Enki's Arc Witch Memorial Page

Hi,

First, thanks for the build guide, I follow it since the begining and it still works pretty fine. :)

However I have few questions about optimization:

- Is Voidbringer viable instead of Facebreaker/Maligaro's ? I guess the mana cost will reach an unmanageable value but it's free to ask^^ (even with the Survival Secrets unique Jewel and some additionnal mana cost reduction ?) The huge crit chance bonus would be appreciate in this kind of build (the ES on Kill add even a little additionnal survavibilty with reference to the gear)

- For the 6-link gem setup, I know Lightning Penetration is awesome but I'm aslo interest by the Hypothermia gem. My point is that with Call of the Brotherhood, you always shock enemies under freeze and often (not saying always, but almost) chill them otherwise. So Hypothermia will increase both Cold AND Lightning damage by 1.20/1.39, that's more than Light. Pen. q%. So we have more some good damage = more chill (especially with q%)/freeze/shock duration and more chance to freeze. I think it's a good sinergy with Echo Spell and high cast speed, somehting like: 1st hit -> chilling, 2nd hit and following -> mass damade. Note that you also reduced mana cost of Arc with a *1.2 instead of *1.4! What's your way of thinking about this ?

- Last point is about the aura setup, Clarity and HoI are essential, but I'm a bit hesitant about HoT. In an endgame play (and with an lvl 2+ Enlighten), isn't Wrath more interesting ? On a lvl 20 Arc this represant about + 10-150 Raw Lightning Damage on the spell (over the 70% damage effectiveness of the skill ?)...just amazing. In addition, Wrath benefits of Sovereigtny/Devotion increase effet of auras nodes and even if you loose the passive effect on kill from HoT (wich I didn't find really powerfull/usefull), it's stronger against single target. Based on a 2500+ mana pool an having a lvl 3 Enlighten (+ Clarity lvl 20/HoI/Wrath + mana reduced nodes), you still have 750+ unreserved mana wich is good enough for Mom. I guess it isn't a bad way to go :) (again, talking about endgame play) Let me know your thoughts about this too !

Here is my current gear to let you see my situation:

Lvl 64 Witch:


(Boots will soon be remplaced by: )


In any case, thanks for your answers and thanks again for this build guide :) My apologizes if these points have already been asked, I didn't read the 70+ pages...

(sorry about eventual English mistakes)

Enjoy and have fun !

@Heli0nix: Thanks! I had the same feelings about most other arc guides back then, most focused on high tooltip but had no sustainability in high maps, that's why i've created this one. Never expected it to get this big, but response was great so i kept updating it.

@andro24: This is correct.

@Akaten: Hey there, awesome to hear that! Your gear is really good, nothing you really have to upgrade asap there. Now to your questions:

1. I personally wouldn't use Voidbringers, the needed investment to make the mana cost sustainable is not really worth the additional crit when compared with both other glove options (crit multi is huge).
But i assume in a Hybrid Life/ES or EB/MoM/ZO version the ES on kill would be nice to have.

2. The thing about Hypothermia is, the first hit would always do less damage as the enemy isn't chilled yet. Assuming the enemy has 0% light res and gets hit twice, Hypothermia is better, but as soon as the enemy has more than 10% light res (or cold res, if you use cold pen) light pen will be better.
The other issue is, you simply can't freeze lots of the high lvl map bosses or some extra life rares, so you wouldn't gain any advantage from Hypothermia at all in that case.
The gem is not useless though, with a build optimized around it, it can be really strong.

3. Wrath is indeed better, but high enough mana values are extremely hard to come by unless you give up valuable life and use Healthy Mind, or give up crit + cast speed and use Pledge of Hands. Just as Hypothermia, this is something that can work when built specifically around it, but would destroy the easy gear progression aspect of this build and thus is not included here.

@Enki91: Thanks for you answer and your advices, I take notes :) Thanks also for the gear approval! (I'm a bit poor by now...)

@Enki91 ,

will Atziri's Foible be a viable choice for the build - better mana flow ?
OR Tear of Purity - pretty good elemental resis from lvl 10 purity of elements ?
OR would a hp+crits amulet be of better use ?

Sup m8, I checked your tree and managed to come up with another version. Take a look.

Starts Shadow instead of Witch.

Pros:
- 46% more crit multi
- 115% more lightning damage
- 2 more jewel sockets
- 3% more lightning penetration

Cons:
- 16% less max life
- 45% less max mana
- 50 less dex
- 20 less str
- no flask effect increase
- 55% less stun avoidance
- not dual curse

TREE

Everything else not mentioned on the list stays the same.

Reason: You can make up the loss of life with 2 extra jewels with life rolls on it. You can use a +1 curse corrupted amulet or use Self-Flagellation corrupted jewel (+1 curse) for the extra curse. You can have a high roll dex on gear to make up for the missing dex. Stun avoidance is a very useless stat given the power of this build; you already kill things "in milliseconds" so we waste 3 passives on that. Flask effect is nice but you have so much more damage to make up for it.

Ideally, for the 2 extra jewels, we should aim for 7% life / 16% lightning damage / 16 dex / 4% cast speed on each.

I think the offensive gains out-weighs the losses using this route. Also, using Lightning Coil unique chest will drastically lessen the negative effects of having a lower mana pool. So with the specific chest, having less mana is a meager downfall impact.

Your thoughts?

In my opinion increased flask effect is the "heart" of this build.

If you want fast clear speed (that's why this build is so good) you can't afford to watch for ele reflect mobs. I have always flasks "on" and this way i don't have to watch hiting reflect mobs.

