Animate Weapon

Any way we can get a HP boost, even with all the minion life nodes on the passive tree, capped minion resist, and using a lvl20 Purity of Fire my animated weapons were still not surviving uber atziri's flameblast! My zombies have 16k life, and my animate guardian has 29k life...they survived just fine, just not my weapons! Which is hella annoying, since there is a limited amount of weapons within the instance itself! And you guys put such a large cooldown on convocation I can't keep them out of harms way! UGH!!!

First time when I do Tora "lair" quest with animate weapon :



but after uber lab that changes :

Guys and gals, i am attempting to use AW in legacy but i have come to a full stop and unable to proceed any further, maintaining weapons more then 15 on regular maps solo its almost impossible spawning new weapons takes super long time which makes aw super inefficient for regular mapping.. the only place where AW shines is breachlord domains due to heavily amount of mobs and a lot lot loot, but man i dont wanna play character there only.

Also , weapons are soo freaking slow and slacking behind me that is absurd. I even made ring with 25% movement speed for minions and still its a joke.
I have to say that this is rather disappointing

Dismantle is the reason why this gem got nerfed =/

I had some gear saved up in standard to play around with this but i abandoned that ideology. The main nerf is limiting animate weapon from nothing to 50... that's retarded... Going from 100-200 down to 50 is a severe nerf in damage output..


Is it really confirmed that AW has less movement speed with no player aura effect anymore? i am not seeing such a note on the wiki. Also if this is true than that means the skill gem is destroyed.

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Theporter wrote:

Dismantle is the reason why this gem got nerfed =/

I had some gear saved up in standard to play around with this but i abandoned that ideology. The main nerf is limiting animate weapon from nothing to 50... that's retarded... Going from 100-200 down to 50 is a severe nerf in damage output..


Is it really confirmed that AW has less movement speed with no player aura effect anymore? i am not seeing such a note on the wiki. Also if this is true than that means the skill gem is destroyed.

100-200 weapons is extreme overkill and put a lot of strain on the servers, most AW builds used ~75 weapons so the nerf is not too bad. AW still does a fuckton of damage if you build it right.

This gem need to be updated in 3.0, weapon should stay alive when we change of instances like other minions. For example:

- Tora, Haku, Vagan, Zana.
(If you have Animate Weapons before port in any instances about these npc they will be destroyed. If you try leave from instance yours weapons summoned before also miss).

-Izaro's room (Aspirant's Trail)
(If you have Animate Weapons before port to Aspirant's Trail). It will be destroyed after you port and if come back to previous room you also have no more weapons).

I have played many Animate Weapon builds including self casting, using spell totem(s), using Null's inclination, using Jorrhast's Blacksteel both legacy self cast and the new automatic version, and using cast while channeling + channel spell. I have played Animate Weapon at low levels all the way up to level 96 in endgame tier 15 maps both solo and in parties and in both hardcore and softcore leagues.

I have the following suggestions to enhance the quality of life for Animate Weapon without taking away from the original spirit of the skill which seems to be a summoner's option to make specific weapon choices.

I suggest to allow Animate weapon self cast to summon any valid weapon within range if the player does not click on a specific weapon choice which is very similar to the mechanics of raise zombie wherein a specific corpse can be targeted (if corpse target is enabled) or any corpse within range can be summoned. This change should help to give the skill some nice quality of life for both experienced summoners and new players that want to try the skill for the first time as the current weapon clicking mechanic can be very tedious at low levels and also especially in the endgame. Many experienced animators already use one of the aforementioned options to bypass weapon clicking since it is so tedious for endgame mapping. If the problem is spell echo then simply prevent echo from supporting animate thus leaving Jorrhast's as a special option.

Secondly, I suggest to prevent self casting on invalid (unidentified) weapons. Currently the player spends mana to use the skill whether the weapon is indentified or unidentified. The introduction of loot filters makes this less significant but this adjustment is still a good quality of life for players of all experience levels. For example the skill Raise Spectre will not allow the player to summon an invalid corpse (boss or unique monster) so why does Animate Weapon use mana when a player misclicks an unidentified weapon in a screen full of text of weapons during combat? This is both confusing for new players and irritating for experienced summoners that still use self casting. Again, the more semi-automated methods such as CwC and spell totem already bypass this problem.

Lastly, weapon persistence with the current duration upon changing combat instances such as master missions or Zana maps with separate instances. This might be the most difficult suggestion to implement but as others have already stated it can be very frustrating to abandon master missions and endgame trials due to the weapon loss especially in ladder or racing scenarios when it means huge time lost.

How about reworking Animate Weapon into a skill named "Animate Spectral Weapon"

This new version doesn't consume the weapon but instead makes a spectral copy of it. It behaves similarly to how it currently is where enemies also still target it but now Animated Weapons have a semi-translucent look as well and the targeted weapon in question isn't consumed on use. This would make Animate Weapon more viable IMO for other content as you can use it on more types of map designs as you aren't limited to constantly having to hunt for weapons or on disconnection issues like the current Specter problem. Also it could potentially encourage players to craft other melee weapons they'd want to use for "Bases" to summon the AW on.

Duration minions are lame. The duration life has to be balanced for something interesting that is why it's okay for revive to do it because the concept of revive is an interesting mechanic. I would love to have a full life animated weapon to join my squad of Zombies, instead of a 30 sec version of it.

Right now i'm only using Zombies for my summons, skeletons, animated weapons, those skull things go against what i want. If we could have the option for a non-durational life version of these gems that would be more engaging that having to recast everything ever 30 secs or so, otherwise i may as well just play a spell caster.

This is my biggest problem with Durational life summons, they feel like a glorified spell, having to recast them over and over defeats the purpose of playing a summoner.

I think that the duration for AW is a relic of the previous AW that had no limitation on it.

AW already has a huge disadvantage to other minion builds in its summoning restrictions which disallow it to run master missions and trials, so I believe the duration should be entirely removed because we are capped at 50 anyway these days.