[1.3]Fireball Witch guide for beginners

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j0zef wrote:

-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?

- Yes going life would be worse than going CI.
- Yes mana management is a problem due to the fact you never invested in mana reg. in the tree/on gear; which ultimately is a consequence of wearing ES gear with a life build. Trading in your "survival" pool for a surplus of mana works while leveling but has too huge a penalty on survivability in the end. IF you decide to go CI you would have to drop the 2 cast speed nodes at the witch start and take deep thoughts instead. When buying new gear you would also have to look for +mana and/or manareg mods.
- If you had a decent life pool you wouldn't have issues with stun. Getting ES gear and as a consequence have a very small life pool results in getting stunned often (and long). So, no, the issues are related: one is the consequence of the other.
- If you opt for status quo at least get rid of fireball and switch to firestorm. That way you get a bit of positive feedback from the Three Dragons as firestorm isn't meant to trigger burning damage due to the small hits. As it applies lots of small hits in fast succession you could drop the crit nodes and still be able to shock stack (which isn't possible for "slow" fireball).

should i get power charge or skill for the bandit quest in merciless? im not familiar and dont know how to use power charge, but i heard discharge gives insane damage.

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Jah_Ith_Ber wrote:

should i get power charge or skill for the bandit quest in merciless? im not familiar and dont know how to use power charge, but i heard discharge gives insane damage.

Skill point.
Additional charges are an option for a discharge build or a Cast On Crit build. For a fire witch a passive point is more valuable.

Hi.

Could you give a suggestion of how the passive tree should look like for even higher levels ?

Thank you.

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Funadept wrote:

Hi.

Could you give a suggestion of how the passive tree should look like for even higher levels ?

Thank you.

When aiming for lvl90+, one should be aware that due to the xp penalty on death and the diminishing xp gain on higher levels dying no longer is an option. You'll have to play your toon like a HC char. I would therefore invest passive points into defensive stats. I recommend shield nodes. They help most against physical damage (and with the right uniques against spell damage).

Hey, and thanks for help before. I've been improving a lot lately.

Did I understand you correctly, that Infernal Mantle would be good choice for CI witch? I've been worrying about "100% increased Spell Damage taken when on Low Mana", cause the mana is so often low.

Also, what does "25% of Fire Damage Converted to Chaos Damage" actually mean? I have problems with English too. Does it means that I deal just as much damage as without that stat, but it just transmutes 25% of that damage to chaos? So same damage, but 75% of it is fire, and 25% of it is fire?

Thanks in advance :)

- Furious-T

Edit:
Ps. Heh. First map I did after this post, I found this...

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FuriousT1 wrote:

Hey, and thanks for help before. I've been improving a lot lately.

Did I understand you correctly, that Infernal Mantle would be good choice for CI witch? I've been worrying about "100% increased Spell Damage taken when on Low Mana", cause the mana is so often low.

Also, what does "25% of Fire Damage Converted to Chaos Damage" actually mean? I have problems with English too. Does it means that I deal just as much damage as without that stat, but it just transmutes 25% of that damage to chaos? So same damage, but 75% of it is fire, and 25% of it is fire?

Thanks in advance :)

- Furious-T

Low mana = less than 30% of mana. This includes aura reservation (for example, if you have 1500 mana total, and after auras you only have 499 mana remaining, you WILL take 100% more spell damage). In plain english, you wont be able to run many auras and you will need to find a way to have very high mana regen in order not to be at low mana all the time.

The 25% convert to fire means exactly what you describe - it takes your normal fireball damage, say 1000, and makes you do 750 fire and 250 chaos. In my experience this is more of a curse than a blessing. Too many mobs in this game are resistant to chaos, and while both your curse and fire penetration support enhance your fire damage, they do absolutely nothing for your chaos damage.

Oh and Bada.. reporting in - just killed GMP Piety with 0 deaths. Took about 20 secs. :>

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j0zef wrote:

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FuriousT1 wrote:

Hey, and thanks for help before. I've been improving a lot lately.

Did I understand you correctly, that Infernal Mantle would be good choice for CI witch? I've been worrying about "100% increased Spell Damage taken when on Low Mana", cause the mana is so often low.

