[3.14] The Invisible Witch | SRS MI Bomber

I tweaked the tree a little and went along the line near EE for mana nodes, dropped Grace for MoM + Agnostic, then took some mana nodes along the way. Now I'm constantly on 20 SRS with 2 seconds of holding down right click with full mana, totally amazed by Raider's casting speed. Fun times kiting and blasting along the way.

Just wondering what will we be missing if we drop Grace. I kinda like the mana build instead.

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Chrisation wrote:

Great stuff, started one as well but has met up with mana problems with 95% of mana reserved it's hardly able to spam SRS. Rarely puts out more than 10 of them at the same time, feels kind of clunky and defeats the purpose of having fast casting.

May need some non-channeling mana reduction cost on rings at endgame to make it smooth.

The percentage of reserved mana is not important, it's the amount of unreserved. But 95% is weird. Grace is 50%, Flesh and stone is 25%, and the rest is Clarity. I can't see your character, but maybe your Clarity is too high level or you didn't take the mana nodes yet (Heart and Soul, Aligned Spirits ...).

There is a sweet spot between unreserved Mana and SRS cost. You can move this spot by leveling Clarity slowly, but you need to find it yourself. The build also needs Enduring Mana Flask, and it's listed in cons). With Unleash support I'm fine around 200 unreserved mana.

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Chrisation wrote:

I tweaked the tree a little and went along the line near EE for mana nodes, dropped Grace for MoM + Agnostic, then took some mana nodes along the way. Now I'm constantly on 20 SRS with 2 seconds of holding down right click with full mana, totally amazed by Raider's casting speed. Fun times kiting and blasting along the way.

Just wondering what will we be missing if we drop Grace. I kinda like the mana build instead.

Be cautious with 20 SRS. If you overcast them they won't pop and they will do 0 damage. I usually try to balance the cast speed to be around 18 of them.

But having more cast speed than needed is great for hard bosses with mechanics since you cant afford to stand still for 2 seconds :D

What I've been enjoying more is to play with Unleash support, so I cast once, move, cast once, move ... etc. It requires some practice and may not be a favorite thing to do for many people, but I like it this way.

If you drop Grace then you're on Necromancer level of survivability. Good enough, but not Raider's level.

But I'm glad to hear you were able to find alternative way to enjoy the build :)

EDIT: I almost forgot I tweaked the PoB a little bit towards end-game (level 96 level tree): https://pastebin.com/8Dh44BPh
The whole point of incorporating cluster jewels is not to increase DPS, but to have more options to get some resistances (mostly chaos), or anything we lack. I'm not there yet, so it's just theorycrafting, but it looks promising.

Edit.

New PoB: https://pastebin.com/bXAJYVG8

There are slight changes to get more health since Kintsugi is so expensive this league.

I also revamped the section with items. Check it out :)

Anyone got this to endgame yet? How is it performing? I am thinking about second character and always liked SRS, and want to be hipster and avoid necro lol.

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JoppoJ wrote:

Anyone got this to endgame yet? How is it performing? I am thinking about second character and always liked SRS, and want to be hipster and avoid necro lol.

It depends what you call an endgame. This league I already killed Sirus, Uber Atziri, Heart of the Grove. I'm at A6 progressing to A8 (I don't rush, but I could).

Two leagues before I played in a party (2-3 people) with 2 other Rangers and we were speedrunning maps. I had a slightly different setup because I was the boss killer :)

On SSF Standard (with a slightly different setup, although the core remains) I killed everything, except Uber Elder, because I just couldn't be bothered to collect all fragments ... and I don't play there anymore.

Interesting buildup, indeed.

Thought about using Skels/SRS and Arcanist brand?

That nerfs damage, but minion instability is based off of minion health so it would be the same, right?
Brand, Skell/SRS, Infernal Legion, Minion Life.


Three taps of Arcanist and you've got 20 SRS or your full compliment of skells dropping right on top of the target and it's much easier on your mana pool.

I've tinkered with it and with unleveled gems it could take on A8 Aqueducts (albeit slowly).

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BlaqWolf wrote:

Interesting buildup, indeed.

Thought about using Skels/SRS and Arcanist brand?

That nerfs damage, but minion instability is based off of minion health so it would be the same, right?
Brand, Skell/SRS, Infernal Legion, Minion Life.


Three taps of Arcanist and you've got 20 SRS or your full compliment of skells dropping right on top of the target and it's much easier on your mana pool.

I've tinkered with it and with unleveled gems it could take on A8 Aqueducts (albeit slowly).

I haven't tried Arcanist brand, but I wouldn't use it. Acc. to description it triggers once per second with cast speed reducing this time. So realistically like 2 SRS per second. With 3 brands you can maybe have 6 per second, but the main problem is that you want to cast your SRS prematurely, so they pop when they reach the pack / boss, not when you see it. That's why it's slow and that's why you used Infernal Legion in your link. It's wrong setup and wrong playstyle (for this build).

If you need for some reason to have your SRS cast automatically you can use totem setup - SRS + Spell Totem + Predator + Concentrated effect. I actually used this setup some time ago for Sirus when I was learning the fight :) And killed him with it.

Skeletons on the other hand require different setup and it would be different build (there are some in Witch part of the forum), but I had skeleton setup in PoB, it looked like this:


Vaal effect is used on bosses to increase burst damage. But it's an end-game item and requires end-game setup, because you exchanging you Spectres as a defensive layer for more burst damage.

Ok, so if I've read patch notes correctly, there are only 2 changes that affect us directly:
1) Flesh and Stone - Now requires 35% Mana reservation (previously 25%).
2) Trigger a Socketed Spell when you Use a Skill, with a 8 second Cooldown (previously 4 seconds).

None of it is a big deal.
1) In 3.13 our total mana reservation was 70%, so it will be 80% in 3.14. Whatever :)
2) Since I switched to Raider in 3.13, I also got rid of this crutch. I still use it for Steelskin and Cold Snap. Both of these skills are useful mostly for mapping, so it shouldn't be a big deal to replace them. Testing needs to be done though.

Usually play MI SRS at the start of a league, and always with the Witch, but this build have piqued my curiosity!