[2.1] Witch Con-ED Regen Tank THC

IGN: Pyr
Lv.: 77
Hardcore Talisman League.
Will update these notes every 5-10 levels or whenever i feel like i've made significant changes.
old notes are therefor prone to disappearance/adjustment.


Intro
This build utilizes the skill Essence Drain together with Contagion, this makes for an incredibly viable, strong, bad-ass but maybe most importantly: fun and budget friendly setup to level with from the moment you can get your hands on the gems.
Because of the gear/gem/jewel setup you retain the ability to switch between offensive and defensive strategy together with good mobility, clear-speed and reach.

"
Pure chaos damage
It has great rp value to me and makes me able to commit to this character the way this character commits hilarious murder on lvl 90+'s in pvp. Though a great laugh in 1v1 (or, on occasion 1v2) there are the obvious downsides like Chaos resist mobs/bosses and Chaos Inoculation. This build is well worth it on all other aspects. The dps is nice, but not too nice. i have not tried this out on atziri for example since this is as far as i've taken the character at the moment.

Balanced
One of the great scourges of my PoE carreer over the years has been finding a build that feels both strong and tank-y. This character is however imo the best balance i've experienced so far.
(actual stats on the bottom of this post)

Budget-Friendly
I hate it when all the items i need to make a fun build work are so overpriced it makes my eye pop when i see it on poe.trade.
Therefor i was pleasantly surprised to see that 95% of the items that give this build some extra flavor (talking about the chest-piece for example) are dirt-cheap. Literally paid about 4-5 chaos a piece for the rares, uniques varying from 15chaos (boots) to 1 chaos (chest and necklace).

"

Reasons to play this build:
- If you like having control over the battle field, while dashing around and firing combo's left and right.
- If you're a fan of pure chaos damage.
- If you want a build that's viable for pve as well as pvp
- If you're a sadistic individual who likes seeing pixels suffer while they crawl at your feet, rendered useless and feeble, futility in their desperation as they claw away at your never ending constitution.
- If you like feeling as if you just popped a healing flask. 100% of the time.

Reasons not to:
-i'm not going to lie, the rotation is slower and the dps more latent than other builds. People consider it to be clunky. Though these people are not me, i'm fine with the cast speed.
(don't get me wrong, this setup by all means doesn't have slow clear-speed)
-if you think all the pro's i listed above are bullshit.



Tree build:

The infamous skill tree segment.
I have been respec-ing and tweaking the build as i went along. first grabbed area of effect increase near the templar, but later found them to become less useful as i progressed (ect. ect, you'll see what i mean when you open the 80 point tree and compare it to the 100 point tree)

Bandit Choices:
N - Oak for 40 life
C - Kill all for the skillpoint
M - Kill all for the skillpoint
"

"

"
The end result i'm going for consists of 3 variations that differ by 6 points each.
I will try out all three setups to see which one fits my play-style the best.
(Assuming i even make it to 100)
Lv 100 Jewel Socket Version

This setup i will use purely to boost my health with Anatomical Knowledge Jewels.

http://poedb.tw/us/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAwMABLMLYQxfDkgPqxDMES0RLxNtFAkUIBa_GFYYahkuGj4cpxzcJIsmiCaVJ-0pLipNKwortiycMtE1kjlSPC0_J0GHRKtFR0WdSRNKyFFMUq9TUlOlVa5XDVgHWW1boF3yXz9fmF-wYeJn_GhlaHRo8mqMbqp2gnwOfIN8uH1bffWCB4IQg1-DzITFhTKJ4IxGjxqPRo-mkx-a4Juhm7WiAKLZpwinVaxHrUqvbLDYtNG1SLXytzC3PrtNwGbDOsRYxPbGrsgMyBTKSs8y0iHYvdlh2mLdX9-w5ljoWutj6-7vDvAf8azyQfOb9W_2SPfX-JP56P4K




Gear

I've started this character when the hardcore talisman league started, researching the options for gear within the limitation of my budget (it's pretty hard for me to even scrape 10 chaos together, because i'm a total feeb) so most of the items you see in my setup are 5 chaos or less, including the gems. even though they're 20% quality, i built them up from 12-15% upon either finding them or buying them for 4-5 chaos. The consuming dark is borrowed from a friend. this item is also not particularly necessary for the build, but does add a slight increase in single target dps)


Chest Want 3blue 1red for an extra faster casting gem.
Shield needs 2 blue 1 green to house blasphemy with temp chains and enfeeble, that way i have room in the gloves to put the wither totem with totem elemental resistance and colors for either faster casting or increased duration.