Without flask nodes you lose A LOT, cuz from my experience these nodes are life saving.

"

memberx wrote:

In my opinion increased flask effect is the "heart" of this build.

If you want fast clear speed (that's why this build is so good) you can't afford to watch for ele reflect mobs. I have always flasks "on" and this way i don't have to watch hiting reflect mobs.

Without flask nodes you lose A LOT, cuz from my experience these nodes are life saving.

False, false, false! You lose close to nothing without increased flask effect. First off, the build is NOT hc viable to begin with. So I don't see why you are concerned about reflect. But if you insist, you will barely hurt yourself to elemental reflect with Warlord's Mark, Poacher's Mark and topaz flask so you don't have to "worry" about it. Unless you decide to do reflect map as a whole than that is just plain stupid.

Secondly, if you want to clear as fast as possible, I just gave you a Tree just about 2x stronger than the original tree. So there's that.

And for the record, 12% increased flask duration HARDLY makes any difference to your overall flask up-time.

@andro24: Atziri's Foible would work as a starter amulet, but i would switch it to something with life and some damage mods asap. The Purity of Elements of Tears of Purity still reserves mana, so it's not the best option.

@gtrans: You could give it a try, but imo it's not balanced enough to be used with my build.
This build already lost lots of survivability and with that its HC-viability in 2.0, so lowering the survivability even further is not a good idea.

Your mana pool will be too low to be of any real use with MoM, even when using Lightning Coil which doesn't help against elemental damage. Speaking of which, getting 5b1r will be extremely hard, and even if you switch Light Pen with Cold Pen it's still 4off. Surely doable, but absolutely requiring a 4/5off already somewhat rare unique chest also speaks against the easy gear progression concept of this particular guide.

You seem to be misunderstanding Self-Flagellation, it means you can have a second curse on yourself, not enabling you to dual curse enemies. A +1 curse amulet with life/mana/mana regen/crit will be impossible to get, or really expensive. Any other +1 curse amulet wouldn't be worth it, you'd get more out of dropping 4 nodes, get Whispers of Doom and use a regular amulet.

You also undervalue the flask effect nodes. We don't just take them for the occassional reflect rare, but they also greatly buff the amount of armour we get from a Granite of Iron Skin and the life we regenerate.

With a few modifications i could see your passive tree working with Pledge of Hands + Coil, those items would somewhat cancel out the weak points of your tree. Let me know how it worked out if you choose to try it!

Hello. I have been using this wonderful build faithfully since my first week in Path of Exile and I'm currently at level 88. Here are some of my thoughts:

In my experience, the Avenger's Hallowed Hybrid Flask of Heat and Perpetual Granite Flask of Iron Skin are way better than both Taste of Hate and Lavianga's Spirit. There are strongboxes that will freeze you upon opening which is dangerous because a large pack of monsters will jump you. Both the hybrid and granite flasks will provide you higher survivability than using the unique flasks. I usually pop the granite flask before opening, then immediately use the hybrid flask to unfreeze, and flame dash away to safety.

Lastly for my own entertainment, I replaced Enlighten with Vaal Summon Skeletons since it is optional and I have enough mana for Mind over Matter. I linked Vaal Summon Skeletons with the Increased Duration-Vaal Haste-Rallying Cry, and put the Summon Ice Golem gem with Herald of Thunder and Clarity. Vaal Summon Skeletons gem is pretty fun to use during boss fights, it diverts the attention away from me, great with Increased Duration + Vaal Haste, and the skeleton general gives additional damage.

hey,

wanted to share some experience with atziri. Noticed that your atziri section could have more information ;)

I'm at lvl 91, 4,2 k health, using a shield and have no double curse or curse on hit set-up.

CotB is probably not the best choice with atziri since you cannot freeze her. Also think that the dual curse on hit setup is not going to work with atziri

For Vaal Duo
- I switched arc and pcoc with storm call and concenntrated effect
- I use spell totem with skeletons and vaal skeletons
- I wear rainbowstride, rathpith globe and stone of lazhwar (pretty sure you can skip one or 2 items since the encounter is not very hard)
- Topaz flask is important
- auras are wrath HoT clarity


For trio
- I used arc, enfeeble, spell totem skeletons,vaal skeletons
- it helps to have to golem up for extra disturbance
- auras are wrath HoT clarity
- most important is to kill the cycloner last, because this flaming cleave guy or whatever it is has a pretty massive reflec mod when he enrages ifyou kill him last. The sequence that worked best for me is: titty bitch - flaming guy - cycloner
- It stays a tough fight even if you did it already a couple of times

For atziri
- I wear saffels frame, rainbowstrides and stone of lazhwar
- auras are purity of fire, HoT, clarity
- spell totem with enfeeble in order to avoid curse reflec. place it as often as possible. Dont know whether you can double curse with one spell totem, probably not.
- skeletons doesnt make sense
- I use storm call and conceentrated effect instead of arc and pcoc
- the tricky part is to switch storm call with arc for the regeneration phase with all the adds. next time i try to do this phase with storm call as well
- one ruby flask is a must
- I have atziris spell block flask which I cant remember the name of
- as you stated absolute correctly, the most important skill is movement. you need to play this encounter a couple of times before you get it right


I'm sure there are 100 ways to skill or gear in order to kill her. Personally I couldnt imagine doing atziri without shield. Therefore one might skill out of the dual wielding nodes for this fight and take some extra life instead.

Have fun