[3.27] The dirty Scorpion-Tail|Herald of Agony| Chaos-Cyclone-Necro|The Arachnophobia Allstars 260M

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AllMud55#1056 wrote:

I did a short test run on Witch, and it was very rough leveling for me personally. Is there any particular changes I can or should make to struggle a bit less?

I was in act 4 with 4 link HoAG and had tried Sybils and cyclone-cwc. Single target felt like it didn't exist, and tried swapping back to Pconc and was barely any better. I had my first lab done but really didn't help at all.

I considered trying out a different class to start, but I feel like Necro has the highest ceiling for gear and damage later on.

While early levelling with HoA I always pushed a mix of different 4 sources of dps:

1) a mainskill like poisonous concoction with mandatory 80-100% chances to poison (guided in "HoA step by step", easy reached on the tree and with chance to poison-support), much thrown flasks (lmp, volley, attackspeed), of course fitting updated flasks and enough flask-charges which buff the damage too.
Flamewalls are good supporting beside.

Poisonous concoction is nerfed 20%, so other early mainskills are as same strong in 3.27. Mmhmm, sorry, I also still did not decided which early leaguestart-skill looks best for 3.27. A basic overview for alternative skills is listed in the top of the spoiler "beginning and levelling".

Perhaps Cyclone - cwc - absolution - chance to poison, or absolution - faster casting - chance to poison - spell echo are good choices or storm rain - chance to poison can be good chosen instead poisonous concoction.
Or jungroan guides a 3.27 kinetic rain heraldstacker as leaguestarter on YouTube.

2) HoA - there are no keystones and not really passivetree-notables and no good buffing auras available. A minion-offence-mastery is not optimal effective too to buff HoA-damage.

So the key and the best choice to boost HoA is the continuous generating of full 40 HoA-virulences. They are gained with fast hitting skills/spells and need 80-100% chances to poison.
Against singletargets the HoA-virulences are doubled with jewel the golden rule. Then the levelling-helmet maw of conquest is recommended to counter the suicide-poison-reflections. Maw of conquest requires minimum lvl 48.

Before other skills and minions like absolution, hop, srs, phantasms etc. are faster.

But with the default full 40 virulences or 45 virulences with HoA-gemquality the HoA already hits like a truck when you keep the virulences constantly up.


3) 3-4 sources of burstdamage: plaguebearer to melt bosses, vaal skeletons (or vaal absolution) against bosses, withering step for withers, and curses like despair, sniper's mark, punishment etc.

4) Then from lvl 54 onwards get fast cheap medium clusters pure agony and circle of nostalgia, they are the best damage-buffs at that level.

Then also the transfigured skillgems Ball Lightning of Orbiting, Tornadoes of Elemental Turbulences, linked to chance to poison, already get interesting to replace poisonous concoction. They produce more HoA-virulences. Also poisonous concoction of bouncing, default storm burst and default ball lightning are fast and generate full HoA-virulences.

At that step Ghastly jewels, CIP or Arakaali's fang, Ebers Unification or support-spectrees are high damage also.


So for that gear a few chaos/alchemy-orbs are needed, around 3, and then for the first medium clusters around 3-10 more. In Secrets the currency was easy looted fighting early some Mercs, and I hope in 3.27 there are sources for some early drops again.

Also the new Grafts seem to be designed to accelerate levelling.

Overall there are much faster levelling skills out there which are better buffed early on the tree with keystones and masteries.
So HoA will be probably again not the optimal leaguestart-racer and choosing other skills until 5-10 chaos-orbs are gained is a good choice when you focus on high leaguestart-speed.