Enki's Arc Witch Memorial Page

@WolfeDude: Not worth losing MoM and the utility from both heralds + double curse, and it would require a completely different build to begin with.
AS BM caster you want as much life as possible, and because you'll get that in the strength area of the tree also go Iron Will. An Iron Will caster will prefer Black Sun Crest and take the BM node including those really good life nodes behind it.

Thanks again for your response; I'm enjoying the discussion, as I'm still newish to the game and like to hear how these things work. Apologies for the delay, though; I've been working on getting this character up through Cruel and into Merciless.

I set up the dual-curse on hit gems just so they would start accruing experience, but realized I didn't actually have the ability to cast two curses yet, so it's only been Poacher's Mark going off so far. Judging by my progression so far, it seems like you've designed the leveling trees so that you pick up all the basic Life stuff first, with all the juicy bits later. I'm only just starting to spec into the Criticals stuff, and I'll probably be well into at least Act 1 of Merciless before I can pick up Whispers of Doom. I do have a Doedre's Damning, but haven't felt like putting it on just yet.

Thanks for the tip, I do see the ones listed for about 35-45c, but so far it seems like none of my PM's are resulting in any responses or trades, and the ones listed as 'online' are usually 2ex. I'll have to just keep hunting, I suppose, or hope for a lucky drop.

I'm surprised you say none of the unique jewels are really worthwhile (though I guess the same goes for most unique equipment.) I quite liked the Assassin's Haste for the combined Move Speed, Cast Speed and Mana Regen. I also had no idea that Clarity's flat mana regen would be additionally scaled by the Mana Regeneration bonuses. Would the Survival Secrets' flat 3 Mana Regeneration base also be boosted?

As far as Enlighten goes, I currently have a level 2 Enlighten (I have two of them, plus three Empowers and a single Enhance that I am trying to level up, but they go pretty slowly.) I'm not sure if that would help at all in trying to free up some of those nodes. I also thought about those Elreon rings that cut mana costs, but trying to get that crafted with Life and Resists would probably be difficult.

Having said that, what level do you take Clarity to? I haven't wanted to accidentally over-level it, so I've kept it pretty low so far.

Thank you for the explanation on the Jewels, although I really haven't seen any Jewels drop so far that had any sort of coherent 'theme' going on with them. Every single one I have is a mashup of caster, melee and bow affixes. I didn't know they were limited to four affixes, though. I had assumed they were like any other Rare item in the game and had up to six, and figured I was just getting really unlucky.

As to your defensive curse setup -- sorry, I must have misunderstood. Does Enfeeble and Temporal Chains have that noticeable of an effect? So far I have been trying the Frost Wall + Immortal Call setup, and I'm liking it for those times I get jumped/shot or a giant just casually walks up to me to try and punch me. I realized that linking Phase Run to this setup was silly, though, because it usually triggers while I'm in the middle of casting, and thus immediately ends its effect when I'm in mid-cast of the next spell, so for the time being I've moved it out into the 'utility' section.

I don't have a Vaal Haste yet either, but I am trying out Vaal Grace in the meantime -- this is mainly for the chance to dodge spells. Outside of high resistances, I don't really see any other way of mitigating spell damage with this build, and spells are usually what kills my other characters.

However, in preparation for trying to include this 'secondary' CwDT setup, I've decided to temporarily swap out Lightning Warp with Flame Dash to see if I can get used to its nuances. Assuming I keep it, it will free up the 3L for CwDT+Enfeeble+Temporal Chains, but the problem then is I'd have one too many gems for the utility slots - Ice Golem, Rallying Cry, Phase Run, Increased Duration, Flame Dash, Vaal Haste/Grace. I could put the Vaal gem in my current CwDT+IC+FW setup, since I can still manually cast it even when linked there, although I kind of wanted to throw in another Increased Duration to make IC+FW last longer.

Otherwise, I have no idea. I like Phase Run for its various abilities, while I find I haven't really used Rallying Cry at all. However, it's recommended in your build, and I have no idea if it becomes really important later on, so I've kept on leveling it for now. I don't really have any idea when to use the warcry.

Finally, thanks for your comments on the Uniques. Alpha's Howl is at least fairly cheap, but I understand your reasoning. For now I've picked up a (non-legacy) pair of Maligaro's Virtuosity with 34% Crit Multiplier -- hopefully it works well enough even though it's lower than the legacy variants.

I'm surprised to hear that Shavs wouldn't work too well -- I thought the ability for Chaos damage not to bypass ES would be pretty useful. Why would this necessitate Low Life?

