The Headbang Gang - Elemental Spirits Animator Scion build

It's a very active build that requires a lot of different button presses and good timing. IMHO, a refreshing change from some of the more brain-dead builds that have been popular recently :3 It also doesn't use snapshots at all, and is generally a much more involved play style than a zombie/spectre summoner (and many other builds; I think it rivals a tri-trapper in terms of APS).

You open by planting 2 totems that will summon Raging Spirits for you.
You curse the mobs with Ele Weakness and throw Ice Nova Multitraps at them to proc EE.
You put the skulls into overdrive with Flesh Offering (use Desacrate for corpses if needed).
You animate all the white weapons that drop for some serious DPS and good tanking for the totems and you.
Meanwhile, your minions will be rushing to the next pack, just follow them and recast totems closer to the front line.
Rinse, repeat, profit.

The Good :
- Cool factor : huge waves of flaming skulls headbutting everything is a pretty sight.
- Fast action : you have a lot of cast speed and your minions move at the speed of light. It makes for pleasingly dynamic gameplay.
- Varied gameplay : there are a lot of active skills in there, and there are some interesting tactical decisions to take quite often. I'd say it's a build that takes skill to use well. If you are tired of playing one-handed while watching TV (I'm looking at you RF), this should be a nice change of pace.
- Easy mapper : There are few map mods that this build can't do. As MoM/AA, no regen and blood magic will be tough and should probably be rerolled. Half regen is doable enough if you take things a bit more slowly. Reflect does nothing to you and neither does Enfeeble. Or Corrupting Blood or lightning thorns, for that matter.
- Solo, but Party friendly : this is designed as a solo build. In parties, even if youdo bring along a fair share of screen clutter, you don't cause the same kind of performance issues that come with CoC or Mjolner builds. Having teammates to tank between the mobs and your totems also makes your life significantly easier.
- Cheap-ish : Alpha's and a 5L Cloak are pretty much required late game, putting the investment at around 7ex. On the other hand the rest of the slots can easily be filled with a-few-chaos rares, so while it's certainly not the cheapest build out there, it's reasonable enough. both core uniques are widely available but very sought for uniques that are easy to reuse or resell if you decide to. If no Alpha's available, a Geoffris or a +1 to gems corrupted pair of gloves/boots can do the trick. I also leveled to about 72 with a Tabula instead of the Cloak of Defiance, it works well enough for low maps/A3 farming even without MoM and a low AA.

The Less-good :
- totems are squishy. They will get killed and need to be recast often, especially at the beginning of a map where you don't have any Animate Weapons available. Getting over that first pack can be a bit tedious especially if you come across leapers or flicker strikers
- you'll have to read the names of white drops for Animate Weapon, which can get quite annoying when in a party with a IIQ culler : the quantity of stuff to wade through slows you down a bit, although that also means a ridiculous quantity of AW out crushing everything.
- You don't have access to a good movement skill as LW gets botched by your increased duration passives and WB is out of the question since you want a wand with cast speed on it - it doesn't roll on a dagger. You could keep a dagger in the offhand with WB or a Brightbeak with LS if you are so inclined, although I personally just quicksilver around - which should be fairly fast with Haste and quality AA.
- Some players will find the constant rotation of skills tedious, I guess. I personally enjoy it though.
- It's hard to get a high life total with this. My lvl75 is currently barely pushing 3k, but this is largely offset by MoM and AA.
- Readability is a bit of a problem at times with all that jazz on screen, the state of your totems in particular is hard to follow. Unfortunately they don't have a separate icon in the status bar and are just added to your Spirits count. (I hope that part of the UI gets a bit of a rework some time)

Mid-April 2014, 1.1.2 : first edition of this guide. This build is still a WIP. The character is currently lvl75 doing 73-75 maps with fairly challenging mods at a very reasonable speed. I hope to put out more information later about the viability for later game, the potential of an MF variant, etc. I'll also try to make a video when I can.

