[1.3] Corrupted Arc Witch - Potato and Beginner Friendly (SOLO) Mapping Char

Mapping is my favorite part of the poe meta, and this is the strongest character I've built for it. The concept of the design is not to clear maps the fastest, but to clear corrupted eight-property maps safely and reliably. It is not particularly expensive to build, but scales very well as you invest into your gear. HC viability of the character is high, but HC viability of corrupting and running 8 affix maps may be a bit low.

Why play this build?

I often can't party well with other players. CoC builds drop my framerate to 4 fps. I hate playing path of trades. I'm too poor/proud to buy maps. This character will build and maintain a 77-78 pool on its own spending the absolute minimum currency per map. You will occasionally find a big unique or reasonably valuable item, and you can sell that to maintain your currency pool; or keep it. I rarely identify rares, and unless I can throw the item into the Regal/Chaos Recipe I tend to not even pick it up. My last cartographer's box was in a 68.

The Tree


Priorities and Timings - early on we invest into cast speed to scale arc's dps while keeping the build maneuverable. by the end of normal you want to have traced the outline over to the shadow area of the tree, grabbing cast speed, es% and raw stats while laying the groundwork for the rest of the build. throughout cruel you will fill out your es% while stacking up your gear's res. I generally make the switch to CI fairly early, during act 2 merciless. HC players may want to wait for more es. Double curse is the LAST priority: when everything is done and/or you have corrupted yourself some elemental weakness on hit vorici gloves you can change out your cws curse for Assassin's Mark or Conductivity and radically scale your dps.

Bandits

Normal-Kraitlyn
Cruel-Alira
Merciless-Alira

The Links (arranged roughly in priority from most to least)

6Ls

Arc - Spell Echo - Lightning Penetration - Life Leech - Mana Leech - Power Charge on Critical

4Ls

Reduced Mana - Discipline - Herald of Thunder - Blind

Cast When Stunned - Cold Penetration - Cold Snap - Elemental Proliferation

Cast When Stunned - Ice Wall - Molten Shell - Elemental Weakness

3Ls

Reduced Duration - Faster Casting - Lightning Warp

2Ls

Faster Attacks - Whirling Blades

Reduced mana - Purity of Lightning (in Saffel's)

1L

Artic Armour


The Gear


Might seem intimidating for a new players to put that much ES together, but honestly ES gear is fairly easy to purchase and craft. Please note that few of my resistances are high - you want to buy as much ES as you can afford and if it has resists, excellent. Armor that is imperfect is often very cheap, and making use of that keeps the build cheap to gear. Go to poemods.com and you can quickly identify armor with high rolls on % es and + es, often a lackluster resist or poor stats will make those armors a great deal. The 6L chest really pulls the build together but you can easily run a 4 or 5L, dropping either mana leech, pcoc, or even life leech. You can also pick up a tabula and purchase a high ES helm to compensate for the lack of chest ES until you can afford a 6L base.

Note that both the amulet and gloves are from Vorici's shop - these are both a priority buy and a relatively easy to come by. The gloves are corrupted, as I am currently trying to roll a specific corruption (elemental weakness on hit) and it's rather time (and gear) consuming.

The +str ring is rather key, as is the onyx base on the amulet. This build struggles to get the stats for the dex and str gems it uses otherwise.

Daggers chosen are specifically to allow the use of whirling blades. Using a kris means implicit 80% crit chance will reduce significantly the need for crit chance nodes on the tree. Ideal kris would have high spell damage, high attack speed, high spell crit chance, and crit multiplier but as you can see I haven't found one that perfect yet. It would be prohibitively expensive to make a perfect one so just buy decent ones.

Saffel's is specifically for -max resistances maps that ALSO have elemental reflect. The fact that this is the only combination of map mods I *need* to make an adjustment for says a lot about the build.

I have begun swapping the dream fragments ring for a Timeclasp on Temporal Chains maps, this is more for quality of life than an actual necessity.