I used to have
because of the spell damage boost, since Cast speed (though still pretty nice to pull off combo's faster) has less priority than damage boost, since the dps uptime of DoT's are 100%, but, the chestpiece has no resists so i had to replace the gloves to cap my resists in merciless. Other than that i invest in regular tanky gear.

Things that have priority during updating:
My shield needs +- 2k armor some resists preferred so i can wiggle my gear a bit.

Controlled Destruction for the 0.5% increased spell Damage per 1% Quality

Rotation


The rotation is pretty straight forward, lots of self-cast.
this isn't one of those one-button-cruise-control builds i'm afraid.

Self cast:
Wither totem -> Contagion -> Essence drain -> vulnerability
(then Use contagion and ED at own discretion)
(when facing blue or rare mobs use ED before Contagion, that's slightly higher dps)
Pop decoy totem when poop hits the fan.
(i.e: on occasion mobs tend to spread and summon and break off into groups, decoy balls them up)

Defensive/passive setup:
whirling blades + faster casting for dashing around
(Was able to get rid of my quicksilver for this in favor of another life flask)
Temporal chains and Enfeeble on Blasphemy.
(with self-cast vulnerability it's tri curse!)
Chaos golem (optional, dies alot. and tbh, i cba to keep summoning him sometimes)
Molten shell on CwDt (procs at roughly 1/3rd of my base health)
----
Stats at current level

currently have 10753,1 DoT damage on ED, 700~ DoT dmg on Contagion, it constitutes for about 15k Sustained AoE DpS at this point, that bypasses energy shield. and about 18k single target dps (scaling up, together with the poison from consuming dark).
will post math if people are interested.

Life: 2955
Armor: 10200 (52%)
Evasion: 2984 (28%)
Block: 32%
Life Regen: 265.5 (plus about 50 life regen per ED infection)
20% extra effect of flasks
Res(in merciless):
Fire - 75% ( 105%)
Cold - 75% ( 103%)
Light- 74% ( 74%)
Chaos- -6%(-6%)

Sidenote on DoT

If you think about it, DoT's have 100% dps uptime, if done correctly. so even if you have a 25k dot, the damage done over lets say, a 5 minute bossfight will be substantially higher than someone not using DoT's, simply because they're running around 2/3rds of the fight and not doing dmg. woop.
This is all irrelevant of course if you have such a ridiculous dps that you can obliterate a boss before he can throw anything at you, but for long fights DoT's are the way to go imo. And i found this the most fun combo to do it with so far. also the only one i've tried. but that aside.


Highest tier map cleared at this point: T1|T2|T3|T4|T5|T6|T7|T8|T9|T10



Feedback is much apreciated. Stay safe people!
-V
Last edited by Lucian_Priest#6970 on Jan 5, 2016, 7:07:47 PM
Hi

Taht's an interesting build.

I just wanted to say that Wither isn't a curse, it's a spell so its effects stack 100% with vulnerabilty. Also as wither is a spell that stacks with itself, it's normally supported by a spell totem.

When you go to 5-link you'll want to socket in poison preferably with quality.

I like that you've gone armor and life on a witch, makes for some build variety. Do you find it tanky enough to do hard bosses in maps, Malachai Merciless etc?
"
ngamer000 wrote:
Spoiler
Hi

Taht's an interesting build.

I just wanted to say that Wither isn't a curse, it's a spell so its effects stack 100% with vulnerabilty. Also as wither is a spell that stacks with itself, it's normally supported by a spell totem.

When you go to 5-link you'll want to socket in poison preferably with quality.

I like that you've gone armor and life on a witch, makes for some build variety. Do you find it tanky enough to do hard bosses in maps, Malachai Merciless etc?


Hey! thanks for the feedback, i have been able to tweak my setup a bit. created room for a wither totem, and boy.. did it amplify my damage..

Regarding the ED setup, currently i have the gem in my helmet as a 4link with the damage boosters and the +1 to gem levels (+1 to gems is a massive boost) a friend gave me the consuming dark to borrow, so the ED setup is an effective 5link at the moment.

