Enki's Arc Witch Memorial Page

Hi,

I'm pretty new to PoE and currently playing a level 85 Witch. I was following your guide since level 1 and really appreciate the work you put in there.

I'm playing with a 5L cause i cant afford a 6L until now. My Question is, if Lightning Pen is really better than Faster Casting, considering the fact that only half my damageoutput is lightning damage because of Call of the Brotherhood. When i switch Lightning Pen with Faster Casting my damage feels a lot higher and additionaly my character control is a lot better. I hope this question wasn't asked before too often, atleast i couldn't find it in the thread.

@relat1ve: Hey there. Call of the Brotherhood heavily changed the effectiveness of Light Pen when compared to Faster Casting in a 5L, and i must admit i haven't really tested it extensively.
If you feel FC is working better, stick with it. But keep in mind FC also means higher mana usage per second, so if your mana regen isn't that high yet i'd rather stick with Light Pen.
You'll also want Light Pen for some more light resistant bosses, for raw damage and shock duration, so i'd recommend to always carry both gems with you anyway and switch when needed.

Hi, few questions.

1: Why did you take Sovereignty? Where else could you spend those 5 passive points if you were to drop the reduced mana nodes? Is it wise to drop them in the first place?

2: You took an approach to dual wielding wands. Any specific reason? If you had the choice of going wand+shield, what would you change on your tree? (ex: Dark Arts for Crackling Speed and you have 1 more point to spend. 10% multi and 4% cast speed are worth 1 points each. 46% lightning damage for 2 points? Sold.)

3: Shadow might be a slightly better start than Witch. Am I mistaking?

4: Lightning Walker/Frost Walker gives 17.33% raw damage per passive for 3 passives. Additionally giving 15% resists to cold and lightning. Any thoughts?

5: "Damage conversion is done before any increases, or multipliers are applied to damage guaranteeing that they are only applied once"(Poe wiki). Does this mean only half of your damage will be enhanced?

Let's say we deal 100 lightning damage and we have 100% lightning damage increase. When applied:

- With conversion: 100/2 = 50 lightning, 50 cold. Then increases are applied. 100 lightning/50 cold
- Without conversion: 200 lightning

Is the build is weaker with conversion? Could you possibly see another alternative? (I was thinking of focusing on critical multiplier so the freeze from Herald of Ice is potent enough to be reliable)

"

gtrans wrote:

5: "Damage conversion is done before any increases, or multipliers are applied to damage guaranteeing that they are only applied once"(Poe wiki). Does this mean only half of your damage will be enhanced?

Let's say we deal 100 lightning damage and we have 100% lightning damage increase. When applied:

- With conversion: 100/2 = 50 lightning, 50 cold. Then increases are applied. 100 lightning/50 cold
- Without conversion: 200 lightning

Is the build is weaker with conversion? Could you possibly see another alternative? (I was thinking of focusing on critical multiplier so the freeze from Herald of Ice is potent enough to be reliable)

This might be why some players said they like "The Three Dragons" more than "Call of the Brotherhood". Thing is, your lightning damage now becomes the source of your freezes, and if the same formula applies as it does for cold damage, you'll have a much longer freeze duration, and even freeze a lot more on, say, resist maps, because you'll still do enough damage to overcome the threshold.

We can't use HoA instead of HoT (HoA doesn't apply to spells). So we would loose any chance to shock, unless we add some fire damage?

I have no idea, really, not a theorycrafter myself. Just my thoughts.

@gtrans: Hey there, nice to see you around again with some questions i'm glad to answer.

1. Sovereignty is used to increase our MoM-buffer, since there's not many mana nodes we haven't taken around. Soul Siphon and/or jewel sockets to replace Sovereignty + Arcane Potency could be an option i will look into, this may be an even better but more restricting (needs good jewels) solution.

2. Dual wielding yields the highest cast speed potential with up to 25% per wand + 6% if Profane Wand base and Dark Arts being really strong. High cast speed simply fits the fast-paced hit & run aspect i wanted to achieve with this build.

1H + Shield is possible, and i may include that in future when i'm working on this build & guide once again (currently stuck on RL and other projects). You will gain another life and resistance slot in exchange for a good amount of cast speed. I think the shadow starter nodes through the cast speed route would be overall better than Crackling Speed, but with the latter you'll have another free point to get a +30 Dex node you'll potentially need.

3. This is correct within the current patch. Back when i created this build (old EB, better witch start nodes) Witch was clearly superior.

4. I've skipped those in favor of jewel sockets.

5. Nope. While the wiki is correct in regards that conversion is applied first, you probably missed the part "Interaction with other modifiers" a bit below. Modifiers that affect the damage source still get applied to the converted part.


@Cr4v3n: CotB is the most balanced way to apply both shock and freeze with Arc. With Three Dragons, shock would be possible through HoI + Pyre, but even though Arcs damage effectiveness got increased, it wouldn't be enough damage to shock anything but white mobs and also take two unique slots without life instead of just one.

Hey m8,

I think you read the wiki a bit to fast. The order of conversion is like this:

Damage converted - Damage multiplier applied to the respective damage type.

That means your lightning damage will not increase half of the damage which is cold damage. When wiki said that conversion comes first, this is exactly what they wanted. To avoid double dipping a damage type to several multipliers. If you increase your lightning damage after conversion by 100%, you will need an equally high amount of cold multiplier for your cold damage. Lighting won't affect cold.

So if this is true. Now you know that CoTB is weakening the build a lot in terms DPS. But we all know DPS isn't always the answer. Then again to a certain degree, standard is made to be experience yolo builds right? So back to my original request. Could you see it work to use extra high multi to use Herald of Ice as your freezing source? (Without the damage loss of CoTB)

The way I understand it Enki91 is right.

Lightning damage is converted to cold damage which is then affected by all modifiers for lightning and cold damage.

http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Damage_conversion#Example_calculation

That's exactly my point. Each damage type needs their own multipliers. Spell damage and elemental damage are the only increases that will affect both portion of the damage.

My point is that stacking lightning damage on this build is wrong. I looked at OP's tree and the only lightning damage is his shadow area so it is safe to say he hasn't lost much.

@gtrans: This is the part you've been missing: http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Damage_conversion#Interaction_with_other_modifiers

The converted cold damage is affected by lightning damage equally as cold damage. I've also tested this with several lightning damage clusters back when CotB was released and can confirm it works.

It's not completely wrong though that CotB somewhat nerfs our damage. Through halving the lightning damage we deal, we won't be able to shock all bosses any longer. But i think that's an ok tradeoff for the reflect safety and overall utility CotB brings to this build.

About scaling HoI with crit multi to freeze, i think it's worth a try but it'll need an obscene amount of crit multi not obtainable for everyone and still be lower than cold damage through CotB.
Positive aspect is you'll keep full shock duration and the crit multi will heavily increase overall damage further.

Then why exactly is damage conversion applied BEFORE any increases if the end result remains the same.

100 lightning with 50% conversion = 50 lightning and 50 cold.

Damage increased by 100% so 100 lightning/ 100 cold

VS

100 lightning dmg increased by 100% = 200 lightning damage.

50% of it is converted to cold so 100 lightning/ 100 cold.