Animate Weapon

Animate Weapon is a spell that animates a weapon on the ground as a flying allied minion.

Skill functions

Animate Weapon can be used on identified weapons lying on the ground, but not on any ranged weapons unless Spirit Guards is used. The weapon is permanently consumed. If the "Key Pickup" option is enabled in the UI tab of the Options menu, the "Highlight items and objects" key must be held down in order to cast Animate Weapon. Attempting to animate a weapon with an item level higher than the level of the gem allows will cost mana and perform the cast animation but have no effect.

Animate Weapon can also be used on Lingering Blades left behind by Bladefall and Ethereal Knives.

Animated Weapons are minions that are considered to be using the original weapon animated. They are therefore affected by modifiers to minions, as well as support gems for weapons, such as Elemental Damage with Attacks Support, but not affected by any of the player's damage or weapon modifiers.

Interactions

• Loot Filter - Some modifiers on identified weapons can be highlighted by correctly editing custom loot filters. When combined with sources that cause items to drop identified, characters can quickly use weapons that are stronger than normal items or lingering blades.Cloak of Tawm'r Isley causes magical items to drop identified. Sextants can can modify watchstones to causes all items to drop identified in maps. Heist Trinkets can give up to 15% chance for items to drop identified per heist member.

• Special benefits - Animated weapons can gain special modifiers that only apply to unique and rare weapons. Because it destroys the weapon for temporary benefits, most characters do not do this.

• Buff Damage - Animate weapon can be used to buff other damage sources. Due to their large numbers and fast attack speed, Withering Touch Support can apply max Withered stacks fast.

• Main Hand - 1 handed weapons summoned from items are counted as being used in the main hand. This only applies to weapon bonuses that come from being used in the main hand like Wings of Entropy.

Calculating damage

There are different calculation for weapons summoned from items on the ground and lingering blades from spells.

• Note - These calculations are meant to calculate animate weapons base stats only. It will not calculate other things like modifiers. See minions and other wiki pages for calculating the entire damage of minions.

Casting on a weapon

Weapons gain the base damage, base attack speed and base % critical strike chance of the weapon they are summoned from.

The minions deals additional physical damage modifier is added to the base damage.

The lingering blades damage is not added to weapons created from items.

Casting on a linger blade

Lingering blades have the base stats of a Glass Shank.

The same formula is used as casting on a weapon, except the lingering blade physical damage is added on top of the other physical damage.

Version history