[2.4]Animate Weapon Summoner. 2 BUILDS! Poison OR Elemental - Max Block, EB/MoM. Atziri Video!
  I'm back again and now I have two Animate Weapon builds that I have been playing around with to show you! One is my older build, Elemental Animate Weapon that uses Anger/Wrath to scale damage to retarded levels. The other is Poison Animate Weapon, which still has stupidly stupid amounts of damage, but offers a few things Elemental doesn't. Lets start with what both builds will offer you: 1. Stupidly stupid amounts of damage.
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Both of these builds just do insane amount of damage once you get 30+ weapons. It makes regular Atziri a joke and most t15 map bosses a breeze. Elemental weapons chunk the life out of enemies while Poison takes only slightly longer to ramp up its damage.
Use of 1 slot Dominating Blow allows you to take control of Rare monsters with valuable auras like additional physical & elemental damage, more ES for casting, and Huge attack/movement speed boosts. You can imagine what that does for your clear speed. 2. Great defenses.
Spoiler
With both of these builds you should be able to reach 4.5-5k+ life, and over 3000 Energy shield over your Mana with EB/MoM The massive pool of ES allows you to reserve all your mana for auras or Curses (in the case of Poison Animate Weapon.)
Maxing out your block chance with Gear and Bone Offering is really easy and adds another layer of defense over Life/MoM Fortify with Advancing Fortress Whirling blades. 12-14 Seconds of Elemental Immunity/Absorption with the Blood of Corruption Amulet. Its ridiculous. Some problems with these builds include:
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1. T16 Map bosses
Avoid these. They are nightmarish. 2 Guardians are immune to Poison which cripples the Poison version of this build, and they have absolutely ridiculous amounts of HP which makes it difficult to kill them before your weapons crap out on you. I have only killed Minotaur once with the Poison version of this build, and it required many portals and two trips to the vendors for weapons. You will not face roll them. 2. Uber Izaro Labs are OK if you are willing to sacrifice stash space for weapons. Uber lab is very difficult to solo, even with tabs of weapons. I won't say that its impossible, but it isn't fun and the build is not built for farming Labs since your minions do not carry over area to area. 3. Other superbosses. I'll admit to not having the chance to try Uber Atziri, Shaper, Pale Council, etc etc with this build. But anything with similar HP to a T16 Boss is probably going to be difficult. "
Summary of Elemental Animate Weapon:
I believe Elemental Weapons have the highest damage ceiling but I have no math to back that up. If you want the absolute highest theoretical damage, go with Elemental. Elemental Animate Weaponers also offer greater amounts of damage support for parties, with Wrath, Anger and Haste.
Summary of Poison Animate Weapon
Poison Animate Weapon is better at not dying. I don't play Hardcore, but if you want to try this in HC I think your best bet is with Poison. It doesn't rely on Anger/Wrath for Damage and allows you to run 2 curses which can be used increase your own defenses greatly (Enfeeble, Temp Chains) or Increase the physical/poison damage your weapons do (Vulnerability)
Also, Poison Weapons have the very unique trait of being able to take advantage of ON KILL effects. Because the degen they inflict is attributed to your character, whenever your weapon's poison kills something you can proc 'On Kill' effects such as: - You can summon wolves when your poison kills things. We'll talk more about this claw later. Or my favourite: - That regen is huge and it procs often. We'll talk more about this later. Passive Trees: The passive trees are very similar with a few changes depending on the build you are doing
Elemental Animate Weapon
Elemental
Bandits: Take Oak, Point, Point. Ascendancy: Prioritize Mistress of Sacrifice, followed with Commander of Darkness, then Spirit Eater. The last two points are freebies.
Poison Animate Weapon
Poison Bandits: Take Oak, Point, Point. Ascendancy: Prioritize Mistress of Sacrifice, followed with Commander of Darkness, then Spirit Eater. The last two points are freebies. I take Beacon of Corruption for the chaos res. Important Uniques for both builds:
Spoiler
Advancing Fortress gives you a nice boost to block with Bone Offering helps to cap your block chances.
Gluttony of Elements is so OP I find it difficult to describe in words. Its 14 seconds of elemental absorption that applies to you AND your minions. Most bosses with scary elemental attacks die before it expires. and the -% to Resists is easy to cover for. Not Required, but very, VERY good: More weapons to animate = more damage. Plus blind is another layer to your tapestry of defenses. 15% might seem like a low proc chance but when you have 40+ Weapons all bosses WILL be blinded. Leech is neat too for keeping things alive. This isn't a required unique though. You can go on without it. But once you have it you'll never want to stop using it. Onto the builds themselves: "
Uniques:
Taking Advantage of On Kill Effects:
Kills from Poison applied to your weapons are attributed to your character, so Poison Animate Weapon is unique from Elemental because there is a wider flavour of options we have when it comes to weapons.
The Scourge:
Dual wielding these suckers and whirling your way through packs will get you the absolute highest possible damage from Poison Animate Weapon. Your degen kills will also proc wolves to spawn. However this suffers from the deadly 'Summoner lag' where the new 70% buff being applied to your 60+ minions causes insane latency spikes. Its also probably not good for the server.
Binos:
Binos does 2 cool things when your degen kills. Poison spreads to nearby enemies (not 100% confirmed) and you get +200 sexy life or ES regen(if you use Zealot's Oath, or the ZO flask.)