Otherwise, I made it through Cruel Dominus without dying again, but I anticipate much pain in Kaom's area once more. I'm still using an Atziri's Foible Amulet, for the Mana regen, and a Meginord's Girdle for the 10% increased Life, but otherwise, of the other Chest Armors you've listed as options, the only one I have available is the Kingsguard. It looks like I'll have to upgrade my Icetomb to that shortly, but I feel like I won't get much out of it until I get Whispers of Doom for the consistent Endurance Charges (and being consumed by IC.)

What do you think about Daresso's Defiance.
Using Empower instead of FC to make coloring at least possible (BBBBRR = ~2.5k chromes).
And changing Warlord's Mark for Assassins' Mark on the CoH?

@DarkRogue_3: Trigger gems, such as curse on hit will always apply the linked spells in their linked order. You could either chrom the item to have Warlords before Poachers, or take the latter out and level it in your secondary weapon slot (gems stored there gain exp even if you don't use the secondary weapon).

All the unique jewels from quest are kinda weak and only meant as temporary boost while progressing through storyline, only Conquerors Potency and Poachers Aim have their edge uses in endgame.
The other unique jewels, aside from those i mentioned in an earlier comment have no real use for this build. One could argue that Anatomical Knowledge is somewhat useful, but compared to an ok'ish rolled 3stat jewel it just wouldn't be worth the slot.
The flat mana of Survival Secrets gets added with your base mana regen and Clarity (and Rallying Cry when used), the result then gets multiplied by mana regen%. Sounds good at first, but a rare jewel with a life or mana roll is again more impactful on the overall build and should be preferred.

Don't try to cut down mana nodes - you need them. Manabased MoM requires a good amount of unreserved mana to take hits, and mana regen (or mana/hybrid flasks) to quickly regenerate those hits. The more unreserved mana you have, the less likely you are to run out of mana in harsh situations which you will 100% run into, even in a party. No mana means no more protection through MoM, damage will go at full value to your life, and you also won't be able to cast Arc to get rid of the damaging enemies, or your movement skill to get out of the damage.
Elreon rings won't help you with this at all, all they'd do is unnecessarily increase your gearing cost while you can sustain your spells anyway.
Clarity should be at Lv20, i even used a Lv21 gem i got through corruption but the difference isn't that big.

Enfeeble + Temp Chains have a huge impact, just give it a try and you'll notice it. Mobs will be slowed down, means more time for you to react and/or kill, and if they hit their damage is greatly reduced plus their chance to hit/crit is lowered. This doesn't just help you but everyone in the party, though if you run with an aura/curse bot (player investing in aura/curse nodes and running as many of those as possible) you won't need it.

Most spell damage can be avoided through prediction and positioning your character accordingly. This requires some experience and knowledge first, but you'll get there pretty fast. Should be even easier since you have a party to draw attention away from you.

I'd drop Phase Run to add in the defensive curse setup, but it's up to you. Rallying Cry is best used when you apporach a big pack of monsters you know will deal a big amount of damage, such as seeing a big pack of leapers leaping at you and it's too late to step away. It's also good in some bossfights, where the boss has slower attack animations (f.e. Dominus' human form) to give you some time to cast without having to reposition every second.

Legacy Maligaros aren't needed, it's one of the very last investments i would make. Focus on all other gear first, survivability should always have priority above damage with ANY build in this game.
Kingsguard is a good chest to transition into, you'll gain a good amount of life and mana which Icetomb simply completely lacks. The endurance charge thing is just an additional little bonus, but not the selling factor of wearing Kingsguard with this build.

@Cr4v3n: Would work, but then why wouldn't you go with Lightning Coil? A bit more expensive in initial investment, but chroming cost would be the same and the chest is way more impactful on survivability. If you do, drop Light Pen for Cold Pen (BBBBGR), for easier maps you can switch in Empower as the leech from Warlords Mark will be sufficient.

Thanks again for the breakdown, I appreciate you taking your time to respond to my points, and I'm learning quite a lot from this.

At this point, I have managed to rush for Whispers of Doom and am able to finally apply two curses at once, so I've left the curses the same for now -- I can apply both Warlord's and Poacher's Marks simultaneously.

I've also swapped out Lightning Warp for your defensive curse setup to test, and am going to give Flame Dash more time to settle in with me, but my CwDT gem is too high of a level (Level 7) so I will need to try and have my friend pick up a couple lower level ones for me. I can see that the Enfeeble+Temporal Chains counter would work best with a very low gem level so that they would trigger much more frequently. I'm not too sure how high to take the Immortal Call + Frost Wall (+ blank right now, maybe something else, or just increased duration) to strike the best balance between it firing when I need it, versus when I don't.

