The Elemental Animator - Animate Weapon, Auras - Life, Hybrid, CI Variants - 1.2.0 Planning
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Theuberelite has taken the reins of this idea and has since formulated an updated, much better version. You can find it here. I'll keep this post as is for archival purposes.
This is a summoner build made to maximize on the synergies between Animate Weapon, Animate Guardian, and added elemental damage from auras. Since its creation it has proven to be the best way to scale their damage and defenses. This is the original version with variants by others featured in two of GGG's Build of the Week episodes and reaching the top ranks of a few long term races.
Elemental Instead of Physical
There are several reasons why elemental damage synergizes better with these skills than physical damage:
Added Damage Added damage is necessary for these skills because you cannot rely on sacrificing good melee weapons to animate all the time. It's simply impractical, especially for Animate Weapon. When it comes to options, added elemental damage that can be applied to minions is a lot more available than physical damage. You have to rely on The physical damage supports and auras scale off of base damage, which doesn't help when the base damage isn't good to begin with. Wrath, Anger, and Added Lightning Damage all provide added elemental damage. Elemental Equilibrium As a summoner, you can trigger Elemental Equilibrium. Your minions will benefit from the reduced resistances but they cannot trigger the change, so all you have to do is use your skill once. Because added lightning and fire damage is much more abundant for the minions, you can freely use a cold spell as the trigger. And what skill is better than Ice Nova Traps to simulate an Elemental Equilibrium Curse? Attack Speed Armor is more effective against hits with low physical damage. For elemental damage it doesn't matter, because resistances provide an absolute reduction. You can split one big hit of elemental damage into smaller hits and you will still deal the same amount of damage. Multistrike is a support that provides attack speed multiplication, which is very effective when stacking the other attack speed increases. It does so at the cost of damage, which would be bad for low physical damage, but is fine with any amount of elemental damage.
Animate Weapon
Animate Weapon is a skill that raises an identified melee weapon from the ground (not from your inventory) as a minion. As you can guess, its attacking uses the stats and modifiers of the weapon animated. It is further augmented by support gems and buffs, which is where the skill really shines.
Each minion has a base duration of 37.5 seconds, which can be modified by the skill duration cluster on the passive skill tree and the Increased Duration support. With those in mind, the duration isn't too bad, but probably needs a little more time. Personally I would say 40 seconds is a fair compromise. The damage, attack speed, and maximum item level requirement that can be animated all raise with gem levels. Much like other traditional summoning skills, this means you have to let the gem level with your character to be able to use it effectively. The damage modifier is global and increases substantially, while the attack speed increases normally. The gem quality is movement speed, which is essential in allowing the weapons to travel between enemies faster, thus increasing actual DPS. After testing this build extensively, movement speed seems to be necessary in making the build compete when it comes to clear speed. Therefore, the massive increase of gem with high quality is optimal. AT 20% quality it provides massive 40% increase. Passive Skill Tree[/url]
Equipment Optimal modifiers are listed for non-unique items. Modifiers are in descending order of importance.