Flasks



Surgeon's are important, as are staunching flasks. Generally my flask choice has reflected my need to outtank in certain situations (Crematorium, Palace, Big Physical hits/Boxes) and my flasks are chosen to mitigate as much as possible. HC characters are going to want to roll these in advance, as nothing is more frustrating than not having a surgeon's staunching on belt when you start finding corrupted blood rares.


Mapping

This build is unable to run Blood Magic maps. Other than that you can go as hard or as easy as you desire. Certain combinations of mods can become dangerous as well as certain mods on certain maps but there is NOTHING you can't run, just a few that you shouldn't. More verbose map guide to follow, but rule of thumb is if it's a map base you wouldn't run on a HC character you might not *WANT* to vaal it.

66-69s I mapped normally, running maps with magic mods and only vaaling cartographer's boxes and twinned mods on museums.

70-71 I generally alch the map and go, occasionally spending 2 chisels on 71s if i'm building my pool

72s I either 2 chisel alch and go or vaal (don't use vaals on lab, torture chamber, and jungle valley)

73s+ I 4 chisel, alch, and vaal.

76s+ I 4 chisel, alch, vaal, and put in atziri pieces (of which you will accumulate a lot) on pack size corruptions.

I personally play on a potato (26-4fps, depending on number of particle effects) and often also play with poor network conditions (cellular connection - frequent loss of sync and ping between 50-400 depending on generation of the data connection) and this is the absolute most desync resistant and frame time resistant character I have ever played. When the connection is good you can kite and dodge everything with the combination of whirling blades and lightning warp, and when it is bad you can Artic Armour and flask up and tell the world to move as you leech back up to 40% of your es every second.

Videos (I'll keep doing this until I either clear uber atziri or whatever else I need to do to hit BOTW)


Shrines



Palaces



Merveil

Merveil is particularly nasty as bossfights go, especially on a potato, and especially against this particular build. Eye of Chayula and Dream Fragments are mandatory, swap to saffel's AFTER you clear initial pack of mobs (one of those damned porcupines popped me). Watch framerate drop spectacularly during second form.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6P4LIfX39gs

best build (tree) from all arc es ci ive seen.

I was planning on using this build, but can you tell me Pro and Cons of yours and this?
http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgMA37DfioIQ6QIHpUuuAuMbJUmy2VssnG0ZBUIRUEGWNbmus9D1pytMs1Aw214RD36vTC2smI0ZFLBE-3RV99fgEoIeO-NfKoRIm6HZX4hCiihca49G3YzBxWQJw20dFCy_f8bsGI5k-tKGrn5ZEZaP-nC796ZmnhcvFdcOSOv12RO2-sAaFkBk51ZjY0Nd8mSdL2-3MYV9Vdby4XDVfjO29_IdjHaApEcGidOkkSsKnjzb53BSE54RL-w4X2oqC4w2gpvz6u0gmju2hu08fEuWdNWmaPJ8DqdVW6A=

do u use dw or shield wep?

btw, why no wand?

and why do you take increase shock duration nodes? I think its useless, its already enough now

Dual wield Daggers allow for a fast Whirling Blades. Whirling Blades is exceptionally good for getting out from underneath Piety's Lightning Storm, Megeara's Fire Storm, and Merveil's Ice Storm. It's fast, cheap (2 links) and uses 11 mana - so even if you panic and spam it on a 0 regen map you'll be fine. I highly recommend it at all levels during the build, and have only recently started using the 3 link warp as supplementary movement. I use dual wield for almost ALL situations, swapping to the saffel's for -max resists with elemental reflect (and palace dom first form).

Shock Duration is to maintain shock on map bosses, the idea is to help the dps and leech of the build. Observe the Palace Video, I'm not confident that without 60% shock duration I would be able to shock him at all.