Having picked up the dual curses, I also spent some time and currency last night to craft my Kingsguard. It took 347 Jeweler's Orbs to get a 6 socket out of it, but at least it's still technically cheaper than having Vorici do it. Unfortunately, that was a majority of the Orbs I've saved up, so I'm feeling pretty poor right now. I do like that when Immortal Call activates and consumes my Endurance Charges, I immediately get a burst of healing from it, though. However, I am wondering if that Restless Ward might have been a better choice, as I'm finding out that the charges don't last all that long. Perhaps this will change later when I spec into more of the Crit nodes, but right now my chance to crit is only about 22% and feels very unreliable.

For what it's worth, here are the two Wands I'm currently using, as well as what the Kingsguard currently looks like. Since most of the other pieces of gear appear to be devoted to survivability, it feels like the Wands are the only places I can really get more Critical Strike Chance.


Thanks for the tips on the Jewels and Clarity. I suppose I'll try to be more diligent in checking what Jewels to keep. As far as Clarity, I was afraid that it would eat up too much mana at higher levels, but if that is the case, I'll try to increase its level some more and see what happens. I'm beginning to run out of mana in extended battles even without specing into MoM yet. I'll also try to be more cognizant of opportunities to use Rallying Cry. I'm not completely sure I want to ditch Phase Run yet, as I feel it's a pretty fun skill, but as with everything else, I'll try to re-evaluate it.

For Jewels, these are some examples of the ones I have available.. and none of them look like they're all that great to me. Pretty difficult to find Rare ones dropping, though, but I'm also not sure about burning Chaos Orbs or Scouring+Alchemy Orbs on them.


I kind of figured the Elreon rings wouldn't have that huge of an impact, since they're best used for fairly cheap skills, but it seemed like it was a potential way of alleviating the number of skill points needed. As it stands, though, it'd be way too costly to find properly crafted gear with Elreon's cost reduction mod.

As for physically dodging, I do try my best to do so, and in this respect I feel Flame Dash has got the 'feel' of in-battle dodging working better than Lightning Warp, even though I believe they both take roughly the same amount of time to cast. However, there are instances where I take 2 or 3 successive hits from a rapid-firing spell with no chance to do anything about it, so those are tough to deal with. Actually, those Storm/Frost/Flame Bearers Bloodline mods, along with that Storm Herald Nemesis mod gets me more than anything else.

If the Legacy Maligaro's aren't strictly necessary, then I'll just be happy with the ones I have now. I am still trying to find a CotB, though.

Regarding the Kingsguard, if the extra healing from Endurance Charges isn't the selling factor here, what is it? Just the Life+Mana availability? What about the other options you list?

Finally, as far as weaknesses I'm currently feeling, Reflect seems to get me more often. It happens rarely enough on the field that I'm ill-prepared to expect it, while if I get cautious, my clear times go way down as I'm trying to read off every affix on a rare monster before engaging. I also changed some of my hotkeys around, which has made it difficult for me to respond in time, but the last Reflect rare I encountered, I was able to pop my Topaz flask and managed to handle it reasonably well enough.

The only other issue I have is when you get overwhelmed by sheer numbers. Arc can only hit so many enemies at a time, which is why I had Ball Lightning on my previous character to handle this situation. At least while I was finishing Cruel, I managed to solo my way through Dominus, Kaom, and even Daresso without dying (Kaom was an intense fight, though, as I was hitting every single flask multiple times, in addition to using Vaal Grace, in succession to avoid dying) but that final pit area in Daresso's Dream got me killed -- there were simply way too many blue monsters in an enclosed arena. I could not find a place to run to where I wouldn't be attacked, and there were too many enemies with too much health for Arc to reliably focus down. Any suggestions for what I could have done here?

Finally, would Mana Leech be useful at all for this build?

"

DarkRogue_3 wrote:

The only other issue I have is when you get overwhelmed by sheer numbers. Arc can only hit so many enemies at a time, which is why I had Ball Lightning on my previous character to handle this situation. At least while I was finishing Cruel, I managed to solo my way through Dominus, Kaom, and even Daresso without dying (Kaom was an intense fight, though, as I was hitting every single flask multiple times, in addition to using Vaal Grace, in succession to avoid dying) but that final pit area in Daresso's Dream got me killed -- there were simply way too many blue monsters in an enclosed arena. I could not find a place to run to where I wouldn't be attacked, and there were too many enemies with too much health for Arc to reliably focus down. Any suggestions for what I could have done here?

