[GUIDE] 1339 Fireball Shotgun/CI Sorc v1.0.0

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MetalheadNorm wrote:

Also, It sounds like you are neglecting the benefits of Arctic Armor - your secondary mitigation and a skill that can reduce over 200 physical damage FROM EACH HIT YOU TAKE. If you do not go out of your way to accommodate AA, you will not be able to facetank some things. That's just how it is.

It's not that I forgot about it. I have it equipped but it hard to use it due to mana.
I have 1200 Mana and 77 Mana regen so my Arctic Armour is at lvl 8 (75 mana/s while moving) and can't lvl any higher. In Merciless Fellshrine it doesn't seem to reduce much. Maybe the lvl is too low.

My issue right now is that I see no way to drastically increase my Mana and Mana regen. Siting at 80% increased Mana and 100% Increased Mana regen. No Dream Fragments.
As I see it, I a couple of options:
- get Int on gear
- get Mana regen gear
- get more mana on gear

I checked out your gear and build and you have 900+ flat mana only from gear+lvl+INT. That's huge.


My Build

Still looking to buy a decent ES chest, hope will get one soon after I hit 68. High ES+ resists = expensive but I'm working on it.

Finally my DPS got a bit better: 1100 DPS with the links from my gear. Now I can solo Fellshrine Yay! :) Though I expect fire resist mobs will be a pain without Fire Pen and higher DPS.

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nebunelux wrote:

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MetalheadNorm wrote:

Also, It sounds like you are neglecting the benefits of Arctic Armor - your secondary mitigation and a skill that can reduce over 200 physical damage FROM EACH HIT YOU TAKE. If you do not go out of your way to accommodate AA, you will not be able to facetank some things. That's just how it is.

It's not that I forgot about it. I have it equipped but it hard to use it due to mana.
I have 1200 Mana and 77 Mana regen so my Arctic Armour is at lvl 8 (75 mana/s while moving) and can't lvl any higher. In Merciless Fellshrine it doesn't seem to reduce much. Maybe the lvl is too low.

My issue right now is that I see no way to drastically increase my Mana and Mana regen. Siting at 80% increased Mana and 100% Increased Mana regen. No Dream Fragments.
As I see it, I a couple of options:
- get Int on gear
- get Mana regen gear
- get more mana on gear

I checked out your gear and build and you have 900+ flat mana only from gear+lvl+INT. That's huge.

My gear

My Build

Still looking to buy a decent ES chest, hope will get one soon after I hit 68. High ES+ resists = expensive but I'm working on it.

Finally my DPS got a bit better: 1100 DPS with the links from my gear. Now I can solo Fellshrine Yay! :) Though I expect fire resist mobs will be a pain without Fire Pen and higher DPS.

You could drop the chayula and a ring for now and equip atziris foible + perandus signet, that should cover your mana regen needs completely. Problem will be stun by archers, just try to shotgun them out of your way quickly.

I'm currently running 4 auras with this build, leaving me with 106 mana for arctic armour (lvl17), blood rage and fireball - and it works, can spam FB without any disruptions.

A tip for using AA: When are you getting hit the most - while moving or while standing still to cast spells? Arctic armors mana drain while standing is no big deal even at higher levels. Only the movement drain penalty gets out of hand. So don't be afraid to level up the gem a bit more and only use it while face tanking. Link it to caster casting. The cast time for you guys should be around .3seconds - with epic gear its even faster.

Also, please do everything in your power to obtain a fragments as soon as possible. This build cannot be pulled off correctly without one. Best caster ring in the game.

Finally I got the build rolling.
Though it's a little bit different.

Since I can't afford Void Batteries, I feel that there's no real reason to use PCoC. I already have 25% chance to crit. Instead I use Faster Casting. I know it's eating up my mana but my DPS is so pitiful that I feel I am forced to use it.

Bought the chest piece that I could afford and here's my gear now with some changes:


I found a ring in my stash with the same mods as Perandus Signet except for the bonus INT. Reached 122 Mana regen per second.
Now I got capped resists and 4.3K ES.
Helm and Gloves are pretty crap but I use them for resists mainly.

I would like some advice on DPS.
With the gear above I have 1.2K listed DPS, though a bit higher due to Fire Pen.
I am wearing my end-game gear and I don't see myself doing very well in Act3 Merciless (now I'm in A2) and later in maps.