Also, what does "25% of Fire Damage Converted to Chaos Damage" actually mean? I have problems with English too. Does it means that I deal just as much damage as without that stat, but it just transmutes 25% of that damage to chaos? So same damage, but 75% of it is fire, and 25% of it is fire?

Thanks in advance :)

- Furious-T

Low mana = less than 30% of mana. This includes aura reservation (for example, if you have 1500 mana total, and after auras you only have 499 mana remaining, you WILL take 100% more spell damage). In plain english, you wont be able to run many auras and you will need to find a way to have very high mana regen in order not to be at low mana all the time.

The 25% convert to fire means exactly what you describe - it takes your normal fireball damage, say 1000, and makes you do 750 fire and 250 chaos. In my experience this is more of a curse than a blessing. Too many mobs in this game are resistant to chaos, and while both your curse and fire penetration support enhance your fire damage, they do absolutely nothing for your chaos damage.

Oh and Bada.. reporting in - just killed GMP Piety with 0 deaths. Took about 20 secs. :>

Thanks for reply. But I think I can't help myself, too low mana or not. Those bonuses just looks so juicy... :) Hope I won't die too often.

The +1 to fire gems gives ~10% MORE damage for fireball lvl 18-20.
Builds that focus on burning damage are a bit reluctant towards that chest as the chaos conversion of the initial damage lowers the burning damage (even when taking into account the damage boni of the chest).
For a CI shotgun build it is a good chest. Gotta be careful with the reserved mana though.
Using helps getting out of a mana "hole" while still spamming fireball.

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j0zef wrote:

Low mana = less than 30% of mana. This includes aura reservation (for example, if you have 1500 mana total, and after auras you only have 499 mana remaining, you WILL take 100% more spell damage). In plain english, you wont be able to run many auras and you will need to find a way to have very high mana regen in order not to be at low mana all the time.

The 25% convert to fire means exactly what you describe - it takes your normal fireball damage, say 1000, and makes you do 750 fire and 250 chaos. In my experience this is more of a curse than a blessing. Too many mobs in this game are resistant to chaos, and while both your curse and fire penetration support enhance your fire damage, they do absolutely nothing for your chaos damage.

Oh and Bada.. reporting in - just killed GMP Piety with 0 deaths. Took about 20 secs. :>

Not less than 35% of Mana?

About chaos damage curse/blessing part. it looks that way to you, because you get used to damage and if you encounter chaos resistant mob you feel that you do less damage. While in reality damage most likely would be is same you would do with other chest. Either way many mobs are resistant to either fire or elemental too. Which also lowers you dps. Also there is mobs who are resistant to fire, but not chaos. Anyways for Fire Shotgun Infernal Mantle is good chest, especially if you're running power charges (100% crit on chest is nice).

I'll add calculation on my current build, passive tree very similar to Bada's, but I run 7 power charges and wear Infernal Mantle.
I'll calculate damage with Lvl 20 Fireball, Flammability, FP, on mobs that have 0% Fire/75% Chaos and 75% Fire/75% Fire resistances.

Damage with Infernal Mantle
Tooltip: 8354
0% Fire/75% chaos:9043
75% Fire/75% Chaos: 4344
with Flammability:
0% Fire/75% chaos: 12113
75% Fire/75% Chaos: 7414
Damage with other chest (Calculated with Occultist's Vestment with 10% spell damage)
Tooltip: 6626
0% Fire/75% chaos: 8945
75% Fire/75% Chaos: 3976
with Flammability:
0% Fire/75% chaos: 12191
75% Fire/75% Chaos: 7222

Infernal Mantle damage is slightly bigger, with bonus of less reflect and easier power charge upkeep. Of course results may differ depending on gear/build.

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Bada_Bing wrote:

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Jah_Ith_Ber wrote:

should i get power charge or skill for the bandit quest in merciless? im not familiar and dont know how to use power charge, but i heard discharge gives insane damage.

Skill point.
Additional charges are an option for a discharge build or a Cast On Crit build. For a fire witch a passive point is more valuable.

For me power charge is more valuable. Damage i recieve from it equals to 19% spell damage. Thus for price of 1 passive point, i get benefits of 2.

Of course it depends on how easily you can gather those charges, but i disagree with you on this one.