Malachai is a complete drag to do at the moment. i'm already lagging like crazy during that fight with 5 fps and it takes for f*kn ever to kill him. so yeah.

other than that, i added a "highest tier map completed so far" bit to the "sheet statistics" tab.

appreciate your time and interest,

-V
Last edited by Lucian_Priest#6970 on Jan 4, 2016, 8:14:47 PM
interesting build. free bump and a p4l.
Spoiler
"
awave wrote:
interesting build. free bump and a p4l.


Thanks man, apreciate your time and interest!

-V
Hey, I was looking around the forum to find some ways to improve my own Contagion-ED Witch. Cool to see something completely opposite of where I went! Yours looks tanky as hell! As I'm playing softcore, I didn't have to be quite so defensive. However, I noticed you hardly have any damage from the skill tree. I'm much more offensive, and I find I'm somewhat struggling for mobs to go down quickly enough before I'm surrounded (Hey there, Pit map).

I'm also curious about your choice of main hand weapon. It seems like most of the mods of Consuming Dard would be wasted based on the skills you use and their damage type.

Here's my Passive tree at 81
orionite
"
orionite wrote:
Hey, I was looking around the forum to find some ways to improve my own Contagion-ED Witch. Cool to see something completely opposite of where I went! Yours looks tanky as hell! As I'm playing softcore, I didn't have to be quite so defensive. However, I noticed you hardly have any damage from the skill tree. I'm much more offensive, and I find I'm somewhat struggling for mobs to go down quickly enough before I'm surrounded (Hey there, Pit map).

I'm also curious about your choice of main hand weapon. It seems like most of the mods of Consuming Dard would be wasted based on the skills you use and their damage type.

Here's my Passive tree at 81


Hey there,

Thanks for taking an interest in my build. I've taken a look at your tree and saw that you only have 20% more chaos damage than i do at this point, where you go up in the crescent towards Atropy i take the chaos/phys nodes towards the shadow starting point. now, i don't know what your end-tree looks like, nor how much damage your DoT has, but i'm taking a wild guess and think you're going for the rest of the chaos nodes in the shadow tree after you've grabbed Alchemist

with my current goal tree being

you'll end up with the same DoT increase, but 71% more chaos damage.
I'm not sure how viable my armor stat is on endgame and if it's worth giving up that amount of damage for, simply because i don't have any experience in endgame yet.
though i think my setup compensates quite a bit. (geoffri's is basically making my ED a 5link with a lv 1 empower, some 20% quality gems, 20% chaos dmg on the chest and some gems including Weight of sin 20%) so i think you and i aren't far off damage-wise at this moment. but i guess you could run the exact gear as i am on lv100 and generously out-perform me in damage.

You're right about my main hand weapon, i only used the consuming dark because a friend borrowed it to me. i have recently returned it to it's owner and am currently using a rare dagger without really feeling any difference. (even without the poison stack on single target)

Currently sitting on about 22k max DoT and +-4k impact dmg.
(need to update the page to match lv 79)

A better alternative for a main hand weapon would be divinarius, due to the aoe and spell dmg, and because it's a dagger you can keep using whirling blades, which is a major survivability boost.

Whirling blades makes you able to phase through enemies, a decoy totem forces them to redirect their attention to it, This brings us to the point made about the pit map.
just the other day i waited for the boss area to fill up while dashing through the mobs
(not by choice, mind you. i was tad bit distracted so it just happened to pile up)
but i popped a decoy in-between two WB dashes and managed to use Con on a fair portion of the enemies, 2 dashes later, using the same method, only with ED in stead of Con. this was back when i was a bit lower level and i doubt my 8-10k armor would've protected me from dying had i not used whirling blades. Since MoM drains all of your mana (depending of intervals of incoming attack impacts) Not being able to phase through enemies with a movement skill or flask would be detrimental when cornered.

As a side-note, i'm not trying to make a perfect chaos damage dps build, nor a perfect tank. My goal was to walk the middle-ground to have a well-balanced build, using life regeneration, armor, and the Con-ED combo, that's HC viable as well as affordable.

i hope i'm coherent enough :')

-V
Last edited by Lucian_Priest#6970 on Jan 10, 2016, 12:46:50 PM

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