The Elemental Animator - Animate Weapon, Auras - Life, Hybrid, CI Variants - 1.2.0 Planning

I was asked in the game how to deal with the Storm Herald enemies. I've been testing out Conversion Trap with them and it's working decently. You can just convert the enemy and it will kill the other enemies around it. After that I just convert it again and leave it alone, as it's not worth losing minions over.

You can do the same if you're having trouble with Ancestral Power. If you convert the rare, the totems will also convert so they'll also damage the enemies.

The conversion duration is pretty good, thanks to the skill duration nodes. You can also link it with Increased Duration if you want, but it's not necessary.

A few updates here and there. I decided that Clarity is indeed imperative. I also found that Reduced Mana supporting Animate Weapon and a high enough maximum mana will be necessary to use a fourth 60% mana reservation aura because of the high skill cost, unless you use the Blood Magic of course.

I will be including calculations in the second post once I get clarification on how exactly reduced mana reservation works (I did some calculations using common knowledge that disagreed with the actual number in-game).

Updated. I lost my level 77 Nemesis character to a laptop crash which really sucks, but I'm working on bringing up another. I will have my new desktop computer built by the end of Black Friday, so a video will be made then. Sorry about not making the one on my friend's computer-- that ended up just not working out.

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Iao wrote:

Updated. I lost my level 77 Nemesis character to a laptop crash which really sucks, but I'm working on bringing up another. I will have my new desktop computer built by the end of Black Friday, so a video will be made then. Sorry about not making the one on my friend's computer-- that ended up just not working out.

Totally fine on the video, thanks for the update sorry about the char loss he was geared nicely. :\


Can't wait for the videos!

Thanks! Yeah, it's a bummer but it's not so bad. At least I didn't have an Alpha's Howl equipped yet. I was actually just about to buy one, heh. Now I have this thing waiting for me:


Computer built, and I'm installing the game now. I'll probably put the video on YouTube in a couple days.

Wow, another awesome guide, Iao! I like the usage of niche skills. :)
How do you create your animated guardian? First blue drops you'll get? Or do you have to resummon it rarely, so you summon them out of good items?

Thanks Caliginosus! Yeah, I'm mainly into theorycrafting very niche, but effective builds. That's where I get most of my fun from the game. The guides are to show what can be done with underrated skills/items and uncommon synergies, mainly to inspire others to also create unique builds.

This build actually surrounds around using Animate Weapon, not Animate Guardian. I do want to replace the zombies with Animate Guardian at some point, but right now they are a bit more effective with tanking.

As for those waiting on a video (no one :p) I decided to wait until I level my new Nemesis character to 60 or so to show it off. I still have the level 77 in Standard and that'd also make an appearance to show how effective it is with high enough level gems.

I've started a Scion some time ago based on same concept - animate weapons and elemental damage auras with the same support gems. As for mana consumption and defence i went for EB and Arctic Armor instead of IR. with ~230 mp/sec summoning weapons isn't hard on mana at all becouse standing still AA mana consumption is droping by ~190/sec allowing you to spam summon. I used conversion trap+increased duration too.

The goal was simple: to make summoner with no preparations required. Along the way i encountered a few problems:
1. Runing Disc (for EB)/Wrath/Anger/Clarity left me with mana pool enough to support single summon before i OOM, forcing me to wait 2 sec to get mana back. Inconvinient but not catastrofic.
2. Animate weapon behaviour - similar to zombies they need to be on top of their target to attack and they have same problem of time lag in changing their target (especially so if it dies mid AW swing). This problem resulted in 5L AW runing like headless chickens between mobs whille 4L burning miscreation spectre have been doing 90% of killing job.
3. Survivability - even supported with buffed up Purity of Elements (40% to all, tried it to see if Necro Aegis with resist heavy shield is worth picking) they die like paper to elemental damage, also they die to things zombies have to problems tanking - phys dmg heavy enemies. That might've something to do with me runing 71-76 maps using gem lvl 18, but i can't know for sure if their hp scales properly (for example zombies lvl 18 are pretty squishy for mid-high maps, but lvl 20 in +2 minion helm can endure some pain). Sadly tooltip doesn't provide enough information about skill defensive stats scaling.

In the end tired of seeing how my weapon army die to single incinetator blast or molten giant roll i switched back to burning miscreations/zombies/blinding skelletons totem as my core, to defensive auras and... my clear time is the same, exept i don't have to bother targeting weapons that will die seconds later. Atm i'm leveling Animate Weapon in offweapon and will give it another shot upon it's reaching lvl 20.

Would like to hear OP experience on AW behaviour and survivability and in what content you've used it succesfully.

P.S. Also i don't remmember details, but my calculations for dps were in the same range. Although i supported my AW only in 5L and with lvl 18 wrath/anger (buffed up by aura nodes though), AW dps was noticably lower then my 28K dps dualstrike character. I suspect the reason for it is "deals % of base dmg" mod, affecting only base stats of weapon and not working for auras. Still AW with elemental support can dish out some hurt. 3-4 of them can kill rare mob inside lvl 73 map in mere seconds as soon as they start attacking.
P.P.S. Imo need more ppls to ask for clarification of skill defensive stats & meaning behind "increased base dmg" in Skill Feedback section. It's easier to meassure zombie dmg as hidden stat then resistances and life of AW.

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Thanks Caliginosus! Yeah, I'm mainly into theorycrafting very niche, but effective builds. That's where I get most of my fun from the game. The guides are to show what can be done with underrated skills/items and uncommon synergies, mainly to inspire others to also create unique builds.

I prefer this way to play too, so I'll keep an eye on your signature. ;P

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This build actually surrounds around using Animate Weapon, not Animate Guardian. I do want to replace the zombies with Animate Guardian at some point, but right now they are a bit more effective with tanking.

But you listed Animate Guardian in the skill section. But I guess I should just try it and find my own way to use the skills. :)

Sorry for the late and short reply. I've been testing Animate Guardian out recently to see how it can fit into the build. It's working quite well, and proves to be extremely tanky with the right auras and gear. With my current Nemesis character I don't even have Necromantic Aegis, but when I do the thing should be near-invincible when it comes to being a minion.

I've updated the guide to include Chaos Inoculation and Low Life builds. I'll be making more changes when I finish theorycrafting. Crizisrf, I'll have a more detailed response soon. Thanks for detailing your experience with your build.