[2.4]Animate Weapon Summoner. 2 BUILDS! Poison OR Elemental - Max Block, EB/MoM. Atziri Video!

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Organics wrote:

Animate Weapon is an intensely mana hungry skill. At a 6-link the amount of mana required per cast is 185. This mana cost is what made me switch from Life/ES Hybrid into EB/MoM.

Uber mana hungry! Considering you need to spam it lol.

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Minions cannot apply Elemental Equilibrium, so its a free -50% Resist to the elemental damage that my weapons actually deal.

Woah this is a new thing, didnt remember (or forgot it, its been a couple of years since i dont play a summoner). Thanks, that clarifies everything.
I would advise to add this passage in your build explanation, it's very important.
Now that I know this, I will surely taken. Maybe Im gonna use the new Vortex skill, which is a cold spell that does AoE damage while staying far from the target (instead of ice nova, which would require spell totems... very costful add and slow, better FP probably then): i hope this new skill will have a decent AoE.

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I haven't updated the tree to reflect the levels I had gained (level 94 currently) I used the remaining points to finish off the Scion life cluster and grab the Might & Physique nodes to improve my life and lessen stat requirements on my gear, but you have a point about Harrier, if I start playing this again I will probably take your advice and drop an STR node to replace it since all 3 stats are of benefit to the build.

How much life do you have? I think that with max block and good es with EB, 4.5k life is enough.

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Something interesting and noteworthy I just discovered from fiddling with an aura calculator is that if you take Charisma, have a level 3 Enlighten and retain Conqueor's Efficiency you can cram in an extra 35% Aura. This alone might make me give Charisma a college try, though obviously it wouldn't be accessible to people who can't get a level 3 enlighten. Some of the possibilities are very attractive for this last aura slot, Such as Purity of Elements for capping the hell out of the Weapon's resistances. Or using Discipline to greatly improve the ES pool and increase the amount of weapons we can animate in a short period of time. Vitality could also be interesting in the same vein as Discipline, increasing our ES regen and giving our minions some life regen. A Blasphemie'd curse would also fit in, though I wonder if the radius would be large enough to be beneficial to the weapons who are between us and the enemy.

Indeed this is true. Since the necromancer passive nodes has changed, i dont think there would be any need in running a general Purity of Elements (while, for bosses, it will be required to use the specific Purity: for this, i will find a way to have a white socket in order to swap the aura in any moment... shouldnt be difficult with those crappy weapon on lol).
The best slot would probably be Vitality i suppose: we could also run a Chaos Golem instead of Stone Golem, this way.


Thanks for all the replies mate. You forgot to answer about the heaviness of this build: I've never done a SRS build coz my pc is gonna freeze with so much things flowing (and the same happens in the Haku's areas).

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Serge91 wrote:

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Organics wrote:

Animate Weapon is an intensely mana hungry skill. At a 6-link the amount of mana required per cast is 185. This mana cost is what made me switch from Life/ES Hybrid into EB/MoM.

Uber mana hungry! Considering you need to spam it lol.

"

Minions cannot apply Elemental Equilibrium, so its a free -50% Resist to the elemental damage that my weapons actually deal.

Woah this is a new thing, didnt remember (or forgot it, its been a couple of years since i dont play a summoner). Thanks, that clarifies everything.
I would advise to add this passage in your build explanation, it's very important.
Now that I know this, I will surely taken. Maybe Im gonna use the new Vortex skill, which is a cold spell that does AoE damage while staying far from the target (instead of ice nova, which would require spell totems... very costful add and slow, better FP probably then): i hope this new skill will have a decent AoE.

"

I haven't updated the tree to reflect the levels I had gained (level 94 currently) I used the remaining points to finish off the Scion life cluster and grab the Might & Physique nodes to improve my life and lessen stat requirements on my gear, but you have a point about Harrier, if I start playing this again I will probably take your advice and drop an STR node to replace it since all 3 stats are of benefit to the build.

How much life do you have? I think that with max block and good es with EB, 4.5k life is enough.

Before I went and fiddled around with Charisma, it was somewhere near 5800+

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Something interesting and noteworthy I just discovered from fiddling with an aura calculator is that if you take Charisma, have a level 3 Enlighten and retain Conqueor's Efficiency you can cram in an extra 35% Aura. This alone might make me give Charisma a college try, though obviously it wouldn't be accessible to people who can't get a level 3 enlighten. Some of the possibilities are very attractive for this last aura slot, Such as Purity of Elements for capping the hell out of the Weapon's resistances. Or using Discipline to greatly improve the ES pool and increase the amount of weapons we can animate in a short period of time. Vitality could also be interesting in the same vein as Discipline, increasing our ES regen and giving our minions some life regen. A Blasphemie'd curse would also fit in, though I wonder if the radius would be large enough to be beneficial to the weapons who are between us and the enemy.

