Enki's Arc Witch Memorial Page

@NeewLegend: Out of the current unique jewels, none is really good for this build. You can make use of Intuitive Leap at the templar slot to take an additional endurance charge, and chill of corruption/sacrificial harvest can help keeping vaal haste up, but all those aren't really necessary.

Your best bet will be rare jewels with life as main stat and a combination of mana, cast speed, crit multi, spell/light/cold dmg and crit chance.


@ald1413: Coil is a great choice, if you can cap your resistances through other gear/jewels.
I've added a mention to the guide that you can switch Light Pen with Cold Pen for somewhat easier coloring on coil.

However, after having played around with several medium armour (5-10k) builds in the last months, that's one thing i'll plan to integrate into this build for better phys dmg survivability. Coil will still remain a good choice, but require a little different tree which i will of course include.


@Lucius_Voren: Thanks! I don't have the build specced currently, but my most recent gear can be seen in the highend gear section.

I really like this build. a lot more speed then I'm used to which is a good thing, took a little liberty on the lightning warp and changed it to whirling blades just cuz i haven't tried that skill before and I'm liking it, will eventually switch though. I feel that this build is not beginner friendly build when your starting a new league though, gearing has been very difficult and expensive, and is difficult to get all affixes without paying an arm and a leg, but i think i got some decent items. But alas ive ran into a brick wall. I can't seem to get poacher's and warlords mark to curse, crit seems like a big linchpin in this build and i feel like I'm squeezing out as much currency as i can to try and balance crit and survivability but can't seem to get there.

Tooltip says 3800 dps, 5400dps with 6 power charges and heralds.

My question: how much crit % do you have on your build? I'm about 40% an it ain't cutting it imo and i don't know what to do.

Opps.

Got myself a coil:D. However i had to drop facebreakers and that dropped my dps by alot sadly. Ill prob pick the resistances in the witch area (lightning walker i think), but on another note I just wanna ask what i should upgrade next

@SandboxRooK: Always consider masting crafting when looking for items. Things like mana, mana regen and crit chance (amulet) can cheaply be added through masters, so i recommend to focus on gear with good life, resistances & movespeed (boots). That of course requires knowing how to determine open prefix/suffix slots and stuff which i've vaguely mentioned in the leveling section, but i'll cover that better in the 2.1.0 version of this guide.

Your curses barely proc because you can hardly freeze with only cold damage from HoI. You need either Call of the Brotherhood, or as a temporary substitute for the former Three Dragons works too (but since you're using Geofri's Crest, not an option for you).
I'd recommend to link the CoH setup to Herald of Thunder instead, until you can afford a Call of the Brotherhood.

€: My crit chance was at 55% with wands, a bit more is possible with crit jewels and daggers.


@ald1413: Not much room for upgrades on your gear anymore. I'd first get similar boots with 30% movespeed, the dex isn't really needed as lower level Poachers Mark/Vaal Haste have barely any less effect for us.
After that, get on the hunt for a good life/mana/crit/crit multi ammy, with a possible slot open for mana regen or resistances. If needed, you could also replace your ring with something similar but more resistances, especially light res.
Last but not least a similar belt on leather belt, preferably tri-res.

lvl 82, 28k dps using 6L Cloak and dual Doryani's. Not using PCoC because my initial chance to crit is low (27%) so working on finding better jewelry to raise that.

Testing some optimizations for 2.1.0 went really well. Here's a screenshot that'll give a few hints what may come, i won't further comment on these yet. Only thing i'll mention is the diamond shrine, some of you may be good enough at maths to calculate DPS down for 50-60% crit chance.

All this can still change quite a bit, i'll further test when all new things and changes have been revealed. Expecting to drop the fully updated guide within a few hours after patch hits, with a few rough leveling outlines being put up immediatly.

This is an awesome guide, and the first charakter i really played! I like, how it's very beginner friendly written (very detailed, skilltree for every 20pts, budget builds) yet also designed to be endgame viable.

After i wanted to try out something new (yet couldn't really get away from an arc build) i tried to build a witch after this guide. While they are both awesome, they are quite similar of course. Yet these are the main differences I see:
- Completly different bandit choices ("Oak, Alira, Kill All" against "Alira, Kill all, Alira")
- Your guide is focussed on dual wielding wands, whereas blackdepp's ones uses wand+shield
- You have a cwdt-setup whereas blackdepp uses vaal storm call as a boss-killer
- You use MoM and Clarity for the endgame, whereas Blackdepp doesn't.
- You use herald of ice as well, whereas blackdepp wants to use wrath in the endgame.
- (Probably the most important one): You use a 6L Arc setup for endgame, while Blackdepp only uses a 4L setup with Geoffri's or the Vertex.

But what does that mean, from the eyes of an experienced player? This is not meant to be a "which is da best guide??!?!!?"-question of course, i'd just really like to understand where the main differences are. Also regarding lategame (and maybe even HC) which one is more viable there? If this can't be answered easily, can someone explain where the main differences will be gameplay wise from level 80 and beyond?

@Chieftain_Joe: Hey there, thanks for the kind words!

The main difference between Blackdepps and my guide is crit. He doesn't scale crit which results in lower damage, but also cheaper gearing costs and allows him to use an effective 4L setup in a +1 helmet. That part may change in 2.1 with the introduction of the Controlled Destruction support gem providing a More Spell Damage modifier with reduced crit chance.
It also means he can put more points into general damage and defensive nodes, however i would say my build isn't lacking in that regard either. It just takes a higher level for my build to get all the good stuff.

My build on the other hand scales crit, which results in more damage output but also higher gearing cost. I'm also using crit as a defensive mechanism through Call of the Brotherhood, which enables us to freeze and shatter and lets us apply two curses for frenzy/endurance charge generation and some leech.

There's some other differences that you've already figured out. Just wanna mention, i'll also include a Vaal Storm Call setup in the next patch, unless some other spell choice turns out better for single target. It's one of the hints i've dropped in the screenshot one comment above yours.

No matter which guide you choose to follow, both will be totally viable for endgame maps. I've recently respecced a char back to this build to test some things for 2.1 and was cruising through 80+ maps, even killed dual Conservatory (Lv81) bosses deathless.
HC should also possible with both builds - but as with all builds, it only works if you know what you're doing.

@Enki91:
Wow, thanks for the very detailed reply. This answered pretty much all my questions.

Regarding your previous post about the upcoming 2.1 patch: This also seems very interesting! It's really cool to see that you maintain this guide so well and want to post the 2.1 update so early. I'll definitely stick to it again as soon as 2.1 comes out.

Also looking forward to see what you have planned for vaal storm call. This might bring us some variety to the map clearing. :)

Edit:
I see that you have brought many gems to +23% quality! But i guess this isn't really necessary, unless you want to get every last % of effectiveness out of the build? From an invested effort point of view, getting a +23% quality gem is so much harder than just a standard +20% quality gem. Or are there some gems where you'd definitely recommend getting the +23% quality (over the standard +20)?