[1.3]Fireball Witch guide for beginners

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Maxlvl wrote:

Hi, im following your build. Thanks for posting it.

Im thinking of making some changes. I'm looking at Intense zeal and also Body and Soul. And maybe going right around that beginning circle for the attack speed and also the critical chance. Does too much critical give diminishing returns or something? Im thinking of getting as much as possible.

It seems to me that the Kris daggers are pretty amazing with 80% crit increase. Are they the best?

Basically what Sarunastm said.
The crit at the witch start is mediocre. There are better ways to spend points.
In a first version of this guide i had Intense Zeal, but then decided going for Bloodthirst first is more efficient. If you want to take IZ you have to shave off some points somewhere else. I can't see how that can be done while improving the build.
Kris daggers: Depends on the other mods and on your tree/mods on gear whether 80%crit is better than 20%elemental for example. See the above calculation.

Hi all, I'm looking for improvements.





Stats:
HP - 1.7k
Mana - 2.8k
Res - 77/77/77/-52
58% block / 52% spell block
AA

Current issues:
-Low survivability. Hope when I take the next ~10 health nodes it becomes easier.. but ideas are welcome. I can run maps ok most of the time with limited kiting, but if I get unlucky it's insta gib. For example, many low map bosses one shot me. Two charging undead rhoas = dead.
-Would like more ideas for CWS/CWDT setups. I'm used to running CWDT+IC+Incr Duration+Molten shell, but besides that requiring RRRR, I just don't see it being viable as a caster since I shouldn't get hit often, and the lack of endurance charges means low IC duration. Thoughts/expeiences?
-I have good DPS.. but how can I improve? I'm at 5k tooltip with 7 charges, most things melt relatively quickly, and my gems aren't even close to max yet.. anything else?
-Damage over a big area. I already don't like Conc Effect since my FBs hit a small area. How can I kill bigger groups of baddies fast?
-Applying shock stacks consistently. I'd like to be able to put 3 stacks on at all times.
-Supporting AA will become problematic in a couple of levels.

Plan for future:
-Respec all 15% crit nodes at start to cast speed, refund 3 points (+2 pts)
-Spec the 4 fire nodes at start, refund 3 10% spell dmg nodes. (-1 point)
-Finish the health clusters, near holy str (2 pts), written in blood (4 pts), 3 pts at beginning of the tree and the 1 other 8% node on right side (total -10 pts)
-Afterwards, either make my way to Mental Acuity through Fire nodes (-4) OR grab the life/mana nodes near Elemental equil. (-5)
-If I ever get that far.. grab the Amplify (-3) and the Health cluster next to it (-4 more)


Ideas I have:
1) Replace Firetrap with Incinerate Spell Totem for better shock stacks. Maybe add Blind to it as well? My concern is its slow cast speed and low life.
2) Go back to Ice Spear GMP for faster Power charge generation. Currently, I have ~15% chance to generate first charge.. so if I lose the 7 it becomes a pain to regain.
3) Replace 3Dragons wtih the Geofri's crest and replace Firetrap with Arc after recent buff.
4) Set up a new CWDT or CwStunned on either weapon or shield, and move the Lightning Warp to an alternate weapon (similar to leap slam w Brightbeak). Not sure what to put in there.. Current CWStunned setup works sometimes, doesn't work in others. Ideas?

Some thoughts:

You run high block chance build and Arctic Armour, but have no life.
Arctic Armour is good against low damage hits, but against big hits it's useless, while block is good if you block, but if you fail to block you're dead. So my thought is to remove all those block passives, because Arctic Armour will suffice against white and blue packs. You get 11 passives, which you invest in life nodes. You'll get 86% increased life from that. Of course it's sad to lose that spell block... Althrouh you can take those block nodes in future if you have enough life to survive if you fail to block. Also you'll be able to leech more life. Well do calculation about this idea, maybe it'll help.

I'm not familiar with Three Dragons, but maybe Elemental Proliferation would help with stacking shocks? Or Increased Area of Effect? But you dont have place in 5L for them. So maybe Blast Radius and Amplify.
About Conc. Effect... Althrought blast radius decrease is kinda sad, but damage you get from that ofsets that drawback for me. But that's your call.

For Damage, first solve life problems, after that look into passives. Well Throatseeker cluster 3 passives who give 45 crit multiplier maybe good option. Faster Casting for 6 gem is also option, but costly so i dont know if you'll be able to sustain AA with that it.

For supplying AA consider Deep Thoughts passive.

Definetly refund those 15% crit nodes. Also I dont think if worth to respect those 3 10% damage nodes for 4 fire damage. You'll get only 9% damage more for them. I think there is better places to spend that passive point. You may take one 8% and that 15% with 15 res. Better option.

