[2.6] Elemental Animate Weapon SRS started four(five) aura summoner

I've taken a liking to ele AW as well but my build is quite different. I started as a zombie/spectre SRS using 2 essence worms with wrath & anger and reserving leveled clarity on mana, atm its only like a 350 mana reserve and I have 2100 total. My tree is probably a bit wonky because I haven't made up my mind on what to change yet.
Right now, like you I start w 4L SRS, and zombies as shields for now. Probably will end up ditching zombies for Vaal skill setup soon.
Main difference is I'm running a tabula for 6L but am running it as CWC Wither. How is manually casting animate, does it feel clunky? I'm doing plenty of damage right now but am only at tier 4 so far. Obviously the 2 extra links if I ditched cwc wither would offer way more damage. I'd like to hear your thoughts, I'm going to test it myself tonight either way.
Good work on your build and thanks!

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Saf3tyhazard wrote:

I've taken a liking to ele AW as well but my build is quite different. I started as a zombie/spectre SRS using 2 essence worms with wrath & anger and reserving leveled clarity on mana, atm its only like a 350 mana reserve and I have 2100 total. My tree is probably a bit wonky because I haven't made up my mind on what to change yet.

If you have the currency to get two essence worms thats a good idea. I focused on reserved mana, life, duration and sockets for more life in the tree.

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Saf3tyhazard wrote:

Right now, like you I start w 4L SRS, and zombies as shields for now. Probably will end up ditching zombies for Vaal skill setup soon.

Though I like the vaal skeletons I prefer vaal haste for extreme speed.

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Saf3tyhazard wrote:

Main difference is I'm running a tabula for 6L but am running it as CWC Wither. How is manually casting animate, does it feel clunky? I'm doing plenty of damage right now but am only at tier 4 so far. Obviously the 2 extra links if I ditched cwc wither would offer way more damage. I'd like to hear your thoughts, I'm going to test it myself tonight either way.
Good work on your build and thanks!

I think the 6 link animate weapon is nice. There are a few gems to choose from to improve the minion damage. If you use less auras you may have some spare points to invest in the tree.
I choose to use only a 4 link cause its still enough damage and I can, after the legacy change of Victario' Influence run 5 auras plus clarity. With Commander of Darkness its a good improve in damage and minion speed. With the change in the threshold jewels I use 2 Spirit Guards for ranged animate weapon. So I have two AW setups, one ranged and one melee. I changed my item filter to distinguish the ranged and melee weapons. I still use SRS to start a map but now with a three link and without problems.

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Saf3tyhazard wrote:

Main difference is I'm running a tabula for 6L but am running it as CWC Wither. How is manually casting animate, does it feel clunky?

Somehow I missed to anser this...
I have no problems with animating the weapons manually. I changed the item filter, so the weapon's labels are quite large. The cast time is about one second and I got used to a animating rythm when there are more than one weapon to animate.
As I mentioned before I have now one setup for melee and one for ranged. So there is no way for auto animating.

So I respecced one of my old witches into this build and I'm loving it so far, but I actually am having trouble with my minions being squishy and all that. The Vaal Pyramid boss (the 'prince' one that looks like he's using reave) kills all my summons pretty easily and I can only really beat him if I get lucky with the weapon drops and snowball REALLY hard into the boss room.

I'm not quite sure what I've done wrong, could someone take a look at my build? Character name is 'jane_the_quain' in this profile. I'm thinking of doing one of two things right now - swapping minion speed on AW for minion life, or using bone offering instead of flesh offering.

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cornjuliox wrote:

So I respecced one of my old witches into this build and I'm loving it so far, but I actually am having trouble with my minions being squishy and all that. The Vaal Pyramid boss (the 'prince' one that looks like he's using reave) kills all my summons pretty easily and I can only really beat him if I get lucky with the weapon drops and snowball REALLY hard into the boss room.

I'm not quite sure what I've done wrong, could someone take a look at my build? Character name is 'jane_the_quain' in this profile. I'm thinking of doing one of two things right now - swapping minion speed on AW for minion life, or using bone offering instead of flesh offering.

Hmm as far as I can tell from your char profile you are missing a flame golem. And getting quality on your animate weapon will help too. The weapons become much faster. How many weapons do you have when you enter the boss room?
My minions kill faster than the prince can attack and so I never get problems. To get more kill speed you can summon the 20 raging spirits before you approach the bosses. And you could change the vaal summon skellies to vaal haste. I guess you are using flesh offering.
Anything else is like my setup. Keep me up to date on your improvements.

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Hmm as far as I can tell from your char profile you are missing a flame golem. And getting quality on your animate weapon will help too. The weapons become much faster. How many weapons do you have when you enter the boss room?
My minions kill faster than the prince can attack and so I never get problems. To get more kill speed you can summon the 20 raging spirits before you approach the bosses. And you could change the vaal summon skellies to vaal haste. I guess you are using flesh offering.
Anything else is like my setup. Keep me up to date on your improvements.

Yo, thanks for responding.

