Animate Weapon

The duration is deceptive, as its not a full 30 seconds of use.

The ability has a wind-up time where the weapon must first levitate itself off the ground, eating up valuable time. Its about 3-5 seconds to get up off the ground.

Please make either: the duration longer to compensate, or decrease the levitate time, if not have it already levitated as soon as you cast the skill.

Skill would also be a little bit better if we could use on Un-Identified blues and / or Ranged Weapons.

I also don't like that they don't traverse areas with you.

Also, I have a question, does the buff effect duration nodes effect this skill?

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This ability also suffers from the old Skelly lag problem, it lags the first time its used in an instance.

There also might be a crash when trying to animate things that can't be animated. (Why can we even cast this on items that can't be animated? It wastes mana and does nothing -_-)

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Waves_blade wrote:

The duration is deceptive, as its not a full 30 seconds of use.

The ability has a wind-up time where the weapon must first levitate itself off the ground, eating up valuable time. Its about 3-5 seconds to get up off the ground.

Please make either: the duration longer to compensate (...)
Also, I have a question, does the buff effect duration nodes effect this skill?

If they change duration to 35s to compensate, you could argue that it's not a full 35s of use and it should be buffed to compensate wind-up time again. :P

As for the buff duration nodes - nope, they don't apply. Skill duration nodes (under Scion starting area) do apply though.

Well, considering that 12 weapons (with minion dmg gem and pretty much every minion dmg node) have a hard time killing one white mob I want to get the most I can out of this damn near useless skill.

If it weren't for the fact that I love seeing a army of minions march across the screen I wouldn't even use it.

Please make this ability make a copy of your own weapon instead of having to have weapons lying on the ground.

This ability seems stupid like it is now, because you have to ither carry around with you alot of weapons, when u have used those weapons, u have to rely on weapons dropping or u have to go back and buy more. There is a lot of other bad sides to this skill which has also been pointet out in previous comments.

My take on it is that it would be cooler and more fun if it made (a limiteted amount) copy of your own weapon, that way it would scale better and it wouldent be dependent on drops and it would be a lot more reliable.

Lvled summoner scion, went straight away to 71+ maps with gem focus on animate weapon. What i want to say:
1) With proper gemming and aura support dps is great;
2) Increased duration gem and nodes make them last long enough;
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3) Animated weapons survivability is horrendous and to understand why we really need better skill description. I've seen 5-6 weapons blown up by a single Carryon Queen in 74 map as they were going to engage. I understand that they're meant to be expendable, but atm you summon all the nice whites you find and they get destroyed long before even 30 sec duration (not talking about hardearned ~75).
4) Blue weapons, the kind we never pick up (and probably even coding a bot to pick them would be counterproductive) - they're always left behind. And yes... we can't animate this trash, so the more rarity we get... the less items we get to animate. That's a serious shortcomming, given that outside of stacking IIQ/IIR summoners have no proper scaling (that's the sepparate theme that needs a serious attention).
5) AI, as i mentioned in first point animated weapons provide great dps when supported by anger/wrath and dps oriented gems. But even ignoring the fact that they die too fast their AI is lacking - they've: a) too short engage range b) they choose the target to engage really slow.
6) Mana cost, without Eldritch Battery it's hard to sustain mana regen sufficient for constant items consumption.

Skill is fun, but have too many shortcommings. I'll stick around and try to get triple resist / high armor shield for Necromantic Aegis, but for now it's a big letdown for ~20ex invested in this character.

Has anyone tried Melee Attack + Cast on Kill + Animate Weapon? seems like it would make the skill a lot less tedious to use and make reaching critical mass easier as your animated weapons would raise more animated weapons.

Also has anyone tested the performance of Melee Splash and Multistrike? are they worth using?

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residualshade wrote:

Has anyone tried Melee Attack + Cast on Kill + Animate Weapon? seems like it would make the skill a lot less tedious to use and make reaching critical mass easier as your animated weapons would raise more animated weapons.

Also has anyone tested the performance of Melee Splash and Multistrike? are they worth using?

Didn't try attack-cast on kill+animate but think that droping 2 dps gems isn't worth it since you won't have a proper minion nodes/gear & auras to support animate weapons.

