Power Siphon

Obtained this on my level 21 Wand Witch (Watchy) last night and played for about 5 levels with it. Respecced into wand passives, hex master, area of the tree with 2 power charges. Was using elemental hit previously, so bound elemental to left and power siphon to right mouse.

The skill itself is pretty good. Nice graphic, dealt competitive damage.

I think it's supposed to be a supplemental skill to build power charges and then switch to another attack, but really it needs to be used as your primary skill. The 10s duration of power charges doesn't allow you to switch off between attacks, look at loot, make sure stuff is cursed, etc.... I don't see that changing with the 13s from passives I can't get to yet.

Also, if basing your build around power charges and power siphon, there is no way to refresh your charges against an act boss (brutus, merveil form 1) since only on kill works.

Maybe the quality effect should be "Chance to grant power charge on hit". What is the quality effect anyways?

Sorry if it's a dumb question, but is this currently the only way to gain power charges for witch using wands?

If so, I'd really prefer to see this as a passive (even keystone) than just a skill :(

There not much information about charges and how to gain them. It seems like a powerful and dynamic mechanism, but it's so obscure!

There are also two passives that allow you to gain power charges (one on melee crit and one on minion death), as well as at least one unique armor that lets you gain one on a critical of any kind.

Currently it feels like the only valid way to use power charges as a natural part of your play on a spell witch is to get Volls unique armor and deal with the half mana pool.

The minions dying isn't reliable enough to spec so many passive points into power charges, but are a "hey nice" addition when it happens if you are speccing into crit damage at least.

Melee crit is really only for templar builds (which is fine).

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Zaanus wrote:

Melee crit is really only for templar builds (which is fine).

wouldn't say that so clear ;)...my Flicker witch was kinda nice too though

but this skill is really fun...and there are enough wand passives too now, so using Wand got really viable now imho...gj :)

The only thing I dislike is the animation...it's little bit too much imho to make the Lightning Warp animation every time you kill an enemy...plz give it a smaller animation :)

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Btah wrote:

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Zaanus wrote:

Melee crit is really only for templar builds (which is fine).

wouldn't say that so clear ;)...my Flicker witch was kinda nice too though

but this skill is really fun...and there are enough wand passives too now, so using Wand got really viable now imho...gj :)

There are two wand skills, it's a big improvement and you can make a viable character, but my experience so far is that the wand skills are either/or and not both and that they both fill the same niche as your primary left click. Really though, most people don't make witches thinking "hey man i'm gonna harry potter like a boss"

Yeah in some way every projectile based character will be massspamming one skill...either Split Arrow or MP-Frenzy with a Bow...MP-Ice Spear as caster...MP-Power Siphon with a Wand
but still the feeling is different imho, to play with such high crits instead of playing a real shotgun (Frenzy/Bow)

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Btah wrote:

The only thing I dislike is the animation...it's little bit too much imho to make the Lightning Warp animation every time you kill an enemy...plz give it a smaller animation :)

This is a completely different animation from Lightning Warp.

Personally I think the animation is great. I just wish it were on a skill I'd use.

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One of the devs said he hopes that Power Siphon would be used by casters in order to finish off an enemy, and that this would encourage people to pick up a few wand passives.

I attempted to test out the viability of this proposition by doing a few calculations. Here is the Power Siphon I used.



With that Power Siphon and six power charges, my DPS was 1279.

Let's now say for the purposes of demonstration that I got five of the best wand passives in the tree without even needing their prerequisites. Those would be

Elder Power
Wand Damage per Power Charge
Wand Lightning Damage
Wand Fire Damage
Wand Cold Damage


My character window currently reads
97 - 152 Physical Damage
28 - 405 Lightning Damage
135 - 203 Chaos Damage

My wand has no quality, and these numbers include the +52% Physical damage bonus from Power Siphon, so my physical damage with Elder Power, Wand Damage per Power Charge and 20% quality would be:

(97 ~ 152)/1.52 * (1.52 + 0.5 + .08*6) * 1.2 = 191.45 ~ 300

Throw in the Lightning, Fire, and Cold damage, and you have

(191.45 ~ 300) * 1.3 = (249 ~ 390)

So in total, these passives and upgrades would increase my overall DPS by:

(249+390 + 28+405 + 135+203) / (97+152 + 28+405 + 135+203) = 38%

For a new total DPS of 1765.

1765 DPS is one third of the DPS of one of my five Ice Spear projectiles. That's to say nothing about Ice Spear's second-phase DPS which is even higher. I could deal fifteen times the DPS of this boosted Power Siphon just by walking up to an enemy and spamming multi-projectile ice spear at point-blank range.

If you really want people to mix spells and wands, you're going to have to give us a lot more synergy than just this.