Looking at the other build - with the investments it's making into crit it should have higher sheet dps (my build will match up dps with double curse though you will prolly clear curse immune maps faster), though less investment into cast speed is gonna feel clunky with daggers (wands and sceptres can roll cast speed, daggers can't. Tree investment is to compensate). the 3 points into mana regen on the templar side seem like a waste - I'd highly recommend picking up practical application (20str/20dex avoid stuns while casting) nodes instead. My approach to 0 regen mod maps has been to maximize my mana pool rather than my regen - I don't keep AA up as I walk I toggle it between fights and use the cheap movement of whirling to maneuver while AA is up. Depending on gear and links it should be workable, but may have some trouble with some map mods. I'm bad at estimating es from tree, but ideally you want to have at LEAST 3k and push towards 6-9k when all is complete.

worth going for dual curses? (main = assasin, second = warlords)

When to go for CI? like how much ES?

Why no Essense Surge node? Its really near CI node. 40% faster ES start recovery

Why no Shaper node, 40% faster mana recovery?

and why no Inner force, 15% buff from auras?

Worth going for reduced mana reserved nodes, marauder way? I want to run AA with high clarity, HoT, clarity and discipline

Curses are great - just don't rely on them or curse immune maps will eat your lunch. Assassin/Warlord's mark is fine but I'd definitely consider the investment into double curse a luxury and not a core part of the build.

Rule of Thumb to get CI is 3k es.

Essence Surge is a good trio of nodes, but point efficiency is pretty much the reason I don't get any of the stuff you're talking about. I generally build my characters pretty organically, where as I level each point is carefully considered to get as much "bang for the buck" as possible. The hybrid nodes give a little ES cooldown time reduction, and for me that's enough.


AA with clarity is traditionally how AA is run. You have to load up heavily on % regen gear to compensate for the nerf on the nodes (most nodes now give very low % regen) but can still run it with 200 mana / sec. This strategy works great until you come across a 0 regen or 50% regen map and have to reroll it. I love AA as a defense, but built this character with the idea "what if I DIDN'T invest into regen?" It works both ways, but my way I don't have to reroll for a mod.

i have my own build here. what do u think, nice mana reg for aa + es/dmg is ok

https://www.poebuilder.com/character/AAAAAgMAVyv-s-kC34oc3A2NbAsi9G0ZvYINfOq6tAyTJ_nogsco-lfJVmMV14auLL_BxX_GjDZQQi1Hy70HYwelghDfsEmyAuMsnND1QZYFQkyzrrNQMNlf4BKNGX6vEQ_bXt2Mm6H316yYw21ca4RIXyp0VY9GWAd85RhqeC-ApFXWZOcXL_rSHRSMdrcxwBpmnoKb7DiePJZ0tobtIGjyfEvVpleUKU8fxyt4KlNilbJwgwlGcZDWLKam6zeDpys1uRFQ8h1knev1j_rsGNDQX2rb50cGcFKJ03DVXfIOSBGWES8rCrb3akPAVAj08-oqCw==

Hey, awesome build for solo plays. One question, why you put points into whisper of doom while you only use 1 curse which is elemental weakness?

Will try this for sure. A lot of Vaaled maps still lay in my stash since I ripped my full block aegis tank quite a while ago!

My endgame is to actually succeed on the corruption of a 40% Vorici glove (getting the implicit changed to elemental weakness on hit) and then I will change my Cast While Stunned Curse to either Conductivity, Enfeeble, or Assassin's Mark. If investing this much into curses worries you, take the 6 points and pick up either more %es or something damage related. I really like the curse on hit gloves for utility/damage, so I'm making that choice.

As for the guy posting builds - Arc is simple enough that anything relatively close *should* work, so just do whatever you like, ok? I'm prioritizing various points because of my own personal taste so I can't very well tell you NOT to get essence surge instead of Dark Arts, or whatever.

thanks for the reply. Now I understand.

Just curious, with 2 leech support gems, is the dps enough for high lvl maps? Since I mostly solo in HC, how likely to die with this build?