Enki's Arc Witch Memorial Page

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bananacandy98 wrote:

Hi pro exiles, I got this pretty good shield from heist, and I used alt+regal and got these pretty good mods that I can use, how should I proceed from here? The ideal mods that I am hoping to get are tier 1 mana, fire res, and hopefully good spell damage. Your inputs will be much appreciated! o><o

I don't play Heist, so I'm assuming that the brown +Life modifier is just a normal modifier that won't be removed by bench crafting.

Since your shield has 3 mods, assuming you have a decent amount of currency (at least an exalt), the safest craft might be just the benchcraft "Can have up to 3 crafted modifiers" suffix, which will then let you craft 2 more prefixes. While this won't let you get extra resistances, you can then craft +54 to maximum mana and gain 8% of extra lightning damage as chaos damage for a good amount of damage (this is a hard-to-get craft, so you might need to pay someone to do this one).

If you want to risk it or are really rich, you could slam it with exalted orbs and hope for the best.

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_kerber_ wrote:

Does damage taken gained as mana over 4 seconds works for this build? is it worth to use this mod. I am playing SSF and struggle with mana regen. Overall love this build :)

I was curious about this, and I don't think it works great. That's because the usual percentages you get from this are fairly small (5-10%). Since your mana pool with this build tend to be much larger than your life pool, 5-10% of 2000 damage you took would be still a tiny amount, considering your mana costs are usually ~1-2k per cast at least. I think #% regeneration still works the best, and prioritizing that as an affix on my wand (where it has a high chance of spawning) was the most useful. Rings, shields, and amulets can help too.

If you don't have access to Atziri's Foible, a Blue Pearl Amulet that drops from New Vastir can help in the short-term too.

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TheNukes wrote:

I'm at level 78 with this build right now, and I generally like it (tanky, Arc is cool, clever concept) but my damage is weak and I don't totally understand why. My Shaper DPS is about 434k without RF, which seems low even for my level - BuckFutter has 3.7M at level 98, for instance.

Does anyone have tips? My next priority is to get a Thread of Hope and pick up Spiritual Aid, then start working on cluster jewels. PoB Community: https://pastebin.com/4Dszpq0U

A couple things that might help other noobs: 1) equipping Crowd of the Inward Eye recently gave me about a 50% damage boost; 2) I like using using Frost Wall in CWDT to help avoid getting swarmed; 3) Increased Mana Recovery (from Redeemer belts) acts like a more multiplier for regen, which makes a big difference.

I think your damage and gear is pretty respectable for your level! Honestly, leveling your character to 85-90 will do a lot already for your damage.

A few notes from your PoB:

1. Try to match the Passive Tree in the original post - that'll get you a good amount of extra damage already. In particular, Spiritual Aid is a must-have for this build and boosts the damage a ton. To get the points, you can remove the 2 random Elemental Damage nodes at the left. I'd also not path towards Forethought for now, as the extra mana isn't quite as useful yet. Battle Rouse is also quite far and a bit of a luxury. Removing a few Life nodes for pathing towards Holy Dominion and Light of Divinity will get you almost as much life and much more damage and resistances. Essence Extraction may also still be worth it for getting rid of Elemental Ailments (Shocked, Chilled, etc.) which can really hurt you on higher-tier maps.

2. You should definitely link your Arcane Surge gem to Arcane Cloak and level it to 20. That'll get you a 15% boost in a damage. Arcane Cloak uses a percentage of maximum mana, so it'll definitely trigger even a high level of Arcane Surge on a single cast. That whole gem linkage setup should ideally be Arcane Cloak, Second Wind, Increased Duration, Arcane Surge.

3. You no longer need Orb of Storms. You can replace it with Vaal Righteous Fire if you find one, or just corrupt it a normal Righteous Fire with a Vaal Orb. This can give you quick bursts of quite a bit of extra damage, at a cost of some of your current life. When your regen is good enough, you can even fully enable normal Righteous Fire for another boost of damage.

4. I think Faster Casting is not that useful for Flame Dash, so you may want to swap out the gems.


Here's a tip for debugging your build on PoB - start by importing someone else's build. Here's my current build for example: https://pastebin.com/KGxDP4tH

Then, use the Import/Export Build feature to import your own Items/Skills. Then, you can try swapping out the Items you're using with the items that came with the build and see which made the biggest difference. Then, try upgrading that item.

Similarly with your Passive tree - you can import your own Passive Tree and see how the nodes differ.

In heist, Anomalous faster casting support is an interesting choice for flame dash, when you have extra gem slot.

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TheNukes wrote:

I'm at level 78 with this build right now, and I generally like it (tanky, Arc is cool, clever concept) but my damage is weak and I don't totally understand why. My Shaper DPS is about 434k without RF, which seems low even for my level - BuckFutter has 3.7M at level 98, for instance.

