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

"

xenochaos1 wrote:

still looking for a tested working build...

i cant believe it was teh msot popular build before 1.0 and now no one plays it?

"

Fireknight wrote:

A quick update for post 1.0.0 spark:

1.0.0 Patch notes impacting spark

-Shock has been reduced to 30% increased damage taken per stack rather than 40%.

-Spark: Damage is increased at lower levels. Spark duration has been heavily reduced.

-Bear Trap: Damage at high levels has been reduced by around 40% at level 15.

-Spell Totem: Damage reduction increased from 40% to 50%.

-The mana cost for all auras except Purity and Clarity has been changed to 60% reservation. Edit: Blood Magic is very strong because the auras are so powerful and the mana reservation can be mitigated very heavily using passives, items and the support gem.

So, to extract from the above, assuming you were using CI and you did not change gear or passives from 0.9.9 to 1.0.0, the difference would look like:

17% less damage
57% reduced area of spark coverage
15% less party damage. (from shock stacks)
Lose 1 aura, gain a slight buff on the other 2 auras.

The practical result of these changes is as follows:

Early endgame (60s/70s): Spark requires more gear to begin usage. It is significantly harder to shock at the beginning - probably worth taking static blows to compensate.

Mid endgame (80s): Still noticeably slower, it may still be worth taking static blows temporarily as a result of the changes to supplement crit shocking.

Late endgame (90+++): Mostly untouched. With strong gear, the only noticeable difference is the reduced AoE. Rather than putting down 2 totems and running through 2 screens as the sparks extended across the screen killing everything, you need to place totems down every pack. Single-target via placing the totems directly on a mob is still one of the best sources of single-target DPS in the game.


Passive changes:

I'll update the passives slightly tonight and incorporate the information from this post into the guide. The current passives are very usable so don't be too worried about respecs. The primary change will probably be static blows before 90, but there may be a few other minor adjustments to be made.