Animate Weapon

I've been playing the Taiwan Open Beta and I found that the mana cost has indeed been reduced! For example, at level 9 it is at 20 base mana cost instead of 25.

I think this skill needs some rework. Like Animate Guardian, this ability has some major problems.

- Health issues. Obviously not as much as with AG who is a permanent minion, but still, they die too quickly, at least so at lower levels.
- The issue is that the weapons aren't actually permanent. I think players would rather appreciate having 2 permanently around than the possibility of having upto 10 of them only lasting a short period of time. (something like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6At_bb1PNU)
- As per with my AG suggestion, for an agility themed ability, this lacks the neccessary minion nodes around the scion dex starting area. These should allow AW to shine without being "imbalanced."

Some ideas for specific nodes:
* Permanent Guardians - Your animate weapons are now permanent, but are limited to 2.
* Animated Weapons Stat Sharing(requires Permanent Guardians) - Your animated weapons share stats each one another, allowing for "double-dipping."
* Animate Weapon Life increase - Increase health of your animate weapons by 200%(2 nodes).
* Animated Weapon Movement and Attack Speed incrase - Your animated weapons gain 25% increased movement speed and 20% increased attack speed(2 nodes).

Idea for AW-specific unique:
* To go along with Animate Weapon: Your Animated Weapons can no longer be killed. Certainly, losing one weapon is far less of a problem than losing whole inventory of items as with the Animate Guardian, but given how they're actually much weaker than animate guardian, the tought of having to replace them constantly in the end-game, might be quite a daunting task to many. So, a unique like this should definitely enable some AW-specific builds in the lategame, and make them on par with other builds.

Hi, this skill works great when you focus on it.. (playing hybrid cold/summoner atm)

but the main issue still persists:

1) having to click directly on the item is an incredible pain in the ass. Immagine full party, 100+ items laying on the ground after the fight. Now you have to read through all the text to find the weapons and target them. When you are done, your party is already half-map away from you.. also, the range is very low, and the text is often in different location than a weapon

pls, make it work similar like raise zombie, so that it would autotarget and summon near weapons as you hold a mouse button/key

also, ability to raise unidentified wapons would be great.

ideally, autotarget whites, and mousetarget (as it is now) unidentified items

Ive read all this thread and about 50% of feedback is about this issue. You guys in GGG obviously have a different opinion. Care to share it? Or is it a mechanics issue? If the totem is able to autotarget them, why players cant?

Thanks for reading.

I noticed that other summon skills show how much life your minions have, such as Vaal Summon Skeletons. This is very helpful tactically...would it be possible to see minion life on Animate Weapon?

If it's not a hard value (scales with level), then say "X life per item level" or whatever it is.

Thanks!

As many pointed out, there are several issues with this skill:

- targeting mechanism: having to search through the vast numbeer of items on the ground to find a fitting weapon to an imate is really annoying and tends to be unnaffordable in fights

- loss of weaponry: when you use a weapon, it will be destryoed. This means that accidentially using a gold weapon will result in its loss.

- weapon hp: while some nodes and minion life can help with that, the combination of a non-permanent weapon that is easy to destroy but sacrifices a melee weapon does not really add up.

- sustain: in some maps, you will find it incredibly difficult to suatain your weapon army, as you sometimes just dont drop enough melee weapons.

- weapon damage output: eapons have very different damage outputs. getting claws or elemental damage maces tends to be quite annoying, not to forget that 2-handed weapons are generally superior to onehanded ones. so a lot of your current damage oputput with thsi skill depends on how good your drops are.



My suggestion to solve this:

- make the weapons permanent like "animate guardian"

- limit the number of weapons, but keep it at at least 6, as most people like this "army feeling"

- rather than taking the base stats of the weapon, the skill itself should provide base stats and ignore weapon basic passives - but not the ones gained through rarity. This would allow players to customize their build, but not limit them to needing to pick 2-handed axes to be most effective.

- unique weapons cannot be animated.

- "killed weapons" are not destroyed. however, they cannot be reanimated for 10 seconds after being killed.

- previously animated weapons are auto-targeted with the skill if they are available again.

- Killed weapons count towards the weapon limit, so you wont animate another weapon that you might need. This limitation also allows for the weapons to have a higher base health.

- unequipping this skill kills all current weapons. this allows the player to switch the weapon set.