Also i've tried melee splash and multistrike, they are fine and generally a weapon itself can solo lvl 70+ magic mob in couple of seconds with wrath and anger support. Problem is they die before contributing enough damage to be worth a cast, especially so when you're facing aoe nukers or +x projectiles or chains map mods.

has any information on the hp of animated weapons shown up? its hard to think of ways to help with animated weapon durability without this information.

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Crizisrf wrote:

Also i've tried melee splash and multistrike, they are fine and generally a weapon itself can solo lvl 70+ magic mob in couple of seconds with wrath and anger support. Problem is they die before contributing enough damage to be worth a cast, especially so when you're facing aoe nukers or +x projectiles or chains map mods.

I also run a Wrath + Anger setup, though I also have Enfeeble, Grace, Rejuvenation Totem, and Necromantic Aegis with a high elemental resistances shield. In the future I'll also be using Discipline.

It's a lot of work to give the weapons enough survivability to live through most things but some enemies are just too ridiculous, especially in Nemesis. I like to use Conversion Trap + Increased Duration (optionally with Multiple Traps) against the particularly powerful enemies clear the other mobs. When the conversion is reverted it's a lot easier for the weapons to overwhelm them. The duration should actually be pretty decent because of skill duration nodes but not too much.

A lot of the time it's also just a matter of completely overpowering them. With Elemental Equilibrium triggered, Elemental Weakness, Weapon Elemental Damage, Multistrike, and minion damage nodes that's usually a piece of cake. And with the way the skill works, the faster you're killing, the larger your army will be on average. The larger your army, the easier it is to overwhelm enemies not only with damage, but with target count.

I would have a suggestion on how to (probably) solve these problems:

a) Upon equipping "Animate Weapon" you will receive a separate "Animate Weapon"-Inventory

b) The number Inventory spaces can be increased with nodes(+1 column in your "Animated inventory")

c) Right-clicking a weapon in the Inventory will summon it for a high base cost

d) for each used space of an acitvated weapon, 8 Mana are reserved from you mana pool. (this is reduceable by "Reduced Mana reserved"-Nodes and "Reduced-Cost -Support gem, but not the nodes.

e)Summoned Weapons are permanent

f)Weapons destroyed in combat will return to your inventory

g)Upon Casting "Animated Weapon" without having the Inventory open, the unsummoned weapon closest to the top right corner in the "Animated Weapon"-Inventory will be instantly summoned.

h) Specific Weapon damage nodes apply to the weapons. For example, Wicked Blades`s "+24% physical damage with swords" will apply, but "+x%increased physical melee damage " and "+x% one-handed weapon damage" do NOT apply.

i)The base life of the minions is affected by the number of spaces it uses; the formula is: base-life + gem-level*spaces used.

j)depending on weapon type and spaces used, their total damage is affecte


one-handed:
2 spaces: only 70% base damage (including Elemental damage)
3 spaces: base damage
4 spaces: attacks splash for 50% damage (range like melee splash, can be modified by AoE; including Elemental damage)

two-handed:
4 spaces: attacks splash for 50%
6 spaces: 140% base damage
8 spaces: 140% base damage + attacks splash for 50%

Ranged weapons deal 50% damage.

Projectiles created by animated weapons do not interact with "Fork" or other projectile specific support gems linked to "Animated Weapon".

Only normal rare (white) weapons can be equipped.

NOTE: the "Animated Weapon" Inventory is 4 spaces high, therefore 3- and 6-space weapons do get the high damage value, but they cost less since they use less spaces, so they do not splash.



- This way you do not have to worry about losing your weapons

- You dont need to target the weapons during combat

- everyone can use it, as long as they have enough dexterity. A typical summoner will still be able use auras and high numbers of weapons effectively, but someone who doesnt want to spend too much mana on the skill amay choose to specialize on his own weapon type and just add some weapons. You can also specialize on AoE or single-target.


I would like to hear a developers opinion on this concept; i know its a lot of changing to do

but i really think its adressign the problem properly.

NOTE: this concept could also be applied to "Animate Guardian"