[1.2.0] How to Smash Heads.Guide for a CI Facebreaker Witch with Infernal blow2

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Vaal Pact no longer suppresses life recovery from flasks. It still prevents life regeneration and now also reduces your leech by 60%.

Also some things that affect gear that a lot of us wear, though none of it nearly as important as Vaal Pact. That one deserved its own post. New legacy items!

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Aegis Aurora: the Replenishes Energy Shield based on your Armour when you Block mod has been reduced from 4% to 2%.
Rainbowstride: Elemental Resist has been increased from 8% to 20%. Maximum Mana has been reduced from 80-100 to 40-60. Increased Energy Shield has been reduced from 150-200 to 140 to 180.

Which means we're going to have to invent a new term, because will now be two "legacy" Rainbowstrides.

Anyone who got your AA for 15 exalts in the last few days...congratulations. It'll be worth a lot more in coming months.

I guess that I can be happy for buying an AA for 7EX (+ change) for this build back then. ^^"
It seems that this build will be affected by the passive tree changes in some way, I'm looking forward how it impacts on this nice FB build, I hope the changes are not to serious. I'm a bit worried about the Vaal Pact thingy...

I'm sure we'll have to change our passive tree some, since the area around Marauder and the area between Marauder and Duelist have been "reworked substantially." We don't get a lot of things from that area and stay mainly on the roads, but I'm sure we'll have to adjust a little.

I don't know this part for sure at all, but there was some conjecture that there would be a few more passives supporting unarmed combat. It's possible that's a part of this change to the Marauder area. I don't know that it'll affect us at all though, as we don't take any damage nodes anyway. It's likely we wouldn't even be interested in such nodes unless they do something more than just "more unarmed damage" (of which we have plenty).

The biggest part that I worry about with the passive tree is that the changes will mean that we need to take one or two more throwaway +10 Str nodes to get to all the things we need. That would be a little, incidental change that could make it a level or two slower for us to get to CI.

The Vaal Pact is a serious thing, but not backbreaking. The change won't have any real effect most of the time, but I can see two places where it will make a big difference:

1. Fights where you take a lot of damage and depend on being able to leech faster than you take damage, and
2. Reflect maps.

I would guess that we'll just have to be careful and have to occasionally hit and run rather than charge in hitting as fast as we can and depending on Vaal Pact to save us. I'm not sure that the change will necessitate any changes in gear or gems or skills (except to make the Life Leech gem mandatory even on single-reflect maps, where I mostly just skip it right now). It'll just require a change in play style under some circumstances, and I can live with that.

Mostly I think about Poorjoy's Asylum. I've done it once, and there were times where I was surprised to be surrounded by so many mobs so quickly. My response was to spam IB and keep my ES up through leeching. My new strategy will be to Lightning Warp out of there.

Unbelievably, I forgot about this.

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Several Energy Shield passives have been improved.

That takes some of the sting off Vaal Pact too, because we'll likely have more ES to work with. I really don't think it's going to be the end of the world. I think it was probably needed, given how insanely powerful full, instant regeneration of our ES is. It still works fine, we'll just have to adjust how we play a bit.

Yeah, to me it doesn't seem that devastating. It was a luxury not having to use life leech gem on phys reflect maps. I don't really think it will change much so long as the path down in the passive tree remain relatively straight forward.

personally, i prefer high ES shield much more than AA when hitting level 75+. Level 75- can still stick to AA. You can feel a lot more safer with more ES (quite a lot) in high level map.

That's what i think.

here is my shield i am currently using.

Hey, I'm sure that shield is great for you, and if it makes you feel safer then by all means use it to its fullest. There isn't any way I'm giving up my AA (especially now that it's a legacy AA!) even in high-level maps though. That stuff that happens in Korgoth's video in the OP about what AA can do for you is real, even in high-level maps.

Basically, I'm happy with my ES amount (about 5200) and I like being machine-gunned up about 150 ES per block. That wouldn't work if the mobs were doing 450 damage to me per unblocked hit, but that doesn't generally happen.

EDIT: The point that I was making, pretty badly as I look at it, is that the AA is good for me where maybe that ES shield is good for you. I have decent ES, I have a fair bit of armor (which not only increases AA's ES regen but also lowers incoming physical damage, rendering more ES less necessary), I carry around two granite flasks. I'm very happy with AA. It's entirely possible that someone with different gear or a different priority list would prefer big ES.