I'm still using Flame Totem on a 3 link for that reason.
Flame Totem > Fire Penetration > Faster Casting

What I like about it, it will distract some monsters the moment you place it. And let me tell you, it's not even weak with all the elemental damage from our passives. It does quite some damage and helps a lot with tankier rares / uniques. It also provides a target for flicker monsters (like Undying Grapplers, the ones that flicker, then discharge). You can place it around corners to lure monsters towards it. Even without any additional survival for totems from the tree or links it can take some hits.

Of course I had to sacrifice something from the guide, and I went with Rallying Cry. I don't really like short duration self casts like this, same as Enduring Cry now. I always end up using them when there's no need, and not when I should have.

Well, that's what I do. :)

Haha, I'm not sure there's anything else I can give up for the Flame Totem, though I am considering something (maybe even Ball Lightning again, since it might benefit from the Lightning passives and CotB.) At least when I was plowing through normal and the first half of Cruel, I was using whatever random things I found in my stash, so I was running through with Freezing Pulse, Arc, Flame Totem and three Zombies.

It basically played like my Totem character who also uses Zombies as more distraction. In particular, I also use Vaal Summon Skeletons on her in order to have a way to summon an 'instant army' in cases where I get surrounded, or I really, really need a boss to stay away from me. The downside is that they die really quickly to large area of effect spells like Firestorm or Storm Herald. I'm not sure if any of these would transfer all that well to this character, though.

Having said that, I'm at 72 now on my long journey back to 86 -- not bad for less than a week, though. However, I am at the limit of my level one unique gear; the random Reflect rares are destroying me, and I'm becoming extremely paranoid about them, to the point where I'm clearing maps at about 1/5 the speed of my Totem character.

I just picked up a CotB for 40 chaos the other day (low rolls though,) but I can't use it yet until I redo all of my gear. I feel apprehensive about it because the stuff I need feel very expensive to me (all in the 30-40 chaos range for the cheaper non-exalted options) but I need to get some more resists into my setup before I can continue. I'm looking at some options on poe.trade, but added all up, it would require basically all of my available currency of chaos orbs, and that makes me hesitate. I'm also chancing every Prophecy Wand I come across, but I don't really have any hopes for that panning out, haha.

what would you suggest I upgrade first, I just hit act 4 merc in 3 days 1 month SC

@DarkRogue_3: I found a Lv10 CwDt with a Lv12 Immortal Call works really well, pretty much my standard setup if i run Immo Call with a build. Frost Wall could be leveled to 15 in this chain.

I'd stick with Kingsguard, you will have way better charge uptime once you crit (and thus, shatter) more often. You can get another ~3% crit through a diamond ring + crit roll on amulet. The rest will come from passive tree (+jewels), quality PCoC and better wands (100%+ crit roll). In the end, you can expect 50-60% chance to crit.

Just check around poe.trade for some jewels. Look for % Maximum Life and one other random stat (f.e. cast speed, cast speed while dual wield, global crit chance, spell/lightning damage), choose buyout and online only and then check and compare if there's some 3/4 stat ones for a good price.
But your main focus should be on regular gear first before pumping money into jewels, the 5-7% Life won't be as impactful if you have no/low life rolls on gear. Each piece should have atleast 60 flat life, 80 for helmet and boots along with the other stats mentioned in gear section.

If you lack currency, you can farm an easy zone for raw currency and divination cards, docks is a good candidate for that. Also do the chaos recipe to quickly stack up on chaos.

Kingsguard offers a good amount of life and mana at a very low price, while it's also easy to chrom for our desired colours due to the Str+Int base. It's the most balanced unique chest choice for this build, only chests beating this are Lightning Coil (very expensive due to chroming) or a good Carnal Armour with 100+ life, 60+ mana and resistances.

The more you play, you will notice most monster affixes are somewhat visually visible without having to hover the mods. It's advisable though to hover atleast quick over them to get a glimpse if they have mods like Volatile Blood, x Bearers, Herald of the Obelisk etc.

The problem with Arcs limited chaining will vanish once you get a Lv20/21 gem (more chains) and more cast speed. That will help you to burst down large packs before they can become any threat.
Mana Leech wouldn't help, you'd nerf your damage output and thus give enemies more chances to hit you in the first place. Warlord's Mark already supplies a valuable amount of mana leech, given that only works on enemies in radius after shattering one monster, but you'll notice it's quite impactful once you got enough crit and damage.

@Bayeasy: Boots, Ring, Belt and Amulet - check the first gear tier for which stats you want there. Put life with haku on your gloves, that should last until you upgrade to Facebreakers or Malis.
Then start looking for a 5L chest (Kingsguard works well) and a nice helmet. After all that's done, you can check for some crit wands.