P.S. Good Wurm's Molt, better than it's unique version.

EDIT: Mental Acuity is good option, it'll help you to sustain AA. Maybe better than Deep thoughts

@J0zef
Your main problem is your low health. The reason for this is that you threw together build pieces that make sense in other builds, but just don't fit together. Don't expext this build to become much better when taking an additional 10 life nodes. You barely will scratch 3000 life and i have my doubts that you will level up that high with the xp penalty on your many deaths. The build is a bit of a dead end.

First: if you want to use Three Dragons you need a build that can facetank. Otherwise this unique makes absolutely NO sense. If you can't facetank and are forced to reposition you can't stack shocks. Low life/ES pool might work for a fire witch that concentrates on dealing burning damage: You hit once and hard and let the burning do the job while you evade the attackers. That option is gone with shocks.
Another problem: The ignite bonus on your qual fireball is wasted. The increased burning for the fire traps only works with the ground fire as you no longer ignite.

Second: Infernal Mantle is a good chest for a fire witch unless you want a life based build. Chest/shield/boots which normally are the main contributors for life are all ES pieces that contribute nothing to your base life (and the helmet hasn't life either). Consequence: Very low base life that won't scale much even when taking %increased life nodes. Additional problem: With that few life you will get stunned a lot (even when blocking) which will further make it less likely to apply shock stacks (and you will die anyway because of stunlock). Using Cast when stunned will not help here. You can use that on niche builds that deliberatly feature a low life pool and build their offense around a battery of CwSt. Using it in your build is just another ill fitting piece.

Solution: You have to make the basic choice if you want a life or an ES build. If you want life the ES pieces have to go along with (alot) of dps and spell block. With 3500+ life and armour you might be able to facetank and use the Three Dragons.
You want to keep the chest + spellblock items: Respec into CI and replace the jewelry/belt with ES pieces (eye of chayula!). You will need more manaregeneration in that case as EB no longer is available.

No-No-That's-too-much-changes: Get rid of three dragons. Rebuild your fireball setup to deal one big punch that ignites for high burning damage then get the hell out of the way of the attackers. FB - Concentrated Effect - fire penetration - elemental proliferation - increased burning damage. Regenerate with life flasks as life leech isn't of much help for one-punchers.

I'm not going into details about where to improve the tree as i think you will be stuck in a dead end even with some minor improvements in the tree unless you take on of the more drastic steps i pointed out.

Updated the guide for a short Vaal Gems section with me praising Vaal Molten Shell.

Edit:
Thanks to a hint from Sarunastm i also changed the optimized CI tree at the bottom of the guide.

@Bada - Thanks for the reply.
-I have no desire to change to a regular life witch right now (and lose a ton of DPS/block). It's too much hassle at this stage to respec that much, and I'd need to change quite a bit of my gear. I don't think it's worth it to do this-the char will have virtually the same ceiling as now.
-If I go life/armor it wont help me facetank in the least. Armor is practically useless against things that kill me - they're all big hits, I'd need ~10k+ to even make a difference. For smaller hits I have AA.
-Qual FB - this is actually why I decided to make a FB witch, it looked fun. I realized it wont help w a 3D build, but I figure I'll level it anyway in case I want to change 3D later.
-Right now I don't get stunned a lot. I only ran into trouble with it against the RoA exile recently, she had me stunned for good 3 seconds. Considering replacing the ammy for the Eye.. eye is so ridiculously bad though, that I'm trying to find ways around it, hence CwS. I'm thinking of trying to place a 2nd CwS or a CWDT setup somewhere to increase the likelihood of proccing MS/IC. If you have any other ideas besides the Eye, I'm all ears.
-If I respec into CI with current gear, or one with limited changes (change gloves, maybe amulet and a ring), I'll probably be looking at ~3-3.5k ES. With Discipline, that will be ~4K ES. What I do get for that tradeoff?
~1.5K HP (4k es vs 2.5k hp)
~1.5k less mana, causing me to take extra mana regen and mana regen passives and items.. even then, I still don't think it will be enough to run AA comfortably.
~loss of DPS through loss of Haste as well CI requiring more points to be viable
~higher chance of getting stunned due to lower max life pool, unless going w Eye (which I can do as a life based build)

In short, I'd like ideas on how to improve this rather than switch over to the generic build you outline in the first post. I realize that you think it's a dead end, but I don't see the generic FB build doing better than me. I run low 70s maps with relatively few problems. With a few more skillpoints, a couple of min-maxes and a dose of practice, I think this build has good potential.

