Dominion's Hardcore Dual-Spark CI Witch - UPDATED for 1.0.1

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exit_zero wrote:

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juakiz wrote:

Maybe im retarded but... u take power charge nodes etc... but how u get power charges when u do no damage with yourself(after taking Ancestral Bond)?

You don't have to actually do damage to still get power charges from something like Ice Spear + Power Charge on Crit (+GMP). It will still crit (but do no damage) and grant you charges.

Hey fireknight

Me again, still a great guide and rocking it at lvl 78 atm.

What struck me (as I just found out): We are playing CI, and killing stuff still gives us bonusses (Ancestral Bonds just states no dmg), so basically I run around with Blood Rage now, granting me 15% free faster cast rate after 3 killed enemies (each killed enemy generates a Frenzy charge, 5% FC per charge). I mean c'mon, 3 mobs is nothing, plus your awesome guide is so awesome, even nuubs like me can follow it :) So don't deny free stuff that is so vital (FC).

Could you add this to the guide, please? It takes no nodes to skill and just one gem slot (Green).

cheers

Can I ask why you don't take Zealot's Oath? I'm not sure if someone has asked already but couldn't find any answer. Cheers

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Moggimus wrote:

Can I ask why you don't take Zealot's Oath? I'm not sure if someone has asked already but couldn't find any answer. Cheers

It's basically not needed since you dont get life regen / vitality anyways.

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Chronodroid wrote:

What struck me (as I just found out): We are playing CI, and killing stuff still gives us bonusses (Ancestral Bonds just states no dmg), so basically I run around with Blood Rage now, granting me 15% free faster cast rate after 3 killed enemies (each killed enemy generates a Frenzy charge, 5% FC per charge). I mean c'mon, 3 mobs is nothing, plus your awesome guide is so awesome, even nuubs like me can follow it :) So don't deny free stuff that is so vital (FC).

Could you add this to the guide, please? It takes no nodes to skill and just one gem slot (Green).

Blood Rage doesn't give you a power charge when your totem kills something. That means it is pretty much useless unless you are also killing stuff with traps. I tried this out, just for kicks and if I spam firetrap, I can often keep the frenzy charges up, but if I'm worrying about keeping Blood Rage going, I'm not cursing, using ice spear, raising a zombie, tossing a trap, repositioning myself to avoid projectiles, etc.

tl;dr: Yeah, it works if you also use traps, but not worth the effort, imho.

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etti_e wrote:

To be honest, you dont even need to specc into the Frost Walker imo. I never specced into it and did well.

About 3k es with Discipline is fine, you will get a nice es boost trough the nodes after CI.
It's getting more easy to reach "decent" Es numbers, after you reach merciless, since the items itself do get a higher ES base.

I'll second this statement. I'm a poor noob so wanted to save the regrets and also skipped the frost walker nodes. I still had fun through the freeze pulse phase of my character. Perhaps I didn't clear monsters as fast but I still managed without too much trouble. Since I'm so poor (this is just my second character) it was worth it to me, also I'm on softcore so dying every once in awhile is okay.

BTW, thanks Dominion for the fun build instructions.

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Gaean wrote:

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Chronodroid wrote:

What struck me (as I just found out): We are playing CI, and killing stuff still gives us bonusses (Ancestral Bonds just states no dmg), so basically I run around with Blood Rage now, granting me 15% free faster cast rate after 3 killed enemies (each killed enemy generates a Frenzy charge, 5% FC per charge). I mean c'mon, 3 mobs is nothing, plus your awesome guide is so awesome, even nuubs like me can follow it :) So don't deny free stuff that is so vital (FC).

Could you add this to the guide, please? It takes no nodes to skill and just one gem slot (Green).

Blood Rage doesn't give you a power charge when your totem kills something. That means it is pretty much useless unless you are also killing stuff with traps. I tried this out, just for kicks and if I spam firetrap, I can often keep the frenzy charges up, but if I'm worrying about keeping Blood Rage going, I'm not cursing, using ice spear, raising a zombie, tossing a trap, repositioning myself to avoid projectiles, etc.

tl;dr: Yeah, it works if you also use traps, but not worth the effort, imho.

yeah.. i just was experiencing just this.

Either get the 15% FC or.. the crit charges :) and the latter seem more valuable to me, having a max of 7 is huge to sporks :)

sry for the input then :)

Instead of Blood Rage, one could use Frenzy instead of Ice Spear to build both Power and Frenzy Charges, but since the chance to crit on Ice Spear is increased by 600% (second stage) vs Frenzy's base crit, again it seems like the casting speed improvement of 15% increased casting speed (3x frenzy charges) isn't worth what you'd lose (faster power charge build-up).

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Turtledove wrote:

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etti_e wrote:

To be honest, you dont even need to specc into the Frost Walker imo. I never specced into it and did well.

About 3k es with Discipline is fine, you will get a nice es boost trough the nodes after CI.
It's getting more easy to reach "decent" Es numbers, after you reach merciless, since the items itself do get a higher ES base.

I'll second this statement. I'm a poor noob so wanted to save the regrets and also skipped the frost walker nodes. I still had fun through the freeze pulse phase of my character. Perhaps I didn't clear monsters as fast but I still managed without too much trouble. Since I'm so poor (this is just my second character) it was worth it to me, also I'm on softcore so dying every once in awhile is okay.

BTW, thanks Dominion for the fun build instructions.

I also skipped the frost walker nodes and did fine. Unlike Turtledove, I could afford to spend the regrets, but since I had good twink gear, I had plenty of dps from freezing pulse, one spark totem, and traps and so never felt the need to put extra points into it.


On a related note, I'm quite happy with the changes to traps made in the last patch. I used to use 2x bear trap gems and I've now changed to a bear trap gem and a fire trap gem (with added fire & culling support). The traps recycle fast enough that I pretty much always have one to toss when I want one and tossing traps when I've got time increases my overall dps and takes down problem mobs pretty fast. If I'd had a quick recharging fire trap from the start, I would have had even less use for the Frost Walker nodes.

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etti_e wrote:

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Moggimus wrote:

Can I ask why you don't take Zealot's Oath? I'm not sure if someone has asked already but couldn't find any answer. Cheers

It's basically not needed since you dont get life regen / vitality anyways.

From everything I have read in other builds and threads people say that Zealot's Oath still works for energy shield regen even with chaos innoculation active, so wouldn't this be really beneficial?

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Moggimus wrote:

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etti_e wrote:

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Moggimus wrote:

Can I ask why you don't take Zealot's Oath? I'm not sure if someone has asked already but couldn't find any answer. Cheers

It's basically not needed since you dont get life regen / vitality anyways.

From everything I have read in other builds and threads people say that Zealot's Oath still works for energy shield regen even with chaos innoculation active, so wouldn't this be really beneficial?

This question was asked and answered less than a dozen posts above:

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etti_e wrote:

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Moggimus wrote:

Can I ask why you don't take Zealot's Oath? I'm not sure if someone has asked already but couldn't find any answer. Cheers

It's basically not needed since you dont get life regen / vitality anyways.

I'll add that since you can easily retreat while still allowing your totems to do damage and when away from being damaged, you rather quickly regenerate energy shield, the two extra passive nodes you'd spend on getting Zealot's Oath are wasted and lessen the overall strength of this build.

If this was a build for a character that was CI and who needed to stay in combat, Zealot's Oath would make sense, but it isn't.