I'm struggling with a lot of 'bad' choices to ascend to as a witch

Hello,

I'm struggling to pick a worth while ascendancy choice for my first 2 points, and I think the choices we're given are poor and need more upsides.

First, blood mage. Gaining life cost to all abilities is breaking builds left and right, and a ton of people from noobs to pro are saying it's a bad choice. You have the occasional person saying it's great if you do X! But, it feels bad that at lvl 25 you need to already have the gear and talent choices to support the choice without killing yourself. There's a ton of feedback around that, however, so I will focus me feedback on the other one, infernalist.



I think the hellhound minion is pretty good. I wouldn't necessarily call it an interesting choice, but it seems good - the main thing i'd request is maybe another 2 nodes behind it to support it some more... but, it's fine for what it is.

I think grinning immolation is "okay" - this is another one where if your talents, gear, etc. are not up to par, this just kills you for taking it early on. This is a weird choice! I shouldn't be actively killing myself trying to ascend. 30% crit damage bonus is just okay as well. It's not like an "omg" amount based on the skill tree amounts, and unless you have a unique powerful interaction with ignite, this is simply a burden early on until you have the stats to deal with self ignite.

Pyromantic pact really doesn't seem to have any upside to it on its own. You lose your mana and gain infernal flame... but, personally through all 3 characters, I'm not really having mana issues at 25. You have mana pot that you can't unequip, so you ALWAYS have one, and as a witch you naturally have a bit more int than other classes. I'm not really seeing the upside to this talent alone, and the downside being you can randomly kill yourself by over using your spells. What's the benefit?

The benefit, is of course the 2nd parts - seething body, and bringer of flame. But I don't understand why we've given a choice with no clear upside until our next 2 points we earn. It simply seems like i can either not pick a choice at first, pick a different choice and respec later, or save up to 4 points so I can gain a clear upside to the pact. IMO, there needs to be a larger natural benefit to this talent, such as "gain 1% fire damage per % of infernal flame", or something.

That brings me to my next 'choice' - demon form. At a glance, I was like wow, kick ass! You get extra stats, some spell levels, and you're a demon! But then you realize that you can't use your weapon while transformed. The stats do not make it worth it. At its base, you get +4 skill gem levels! Except, my weapon has +3. You get 17% case speed! Except, my weapon has 24%. You get spelll damage per demon flame! Yes, except my weapon has 88% spell damage... so I need to stay transformed for nearly 10 seconds to actually gain any benefit to being in demon form - and by then, I can't sustain the life, and i barely have ES to survive without the life, because again - i'm level 25 when I get this talent... so where's the pay off? I swap demon form, I lose a bunch of stats ntil around 10 seconds, then I have around 5-6 seconds of 'power' before I'm at 1hp. Who is this for?

The second part of the demon form seems okay - max out at 10, so you can in theory reach enough life steal / life regen to stay alive and maintain permanent demon form. But this again goes back to the weapon issue - at 10 stacks demon form is barely better than a well rolled level 25 rare... so why would I do it? Why spend 4 talents on a mediocre form that's barely better than my weapon and requires specific stat break to survive in it?

The last talent, altered flesh - is actually good. I don't really see a downside to this unless you just have negative fire resist - which is entirely possible, but typically speaking this is just a pretty good talent. Phys as chaos may be a downside, but I haven't played enough to know for sure. The rest of the talents behind this node are also situational but powerful, I think. They are trade offs, but all pretty much upsides if you're ES build.

Anywas, I think my point is across - too many mediocre choices and aggressive downsides with no clear upside. I hope these get tuned rapidly to make them more fun, powerful choices for your first 2 points, so I don't have to actively feel bad for choosing half of them.