I'm not trying to antagonize you, but maybe it was my mistake to post in this thread as you may have misconstrued my intention. :)
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@Sarunas - thanks, didn't respec spell dmg->fire. That was a dumb idea.
I'm still not sure what to think of CE. If I do some calculations:
-My current crit setup has 3.8K DPS with no power charges and 5.2K with 7 charges.
-If I respec, to something like this, it gives me 3K base DPS without CE. Add 65% from CE, and I get 5K.
-So the basic tradeoff (from what it looks) is the reduced area of effect and higher mana cost vs. more consistent dmg. The whole calculations get thrown off though if I get a 6L Infernal Mantle. I can add CE then and enjoy both benefits. The other path is Voll's, but I don't like it at all.
^That was kind of a ramble

Edit: I can do something like this and mitigate some of the AoE loss from CE.
Also, I'd be able to replace the chest with something like Carcass Jack.. which drops the DPS to ~4K range.

HOLY FIRE IS TOO GOOD TO SKIP, JUST SAYING.

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j0zef wrote:

I realize that you think it's a dead end, but I don't see the generic FB build doing better than me. I run low 70s maps with relatively few problems. With a few more skillpoints, a couple of min-maxes and a dose of practice, I think this build has good potential.

Let's just agree that we disagree.
The way i see it you made a fundamenttaly wrong choice in building around ES gear while going for a life build.
That way the different parts of the build work against each other instead of strengthening each other. Just an example: If you go for a self cast incinerate build you will have to facetank and build you char up so it can do that. Enter Three Dragons: To shockstack you'll have to facetank. Check on the incinerate build. Incinerate doesn't crit/ignite. With TD incinerate suddenly can shock without giving anything up. That's a classic example of good synergy. In your setup the different parts just work against each other: For example CwSt is just an attempt to fill a hole that originates in that life/ES gear dichotomie, not solving the stun issue, but only wasting sockets.
But enough, if you feel the build is playable, fine. Just a hint: Shrine Piety does 4000+ damage per projectile against max resists. And that's just one example of what waits in higher game content. Your build may be playable in a group and low maps, but it surely hasn't any perspective to ever tackle endgame content and no minor tweaking will fix that imho.

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l2f wrote:

HOLY FIRE IS TOO GOOD TO SKIP, JUST SAYING.

No it ain't. If i had another 3 points on the final tree it would be better to spend them on 3 x 10% increased elemental damge at the shadow or templar start. Those nodes not only increase your initial damage and thereby the burning damage, they also get applied a second time on the burning damage. With the double dip not only your overall dps is higher than with the 60% increased burning from holy fire, even when just looking at the burning damage, 30% elemental results in a higher value than 60% burning.
Holy Fire is #1 pick on searing bond builds, not on other fire spells.

BTW I'm sure there is keyboard-use-for-dummies manual out there that you can google so as to look up how to unlock caps lock.

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Bada_Bing wrote:

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j0zef wrote:

I realize that you think it's a dead end, but I don't see the generic FB build doing better than me. I run low 70s maps with relatively few problems. With a few more skillpoints, a couple of min-maxes and a dose of practice, I think this build has good potential.

Let's just agree that we disagree.
The way i see it you made a fundamenttaly wrong choice in building around ES gear while going for a life build.
That way the different parts of the build work against each other instead of strengthening each other. Just an example: If you go for a self cast incinerate build you will have to facetank and build you char up so it can do that. Enter Three Dragons: To shockstack you'll have to facetank. Check on the incinerate build. Incinerate doesn't crit/ignite. With TD incinerate suddenly can shock without giving anything up. That's a classic example of good synergy. In your setup the different parts just work against each other: For example CwSt is just an attempt to fill a hole that originates in that life/ES gear dichotomie, not solving the stun issue, but only wasting sockets.
But enough, if you feel the build is playable, fine. Just a hint: Shrine Piety does 4000+ damage per projectile against max resists. And that's just one example of what waits in higher game content. Your build may be playable in a group and low maps, but it surely hasn't any perspective to ever tackle endgame content and no minor tweaking will fix that imho.

The way I see it:
-Life is hard to get on a Witch even if you 'spec for it'. You say if I respec I'd get 3.5k hp but I'd have to give up block. That's awful. No evasion, no block and 3.5k hp? Hell, even if it's 4K hp, that's still bad to play through.
-I'm not rich to afford high end ES pieces. If I respec to CI now, I can't see myself getting more than ~3.5k-4K ES. Sure, that's more than I have now, but that makes mana management a nightmare.
-CwS has nothing to do with "life/ES dichotomy" as you like to put it. I don't want to use the Eye and don't want to waste 12 pts to get US. That's ALL it is. If I had Shavs and 6K ES, I would STILL not want to use the Eye. The two issues are completely unrelated.

I've never seen a FB witch doing end game content. How has your experience been with one?