How can I improve my DPS to at least 2K, preferably 3K?

I made a spreadsheet that calculates the damage of Fireball and the 60% fire damage from passives will bring me from 1.2K to 1.4K DPS. Adding more spell damage or cast speed doesn't do much either.
The only big difference in DPS I noticed was when increasing the level of Fireball.
Also due to the low DPS my leech and survivability is low. I can't leech enough to facetank.

The easiest way to increase DPS is to stack crit and level up fireball gem. If you break 4k ES, don't be afraid to drop an ES node or two in favor of DPS nodes. 4k is more than enough for act3 merciless.

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nebunelux wrote:

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Did you spec into the power charges already? If not, you should do so soon and put back PCoC.
That would be dps-wise the best thing you could do, don't worry about not having voids.
I'm using a very similar item build as you, you can check it out for reference:



Currently got 1.8k pure tooltip dps with this, let's now compare PCoC (with 6 power charges) vs. Faster Casting:

(Please note i refer to tooltip dps, unless stated otherwise)

Faster Casting gives me a constant increase to 2.3k dps, 2.55k with Blood Rage (3 charges).
CS increase jumps to 76%, which sure gives lots of survivability from leech, but as downside your crit chance stays the same - 38.4% in my case.

PCoC keeps my dps at 1.8k, 2.2k with charges and ultimately 2.47k when adding Blood Rage.
The huge plus is my crit chance jumping to 56.4%, while still having 40% CS increase.

IMO, the higher chance to crit is worth gold for this build, especially if you got a decent crit multiplier. With Blood Rage and Haste you will still have enough CS to sustain enough leech.

My biggest mistakes were:
- not using PCoC
- prefering Faster Casting over Fire Pen
- not using Blood Rage / Haste
Since i've fixed that, this build is unstoppable even without Void Batteries!
Can't wait to get mine though.. :P

Don't forget that it is possible to attach PC on crit. to a secondary skill such as firestorm as well if you don't want to sacrifice FB damage. The only downside is that you would have to manage spamming two attacks instead of just fireball shotgun. Ultimately, with 6L i decided to keep PC on crit with fireball. However, if I only had access to a 5L for whatever reason, setting up a 4L firestorm in your boots might fit your playstyle. Firestorm + Faster cast + crit chance + PC crit. is a good combo for building charges.

I took you advice and swapped Faster Casting with Power Charge on Crit, and the result seems pretty awesome though the charges uptime is pretty low.

Now my Fireball DPS is:
913 DPS unbuffed
1.4K DPS with 4 Frenzy charges and 6 Power Charges

My crit chance went up from 25% to 43%.

With this setup I managed to finish Act2 solo including soloing Vaal, no problems there. Usually I had a lot of problems progressing through Ancient Pyramid but not this time.

Also I managed to buy a Perandus Signet and my INT went up to 483. I am aiming to get past 500 INT.

With 133 Mana regen per second I can run lvl 10 Arctic Armor all the time while spamming Fireball (all gems lvl 16).

Pretty awesome stuff.
I must say that this is my most successful character so far. Most of my other characters are stuck at various stages in Merciless.

Glad to hear that, still remember how much i struggled in Act 2 Merciless, already was at a point where i wanted to quit my witch. Then i discovered this build, played around a bit and well, as i said it is really well done - probably the best FB witch build you can find!

Edit: Just to make clear how good this build works even with just medium decent gear.
My witch is currently Lvl 77, and i can solo 75 maps (that's that highest i found so far) without dying!

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Enki91 wrote:

Glad to hear that, still remember how much i struggled in Act 2 Merciless, already was at a point where i wanted to quit my witch. Then i discovered this build, played around a bit and well, as i said it is really well done - probably the best FB witch build you can find!

I am glad everyone found my build helpful. Yeah, it is very powerful and I wanted to show that to you guys. Thanks for your interest. That being said, I will be taking a break from my sorc and I am in the process of creating a zon that I've been theory crafting for the past couple weeks. I will probably write up a guide for her when she's done seeing as how I like paying homage to the D2 classic builds.

Anyway, I will check this thread to answer any other questions that people may have and of course if anything changes in a future patch I will keep it updated. Be on the lookout for my next guide as well. Peace.