Animate Weapon

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Nurbel wrote:

The Jewel is complete trash right now, it has only a use in Null's Inclination Builds and should be changed.

I quite like it, tbh. I use it to just have those extra 4 weapons around, and they do contribute quite a bit. Using Null as well, I have to admit.. but still. What I would like to have changed (read fixed) about the jewel is projectile supports - they do not work. I'm relying on Blink/Mirror for the ranged leg work, but I'd rather have 2 different Animate Weapon skills.

Played AW for the first time around any somehow managed to hit Lvl80, so my knowledge with the skill is limited.

My main gripe with the skill is the loss of the weapons when zoning. Damage is fine (actually excellent when you have 10+ up) and the targeting can be a bit tedious, but it's not that bad. But loosing all weapons when portaling to empty your inventory is just ridiculous. I regularly take 2-3 trips to town when doing maps (solo ofc) and having to gather at least 3-4 white weapons up to three times per map is just stupid.

Every single (active) summon skill shoud be able to stand on it's own feet, why do I need a secondary attack to get my primary one going? Afaik there is no other skill gem that has this problem.
If it is indeed a technical limitation of the engine as someone posted earlier in the thread, then GGG should really implement something akin to Desecrate. Summoning corpses out of thin air is just as believable as summoning elements of the earth which then somehow form weapons. The drawn-out Malachai fight is basically impossible without bringing backup weapons for the second phase, mainly because of all the overly long animations/transitions.

EDIT: Out of curiosity I read the first replies in this thread, dating way back to 2013. It's kinda funny (or sad, whatever your view) to see the same shortcomings mentioned back then (cast time/duration/lack of material to animate). Looking at the wiki, the version history stops at 1.0.6 O.o
So pretty much since 2 years this skill has remained unchanged. Either GGG is extremly happy with the way the skill works or they have completely given up on it, at least that's what I take away from that fact.

If it's impossible to implement that only items not shown in your filter are animated.

make it so that at least AW cannot animate max socket/max link items.

I'm fed up with having 6 socket weapons animated and being punished for playing a game for the love of god. I need those jewellers. It's like stealing out of my pocket.

My thoughts about this gem - mechanics of it should be reworked.

From my point of view, the damage is okay. But the mechanics are tedious as hell.

Current mechanics of it:

1. It requires to hover your mouse cursor over item names, which can be impossible, if you don't have a proper loot filter setup.

2. It is really hard to keep up in full group parties, because if you'll try to summon weapons that already dropped, it will take time, and your party members will just progress forward.

3. When you're standing still, and trying to hit that nasty item name out of ton of loot just to summon it, the time still goes, and duration of your other animated weapons is wasted.

4. Summon range is VERY small compared to summon zombies or other summon skills.

5. Minions don't persist over area, making it mandatory to use either party members, skills, or other minions to generate white weapons. Or carrying a stack of trash weapons in your inventory.

6. Mana cost is WAY too high for a single summon spell. It's just wrong to have a 90 mana\cast for a 4-link.


So, in my opinion it should be reworked:

1. To AoE skill, which allowes you to animate all identified weapons in radius when you hover over items, or just in AoE, ignoring 6 socketed ones.

Another option - make it automatically pick first nearest identified weapon which is near your cursor, and auto-summon it. Same as summon zombies mechanic.

2. Range of summoning should be increased. You don't need to run across the screen to the corpse of zombies just to summon it. Same should apply here.

3. Minions should persist and stay with you when you change zones. The duration of them should be also saved. (e.g. 30 sec left -> stays 30 sec when you change zones). Unless it's a town or hideout, then the timer should pause.

I know it's hard to implement, but who knows? Maybe in future.

4. Mana cost would fit perfectly, if it was an AoE skill. (See above)

These quality of life changes would make people use this gem more often.

^I tried it some time ago, and fully support this suggestion.

I support this suggestion as well. The Skill sounds so awesome, but is really bad compared to all other summoning spells. The spell should have a radius and animate any viable weapon within.

I think a "Desecrate" duplicate for animate weapons would work quite well. It summons some scrap metal and allows you to use "Animate Weapon" on it. Wouldnt be hard to implement, it just needs a new graphic for desecrate! (And a new name :P)
This would also solve the problem with animated weapons not transferring into other areas.

All I'd really like is for the 1.3 functionality to return where we could press and hold the skill button down anywhere on the screen and THEN hover the weapons we want to animate. As things stand since 2.0, you have to start the cursor on a weapon, which makes it much less comfortable. I'd also like to vote against the "auto-animate nearest weapon" thing, as it'd make it a pain to use in combat for fear of animating bases I want to pick up.

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Mark_GGG wrote:

This is both wrong conceptually (area transitions inherently represent the passage of an arbitrarily long amount of time, timed effects intentionally cannot transition) and impossible (timed effects will time out while being created in the area).

Area transitions representing arbitrary long times seems itself wrong since most transitions are set up to look like you're just walking through an archway and bam you're in the next zone, which would take under a second at most. If this is really how the devs see it, the actual game as presented to players looks entirely otherwise and thus makes that extremely counterintuitive. You might want to reexamine that concept itself accordingly to make the game more friendly and accessible instead of having such a total disconnect between presentation and concept.

It is probably an engine limitation, as all timed effects stop. Would be too much effort to fix this for one skill. I wouldnt mind this, there are other options to make this skill useful. (e.g. as suggested by VanguardUa)

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No. This is necessarily short to prevent griefing

Seriously? I can understand this for 6s, 5L and 6L, which simply should be impossible as animate target. But for every other white "crap" item ive never seen a player picking it up in endgame.
Also, the unique bow bypasses this completely (And everyone who is actually trying to play Animate Weapon is probably using it). So your argument is somewhat flawed.

It is presumably the least used active skill in the game, due to its disadvantages. I want to play it next league, so give it some love. :-)