stated that AW from blade skills were glass shanks, so with the new change, apart from particular bossing scenarios, it will be very unlikely that we use another weapon type.

I may be misunderstanding you, but the only time we will be animating Glass Shanks is in the beginning of the zone and the boss fight. We will otherwise be animating weapons that drop from monsters.

Just a heads up for everyone, don't forget to make an animate weapon loot filter.

Not really, the added damage from BF weapons is missing from the patch note, but will be here at 99%. We will see tomorrow anyway.

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If bladefall is being automatically casted every 4 seconds, won't we be much more likely to be animating those blades instead of monster weapons?

I went back to PoB to see if something had changed. I don't see where bladefall is cast automatically every 4 seconds. Can you clarify please.

edit: found it "Weapon: Bladefall, Desecrate, Flesh Offering. (Has crafted Trigger Socketed Spells when using a Skill)" in the leveling section, the PoB had Clayshaper.

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IchiMorghulis wrote:

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If bladefall is being automatically casted every 4 seconds, won't we be much more likely to be animating those blades instead of monster weapons?

I went back to PoB to see if something had changed. I don't see where bladefall is cast automatically every 4 seconds. Can you clarify please.

Bladefall - Desecrate - Flesh Offering are suggested to go in the wand which has the affix "trigger socketed spells when skill is used"

That has a 4 second cool down. After the cool down is over, the next skill you use will start casting bladefall again.

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OmniPulse wrote:

Animate Weapons also has a physical tag now. So it should be affected by Cold Iron Point. Not sure how much this would actually benefit the skill compared to a good Minion wand, but it's something to keep in mind.

So as I understand it yes cold iron point would give the animate weapon skill gem 3 levels. But it is inherently a 3-Link item so you are sacrificing massive damage increases from 5-6 link setups. You could do a build version like someone previously mentioned where they stack gem levels using Unnatural strength. If you use empower it would be +7 to gem level giving you gem level 27.
(+3 dagger +2 ascendancy +2 empower)

But your setup is Animate weapon + empower + support.

You also cannot trigger spells using the crafted wand or new spellslinger setup because you need to attack with a wand. So you now must sort out casting Animate weapon, bladefall, exposure source, curse, offering, desecrate, movement. You may be able to automate curses and exposure together but I think you see the issue.

Then you need to take advantage of gem levels somehow and scale animate weapon damage. Let's take a look at chains of command patch notes for an idea of damage scaling above gem level 20.

Chains of command notes on damage scaling:

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The level 18 version of the skill adds 108 to 159 physical damage to the attacks of minions animated by it. This level of the skill can animate up to 13 minions.

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The level 20 version of the skill adds 126 to 184 physical damage to the attacks of minions animated by it. This level of the skill can animate up to 14 minions.

18 damage gain on minimum 25 damage gain on maximum

If we assume this (BIG ASSUMPTION) then damage range at gem level 27 is:
18*7= 126 minimum damage gain 25*7= 175 maximum damage gain
126+126= 252 and 175+184= 359
252 to 359 physical damage at gem level 27 with empower

This method is probably completely wrong because the gem might get diminishing increases to damage above level 20. The maximum of 14 minions also probably does not increase above gem level 20. The base damage number does look decent using this method but I would need someone else to say what a basic DPS number might look like on a build with minion damage modifiers etc. I think most players would simply take the couple free gem levels from empower+ascendancy and get huge quality of life improvements over 3 gem levels and losing the 6 link.

I think the entire point of adding the physical tag was to make support gem support like melee splash clearer. Also as I understand it global physical modifiers would NOT effect the minion damage such as voidheart's "5% increased global physical damage".

1) Cold iron point gem level is global
2) Your lvl calculation is false from the very beginning, as 18-25 is the damage you get from TWO levels, no one.
3) Nobody will play empower on AW, as gem level looks like even worse than before.

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Keyen wrote:

1) Cold iron point gem level is global
2) Your lvl calculation is false from the very beginning, as 18-25 is the damage you get from TWO levels, no one.
3) Nobody will play empower on AW, as gem level looks like even worse than before.

