Animate Weapon

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NinjaWill wrote:

Issues I've had with this skill (Aside from the buggy keybind usage)

1) Very tedious to cast - needing to manually click on each weapon on the ground takes you away from combat. The only other summon that requires you to look away from combat is Raise Spectre - and even then its only once in awhile and on specific creatures you want to utilize. Also the cast range is abysmally low.
Suggestion: Casting Animate Weapon automatically target the nearest non-4/5/6L white weapon on the ground.

2) Completely useless without weapons on the ground. There are almost always enough corpses for Raise Zombie and Raise Spectre - if you don't see enough White weapons you have to waste item identifying to get more.
Suggestion: Let us cast Animate Weapon on unidentified Blue weapons on the ground, even if it reverts it to the base values.

3) Low Duration - 30 seconds is far too low given the above two points. Unless the damage output is incredible at higher levels - taking the time to animate half a dozen weapons only have them disappear shortly thereafter is frustrating.
Suggestion: Either A) Remove the duration and give a cap to the number of weapons we can have out, or B) Keep the duration but let summoning nodes improve it, say 5 seconds for each of the key summoning nodes (+1 Zombies/Skels/etc)

Overall I really want to like this skill, but it just feels incredibly lackluster at the moment.

I agree with all these points. Something about short duration minions really goes against my sensibilities. I'd rather duration minions (weapons, skeletons) lasted longer or the duration mechanic was dropped entirely and those minions reserved fixed mana. Recasting minions constantly is anathema to minion play, it isn't fun to manage or engaging.

Reserving mana in lieu of spawn duration is an excellent suggestion.

Personally, I'd rather them not reserve mana. It made sense before 1.0.0, but not with the current aura and mana reservation system and Mind Over Matter having been implemented.

I think it'd be interesting if the duration was affected in some way by the weapon quality. Perhaps the quality could act as a multiplier for the duration.

Or maybe when the duration ends, a certain amount of the quality is removed and the weapon drops back on the ground. If there isn't any quality left then the weapon will be destroyed. Actually, I really like that. It'd mean you can even safely use unique items (well, at least when playing solo).

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Iao wrote:

Personally, I'd rather them not reserve mana. It made sense before 1.0.0, but not with the current aura and mana reservation system and Mind Over Matter having been implemented.

I think it'd be interesting if the duration was affected in some way by the weapon quality. Perhaps the quality could act as a multiplier for the duration.

Or maybe when the duration ends, a certain amount of the quality is removed and the weapon drops back on the ground. If there isn't any quality left then the weapon will be destroyed. Actually, I really like that. It'd mean you can even safely use unique items (well, at least when playing solo).

What if it drained mana instead at a fixed rate or percentage? Also fixed reservation wouldn't be nearly as bad as percent reservation. The main idea is removing tedium from the skill while maintaining a legitimate opportunity cost.

skelies is fine becuase it is a summon you don't need anything to cast and gives the summoner something to spam while his minions are killing stuff if you use actual killing skills skelletons might not be needed. The problem with this is that it makes you lose an item and lasts for the same amount of time as a skelli. has anyone tried buff passive nodes on this? is that another way to raise the time limit on it? i like the lower quality idea it would force people to waste currency on a skill other than white melee weapons and if u get a good yellow out of something you can always start a fresh with a new item. It would in a sense though make this skill very expensive to keep. even though it might make it abusable for bosses I say raise the time limit of this skill to a point where it lasts for at least half of a boss battle before any buffs The problem with the mana drain idea is that one could make their mana regen faster than the drain which would counter the drain. I do kinda wonder though how come ggg hasn't come up with any mana drain skills

Few complaints about this skill

1. Lag - When initially summoning it, it seems to lag the game ever so slightly. Seems to be a delay as well for the weapon rising up to fight for you.

2. Tedious Casting - You have to click specifically on the weapon to raise it. Please make it similar to Raise Zombie, where the spell checks for an eligible nearby item. While were speaking of that, please remove the option for it to target "Chromatic" weapons and 6 Socket weapons. I can see this being used to grief in parties for Chromatics you know you can't reach, and as far as the 6 socket, nobody would willing raise those anyways.

The duration I'm fine with actually. It needs a restriction to prevent people from dumping a whole bag full of weapons for boss fights. I easily had 10 weapons up for a bit while normally farming (my gem still isn't high enough level yet though to target 61+ weapons). A level 20 quality duration gem will bring it to just over a mintue, and if you chose to get the skill duration passives, it raises it to 74.4 seconds. Also, keep in mind that it doesn't carry the penalty that skeletons do with the -50% elemental damage, so if your running wrath/anger/hatred damage can scale up VERY quickly with multiple weapons.

I'm also fine with the duration. If anyone's wondering, I can confirm that the skill duration cluster does indeed apply to the minion duration.

And the fact about elemental damage is true. Currently I have this linked with Added Lightning Damage and Increased Duration and I am also using Wrath. With a couple minion damage nodes, my animated weapons are often one-hitting normal enemies.

Sadly I can only sustain an army when in a group, because of its increased item quantity. When solo I either have to buy items from the vendor or wait for a melee weapon to drop, which sometimes takes awhile. It makes me want the item quality idea more and more.

If anyone's interested I wrote about my build here: Elemental Animated Weapons Scion.

tedious casting can be solved with trigger gems

i tried yesterday 'on dmg taken' and it works very well. area affected is huge, had no problem summoning 2-3weapons during normal run. but as a summoner it is better to not get hit at all..

but - cast on dmg taken means garbage dmg.. so other option is mine/trap + increased duration to alleviate timer issue

i think this skill can be nice filler with reliable dmg type of skill. however that casting 2-key combo is tedious at best

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sidtherat wrote:

tedious casting can be solved with trigger gems

UI obstruction should not be a tool with which to balance skills. What I'd really like to know is why such skills are duration based instead of a legitimate tradeoff like % mana drain or fixed reservation.

If people don't like a skill they just won't use it. These skills are very cool and I think they would be more fun for players to experiment with if they were balanced around build considerations instead of tedium.

I'd like duration to be what increases with leveling not item level.
Just seems silly, like better weapons take more magical ability to make them float or something but I don't learn to make them float longer? Have it start at 20 seconds and hit 60 seconds at level 20.

I think having it duration limited is fine but I'd like the duration to be implemented as life draining. Even if you increased its life it would still drain life/duration per second. But then you could extend its life with regen aura/totem, life leech/on hit gems, and on weapon life leech. This would make claws in general the best white items to use it with, which would go along with it being a dex/int spell.

I can't believe people are asking to be able to spam it but not have it target recipe items automatically or high links. Come on. This game is all about trade offs. If you're lazy with your casting you're gonna lose some good stuff. That's like asking for raise zombie not to auto target good spectre corpses. Also GGG likes to sneak recipes into the game time to time, something like that would give it away too easy.