3.6 Animate Weapon/Spectral Spirit build

Q: Why choose a bow?
A: It gives you a stat stick in the form of a quiver with res and life.​

Q: What are spectral spirits? They are 3 unkillable raging spirits that don't run out. ​
A: Are spectral spirits any good? They do some pretty good damage and are I find that they are a great way to kill some mods early in the map to build up some animated weapons, you can then weapon swap to Dancing Duo and your weapons will kill to start your rampage.​

Q: How do you get a bow with minion damage and spectral spirits?
A: This can be done by using the following fossils Glyphic Fossil to add a corrupted essence mod and Bound to add a minion based mod.

Q:Why use a short bow?
A: To save on costs you can buy the porcupine card set that gives you a 6 linked short bow. This should cost approx 5c per card and you need 6. You can then choose to either chrome it from here or craft reduced attributes on it. Due to the item level of the short bow being 50, you can only get T2 reduced attributes 18%. ​

Short bow is the cheapest 6 link bow and the low dex makes it easy to get off colour sockets. Don't make the same mistake as I did and think a higher level base is better, because the high dex will make it impossible to get the colours that you need.​

Q: Why do you use wither and is cast when channelling needed?
A: Wither feels the best to use when pointing and casting, it also offers a debuff. You 100% need cast when channelling for an animate weapon build, otherwise you have to get your mouse right on the item you want to animate and this is very tedious when trying to do it with multiple items. The cast when channel has a good range and you don't even need to be over the items some times e.g you can use it on the delve crawler and it will animate the weapons in the loot ring around it.​
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Q: How does this build work in the lab?​
A:With the help of the spectral spirits, they have so far gotten me past the 3rd lab without any trouble. The Spirits aggro is nice an they tend not to move away from their target until it's dead or you use convocation. Unlike the zombies aggro, where they break away when you move. Animate weapon has a similar aggro to the spirits.​

Q: My item filter doesn't show the trash items, how can I fix this?
A: I am currently using a version of NeverSinks loot filter. He has a super handy site set up called Filterblade https://www.filterblade.xyz/

Simply select the strictness level you want, click customise, scroll down to Optional Filter modules, click show on the animate weapon filters you want to apply, click the save & load tab, enter your filter name, click publish save and then follow instructions in the download tab.

Q: What colours do I need on the bow?​
A: Its hard to get the colours on the bow that we need for this build. Ideally we would need 5 red and 1 blue.

Q: Why not use the threshold jewel Spirit Guard?

A: To get to the closest jewel socket with the required dex will cost 8 skill points (under Profane Chemistry) and this does not seem worth it. ​

What do you items do you use on your animate guardian and why?

https://pastebin.com/Hr2U0bGn

A bow crafted with Triggers Level 20 Spectral Spirits when Equipped and increased minion damage. Level to socketed gems would be nice but not mandatory.

Dancing duo if you plan to use it.

Cloak of Tawm'r Isley*. This makes it so magic items drop identified and you minions will blind. Magic items are equal stronger animate weapons and the blind chance saves you the cost of getting it on minion jewels. The leech it provides is also nice. *Note that this item is now back in the game as of 3.6 and reports from people I have spoken to say that this has been dropping in delve and also from syndicate safe-houses.


The Withing Jar flask is also useful to help keep rampage up for your dancing duo if you plan to use it.

Focus on life and res on all your other items. You can also start to craft minion movement speed on your rings and amulet to help with late game.​

Spectral Spirit
Damage on full life, Melee Splash, Multistrike, Melee Physical Damage, Added Fire Damage and Minion Damage.

My current links are: Minion Speed, Minion Damage, Added Fire Damage, Damage on Full Life, Melee Splash and Culling Strike

If you don't care much for the minion speed, you can swap out for summon phantasms instead. These be lost if you weapon swap.

Animate Weapon
Animate Weapon, Wither, Cast When Channelling, Multistrike, Melee Splash and Melee Physical Damage.

Dancing Duo
Damage on Full Life, Melee Physical Damage, Multistrike, Added Chaos Damage, Minion Damage and Withering Touch


Please note that Empower does not work on either Dancing duo or Spectral spirits as they are both trigger skills.​

I took the two passive points and killed the bandits

I chose necromancer as the ascendancy for the buffs to duration and minion damage.​

I took my passives in the following order:​
Puppet Master -> Mistress of Sacrifice -> Commander of Darkness -> Invoker​
If you feel that the cooldown on convocation is too long and your res are fine, you can get Invoker 3rd​

I levelled this build with the help of some standard levelling unique: Goldrim helmet, Wanderlust boots, 2x Screaming Eagle (for movement speed) and a Tabula Rasa for summon raging spirits. Zombies provide a nice meat shield as well.

At level 38 you can start using animate weapon as this is when you will get cast when channelling. I used both SRS and aminate weapon at this point.​

When you reach level 50 you can stop using SRS and put on your spectral spirits bow. In most cases you can just simply use the spectral spirits and not the worry about making animate weapons.​

You need a total of 98 dex in this build if you don't plan to use dancing duo and 119 if you do.​

Blue mobs tend to drop a lot of normal items, so its a good idea to hold the channel until the pact dies.