Indeed this is true. Since the necromancer passive nodes has changed, i dont think there would be any need in running a general Purity of Elements (while, for bosses, it will be required to use the specific Purity: for this, i will find a way to have a white socket in order to swap the aura in any moment... shouldnt be difficult with those crappy weapon on lol).
The best slot would probably be Vitality i suppose: we could also run a Chaos Golem instead of Stone Golem, this way.


Thanks for all the replies mate. You forgot to answer about the heaviness of this build: I've never done a SRS build coz my pc is gonna freeze with so much things flowing (and the same happens in the Haku's areas).

I'm trying out the 4th aura currently and I am pretty set on Discipline. It shoots my ES pool from 1600 to 2600, increasing the buffer for MoM and practically assuring that I won't ever run out of ES to cast. Its also probably better for minions to get a recharging shield than a small amount of regen, as I assume the animated weapons do not have the life to make use of it.


Another option that I was trying out that could be good for extra offense is to use Blasphemy with Elemental Weakness. Normally I don't take the time to curse every pack with FP. But with a Ele Weakness aura I wouldn't have to worry about it, and could save FP for lowering boss resists.


In regards to the 'heaviness' of the build, I believe I mention it in the 'Cons' section at the beginning of the guide. Having many, many weapons will take its toll on your computer. When I do the Trio in Atziri I almost always have at least 4 seconds of freeze on my computer until everything sorts itself out (99% of the time with the Trio being dead)

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Organics wrote:

I'm trying out the 4th aura currently and I am pretty set on Discipline. It shoots my ES pool from 1600 to 2600, increasing the buffer for MoM and practically assuring that I won't ever run out of ES to cast. Its also probably better for minions to get a recharging shield than a small amount of regen, as I assume the animated weapons do not have the life to make use of it.

Yeah I think the same too. Though there's a huge counterside: the traps in the lab will hurt a lot more.

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Another option that I was trying out that could be good for extra offense is to use Blasphemy with Elemental Weakness. Normally I don't take the time to curse every pack with FP. But with a Ele Weakness aura I wouldn't have to worry about it, and could save FP for lowering boss resists.

Honestly dunno about the utility of Blasphemy playing summoner. Sadly, aura nodes doesnt increase the radius of Blasphemy, and Blaspehmy itself has a pretty low range at lv20. Worth being tested, though.

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In regards to the 'heaviness' of the build, I believe I mention it in the 'Cons' section at the beginning of the guide. Having many, many weapons will take its toll on your computer. When I do the Trio in Atziri I almost always have at least 4 seconds of freeze on my computer until everything sorts itself out (99% of the time with the Trio being dead)

I see... well i just hope i wont have frequent fps problems. I would like to start the new league with this build. What build are you going to use?

I'm probably not going to be playing the new league very much, but if you use my build, please continue to give me feedback :)

Just tried this build for a moment in Standard using an old character (without ascendancy, then).

I just saw that if we take even the Charisma node, then we can take out Alpha Howl: the 50% auras will cost 33% (even without conqueror's efficiency, so we gain also a jewel slot), this way we can run still 3 big auras. Not bad. I hope they will add a good summoner helmet, or maybe something that increase skill duration.

EDIT: Wonderful. Instead of running 3x50% auras, you can also run 2x50% and 2x35% auras (reserving exactly 100 of your mana, only with Alpha though).

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Serge91 wrote:

Just tried this build for a moment in Standard using an old character (without ascendancy, then).

I just saw that if we take even the Charisma node, then we can take out Alpha Howl: the 50% auras will cost 33% (even without conqueror's efficiency, so we gain also a jewel slot), this way we can run still 3 big auras. Not bad. I hope they will add a good summoner helmet, or maybe something that increase skill duration.

EDIT: Wonderful. Instead of running 3x50% auras, you can also run 2x50% and 2x35% auras (reserving exactly 100 of your mana, only with Alpha though).

With the changes to the necromancer ascendancy tree, we can even drop Haste for a different Aura. So long as we still run 4 auras, the aura node in the Necromancer tree will be a free Haste.