June 2014, 1.1.4 : this character is now on my back burner. I did level her to 81, and she got to do 77s solo without much trouble. Piety is a bit of a pain as her AoE will instagib most if not all of your minions. I also did some very hard 75 and 76s, most corrupted, that none of my other builds could do before it (that includes OP builds like Mjolner and Windripper).

DPS Per Raging Skull : 4.5k or thereabouts (50%fire/40%light/10%phys)

DPS Per Animate Weapon : 10-15k depending on the AS of the base (10k for a 0.95aps maul, 15k for a foil)

These numbers are calculated from passive bonuses, gem links and offensive self-buffs. It doesn't take into account bonuses on gear or curses on mobs, which will be used along with proccing EE with cold, ideally bringing mob resistances down by -109% for fire and lightning (20/20 ele weakness; -100 with 19/0).

I can provide my ghetto spreadsheet if anyone is interested.

Here is a lvl82 tree that is pretty much finished product.

Bandits :
Oak
Skill Point
Skill Point

Chest : Summon Raging Spirits - Spell Totem - Faster Casting - Multistrike - Minion Damage - (Increased Duration/Faster Attacks)
Your main link will give you access to waves of flaming skulls headbanging your enemies to death at lightspeed. Faster Casting will let you have a lot more out at the same time, and Minion Damage will give them as much of a damage boost as WED would if it worked with skulls (they are Unarmed so it doesn't). Increased duration is of course very nice on them but my experiments this far seem to show that the increased duration from the tree is enough for them to perform well. That is what I was using in a 6L (Tabula!) until ~70, but took it out to switch to a 5L Cloak. Faster Attacks would be worth considering, I haven't tested it much though.
Quality is heartily recommended on SRS, FC, and MD. It's also nice on increased duration.

Helm (Alpha's) : Anger - Wrath - Haste - Reduced Mana
The meat of the build. Haste is extremely beneficial both for the cast speed on you and the attack and move speed on the minions.

Gloves : Animate Weapon - WED - Multistrike - Minion Life
Animate weapon is such an underrated skill. It has a ridiculous 250% damage effectiveness at lvl20. One of these guys with 2 damage supports will as much damage as your average party member in a public docks farming party. Minion life is to let them tank reasonably long as your spirits cannot be targeted and your totems are squishy, so we need them to be able to take some hits. (they have 3% life leech which helps tremendously). The Quality bonus on Animate Weapon is excellent, do not pass it up.

Boots : Clarity - Reduced Mana - Blood Magic - Vaal Haste
Vaal Haste is only there because it was the only open socket. Ideally you would want inc duration on it.

Weapon : Flesh Offering - Elemental Weakness - Arctic Armor
Quality is fantastic on Ele Weakness and also good on Flesh Offering. Quality on AA is a luxury, but a very nice one.

Shield : Ice Nova - Trap - Multitrap
Quality Ice Nova and Multitrap is a nice plus

Chest : Cloak of Defiance

Helm : Alpha's Howl

Weapon : rare wand/scepter with cast speed, mana regen (mana, +2 cold, resists)

Shield : rare with life, resists, ES and Ev (mana regen & mana if pure ES, but i do think a good amount of Evasion there helps so I'd go with a hybrid. Archon for more resists is nice too)

Amulet : rare with cast speed, mana regen, life and resists. sidhebreath is a valid choice if you can spare the life & resists.

Rings : rares with mana regen, life and resists. Cast speed is also nice. Maybe Voideye if you can afford to run AA that high.

Belt : rare with life and resists. Corrupted for Increased Duration would be very nice. Maybe Perandus Blazon for farming.

Boots : Goldwyrm

Gloves : rare with life/resists or Aurseize. I have Dex on my gloves, it's very likely you will need some on at least one piece to be able to wear Alpha's

Apart from the uniques, this is all self found bits and bobs I had in my stash. Except the wand which I did by for a few chaos and the amulet which I alt-regaled. There's quite a bit of room for improvement.