Thanks for the correction, but yeah seems not very good (empower). I think personally the impale version of animate weapon is looking great.

edit:
About an elemental build not impale obviously :)
What do you all think about aura scaling on the top end of damage? As you can see I'm very sloppy with figuring out damage so it's hard for me to evaluate that. For example I have a build that can potentially get about 100% increased aura effect.

I would be running something like hatred+precision+generosity+skitterbots
(But skitterbots does not really benefit)

But it seems to me 36% more cold damage and then scaling minion crit chance with precision and precise commander could cause minions to chill and freeze more often.

Something like Call to Slaughter, Precise Commander, Vengeful Commander jewel extensions.

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Cupkax wrote:

Are these changes correct for the updated AW?

AW Changes
Cobalt Jewel
Crafted: true
Prefix: None
Prefix: None
Suffix: None
Suffix: None
Quality: 0
Implicits: 0
Minions deal 48% more damage
// Flat phys changes
Minions deal 88 to 128 additional physical damage
// Attack speed changes
Minions have 48% reduced attack speed
Minions have 48% more attack speed

No not quite, first of all it should only be 44% reduced attack speed (old value was lower) but most importantly base damage has been changed from 276% to 100% before the more dmg mod now. I mean sure, ingame it did not work so it is a pure buff but for POB comparison you also need to add a

Minions deal 64% less damage

mod, assuming lvl 20 gem. Which is a bummer from the number point of view. Rough estimate is: 1.48*1.48*0.36 which gives a 78% of old damage numbers. For the reduced attack speed and increased base damage I just assume they will be somewhat balanced out as you typically scale both values anyway and therefore both together should not change the baseline too extremly. Unless you go pure ele and dont convert with Triad Grip, then it is another negative mod you have to consider. But for pure phys or conversion builds it should be similar depending on current animated weapon.

Now since base minion count has been changed to ~14 or even higher if it scales beyond gem level 20, then the numbers are still better then what we assumed before patch notes with 10 minions. So another *1.4 to 1.6 dmg boost and then you once again reach what was planed with old values and 10 minions. So a few million shaper dps is still not a problem. As a side node, now that they dont have inherent increased attack speed anymore they scale better with values from offering and skill tree.

In the end it seems that if you can hold max number of minions it is still a decent buff compared to old 10 minion plans. Massive nerf to old 50 minion builds but noone was able to pull that off anyway.

Edit: Or rather since ingame the 260% base did not work before the 50 minions back then only accounted to 20 PoB value minions, and the current 14 minion limit with two 1.48 more modifiers even surpasses that by far. So even if someone did a 50 minion build they should still feel a significant damage increase ingame. Huh...

Thanks for the detailed build guide!

I myself was wondering if the lower max limit of weapons makes it so that if you are summoning weapons too quickly, that you are constantly re-summoning your existing attacking ones. It this something to be cautious of with this new change? I was thinking to run it on CWChannel without bladefall so the summoning is reduced to a minumum but still with uptime of the maximum amount of weapons.

Would really like to hear everyone's opinion on this.

Thanks and happy league boys!

Wide-sweeping changes to the guide are in the works, waiting on POB update before committing to which sort of scaling will be definitely best - but right now it looks like pure cold.

Parts may still be outdated as I go through and revise based on all the 3.10 changes. Keep an eye on the the change log dates to know when this happens.

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Matarrx wrote:

Thanks for the detailed build guide!

I myself was wondering if the lower max limit of weapons makes it so that if you are summoning weapons too quickly, that you are constantly re-summoning your existing attacking ones. It this something to be cautious of with this new change? I was thinking to run it on CWChannel without bladefall so the summoning is reduced to a minumum but still with uptime of the maximum amount of weapons.

Would really like to hear everyone's opinion on this.

Thanks and happy league boys!

CWC doesn't seem worth it to me. The main reason people did that before was because AW had to target specific items on the ground - now it's fixed, you can just target an area. No need to take up two damage links for a nonexistent utility issue. Self-casting AW seems like by far the best way to me.

The only question is whether to add an Unleash support into the setup as well.