[1.3]Fireball Witch guide for beginners

@mkdabra
LotD is just the most efficient way to get out of the starting tree. You might as well start at the bottom 12% spell damage. It just takes you 2 more levels to reach the final build.
Personally i prefer to get to the life nodes and keystones as quick as possible + having two additional skels helps as long as the summon skels gem isn't leveled up. BTW the crit at the witch start ain't that good. Most other crit nodes give you more than 55% on 3 points. It is therefore recommended to take the mediocre nodes at the end after you already have aquired the good ones.
If this is your first char i recommend a life build. It is much easier to get a decent life pool with HP on gear than an ES pool. After all every gear (armour, evasion and ES based gear) can have a life mod. As CI on the other side you are restricted to wear ES gear. That's only a third of the item base you can choose from, which makes it much more difficult to get gear that not only has enough ES but also resistances and the right socket colours.

I'll go with life then.

Now that you mention it, when reading about the support gems (specially dex and str based ones) I was wondering if I'll have enough of those stats to level them up. Now I don't but hey, I don't have the support gems neither appropiate linked gear, so no worries. In the final build there's >100 str from pasive skills, so at least requeriment-wise str gems can be level, but seems like the dex ones would require to have some dex gear.

Unless, as you said about the skeletons, leveling them up is a but idea for mana use or whatever reason. Damn, this game is complex...

Thanks!

I just died on my LA ranger on dominus cruel and looking for something different now. And I wonder about two things:

1. Is this build HC viable?
2. Is this very gear dependant?

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Asag wrote:

I just died on my LA ranger on dominus cruel and looking for something different now. And I wonder about two things:

1. Is this build HC viable?
2. Is this very gear dependant?

1) I didn't play that char on HC so i can't answer that question. If i were to start in HC i would probably drop the crit nodes and invest in more life and armour (maybe shield) nodes. Get burning by using chance to ignite gem instead. But that is just my very personal opinion. As i haven't tried it, i can't say if it would work better than the original build.
2) No. It's not build around some fancy uniques. Only thing i recommend is getting a 5L chest in merciless.

Do you think this tree would work better in HC (Its from Astarte911 build)?



Hes using firestorm, do you think fireball setup would work too with this?

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Asag wrote:

Do you think this tree would work better in HC (Its from Astarte911 build)?

Hes using firestorm, do you think fireball setup would work too with this?

The build probably works better in HC. After all Astarte911 is playing it in Nemesis up to lvl 85+. Afaik it is required to have a rathpith globe.
Fireball should work just as firestorm in that build, both are fire + aoe. You have to change the gem setup of course, but you should still be able to wear pure armour or armour/ES hybrid.

I'm kinda following your build on Nemesis. Will update here when I hit over lvl 80 if it is viable or are there some modifications needed for hc

Hello, I have been using this build (the life variant) as my first character and I must say it has gone very good.

One question I have is about Auras, currently I am max at 75% with no Purity - I am wondering what other aura do you think would complement this build the best? I find I sometimes die in maps with many multi-hitting mobs - though at times this is due to my own foolishness by not keeping my skeleton totems up.

While I am at it here is my gear/build let me know if you think I should do any changes and what items do you think I should upgrade next. Thanks!

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Crystalis531 wrote:

One question I have is about Auras, currently I am max at 75% with no Purity - I am wondering what other aura do you think would complement this build the best? I find I sometimes die in maps with many multi-hitting mobs - though at times this is due to my own foolishness by not keeping my skeleton totems up.

While I am at it here is my gear/build let me know if you think I should do any changes and what items do you think I should upgrade next.

If you would wear armour i would go with Determination. As your gear for the most part is ES (hybrid) i would either run Discipline for more ES or if you want more dps and can handle the higher mana needs use Haste.

Gear: You are at a point where you want to decide whether you are content farming piety and low level maps (for which your current gear is ok i guess) or if you want to reach high level maps. In the latter case you would have to invest some serious currency into your gear (for example a 5L/6L tri res + life armour or armour/ES hybrid that protects better against physical attacks).

Very well written guide. Thanks very much for this. I have a couple of questions regarding the passive tree you suggest.

Before I found this build I found the one outlined in the comments here: where he says "This one is a cake walk" about halfway down the page. (Passive Tree).

Considering both builds are "Fireball / Firetrap" it's rather amazing how different they are. I got to level 20 or so very quickly with that build but began to suspect things were going too well because every damn node it was adding fire damage and it seems a far way away to improve life, armor, or mana for that matter.... Which is why I like the look of your build very much. However it does leave me wondering: Is improving fire damage just not as useful as spending node after node to get to the far sides of the tree, or is there some compromise to be made?

I'm sure that's a bit noobish, but what can I say, I'm a noob. It just seems that so many nodes taken in this build are to travel from here to there I wonder how much (if any) this weakens this build overall compared with other class/builds?