This regen is especially useful with ZO as Animate Weapon costs 230+ Mana PER CAST. Other on kill effects that I think might be worth taking note of: Atziri's Splendor Rigwald's Crest Blood Dance The Dark Seer Daresso's Defiance Death's Rush
Current Gear:
Gem Links:
4L: Zombies - Animate Guardian - Minion Life - Minion Resists Meat shields + Aura Bot, These are best put in a +2 Minion Gems Bone Helmet. 4L: Vaal Haste - Convocation - Flesh/Bone Offering - Increased Duration Standard summoner fare. 4L: 2 Curses of Choice (Temp Chains/Enfeeble/Vulnerability) - Level 3 Enlighten - Blasphemy Level 3 Enlighten is very important otherwise you won't be able to cram all your auras in. 6L Chest: Animate Weapon - Added Chaos Damage - Poison - Melee Splash - Increased Duration/Void Manipulation - Minion Damage 3L Weapon: Whirling Blades - Faster Attacks - Dominating Blow This gets Fortify as a 4th link if you are using Advancing Fortress. 3L Shield: Haste - Discipline - Level 3 Enlighten Again, needs level 3 enlighten to cram auras in. You could also try a different 35% Aura. Vitality might be interesting. Ring: Stone Golem IGN: PortiaDeRossi Last edited by Organics#7173 on Nov 30, 2016, 8:34:08 PM Last bumped on Aug 28, 2016, 3:49:52 AM
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Any Thoughts?
IGN: PortiaDeRossi
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Hey, I was looking to reroll in perandus and this looks pretty awesome, do you have a video of the build in action?
Also, the vast majority (I'd say 70%-90%) of my mapping is done in a 3 man party, will this build do well in those, and in highest tier maps? I need to be able to keep up in dps and not lag behind. I've been trying to play a blood rage/poacher's mark flicker strike build in party play but been having a lot of problems with that. Last edited by anyloss#6694 on Mar 14, 2016, 5:24:32 PM
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AW Builds scale well with Party Members. More Loot to drop, more Weapons to Animate. Simple as that. The same applies for maps: Harder Mods = more Quanitity = more Weapons = faster Clearspeed. Personally i feel literally no Difference between a Blue Strand Map and a 140+% Quantity T14 Map. But AW Builds don't clear that fast as other Builds. But you can clear those Hard Maps safely (if you play right).
@OP Your Build looks good. As for Gear, get Blood of corruption. One of the most OP Items in the Game, there is no reason to not use it, especially as a AW Summoner, where high Amounts of Elemental Damage kill your Weapons fast. This Item also makes 80% of the Map bosses in the Game a joke. Also Item Quantity is legacy. Increased duration works better in Maps. Roll harder Maps to get more Quantity and use increased Duration instead. Drop melee physical Damage, it's not worth it. Use Added Lightning Damage instead and Increased duration. Optimal Gem links are (in order of priority): AW-Melee Splash-Minion Damage-Weapon Elemental Damage-Increased Duration-Added Lightning/Elemental Focus (As for my calculations, Elemental Focus gives more DPS than Added Lighting) I keep this setup everytime. I only switch Melee Splash to Multistrike if i have the preperation Time for a Bossfight (like Vaal, Atziri/Uber Atziri, Palace Dominus ect.) NurbelST Level 97 Low Life Animate Weapon (Standart) DerNurbler Level 96 Low Life Animate Weapon (Talisman/Standart) Animate_Weapon_for_Life (Essence) Last edited by Nurbel#4899 on Mar 15, 2016, 4:47:51 AM
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Hey,first of all thanks for the build!
I'm a total noob when it comes to summoners builds, but i heard that AW is pretty good, the thing is, I have absolutely no idea what to take as other gear and gems than the one you are showing and what to change if I want to make variations, I also would love to see this build in action so if you could make a video showing your character and a map clear I would really appreciate that ! |
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" I was doing T9-10's with 2-3 other people. I think you would be surprised at how well you can keep up, not to mention the crazy party support you provide. In a party you'll probably have Vaal haste up all the time and Flesh Offering boosts your MS even further. 20% quality animated weapons combined with your auras/offerings move pretty quickly. " I wasn't too sure on Melee Physical Damage anyway. Was going off of my knowledge of SRS because I haven't seen an animate weapon build in a long time. Elemental Focus sounds like a really good alternative. ...Blood of Corruption, wow. I never thought of that and you are right, that would be amazing.. I was doing a few Atziri attempts for shits and giggles, and while the build absolutely SHITS all over Vaals/Trio (Its ridiculous, I should make a video of it) It can't really survive Atziri too well. With clutch usage of Gluttony of Elements, the weapons would be able to survive her big flame blast... Only one usage though, so maybe it won't work as well as I think. " I have a few videos, I took the character apart a bit to play a traditional summoner, but I will see about getting some videos up. IGN: PortiaDeRossi Last edited by Organics#7173 on Mar 15, 2016, 1:54:47 PM
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I updated the passive tree a bit, added a section for videos and switched out some gear.
VIDEOS COMING SOON! In the process of uploading one right now! IGN: PortiaDeRossi
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2 Videos added! If you want to see a specific map or set of mods, please let me know.
I am also going to be working on an atziri video. IGN: PortiaDeRossi
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Atizi video added!
IGN: PortiaDeRossi
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I'm testing out a different version of the build with drastically boosted defense. Its at the bottom of the build page just above the Conclusion. I'm very excited about it.
IGN: PortiaDeRossi
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