What do you guys think?

Not sure what you are talking about, but have you used this skill?
Animate weapon is good regardless of weapon drop, as it adds base physical damage.
You can never accidentally animate magic or rare items, because they are unidentified. The only time you can do it is if you open a strongbox that pre-identifies them.

Animate weapon has quite a bit of hp, so no, they are not easy to destroy.

Unless you have ultra high magic find or something, sustaining your weapon army should get easier as you get to higher level zones.

I would actually prefer it if you can animate magic weapons, because players don't care about them and don't want to waste time identifying them.

I agree with the targeting mechanism, I rather it target closest to cursor, like Raise Zombie or Raise Spectre.

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Starxsword wrote:

Not sure what you are talking about, but have you used this skill?
Animate weapon is good regardless of weapon drop, as it adds base physical damage.
You can never accidentally animate magic or rare items, because they are unidentified. The only time you can do it is if you open a strongbox that pre-identifies them.

Animate weapon has quite a bit of hp, so no, they are not easy to destroy.

Unless you have ultra high magic find or something, sustaining your weapon army should get easier as you get to higher level zones.

I would actually prefer it if you can animate magic weapons, because players don't care about them and don't want to waste time identifying them.

I agree with the targeting mechanism, I rather it target closest to cursor, like Raise Zombie or Raise Spectre.

a) It depends A LOT on weapon drop as you can easily calculate on endgame weapons:
Animate weapon level 20: AS + 38%, Damage + 38-56

1-H Mace, Carnal Sceptre (highest DPS among 1-H elemental sceptres):
base stats AS: 1.1, Damage: 37-85
stats with animate weapon: AS: 1.518 Damage: 75 - 141
Average DPS: 221

2-H Axe, Vaal Axe (highest DPS among 2-H axes):
base stats: AS: 1.15, Damage: 85–141
stats with animate weapon: AS: 1.587, Damage: 123 - 197
Average DPS: 352

The axe deals 60% more damage...so it is definitely not "regardless of weapon drop".

b) they are not easy to destroy by induvidual enemies which need to autoattack, sicne a lot of weapons mean that the autoattacks are split amon the weapons. However, they do fall quickly to monsters supported by AoE spells.

c)there are a lot of ppl in endgame maps trying to get better gear, so i guess, yes: the the numebr of magicalö items in drops is high. Items providing higher rarity usually lack a stat already, and the unique ones do have quite some disadvantages too. But in this case, it really inhibits a lot of your damage output, and that in a game thats is about gearing up properly. very counterintuitive, if you ask me.

d) that is why i added the options to use all non-unique weapons. It also adds more ways customization. im not sure about allowing rare weapons too or not, but that is an issue of less importance at the moment.

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a) It depends A LOT on weapon drop as you can easily calculate on endgame weapons:
Animate weapon level 20: AS + 38%, Damage + 38-56

End game can drop garbage weapons too. There is no need to compare end game weapon vs end game weapon, just compare what can possibly be dropped.
By that, I am talking about level 20 to use weapons or lower. But that flat bonus mitigates it.

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The axe deals 60% more damage...so it is definitely not "regardless of weapon drop".

60% more damage fits in the regardless of weapon drop. From the way you put it, having bad drops makes it useless, which is not true. We aren't talking about a difference of 2 to 10x damage, which I believe used to be true and is true for Animate Guardian. That difference generally gets more narrow as you add offensive auras, which I assume you have at least one of.

"

However, they do fall quickly to monsters supported by AoE spells.

From looking at their stats, they have more base HP than zombies. A level 20 zombie has 2450 base hp, while a level 20 animate weapon has 4356 hp. That translates to over 10k hp. Even AoE spells should not kill them all that quickly.


I don't understand your last 2 points, as I disagree with the basis that Animate weapon should be permanent. It is way too strong for it to be so.

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Starxsword wrote:

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However, they do fall quickly to monsters supported by AoE spells.

From looking at their stats, they have more base HP than zombies. A level 20 zombie has 2450 base hp, while a level 20 animate weapon has 4356 hp. That translates to over 10k hp. Even AoE spells should not kill them all that quickly.


I don't understand your last 2 points, as I disagree with the basis that Animate weapon should be permanent. It is way too strong for it to be so.

Perhaps this is due Zombies having base resistances, while animate weapons have 0%