[3.23] Ranged Animate Weapon - Lightning

Hi everyone. I've been trying out the new ranged animate weapon along with the new spectres and the results have been pretty satisfactory. The main selling point of the build is incredible target acquisition provided by the ranged animate wepon skill and the new spectre buffs (especially perfect spirit of fortune and hulking miscreation) with lucky lightning damage.

The campaign is a breeze due to how overpowered sentinel of radiance is. Just use SRS for bosses if you're impatient, and your sentinel's fire aura will take care of everything in its range. Rush to minion duration and generic duration nodes, decrease the cd of convocation with mastery and put it on your left click. Easiest leveling in poe with zero investment. We will keep this setup in maps / bossing as well, since we want our spectres and animated guardian to be close to us at all times for the buffs they provide. Convocation is not a dps loss in this build, since our minions are ranged.

Here is a basic breakdown of the build:


https://pobb.in/6PBSk94YR15E




Start with a corrupted 6L chest after the campaign, pierce is important for returning projectiles so find a chest with 3 green sockets instead. Then upgrade to lioneye's, and look for good corrupts (+2 to duration is dirt cheap btw), and finally go double corrupt with +2 to minions as well.

I'm using volatility, since it provides the best DPS increase due to the low-high roll difference of lightning damage and the lucky lightning buff provided by the spirit of fortune. All jewels are lightning damage focused to utilize this



I'm stun, bleed and poison immune since it is so easy to get these stats in dps focused jewels. Charms are focused on capping block along with the guardian ascendancy's block bonuses.

I also use returning projectiles, I've tested this out and it definitely gives better dps than awakened lightning penetration. With so many animated weapons (25 at the moment) , GMP / LMP are dps loss imo. Elemental focus because I'm shocking through skitterbots with 18% effect.

Rest of the items:



Priority after the body armor. This is the item that gives us 4 spectres, so find the cheapest one you can with +2 to minion level and then upgrade stats as you earn some cash.

Shield charge for movement along with block buff from guardian, a blade skill for lingering blades to raise your bows and purity of elements is our first aura for ailment immunity / minion defense. Skitterbots is a controversial choice here, I'll discuss it later.





Standard wand. With increased duration nodes from the tree, our flesh offering here has close to 100% uptime. While we do not need the shock immune effect, tempest shield caps our spell block.





Stat stick for max block, along with some dps nodes.

Haste is our second aura, and mark is quite the dps increase.





Start with a replica dragonfang, they're very cheap.


Ashes is the best dps incrase due to how quality scales our main skill (+2 minion limit) , dps buffs like sniper's mark and flesh offering etc.



Generic ring for whatever stats you're missing, along with a profane proxy for 100% uptime on elemental weakness. You can't reliably shock with your minions (especially on ubers) since you have 20+ light hitting minions, thats why I went this route.





4B triad grip for better lightning damage scaling. Carrion golem for the buff and chaos golem since physical damage is the bane of our build if we fail to block / evade attacks. Convocation is still on LMB, and feeding frenzy is a nice buff.





Darkness enthroned to scale our jewels. Nothing fancy here. Note that the jewel effect modifier makes it very easy for us to have 100% stun/bleed/poison avoidance.



Regular boots with whatever stats you're missing similar to the ring. I focused on chaos resist and with 68%, I feel very confident during mapping.



New spectres are big, so lets discuss about them as well. All of them are perfect to have all the buffs.

Spirit of fortune : Lucky lightning damage. This is one of the pillars of our build. Also even though the wrath aura was nerfed, it's still better than the one provided by our ascendancy.

Hulking miscreation : %50 uptime on the overpowered buff (100 % increased damage and 30% increased attack speed). I put this in PoB by halving the effects in self configuration area. Also phys as extra lightning is very nice.

Primal thunderbird : Easiest lightning exposure source that we can find. Quite powerful with 20 penetration as well. And the grace aura brings our evade chance to 50%, which goes very well along with our 75% block.

Guardian turtle : Since we are not running determination in our gear, this fills the niche along with some additional phys reduction.


The strongest aspect of this build is its scaling from zero to hero with very low investment. Sentinel carries you through the acts, ranged animate weapon's target acquisition is beyond belief and you're off-screening most mobs during mapping. When you put enough damage with awakened gems and some better items, 60-80% delirious maps with 5k juice are a breeze. I used harvest beyond altar strategy for grinding some cash, then switched to a boss rushing strategy for invitations and trying ubers after I got some upgrades.

One disadvantage of the build is you have to resummon all of your minions after 90 seconds, so bosses without a buffer area (like the maven) are painful if you die. This, coupled with my lack of skills have prevented me from killing uber maven, but I was able to kill uber shaper and uber uber elder for the first time. Regular elder deserves a mention here, as you don't even have to move the entire fight due to ranged minions taking care of everything.

Regular sirus is easy and I usually don't even see the meteor maze due to high dps phasing, but Uber Sirus has also been beyond my reach, quite possibly due to my lack of skill again. This build is of course weak to powerful oneshot abilities, so shield charging through the boss arena to avoid mechanics while letting your minions take care of everything doesn't work for shaper bullet hell or searing exarch's flame balls.

All in all, this has been the most fun I've had with path of exile for quite some time, and that's why I wanted to share the build. Next league with spectres (and lucky lightning damage) gone, I'll probably try out the cold version of the build but necromancer poison version is probably going to outperform it out on a higher budget.

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axedice wrote:

necromancer poison version is probably going to outperform it out on a higher budget.

I question this statement.

This is what i ended up with this league (cold covertion + smite guardian): https://pobb.in/UtcNGLyiJMqJ

And a small tip - if you are going for lightning convertion, be sure to use march of the legion with smite and wrath. Smite is what you cannot ignore.

Thanks for the input. I'll certainly try this route after grinding some cash.