Animate Weapon

When 1.0.0 was released it was clear that neither Animate Guardian or Animate Weapon was ever tested, and it's clear that the change to Guardian in 1.0.1 wasn't tested either. I don't believe that anyone at GGG has ever built and played a successful character around either of these skills, because if that had ever happened they would not be in the state they're in.

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OnmyojiOmn wrote:

When 1.0.0 was released it was clear that neither Animate Guardian or Animate Weapon was ever tested, and it's clear that the change to Guardian in 1.0.1 wasn't tested either. I don't believe that anyone at GGG has ever built and played a successful character around either of these skills, because if that had ever happened they would not be in the state they're in.

Yes. I'm wondering why they choose to release crappy gems into the game that are just bad. Don't add gems just for the sake of adding gems.

Just wanted to comment on the range of the skill. It seems that when not using shift, your character will run up very close to the item before animating it. With shift held down, you can animate items at the corner of the screen. This seems like a bug. It should either be one or the other. I think animate guardian does the same thing.

I would also consider having it cast on the nearest-to-cursor weapon if you aren't targeting a particular weapon. This would solve a lot of headache in using the skill. Also summoning unid items would be a plus.

Other than those things, my experience with this skill has been positive. I realize it's not a primary skill and can't be due to the quirk of needing a particular drop to summon from and it being on a timer. There's absolutely nothing wrong with this.

As someone using this as his character's main skill, it's rather annoying to level with it in Merciless Act 3. I'm at level 72 and the gem just reached level 17 after using it since the character was level 2. But alas, the skill can only animate weapons up to level 66. That means I can't even animate all the unmodified weapons from normal enemies in the Catacombs. Basically what I'm saying is that the restriction modifier shouldn't always just be the gem level requirement +5.

This made me realize something. If the gem is at level 20, will it still have an item requirements restriction? If so then that must be changed. I seriously hope you're not designing this skill around items with additional minion gem levels.

What if instead of level requirements the gem increased HP and damage significantly. Weapons spawned with the level 1 gem, then, regardless of item level would be relatively weak.

what about the following solution:

with the gem level, the animated weapons have an increased chance to drop again on the floor after the duration of the spell and/or when killed.

Simple, yet would really fix the most problematic issue with this skill: lack of weapon to use on the ground.

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Kaskar wrote:

Please, make it supportable by spell totem (if it is not now) and make the skill ignore 6-socketed + 4-linked and above items.

This will be great.

PS: anyone tried it with spell totem?

Fantastic idea! Please take note GGG.

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Veta321 wrote:

What if instead of level requirements the gem increased HP and damage significantly. Weapons spawned with the level 1 gem, then, regardless of item level would be relatively weak.

Please do this GGG. Animate Weapon is terrible at the moment partly because there are too many restrictions in the way of playing around with it. You have to be at the right level and up to the right part of the game and have the right item drop within a suitable distance of an enemy that isn't going to be too strong for it to be a waste of time and mana.

Seriously, the nicest thing I can say about Animate Weapon is that occasionally it proves briefly amusing but isn't really worth using.

I would much prefer animate weapons be able to animate ranged weapons including wands. The stats for it are fine as it currently stands, but it lacks versatility as not enough melee weapons drop to be viable.

Seriously. What I have to do is dedicate a stash tab entirely to animate weapons, where I hoard all of it and when I run into the act boss, I spend a little time dropping all the items into the arena. After which I engage the boss, make it attackable, then animate all the weapons I hoarded.

As it stands, melee only animation severely limits its usefulness.

You know..... I just thought of a neat mechanic.

What if, instead of consuming the item, it creates a mirror of the item?
You then need to also remove the restriction of having the item dropped / on the ground.

Of course there would have to be other balance changes.
Probably adding a limit to the number you can create, and buffing item duration and hp.

It makes rare items valuable to use with the skill effect, and not need to worry about dropping an item.
No need to worry about consuming your valuable weapon.
Doesn't effect uniques, because uniques are mirrored items themselves.

Possibly add, no need to identify an item. This is a super annoying drawback, that relies on in game currency. Unheard of before this was introduced, and not acceptable for its use.
Takes way too much time to actively use. It's not practical.