I would really advise against getting rid of Alpha's Howl though. Anger/Wrath are most of your damage and + to gem levels really improves them. Like, A LOT.

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When you are animating weapons, be sure to hold down shift. Without holding shift the range for animating weapons is extremely short, your character will move until they are almost beside the weapon. HOWEVER if you hold shift you will be surprised at how far away and under what circumstances you can animate weapons (Behind walls)

I edited this info out of the main thread, as there is a change within the 2.3 patch notes that affects it:

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Animate Weapon and Animate Guardian have had their range modified. Previously there was a bug where you could bypass the range. Now that this is fixed, the range has been tripled from 25 to 75 units.

I assume that when we held shift, we were using this bug to bypass the range we could Animate Weapons, allowing us to animate things from a screen away and behind walls.

Animate Weapon's original cast range was pure cancer, you had to be practically beside a weapon to animate it. I'm hoping that a tripled value will be an okay medium between cancer and animating stuff behind walls, but I remain wary.

I'm running this build on my alt this league, enjoying it so far. Haven't got to mapping yet, but it doesn't look like I should have too many issues with the transition. The range increase is perfect, and I've yet to run into a situation where there were weapons I wanted to animate that were too far away.

I bought this Alpha's for 4 Ex:

I spent another 4 Ex on Chromatics trying to get 2B2R... and, as you can see, no dice.

Once I get my colors right, I want to get that new Tawmir cloak, which will probably run me another 8 Ex.

I look forward to running Atziri.

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Khepresh wrote:

I'm running this build on my alt this league, enjoying it so far. Haven't got to mapping yet, but it doesn't look like I should have too many issues with the transition. The range increase is perfect, and I've yet to run into a situation where there were weapons I wanted to animate that were too far away.

I bought this Alpha's for 4 Ex:

I spent another 4 Ex on Chromatics trying to get 2B2R... and, as you can see, no dice.

Once I get my colors right, I want to get that new Tawmir cloak, which will probably run me another 8 Ex.

I look forward to running Atziri.

Yeah the Alpha's is intensely hard to colour.. I think I used the 1b1r option with Vorici to get mine, don't bother with 2b1r or 2r1b. It'll probably cost more in the long run..

But WOW that enchant... I want it so badly...

I REALLY want to try that cloak but I have no money to 6Link one, haha. Let me know how it goes!

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Organics wrote:

Yeah the Alpha's is intensely hard to colour.. I think I used the 1b1r option with Vorici to get mine, don't bother with 2b1r or 2r1b. It'll probably cost more in the long run..

But WOW that enchant... I want it so badly...

I REALLY want to try that cloak but I have no money to 6Link one, haha. Let me know how it goes!

I ended up buying a 2R2B Alpha's for 15C, and I'll farm Uber Lab with my RF totem character to try and get a decent enchantment out of it. Should that ever happen, I'll make the switch on over to that. The lab is very, very, rough on this build. the Lab has so many area transitions, you lose all your weapons really quick. Takes forever to then drop weapons, animate them, pick up momentum again to get through the area, while picking up other weapons to store in your inventory. Traps are non-friendly to block characters with no life regen. Izaro goes down super quick, but the gimmicks in his fights make that troublesome, because you have to kill him after dealing with the other crap, and Convocation has little utility in that circumstance given its painfully long cooldown.

Wearing 2 unset rings, because holy crap is this built socket hungry.

I ran Atziri today on a 5 link Belly at level 76 with level 17ish gems - was amazing. No issues clearing packs faster than I could keep up with the weapons, constant Vaal Haste up, and I ended each section with 100+ weapons animated. Vaal Oversouls died instantly, Trio died almost at the same moment, and Atziri went immediately into split phase almost as soon as I came in. Spell block is phenomenal, and I survived despite not playing optimally.

Unfortunately, I was not properly prepared (threw on the sac set on a lark, not expecting to do as well as I did), and my weapons got her down to about quarter health before they could no longer cope with her flameblasts. I ended up switching to my Dual RF Totem character to take care of the last quarter of her health, as I had no weapons left to get the job done. I think with a Purity of Fire, I'd have steamrolled her. I've got a 20% PoF leveling now, which should make the fight trivial.

I can get a map started by just dropping 1 or 2 weapons on the ground and going from there.

I was able to run tier 8+ maps before I even hit level 70 as well. The DPS on these weapons is insane, and can do just about any map mod I've tried so far (going into an unid'd Blood Magic with 100% mana reservation isn't a smart idea...).

Really loving this build, lab issues aside.

Current gear: