Enki's Arc Witch Memorial Page

@GilliesSWTOR: Your character tab is set private, so i can't have a look. But the reason for this damage-difference you experience is very easy to find: Reverberation Rod has a +1 to socketed gems modifier, and spells heavily scale their base damage through levels.

With your Arc in the 5L chest, there's no more reason to use Reverberation Rod as it doesn't have any real offensive stats. Switch them to a better weapon and you will see your DPS rise.

This build actually scales very well into endgame, but you first need to develop a basic understanding of what affixes we need on gear, why we use them and how they scale the build together with passives you will take at higher levels to be really successful at endgame. I've intentionally set up the build like this, as it forces players to learn and understand some mechanics, instead of being just a foolproof faceroll-everything meta build.

Single target isn't the best due to how Arc works, but if you got all pieces together you won't have issues killing high tier map bosses. Still, there's hope for a better solution with the upcoming new skills, but we will have to wait and see.

@MalakielCL: Damn that sucks, but still grats for getting that far!

@gargantua0: The latter part of Merciless Act 4 is intentionally pretty tough and full of heavy physical damage, harder than the first few tiers of maps. So if you made it all the way to Malachai, you shouldn't have any issues mapping.

"

Enki91 wrote:

@GilliesSWTOR: Your character tab is set private, so i can't have a look. But the reason for this damage-difference you experience is very easy to find: Reverberation Rod has a +1 to socketed gems modifier, and spells heavily scale their base damage through levels.

With your Arc in the 5L chest, there's no more reason to use Reverberation Rod as it doesn't have any real offensive stats. Switch them to a better weapon and you will see your DPS rise.

This build actually scales very well into endgame, but you first need to develop a basic understanding of what affixes we need on gear, why we use them and how they scale the build together with passives you will take at higher levels to be really successful at endgame. I've intentionally set up the build like this, as it forces players to learn and understand some mechanics, instead of being just a foolproof faceroll-everything meta build.

Single target isn't the best due to how Arc works, but if you got all pieces together you won't have issues killing high tier map bosses. Still, there's hope for a better solution with the upcoming new skills, but we will have to wait and see.

@MalakielCL: Damn that sucks, but still grats for getting that far!

@gargantua0: The latter part of Merciless Act 4 is intentionally pretty tough and full of heavy physical damage, harder than the first few tiers of maps. So if you made it all the way to Malachai, you shouldn't have any issues mapping.

I will have to fix that tonight, my fault. I HAVE tested other wands with socket gem bonuses. I am convinced it has more to do with the free spell echo effect which essentially makes the wand a 4 link item.
I will do more testing tonight and will take some screen shots.

Getting the ascendancy, as expected, did provide immediate benefits as my DPS shot up about 20% by picking the golems.

I may indeed be naive to how this all works (seriously, this is my second character into Merciless, ever), but the reality I am finding so far is that you NEED the flame totem in order to survive against uniques/bosses in some cases. I also think that (so far) using spark against bosses is more efficient as it's easier to hit and run with that. Arc is great while adds are around but when the weak adds are dead...spark as a spell takes longer to hit the target so I found myself in late Act IV just casting and running. Daresso absolutely destroyed me (5 deaths, again this is cruel) yet surprisingly I only died once more after that, in stage 2 of Malachai oddly enough (it is typically stage 1 that gets me)


Oh and @gargantua0: He is speaking the truth about act IV Merciless. My first character was my duelist and he must've died 5 times to Malachai between the two stages. I think he died twice, total, up to that point (level 68). Comparatively, I've died far more on this character up until now (level 60).

Tiers 1-4, hell even Tier 6, is easier than the end of Act IV, unless you swap out some chaos gear in. I now keep 3-4 items now that are high in chaos resist for those rare occasions I see them in maps.

So, which gear should i change first ?
probably the glove & flask (didn't search for any of them)

Hello! Back with another question.

Just hit 75 and I was wondering if Doryvani's Catalysts would be better than my weapons right now.

I dont know how to accurately judge and compared items (unless they are of the same type yet) and I need any help I can get . thanks :D.

Heres my 2 wands right now , .

Hi all, I use this build with a elementalist and liked it very much. Besides the call of the brotherhood I just picked up a 5-linked lightning coil with 5 sockets. Already wasted around 150 chromatic orbs, but still no 4B-1G sockets. What is the best option?
1- To make it 6 socket, and try-ing to get it 6 link? And later on, trying to get the 4B-1G-1R sockets with vorici or
2- try to convert it with vorici with 2G or 3G to hope it well end in 4B-1G? Help please, any advice?

OK, so I have no idea how to make my inventory public.
I see how to make stash tabs public but that's it. Some advice here can make my analysis here easier to read/follow.


No idea how to link much of anything here. I will need a tutorial on that :/


However I just used 2 wands that more or less reach your baseline specs for cheap 1 chaos orb items (level 59-60 wands). When I put arc into my chest plate, it registers a tool tip of 6066 DPS.

When I remove one of my level 59 wands, and use the rod of reverberation with simply arc -- faster casting --- controlled destruction , the dps tooltip says 7,215 DPS.

If the +1 to socket type is making that dramatic a difference...than I ask why even bother using a 4-6 link set up at all? A wand with + to socket or even lightning will always be superior, right?

I chose to test this out.

I used just a wailing essence of spite on a level 56 demon wand. So I KNEW it would have a tiny bit of spell damage (the default that comes on it) and +1 lightning socket. Essentially replicating the Rod of Reverbation - minus the spell echo freebie. It rolled with no extra bonuses to crit damage or casting time, and it DID roll an extra 20% spell damage.

Then I replaced faster casting with spell echo (since I needed it). My level 56 demon horn with +1 to socket type, linked with spell echo support and controlled destruction, showed an arc tooltip damage of 6904.

So that's STILL much higher than the 5 link arc in a chest plate, WHILE using two wands that matched your basic low end specs (10% cast time, 40% spell damage, 80% crit rate bonus).

However it's still 5% less DPS than our basic reverberation rod with faster casting - controlled destruction. However this I could reconcile by simply suggesting you buy a better wand with +1 (or even +2) to socket, and look for better specs.


My long winded point is, again, I legitimately don't see the math behind using your arc in anything but your socket enhanced weapon...

not trying to troll, just really don't understand this.

edit: Just tested with a wand with +2 to lightning socket only. Arc with spell echo and CD turns out to be higher as predicted. It's at 8585 DPS tooltip currently. 3 links. What this suggests to me is that it's more DPS to use a 2-handed weapon with socket bonuses, right?
The drawback by going with a Staff, of course, is the reduced crit bonuses.

edit 2: I figured out how to let my inventory be seen, I think.


edit 3: OK, so I am beginning to see why you go with the 5 slots (or 6) chest. I tested my current 5 blue chest setup with ARC and the optimal setup and it puts out 8000 DPS before power charges.

When I stick with it in my +2 socket wand, the base damage is now about 8800 DPS. However the crit rate is considerably lower. I think the diffeence is curently 33% in the chest, versus 21% in the wand. However, it takes 3 power charges active for the DPS in my chest setup to surpass the wand with NONE.

The one advantage the chest has is the fact you can slot a penetration gem in. Which I suspect matters in the upper tiers. I see why you have the cold penetration now (call of the brotherhood).

I'm having a blast so far with this build. Thank you very much for the detailed instructions!

After failing to reach 2nd tier maps in my last attempts of creating a build from ground up by myself, I browsed the forums on something similar to what I was trying to achieve and stumbled across this.
I didn't aquire that much currency yet and only started to mess with trading this league, so I'll probably leave out most of the expensive endgame gear. I got myself some of the more affordable equipment such as Call of the Brotherhood and and a nice rare 6link chestpiece with about +100 health.

What do you think of switching from dual wielding to 2hand/staff?
I first switched to a staff because it was the cheapest option to get a 5link for this build. Now that I have collected a decent amount of currencies and especially essences I tried to attempt crafting a staff that might be viable for red tier maps. (I'm currently doing maps close to tier 10)

I noticed one of the Maraketh base-types has a great "+80% global crit chance" implicit. I tried crafting a staff for this build in particular. So I got myself a white 5-link Eclipse Staff and applied a Shrieking Essence of Spite that guarantees "+2 level on lightning gems".

This is the result:


The stun threshhold mod is fairly useless and the staff lacks some defense, but apart from that it looks decent, doesn't it?

@gargantua0: Fix flasks first, then upgrade everything that doesn't have a life roll (except CotB of course). After that, try to get more res on individual pieces like the helmet.