Character
Weapon Sets
Armor
Accessories
[spoiler="Example Configuration"]
Armor
[spoiler="Example Set"] I consider this the budget version. Each item cost me 1-3 Orbs of Alchemy each, and about 5 Chaos Orbs in total.[/spoiler][/spoiler] Gems Each list item represents a socket chain. Support Gems are in descending order of importance. Gems marked with [%] have quality bonuses that are highly recommended. Chest Armor When entering a zone or reloading the guardian:
Helm
Gloves/Boots
Primary Weapon Set
Secondary Weapon Set
Quest Rewards
same name in-game Last edited by iao#2860 on Mar 25, 2015, 6:36:08 AM
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Damage Approximation
Edit: This approximation was made pre-1.0.4. I'll update it at some point. This is taking into account just the added base damage and other modifiers from level 20 gems and the 109 point passive skill tree. Anger and Wrath are in Alpha's Howl, so their levels are boosted to 22, and their effects are further increased by the 70% increased effect of auras from the passive skill tree. Added Damage
Altogether that's an average of 543 added base damage. Damage Multipliers Positive
Negative
With those applied, the total added base damage per hit would be 3063. Attack Speed Multipliers
The lowest base attack speed in the game is 0.95 attacks per second, and the highest is 1.7 attacks per second. The former would then have 3.57 attacks per second, and the latter would have 6.4. That means the lowest damage per second added would be 10934.91 and the highest would be 19603.2, considering only unmodified weapons. Enemy Debuffs
With those applied, they can provide a maximum of 99% more damage dealt. For the lowest base attack speed weapon, the damage per second would be brought to 21760.4709. For the highest, it would be 39010.368. Gem Quality With gems at maximum quality, the following bonuses can be added to the approximation:
With those taken into account, the approximate maximal stats against enemies not debuffed are:
And now for the damage stats for those debuffed:
same name in-game Last edited by iao#2860 on Mar 17, 2014, 5:59:00 PM
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Almost positive Weapon Elemental Damage will do nothing for animate weapon, since they are minions and not weapons (it doesn't work on zombies or spectres, and even though your using weapons their still minions).
I would replace it with melee splash. Also, how useful is the lifegain/life leech? My weapons don't die that often when I use them, perhaps replace it with another gem, maybe Added Chaos damage? Its a nice flat damage modifier and the quality bonus increases its damage further. Culling Strikes would be another good choice. |
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According to the terminology of the gems, it seems Weapon Elemental Damage should work for Animate Weapon simply because it applies to weapons, and the minions are weapons. This is different from weapon elemental damage passives on the tree because the tree itself will only apply to the character, unless any passives describe that they don't. I could be wrong, of course. I'll PM a developer to see.
Melee Splash is indeed probably a good idea. I guess if Weapon Elemental Damage doesn't apply I'll switch it out for Melee Splash. Life Gain on Hit and Life Leech seems to be a good choice in keeping the animated weapons alive in endgame, though I'm not sure they'll need them. If Weapon Elemental Damage does apply, Melee Splash would probably take the spot if they are unneeded. Added Chaos Damage is also a good support choice because of the high base damage, as you said. Thanks for the feedback, Moose65. I made a few updates to the first post. same name in-game
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nice idea, exactly the same thoughts i had, the moment i read about animate weapon. ill give this a try, please update your guide with your experience about support gems.
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" Thanks, and will do. Next thing I'm getting to are passive skill tree milestones, and then I'll order support gems by importance and give some info on my experience with different combinations. I am currently leveling a character with this build in Nemesis. I run Wrath and link Animate Weapon with just Increased Duration and Added Lightning Damage. I also took the skill duration cluster early, which helps out a lot. They do pretty damn good damage, it's just hard to keep them alive throughout the duration and have enough weapons to animate when solo. Also, Rejuvenation Totem is a good substitute for Vitality but requires you to cast it a lot. I am considering running a normal summoner until I feel comfortable to rely mainly on Animate Weapon. I'll keep running it as a secondary skill of course. I'll update with when I feel it is comfortable to make it the main skill for this build. same name in-game
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what about spell totem animate weapon? does this allow you to animate the same weapon many times? does it not work at all? does it just animate once and then do nothing? does it consume all the weapons near it animating different weapons and not providing any savings on weapons needed?
because animate weapon seems like it's competing with skeletons? while guardian competes with zombs/spectres? |
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I haven't tried it with Spell Totem, but I imagine it'll animate any melee weapons that are close enough, one by one. It should work the same way as though you are spamming the skill, but with the damage reduction applied. Because of that it's simply not worthwhile.
same name in-game
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I made a feedback post for Animate Weapon here, so I thought I may as well link it here. I'll be making some updates to the first post soon, as well.
same name in-game
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Updated the first post with passive skill tree point milestones and a few other updates here and there.
Also, I got confirmation from Mark that Weapon Elemental Damage does work with Animate Weapon. This is great news, as it should be a great damage boost. same name in-game
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