Animate Weapon

Not sure on the reason for the difference in item level limitations between Animate Guardian versus this skill. Even playing as sedately as I do, every now and then I'll drop a few levels beneath the area and then suddenly certain weapons "inexplicably" don't animate.
What about paying a straight up damage penalty instead for animating higher weapons? (ilimit/ilevel or something.) I think it would be more clear than scaling item levels.

Incorporated Animate Weapon into my latest summoner, works quite well!

Duration or survivability seem no issue. You do need some other summon to get you to the first three or so weapons but from then on the ball grows sustaining about 8-12 weapons using the Scion duration nodes and Inc. Duration support.
I've used Perandus Blazon for the stats and quality a while, but noticed no shortage when i removed it. I even tend to skip some of the lower level onehanders when the ball is rolling.

Damage is quite good using just Melee Splash as a support and Wrath/Anger/Haste as auras. Movement speed is an issue, but makes Minion Speed a good choice as a 4th link (and/or Flesh Offering). Added Chaos, Lightning or Cold are great too if you have the space.

Animating the weapons is quite doable while playing as a summoner; you want some things to spam in the battle anyway, and after your curses and offerings you have plenty of time to animate a weapon or two while your summons finish up a pack. Animating another weapon adds more damage in my build than summoning another Raging Spirit or other spam-skill does, so seems worth the time.
Animating Weapons does take away from your concentration on the fight, so if you focus highly on monitoring your spectre health it has a negative impact.

The level requirement has only been a minor issue while leveling the character. When you start to come across unusable items it is time to farm a bit, but often you will want to do so around that time anyway. That is because (1) you are nearing not being able to use the items yourself as well; (2) you are heading towards getting xp penalties; (3) Damage will be falling off on the lower ones that you cán animate as well; (4) Summoners want a lot of skill points as early as possible, so there is natural incentive to overlevel areas before you can tackle the next boss. (5) There are lots of combinations to test using summoning skills, so farming for xp in a somewhat constant environment is a more interesting activity compared to other builds.
If i remember correctly i came across a few unusable items around Brutus or Piety, i think 3 out of the 6 times you meet them. I took those opportunities to test out how my spectres were faring or to decide between A. Chaos and M. Speed by doing a level or two of Ledge or Docks.

I agree with the post above, this is a good spell mainly after level 16 when you can use almost all weapons you find. I´m using as a 4 kind of summon, first spectres, second zombies and third skeletons. So I´m only linking with minion damage and reduced mana, then the cost of mana is equivalent to 2 sec of my high mana regen.
It´s funny to see 6 or 8 flying weapons attacking at the same time besides the other summons.

not trying to whine about my lack of attention when using this skill, but i think some factors would make animated weapon more interesting to use when it comes to animating weapons you'd rather pick up. i'm sure every now and then some wayward animator accidentally slipped a key, or moved the mouse, or were just plain stupid (like in my case) to animate a chromatic/5l/6s/6l. it is rather frustrating when this happens and makes you feel like a massive idiot. to soothe the guilt from this incident it would be nice if the following bonuses were added:

chromatic weapon animated - gets +flat additional elemental damage
x-slot weapon animated - the more slots a weapon has upon animation, the stronger % damage bonus it has. scale it at 0% addl dmg at 1-slot to 5% at 4-slot, but 50% at 5-slot and 150% at 6-slot.
x-link weapon animated - the more links a weapon has upon animation, the longer it lasts. scale it from 0% addl duration at 0 to 4-link, then 100% at 5-link and 300% at 6-link.

of course these are just placeholder values and mods and should be considered as such. but it would be nice to have some feature like this to make the occasional misplay less painful

I’ve used this skill and read the feedbacks here.

1) My general opinion

I agree with drawbacks mentioned here.
And also I think this skill should remain very specific, very different from the other minions, and keep the suicidal far fetching AI.

Also I have no problem with such an imperfect skill. That can be a normal part of the game mechanics: trained players know they won’t go into that a lot, new players discover something and try to get the best of it.
At the beginning of the campaign you don’t have much gems, you can use this skill to help a bit. Then, later, a higher level player will find some circumstances where the animated weapons could be a nice skill to mess again with, or a gimmick they fancy to show. This kind of imperfect side skill is nice and welcomed.

2) However, here is the mix of suggestions I endorse to improve this skill...
Suggested mechanic:

When the weapon get hit or after timeout or when the player leave the zone, then the weapon “drops” with a probability to vanish or not. We can say that currently this is the way it works, with a 100% vanishing probability.
I suggest that gem improvement raise the probability that the weapon is normally dropped, so the weapon can be recasted or picked up. I feel that a level 5 or 7 gem should give a 10-20% chance of normal drop after discard, players would easily reach 90% by the end of act III. Having 90-95% as a max value means that a weapon can be casted 10-20 times at most on average, so you won’t build a definite consistent set of weapons to carry along.

This lower vanishing probability won’t address all the imperfections of the skill, but I repeat I’m fine with that, this slight improvement won’t fundamentally change that, but the fun with the skill will last longer.

Various rules can be thought of regarding the quality decay, unidentified weapons castability, animation lifetime, cast radius as suggested before. Also castability highlight for weapons on ground and/or auto select could be think of. I think only melee weapon should be animated.

The skill should be described accurately to avoid deception when the gem is chosen as a reward by new players.

3) Suggestions I won’t advocate
animating range weapon, copy (instead of levitate) a dropped or inventory weapon, etc.


4) Conclusion
This slight and easy to code modification would be fine to me: increase “normal drop” probability upon animation end.

Just as there exist a portal skill, we need a big AOE wisdom skill, to get a fast and massive ID (everything on screen? the X items closer to you? will this skill also open the chests?). To avoid goldfarmers you might want to add a cooldown also.

Also this skill has very bad synergy with trigger gems, due the 6 sockets weapons that might be converted. You can either put a limit on this when it's used along a trigger gem, make it level related, let us configure it somehow, or... the option I like more:

Don't make the 6 sockets white weapons disappear after use (maybe you can make them unable to summon again though). This could be applied to ID rares (and uniques).

It would be really nice if this skill worked without the identify requirement and instead just didn't provide the unidentified bonuses. Blue weapons are basically off the table because of how long it takes to pick up and identify them.

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dsmelser wrote:

It would be really nice if this skill worked without the identify requirement and instead just didn't provide the unidentified bonuses. Blue weapons are basically off the table because of how long it takes to pick up and identify them.

Nope as soon as the items drop the mods of said item are known to the game (you just cant see them), you should be able to animate unid weapons and they should get whatever stats they were going to have.

Does spell Totem + Animated Weapons works ?

Edit : Nvm, I tested it. It works.

ggg spreadsheet with minion data now covers also animated weapon. you can find it in the raise zombie thread. good read. health values of animated weapons surprised me A LOT