@Rhaokraus: Probably equal. You'd lose a bit of cast speed and crit consistency for more raw damage. If you can get some top rolls for cheap, maybe worth a try, otherwise i wouldn't bother.

@Zivil2016: Vorici 2B is the best option. Good luck with chroming the coil!

@GilliesSWTOR: It's good to see you testing stuff and learning some things through it.

For lower levels, a wand with +x to (lightning) gem levels is indeed very strong, which is why i'm recommending it in the leveling section, but it loses its advantage at higher levels.
While you may reach a higher tooltip with it currently, you actually deal more damage with the 5L setup by having higher crit consistency and penetration. The advantage isn't that big right now, but it scales extremely better the more you level your gems and char, which allows you to pick more crit nodes.

Once you get your 6L setup (white 6L chests are fairly cheap, can be farmed by doing chaos recipe), Empower will add back the advantage of +x level to gems with more links than you can have on a wand, and being able to wear actual wands with offensive affixes.
You also gain more flexibility by being able to switch in Life & Mana Leech gems when needed.

It's true that a staff with +2 to Lightning gems plus +1 to gems and other good caster affixes will be really strong, but such a staff is also very rare and expensive. If you can get your hands on a perfect staff, it's a good option, but otherwise you're better off with the setup i'm recommending in this guide.

@bloodcurdlingraccoon: As mentioned above, staves can work but one that outclasses my recommended setup is really hard to get.

They can definitely work on a budget tho, you could prolly stick with yours until you can afford a 6L chest and some proper wands.

"

Enki91 wrote:

@GilliesSWTOR: It's good to see you testing stuff and learning some things through it.

For lower levels, a wand with +x to (lightning) gem levels is indeed very strong, which is why i'm recommending it in the leveling section, but it loses its advantage at higher levels.
While you may reach a higher tooltip with it currently, you actually deal more damage with the 5L setup by having higher crit consistency and penetration. The advantage isn't that big right now, but it scales extremely better the more you level your gems and char, which allows you to pick more crit nodes.

Once you get your 6L setup (white 6L chests are fairly cheap, can be farmed by doing chaos recipe), Empower will add back the advantage of +x level to gems with more links than you can have on a wand, and being able to wear actual wands with offensive affixes.
You also gain more flexibility by being able to switch in Life & Mana Leech gems when needed.

It's true that a staff with +2 to Lightning gems plus +1 to gems and other good caster affixes will be really strong, but such a staff is also very rare and expensive. If you can get your hands on a perfect staff, it's a good option, but otherwise you're better off with the setup i'm recommending in this guide.

Yeah, this last paragraph is the conclusion I came to as well. It's a super high end item, looking at perhaps 2EX for something close to what you need. You'd also lose out on some spell damage (NBD) and crit bonus (more of a big deal), but I suspect the raw output from the gem bonus would more than compensate for it.

I suspect the penetration gem is a big deal once you get past level 80. In fact right now I am using a lightning penetration gem in my 5L in merciless. Not sure you'd really need it before Merciless, but it would be worth leveling one along the way in a spare spot.


As far as cheap 6 links, white's are going in the 30-40 chaos range, for me, not exactly cheap. There are some corrupted versions for 20-25 which might be passable, but I really don't have much in the way of currency. I could afford 10 maybe 15 on a proper chest like this.

Thanks to the clear speed of the build I've managed to make some good money selling off ilvl80 gear and maps.

Trouble seems to pop up as my solo DPS with Arc takes forever to kill bosses unless they happen to spawn minions (eg. Quay Map) but at this point of the game it should be expected.

I am not sure if I should start specing into jewels for increased % maximum life and dual wield damage modifiers. I am still learning many of the fights for T10 Corrupted map bosses but it's getting to the point where dying multiple times to get the job done is the best way to learn, which is expected but a massive pain when losing valuble EXP.

In terms of gear I've managed to get near to what's been shown in the guide and they've worked wonders so far. Besides grabbing Atziri's Acuity (which will take forever) I am not sure what other pieces to improve on.



So far this league has been a ton of fun and I hope to at least make it to Shaper, but the progress wall feels especially slow nowadays with 1-shot mechanics being more common the farther I go into the Atlas but playing smart seems to be the best way to getting around the wall.