Yeah, I just opted to summon two Stone Golems because I liked the way the regen felt. I'm gonna try swapping it for Flame Golem.

I've got at least 20-22 weapons when I enter the boss room, they clear the first two bosses pretty quickly, but the third jumps on them before they can get solid hits in. SRS helps, but even then I usually die once before I can beat him.

I took a look at yours and noticed that you're running Purity auras - would you recommend that?

The Purity helped me to max resisance and its one more aura. So I get the Commander of Darkness bonus.
If you looked at my current setup you have noticed, that I added a ranged weapon AW gem. The threshold jewels are cheap. Just have a look at that option. The new limit of animated weapons is per gem. So you can have 50 melee weapons and 16 ranged weapons with two Spirit Guard jewels.

So I've been following this build fairly closely and I've been having a blast. I'm really trying to work in 7 auras all together, but to do it at my current level (85) I would have to sacrifice 25% life.

On the plus side, I'd gain 30 intelligence, and 6% increased effect, and 4% reduced mana reservation. So, overall, I'm thinking I'd be able to give my minions (and allies) some serious life regeneration by socketing Vitality into a 6 socket Victario's, and have Clarity running on the side to benefit from Commander of Darkness myself.

I do have a question though: Is the additional 10% damage, 5% AS/CS, and however much % life regen to all my creatures worth it in lieu of 25% life? I know that by level 100 I can have my cake and eat it too, but that feels a long way off so it's a right-now sort of question.

I'd have:
- Purity of Elements
- Haste
- Anger
- Wrath
- Hatred
- Vitality

and, finally, Clarity for myself.

My resists are capped by over 30% each (because of my Jewels/CoD and all that), with my Chaos resist at 58%.

EDIT: So, I've changed my stuff around in order to actually have 7 auras. I lost 400 health, but the gains in survivability for my minions because of life regen, plus the damage up, has definitely outweighed the downsides. Highly recommend. It also feels nice to have every single aura-based passive on the tree (except, I think, 1 on the opposite side and the Life keystone one).

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Renzenku wrote:

...So I've been following this build fairly closely and I've been having a blast.

Thats great to hear. I still like this build myself. I playing around with other builds now and then to then come back to the animte weapon stuff.

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Renzenku wrote:

I'm really trying to work in 7 auras all together, but to do it at my current level (85) I would have to sacrifice 25% life.

On the plus side, I'd gain 30 intelligence, and 6% increased effect, and 4% reduced mana reservation. So, overall, I'm thinking I'd be able to give my minions (and allies) some serious life regeneration by socketing Vitality into a 6 socket Victario's, and have Clarity running on the side to benefit from Commander of Darkness myself.

I do have a question though: Is the additional 10% damage, 5% AS/CS, and however much % life regen to all my creatures worth it in lieu of 25% life? I know that by level 100 I can have my cake and eat it too, but that feels a long way off so it's a right-now sort of question.

I'd have:
- Purity of Elements
- Haste
- Anger
- Wrath
- Hatred
- Vitality

and, finally, Clarity for myself.

My resists are capped by over 30% each (because of my Jewels/CoD and all that), with my Chaos resist at 58%.

I am playing up to tier 12 at the moment and the main problem is to survive myself. As long as there enough weapons around me its quite safe. But I get in trouble when my weapons die.

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Renzenku wrote:

EDIT: So, I've changed my stuff around in order to actually have 7 auras. I lost 400 health, but the gains in survivability for my minions because of life regen, plus the damage up, has definitely outweighed the downsides. Highly recommend. It also feels nice to have every single aura-based passive on the tree (except, I think, 1 on the opposite side and the Life keystone one).

That sounds like a good deal. How much life do you have at the moment? I am using 6 aura's at the moment and didnt check for the seventh. Will have a look there.
And I made a differetn setup for ranged weapons. I will try to get Animate weapon, minion speed, GMP and blind to weaken the enemy. Still need the right socket colors to try it out.
I am sorry that I am responding this late.

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Sammas378 wrote:

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Renzenku wrote:

EDIT: So, I've changed my stuff around in order to actually have 7 auras. I lost 400 health, but the gains in survivability for my minions because of life regen, plus the damage up, has definitely outweighed the downsides. Highly recommend. It also feels nice to have every single aura-based passive on the tree (except, I think, 1 on the opposite side and the Life keystone one).

That sounds like a good deal. How much life do you have at the moment? I am using 6 aura's at the moment and didnt check for the seventh. Will have a look there.
And I made a differetn setup for ranged weapons. I will try to get Animate weapon, minion speed, GMP and blind to weaken the enemy. Still need the right socket colors to try it out.
I am sorry that I am responding this late.

Hey! Sorry I'm getting back to this late!

I'm sitting at around 3300 health, but am still missing 2 jewels that should bump that to closer to 3500. My gear is also nowhere near what it could be in the non-unique slots. My biggest problem is maps with multiple bosses in a small room that use AoE or ignore the weapons. Definitely feel like a shitty helium balloon in those instances. The only map I've been incapable of clearing thus far was a unique tier 13 map that I corrupted.