Enki's Arc Witch Memorial Page

Hi! Firstly I'd really like to thank you for this build, creating a build from scratch is a lot of work! I'm really having fun with Arc currently.

I couldn't sleep last night and while trying to sleep I came up with a possible change, this is something you'd aim for in end game around high 80's once you've invested into mid tier gear; dual curse

What do I lose with this change? 15% increased HP, 18% Increased mana, 25% increased ES and Arctic Armor. You need to bulk these losses via gear to ensure you're still hitting what I believe are goal posts for mapping safety, you can still hit 5,000 HP + 1,000 ES + 1,000 unreserved Mana with mid tier gear.

What do I gain with this change? 10% increased curse effect & Enfeeble Aura (replacing Arctic Armor) Enfeeble reduces incoming damage by one third for non-bosses along with reduced crit and accuracy. This should provide greater survivability than the stat nodes given up to obtain it even at a glance.

In mine and many others opinion, curses are over powered! And that's still considering bosses having reduced curse effect. With Blasphemy + warlords mark, this build already spends most of the time within blasphemy aura range to ensure life leech, this dual curse change gives mobs 36% less phy & ele damage due to passive nodes and 20% quality blasphemy gem. I haven't done the hard math, but I find it hard to see how reducing incoming damage to 63% from non-bosses and about 79% from bosses (Map bosses have 60% less curse effect) compares to the stats we are sacrificing to obtain it.

One other issue I've found is while the cold trail of Arctic Armor can be useful for kiting, many high tier maps require a lot of movement, during which time Arctic Armor isn't doing anything for physical mitigation.

What are your thoughts? Is there something major I'm missing here? It all sounds good in my head and I'm keen to try it out.

@Gosen; Yeah Mastermind of Discord looks amazing especially if you also use Flame Totem to help with single target damage; Flame Totem > Ice Golem = +25% peirce on light and cold damage. Where to fit Flame Totem is another discussion in itself, but for standard players I find it more helpful than IC personally, not an option for Hardcore obviously with how rippy this game can be with stun and burst damage.

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Enki91 wrote:

@skuadak: Are you dead set on CI? This build is heavily optimized around life, going CI would require a completely different setup and make it a different build. If you really don't wanna go lifebased and can live with the downsides/limitations of CI, i'd recommend to check out Cabesi's Arc guide. While it's a lowlife build, he also has a budget CI version in the thread.

Leveling shouldn't be slow if you got some Wanderlusts, Flame Dash and 1-2 quicksilvers.

Yeah, I'm pretty confident in that choice. After 4 years of making rangers in 9 of every 10 chars and always life based, I think it's just about time to try something else. I have big black hole in that part of game at all, I don't know items, skills etc.
Thanks a lot for a redirecting me to guide, until now I just picked es/crit/spell damage nodes from nearby wich start. I obviously needed some plan. Time for bit of reading then :)

p.s. Double Golems are so awesome *_*

I'm struggling a lot against strong bosses. DPS is fine (note that I'm using slightly different build then this, low life on Shavs, which grants me much more dps), but when strong enemy hits me I have to run, which ends with too much kitting and long fights. From now on I'm going to try Decoy Totem (linked with faster casting and flame dash, so there's no problem for sockets and colors). Flame Totem should be also okay, but with just single support it won't do much anyway, I need real decoy with higher life pool.

Also I think I'm going to exchange Culling Strike for IAoE. It doesn't change much anyway, while more AoE grants more chance for power charges and blinding as well as safer positioning during the fight with bosses.

For someone who just moved from Dual Flame Totem, expectations for fast and safe killings are much higher than before, so I want to own bosses easily again. It's very possible, Arc has much more dps than my noncrit Dual Flame Totem, but totems attacked constantly, while Arc needs too much kitting. Now it's going to change! I can't wait trying my new ideas against Uber Izaro, which I barely survived after long minutes of constant kitting. No more!

Oh, I also tried my idea with +25 penetration and maybe it was placebo, but I thought like there's really a difference.

Well, suppose you have 25% lightning penetration and the target has 75% resistance.

The formula is (0.25 / (1 - 0.75)) which of course is 0.25/0.25 = 1

So that'd mean that the 25% penetration would give you a 100% damage increase(?). Can anyone correct me here if I am wrong?

Source: http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Resistance_penetration

If you deal 100 dmg and mob has 75% resistance you deal only 25. With 25% penetration you deal 50. So it seems so.

I just started playing the essence league and decided to try arc, can u tell me what I should improve first in my gear?




Should I get 6L now? and what body armour should I get? I really like lightning coil but It's probably a bit tough because of the gem colours :/

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Gosen wrote:

Oh, I also tried my idea with +25 penetration and maybe it was placebo, but I thought like there's really a difference.

I also specced in Mastermind of Discord last night and the difference against single target is real! Flame Totem > Ice Golem > Vaal Haste and Bosses on the maps I've been running all week died in half the time! It's a serious improvement on single target damage boost :)

@riclobo, Nice work man! Your gear is already looking pretty good :) I'd say maybe amulet and if possible removing dependancy on facebreakers, that's easier said than done of course.

thanks!

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Sectiplave wrote:

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Gosen wrote:

Oh, I also tried my idea with +25 penetration and maybe it was placebo, but I thought like there's really a difference.

I also specced in Mastermind of Discord last night and the difference against single target is real! Flame Totem > Ice Golem > Vaal Haste and Bosses on the maps I've been running all week died in half the time! It's a serious improvement on single target damage boost :)

Do you link Flame totem with something? I'm using Decoy, but when it's on low level, it's dying fast. Fortunately once I leveled it to around 15+ I was able to buy myself a time to deal with harder hitting bosses. You're using cold damage in this build as well, so fire spell gives you even more power, but as I said: you can replace Teleport to Flame Dash and effect will be the same without necessity of using Flame Totem. So is it worth to use Flame Totem (with only faster casting link and lower hp than Decoy) rather than Decoy? I would really like to see totem strong enough (but without passives and links) to survive few hits from bosses like Uber Izaro, while I deal huge amount of damage without worrying about anything else in the meantime.

@Sectiplave: Dualcurse is something you can do, and was actually part of an earlier stage of this build. The one problem there is are hexproof maps/monsters. With enfeeble being a blue gem, you couldn't easily switch over to Arctic Armour so it's either reroll map or play without protection.

On the plus side is that it works towards more than just phys/fire damage. It's definitely an alternative, and i will keep it in mind for the next version of this build.

Btw. you can save a point by pathing through the upper part completely, and ditch the 2 nodes between witch start and MoM.

@skuadak: Alright, goodluck with your char! I'm not really experienced with ES chars, but if you got any questions still feel free to ask me.

@riclobo: Your gear is really decent. Only thing i can see is your ammy has a spot for crit chance mastercraft. If you don't have them yet, i would save up for a good flask setup or a 6L chest at this point, or maybe some gg jewels.

@Gosen & owa: The feedback so far seems like Mastermind of Discord is indeed the way to go now. I'll think of a few ways to reliably proc it without needed to spam multiple skills every 10s duing bossfights, while keeping Decoy Totem up and damaging with Arc.