Thanks for the breakdown - Good to know that the Kingsguard is actually a pretty good one for this build considering how much currency I threw into it just to make it a 5L/6S. I'm still wondering what a Restless Ward would feel like, but as you say, perhaps when I can crit more reliably I'd be less inclined to want the 100% charge duration. As of right now I have a base Crit chance of about 31.5%, going up to around 44% I believe when I have 5 Power Charges up, but it still feels very random and inconsistent as it feels like I'll get 2 minutes of casts without a single crit, then I'll get like 40+ crits in a row.

I figured Mana Leech would not be an optimal choice, as you'd have to give up something else on the chain, but I did want to see if there was a way to make it work, since it could potentially help to reduce the overbearing mana requirements you have to deal with here. Warlord's Mark only helps with non-curse-immune monsters as well.

It sounds like you are suggesting I take a Diamond Ring base over a resistance ring base for the Crit, though. I tried searching poe.trade for a Ring with both Crit Chance and Cast Speed, but no results were found -- Cast Speed ones were all resistance bases without Crit affixes, and Diamond bases didn't have any Cast Speed.

Having said that, I'm a bit confused over what to look for in the Amulet - ideally you wanted Crit Chance, Crit Multi, Resistance, Life, Mana Regen, and Spell Damage (and maybe Cast Speed?) but these would either be too many affixes for an amulet, or you'd be limited to a single resistance on it. Which ones are the priority to have above the others? I kind of thought Crit Multi would be a bit better than Crit Chance, considering any amount on it would translate to only a 1~2% increased real chance, while a multi would increase damage probably a bit more than that. I could be wrong though, since this is the first time I'm working with Crit.

I'm surprised you say that a level 10 CwDT works well -- I swapped some of my gear and gems around so that my IC is linked with my level 7 CwDT again and it feels like I'm a bit safer with it than when I had it linked to my level 9 CwDT. Perhaps this is when you are a higher level (currently 74) with more life and ES? (As an aside, does CwDT's damage counter include the damage you take to your ES, or only the damage you take to Life?) I've also moved Frost Wall off to the new level 1 CwDT set alongside Enfeeble+Temporal Chains, and I am highly amused by things hitting me and my being immediately surrounded by an ice fort. (It was linked to my IC before, thus forming a wall only when I took a big hit.)

In either case, I'm still hunting poe.trade for some decent gear to use, while also trying to farm what I can. As I mentioned, I changed out some of my gear since I needed to change my gem links a bit anyway.



I picked up this helmet yesterday for 2c and went ahead and crafted the sockets, quality and Lightning Resistance onto it to replace my Crown of Thorns. I think it's a decent helmet to use until I find or buy a better one, although I'm not sure if that might be good enough to just take me to the endgame. Because the tree doesn't really have any sort of bonuses to Armor or Evasion, I figured a tiny amount wouldn't really make much of a difference, so I decided to try and push my ES as high as I can instead. To that end, this helmet technically should have another open prefix slot for me to craft some more ES on it whenever I have the currency for Elreon's multi-mod. I'm not sure if this would be a better path than simply buying a better helmet, though.

The Belt I lucked out on when I was randomly identifying all the Leather Belts I had in my stash (for the Chaos recipe, but I wound up having tons of other belts to use for that.) It provides some valuable Chaos Resistance, which I feel is very difficult to get in this game, along with more Lightning Resistance. There's no more room for a movement speed affix, though, so this will probably only be temporary until I find a better belt (one with similar stats, minus the Armor roll, I suppose.)

I'm still looking for a decent pair of boots to use.

I also need to upgrade these rings.

One will be the CotB, and the other will probably be a Diamond Ring of some sort.

However, these changes managed to bring my Lightning Resistance from a paltry 16% up to 75%, and I no longer really have to worry about Reflect rares in (non-reflect) maps. Cold resistance is still lacking, though, so even if I can get the appropriate Ring and Amulet, I'm not sure I'd want to swap CotB in until I get it capped. (As another aside, Lightning Damage bonuses will apply to the converted Cold damage, if I'm reading the wiki correctly, right? The page seems a bit contradictory. As well, would 'Spell Damage' or 'Elemental Damage' bonuses apply twice? Once for the Lightning portion, and again for the converted Cold portion?)

Finally, as far as Arc chaining goes, I believe 5 Chains is the limit for my up until level 20. The only way to get that 6th chain is to boost it to Level 21, which was why I asked about Empower before. Without that, I'm not sure how else to get it there without the very costly and extremely random Vaal corruption.