[3.3] Low Budget - Animate Weapon Bowmancer

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Velkhar wrote:

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Swap the helm out with Mark of the Red Covenant?

So the core of this build (Null's Inclination; Speaker's Wreath) should work with any minion gem. Its strength is the ability to auto-cast the minion spell extremely fast. This means its well suited for minions whose maximum number is high, e.g., Animate Weapon at 50. It's also pretty great for Offerings, especially coupled with Necromancer's Mistress of Sacrifice notable.

There are two issues with swapping Speaker's Wreath with Mark of the Red Covenant.

The first is that Speaker's Wreath is a core component to the build; it is how you are able to get killing blows instead of your minions. Null's Inclination won't do anything if you don't get the kills. You might be able to get kills before your minions using Culling Strike, but I've not tested that.

The second issue, and no less troublesome, is that Mark of the Red Covenant reduces the maximum number of SRS minions by 75%. This means you can only have 5 out; there's no advantage (in fact, it's a detriment) in casting SRS over and over, which is sure to happen with this build. Moreover, the purpose of the build is for you, the player, to score kills, not your minions. Mark of the Red Covenant prolongs the life of your 5 SRS when they get kills. These two things (you getting kills; SRS getting kills) are competing with each other.

I think you could do this build (Null's Inclination; Speaker's Wreath) with SRS, but you'd be resummoning a lot of SRS and SRS have a rather long activation period (i.e., they sit where they're summoned for like a second before they do anything). I wouldn't recommend it. As far as I'm aware, the only minion that you want to cast as often as possible is Animate Weapon. If there's another, it'd definitely be perfect for the two core items.

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Have you tried to create another build using Null's Inclination?

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Velkhar wrote:

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Have you tried to create another build using Null's Inclination?

I have not, but I have seen videos of Summon Skeleton + Dark Pact. That tree would be very different than the ones in this thread. Equipment would certainly include the two core items (Null's Inclination; Speaker's Wreath), but the rest might vary greatly. I haven't put a lot of thought into it; this league I wanted to do something with Animate Weapon.

Maybe if I get bored with AW, I'll create a new character for Dark Pact + Summon Skeleton. I'm not sure Necromancer is even the best option. The purpose of DP + SS would be to sacrifice the skeletons immediate, so +Minion Damage/Speed/Duration etc is useless. You'd want +Chaos Damage, +AoE Damage, +AoE Radius, etc. Now that I think about it more, I'm definitely doing this for my 2nd character.

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What build were you playing for this league?