I don't recall when exactly my damage hit the exponential increase point but it was probably around level 90 when I was able to dump a lot of points into a cluster jewel setup. It was still fairly early in the league and there was a lot of good gear available on the trade site for reasonable prices. I believe the damage figures I pulled form POB were A8 Sirus so I am not sure what my witch's Shaper DPS is or if it would be more or less than the number I used.

To be honest, the gear I have is pretty absurd and some of it is just not readily available, specifically the wand and some stuff that I have spent time and resources on getting near perfect rolls. It has also been a lucky league for me, part of that is amount played, but my big turning point was getting an early Cortex map drop and from it a Bottle Faith which I sold for a pile of ex which I then poured into ideal cluster jewels and better gear. I had thought I burned all my luck up but last night I ran a 5-way Timeless battle with a friend and got an Asenaths Gentle Touch and then we ran a Simulacrum and a 5 passive voices dropped proving that the best way to beat the RNG gods in PoE is to play too much, or at least until your hands are sore, or a new episode of The Expanse comes out.

Hey!
With the 'Basic Gear Trade Links'.... which trades are recommended? the least expensive ones? Thanks

Thanks for the tips! I'm at 85 now, and with Spiritual Aid, a level 21 Surge on Arcane Cloak, and Vaal RF my damage has almost doubled. Even without RF I have 700k Shaper/Sirus DPS, which isn't godlike or anything but much better than just a few levels ago.

Not sure I'll be able to get more than a million or so DPS before the league ends, unfortunately. There are literally zero good large cluster jewels for sale right now (or any Anomalous Faster Castings). But it's a cool enough build that maybe I'll run something similar again.

Hey, I finally crafted something that seems pretty good.

I bought this shield with the fractured mod and it had a couple other decent mods but a couple that were garbage, went ahead and used annuls on it and wrecked it pretty handily ending with the worst mod on it left. Used some essences to get the 2% mana recovery, was planning on not getting anything good and then had some other essences that I was going to use next to guarantee fire resistance. Two or three tries in I get 10% cast speed, 84% energy shield (which with something gets converted to damage I believe), and the guaranteed mana block recovery from the essence. Added the fire resistance that I needed then used and exalt and it hit the increased lightning damage.



Got about 300k additional damage in comparison with the old shield and so far have not seen any mana or survivability issues that make me want to switch back.



With the extra fire resistance I might even be able to replace my ring with something better since it doesn't have to be quite as specific as this one that I have been using for a while now.



What's the best POB setting to get a good DPS number to use in comparing gear choices? I have been using Sirus A8 because I thought that was the best but perhaps that is wrong. In POB when I switch it to Shaper I get the same DPS number, not sure if that should be happening or if I messed something else up.

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BuckFutter9 wrote:

Hey, I finally crafted something that seems pretty good.

I bought this shield with the fractured mod and it had a couple other decent mods but a couple that were garbage, went ahead and used annuls on it and wrecked it pretty handily ending with the worst mod on it left. Used some essences to get the 2% mana recovery, was planning on not getting anything good and then had some other essences that I was going to use next to guarantee fire resistance. Two or three tries in I get 10% cast speed, 84% energy shield (which with something gets converted to damage I believe), and the guaranteed mana block recovery from the essence. Added the fire resistance that I needed then used and exalt and it hit the increased lightning damage.

Got about 300k additional damage in comparison with the old shield and so far have not seen any mana or survivability issues that make me want to switch back.

With the extra fire resistance I might even be able to replace my ring with something better since it doesn't have to be quite as specific as this one that I have been using for a while now.

What's the best POB setting to get a good DPS number to use in comparing gear choices? I have been using Sirus A8 because I thought that was the best but perhaps that is wrong. In POB when I switch it to Shaper I get the same DPS number, not sure if that should be happening or if I messed something else up.

Well, I am a moron, can't use my new personally crafted shield because if I do I am at 48% cold resistance. If anyone else can use the shield let me know, glad to give it to someone who can make use of it. I think this is a sign that I am pretty much done messing around with my gear this league.

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prosanity wrote:

Hey!
With the 'Basic Gear Trade Links'.... which trades are recommended? the least expensive ones? Thanks

When looking through the basic trade links, the cheapest ones are always going to be a good start. When choosing between different items, try to prioritize the modifiers that are at the top of "Affix priority" in the Gear section on the original post.

For example, when given a choice between 2 wands, 1 with better "+# Maximum Mana" and another with "#% increased Critical Strike Chance for Spells", prioritize the one with maximum mana.

Another thing you can do is to copy the item using the copy icon on the left bottom. If you try pasting the item into PathOfBuilding's Item screen, you'll be able to see the advantages/disadvantages of that item relative to what you're currently using.