5 Aura Raging Spirits / Animate Weapon 1.1.5 Build

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Duskcaller wrote:

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sgehtSusaki wrote:

Sorry but your build doesnt use the potencial Summon Raging Spirits have.
Your weapon is okay but crap if you want to deal damage.
Flesh offering affects Spirits which are already casted, but not these which casted while flesh offering is up. So better use vaal haste, which allows yourself to cast faster and ALL spirits to attack faster and moving faster.
More melee damage isnt bad, but not good at all too.
Spirits->multistrike->melee splash-> faster casting->spell echo->empower is the best way to get all the strengt from them you want if you have a staff with +2 on fire and +1 on all gems.
dont know if you ever thought about calculating your dps, but i deal around 360k dps normally and 680k with vaal haste running.
check out my post for more information: http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/961802

Interesting. Wasn't aware of the difference between Vaal Haste and Flesh Offering. Is Faster Casting preferable to Increased Duration or Minion Damage? When I experimented with gems pre-Spell Echo, Increased Duration allowed me to maintain more spirits up than Faster Casting. I wonder if there is a point where Fasting Casting overtakes Increased Duration in usefulness?

Increased Duration is not bad, thats right. You know that the Spirits deal more damage the more they are. So it is better to have many of them fast. If you have the duration nodes from the passives they still last 5 seconds which allows you to cast 20-21 spirits aswell and you are able to cast them faster what directly increases your dps.

I guess if you reach the point where your Spirits are killing everything on screen before you actually hit maximum numbers, you could sacrifice some duration. In that scenario, the speed at which you can ramp up the number of spirits becomes more important than how many you can have up at one time.

I'm working with a 5-link Cloak of Defiance at the moment. The duration passive nodes are still a fair distance away, but when I get them I might replace Increased Duration with melee splash. (Current setup is Summon Raging Spirit, Multristrike, Spell Echo, Increased Duration, Minion Damage).

Tried to math out which of the elemental auras gave the most bang for the buck. I hesitate to say I got all the numbers right, but they seemed to show that Hatred -> Wrath -> Anger. And chilled monsters probably aren't a bad thing.

Im currently running a variant of this build & I will say this... Regardless of the +2/+1 to gem staves added dmg to the Skulls, These little guys do an amazing amount of damage with very little set up.

Maxing out damage in builds is one thing.. But making a build that is fun and playable(cheap) is another.

TheNugernaut, This is a great build. Good job ^.^

Is the chober/animate weapons really worth it? Personally i'd say it's not. You kinda need them during bossfights and while fighting exiles, while this not always possible. Personally i feel like relying on weapon drops is a bad idea. Wouldn't something more defensive be more appropriate? You already got very little defense to begin with. Maybe take a shield and some defensive skills like skelly totem?

Out of curiosity, how did you do the leveling? (Go Spectral Throw while leveling the needed gems?)

Went your tree, or did another tree and later respect?

You don't need to use a 2-handed weapon to use Animated Weapons. You can just put it in your gloves or boots (I'm currently running Animate Weapon, Increased Duration, Multristrike, Melee Splash). Using a 2-hander to go 5 or 6 link obviously ups your DPS potential at the cost of block and resists.

Observations from running low-level maps: I love my Animated Weapons and they're awesome. They seemed kind of weak at low levels... died often, and I couldn't have too many up because most of the weapon drops were too high a level. But now they're killing machines. I'm doing enough DPS to kill stuff pretty quickly just with sprits, but with 6 or more weapons up at once, packs just melt. Bosses really just get chewed up and spat out.

Animated Weapons in this build are fast and aggressive. With a crowd of them around, you don't get attacked by much. And weapons aren't hard to find lying on the ground. Some maps I've found myself chasing after them, animating more weapons in their wake.

I think my character was respecced from something else at about level 12, and I levelled up using the Spirits just to see if it could be done. Perfectly viable, although undoubted there are faster ways to do it. I was running Clarity, Discipline and Haste until 64 when I could finally put the Alpha's Howl on. Dropped Discipline, turned on Hatred and Wrath.

More cool things about this build: You laugh at reflect maps. You laugh at proximity shield. Had one issue on a docks run (while Animate Weapon was still underlevelled) with a multi-projectile dog pack: the continuous overlapping streams were doing so much damage my spirits were dying before doing much harm to the dogs.

Few ways to optimize your tree:

Start as Witch - you'll pick 40% mana regen +8%mana (2 nodes) instead of 20% mana regen + 24% mana (4 nodes). If you really need more mana you can pick 2x8% mana nodes on left "life and mana" wheel.

Don't go for Athleticism wheel - you pick +30 Str, + 10 Int and + 24% life in 5 nodes. Instead go for small life wheel near Mind Drinker - +10 Int and +24% life in 4 nodes. If you really need more Str you can pick that +30 Str node.

And 2 other suggestions:
- get those skill duration nodes - they are very close and give you huge boost.
- EE + cold spell rocks.

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How much mana do you need?

I calculated that you need 5.1k but your gear doesn't seem to add up to that.

Alpha Howl's 3x60% aura, 60% Discipline and Clarity

60%*.92*.59*.71*3 = 69.36% reserved (Alpha)
60%*.71*.59 = 25.13% reserved (discipline)
440*.71.59=184.31 mana (Clarity)

Raging Spirit Cost with links = 100ish mana (considering AA running too)
So you need 100 mana not reserved

Mana pool = 100+184.31+94.5*(Mana pool)
Mana pool = 5100ish

Am I doing something wrong here?

Nvm solved it. Alpha Howl is global and is additive to the reduced effect of the nodes.

Would'nt it be a better choice to swap Vaal Haste for Empower (in your Boots), and additionaly change the Spectrewheel passives for increased skill duration as mentionend. Then you have the Weapons, your Spirits, Flesh Offering, Vaal Haste, Convocation all benefiting from increased duration and the Chober Chaber fitting even more into this build.

Anyway, thx for the nice build, inspired me playing it in the 1 month League.

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PopeJo wrote:

so you don't have a single target ability, you're squishy and you need two skills to clear maps fast, while running 5 auras in an aphas howl!

that does not sound like a good build.

classical summoner with zombies + spectres seems way more effective. you don't need aphas howl and you can still cast your raging spirits or animate weapons just for fun, while your minions protect you and do the killing.
skeleton + spelltotem with the minion instability passive would also offer more protection than animate weapon (needs weapons) or raging spirit (cant be targeted).

so what do you do against bosses and exiles?

... I am totally missing the point of your build :(

Sounds like his minions are being used as projectiles. Kinda like how a Bow user links Trap with Desecrate. Just new ideas on how to play.