IGN reveals one of the new Witch Ascendancy Classes: The Elementalist

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MortalKombat3 wrote:

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DDseedFoot wrote:

Also please dont give me the argument "but you can use offerings on your melee witch" because to be honest, its pretty shit for any stick+board witches because you can get max block with rumis pretty easily anyway.

Lol, free 37% block and 1000-1500 HP gained each time you block is shit? Aegis Aurora requires 50-75k armour to get same HP/block...
And i think the 3-rd Witch class will have some bonuses to ES, just as 3-rd Shadow's class has bonuses to ES and evasion.

What many people out there don't seem to realize is that there is a huge difference between in wording behind Aegis and Bone Offering

- "replenish" (Aegis) = instant life gain like life leech via Vaal Pact
- "recover" (Bone Offering) = life recovery over time like life gain via using a flask

So to make it good/"OP" you have to scale life recovery speed. Remind that you won't gain life back instantly like ES with Aegis - with Bone Offering you still can get bursted down with successive big hits or get one shot when you fail to block.
This is relativly likly to occure; for instance ~7% of the time you would get 2shot against one single monster (usually there are more around - keep that in mind) if the monster deals 3k+ damage to you asuming a solid 6k life pool.

TLDR:
What i wanted to say is that you are much more vulnerable to consitant successive burst damage with Bone Offering than you are with Aegis. Aegis shines against rapid burst damage and is only weak against very big hits.

A good example would be Phantasmagoria boss. High armour Aegis laughs at this boss and can facetank it. Bone Offering will get bursted down within seconds against this encounter if block fails.

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GeorgAnatoly wrote:

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Rakiii wrote:

Too much talk cos last witch class is still waiting to reveal and smth might change before realeasing Ascendancy.

It's because long time players knows how this works.

People who've played witch extensively can see from a mile away this ascendancy class is DoA for most witch self casting builds and despite our extensive knowledge they're not going to change it so that leaves the final reveal as our last hope for a decent ascendancy class but knowing them it's going to be something insanely asinine like curses leaving self casters shafted once again for the foreseeable future.

Most likely this.

Still hoping for GGG to reconsider.

This class is just bad for single element casters.

It's sad to see 95% of witch builds going to waste.

WHEN are these going to be put on the main site!? I am getting fucking pissed off now. I'm not taking one look at IGN. They can choke on a dildo.

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Jibblies wrote:

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TheAshmaker wrote:

This is so bad its rediculous. STOP WITH THE ON KILL MINI BUFFS HOLY CRAP. People want reliable buffs because killing certain bosses is the most consistently difficult part of this game.

Most bosses dont have adds you can kill to prolong this stuff.

Also these buffs are just bad...seriously dont want any of them.

+1

Ok, Shaper of Desolation could be strong for trash-mobs, because with this you could chill, shock and ignite with any(+chaos) damage non-crits but its not useful for boss fights :/ So basically just a gimmick and not something you really want to build anything around.

I agree as well. Nobody needs more dps on trash.

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

Wrote a mini-essay on previous page (9), that I mostly agree with.

Here I will give the perspective a rather new player.

TL;DR: massive disappointment.

I started by just playing the game, late December 2015 (2 months ago - and I have had a lot of free time in those 2 months to play PoE). Then when I realised (through trying it) that passive respec points didn't reset my whole passive tree, but just one node, I also realised that if I didn't want to waste all the time and effort I spent now further down the line, I shouldn't just "wing it" and explore on my own and end up with a build that couldn't do late-game content.

So, I looked around what witch builds were popular. I checked how much their skill trees matched mine, game-play videos for feel and how beginner/budget friendly they were. I ended up going with Whaitiri's Crit Arc Witch since it was a good match in pretty much all categories I was looking at, looked fun to play and seemed like the most popular witch build out there. (I was already in Cruel and had gone with Bandit Kraityn in normal - and pretty much all builds went with Oak - oh well). Before choosing on that particular arc build, it was already quite early clear that arc was the most common witch skill, and as someone who knew nothing about end game, I wanted something tried, tested and trusted. I wanted to use something safe and popular to develop an understanding of the game, before going off making a whacky build.

I haven't followed Whaitiri's guide mindlessly, however, and have done quite a lot of my own variations to the build (I am dual-cursing-on-hit [Doedre's Damning], with Vaal Pact and have several pieces of gear that I swap depending on what map mods get rolled, like taking out curses for flame totem for curse-immunity, or switching arc for EK for elemental reflect, trying out different main skills for fun and so forth). Again, the idea is for me to develop an understanding of PoE.

Well, my lvl 88 crit arc witch is still pretty much my only real character. I have about half-a-dozen others between levels 20-60, but I haven't spent much time on them, because I wanted to make this one build good, see the late game content so I know what to expect in future leagues, get some achievements, maybe most of the Rigwald Armour Set, and bring a good character into standard. Well, that last point no longer stands, and that made me lose 50% of my motivation to play this game right now.

I love the idea of Ascendancy classes. One (of the many) things I think could be better in PoE is to make different classes be somehow more different than just different starting points on the passive tree, with many builds being identical late-game no matter which of the 3 possible classes you decided to start off with.

Having looked at the other Ascendancy classes, I was getting really hyped up: they did some incredibly powerful and fun stuff! The Templar Inquisitor (Righteous providence + Inevitable Judgment? Insane!) and the Shadow Assassin (Ambush + Unstable Infusion + Deadly Infusion? Insane!) would have been Oh-my-God-this-is-out-of-this-world! -level improvements for my crit arc witch.

I was really, really, really looking forward to the reveal of what the witch spell-caster class would do. The summoner was really cool, and I might even make a summoner to use it one day, but had nothing for crit arc; indeed, it only seemed to support summoners, so I agree with others here: it is a very narrow class.

So I was very excited when the words "Elementalist" appeared before my eyes: this was it!

No. No... No. No. No. No no no no no no nooo! Noooo! NOOOOO! NOOOOOOOO!

Let's do this node-by-node:

Mastermind of Discord:
I wish PoE was less about spamming your one main skill, but hey, this is not the solution. The problems run deeper. The game pretty much forces us to focus on maxing out one skill and to spam it through other design choices. Thus switching between skills is mostly inefficient and bad in PoE. And while I use Call of the Brotherhood to turn 50% of my lightning damage to cold to freeze mobs on crit and to spread curses with Herald of Ice shatters, with even cold penetration (usually) in my 6L, my use of a lightning skill (arc) ends up increasing fire pen. I still sometimes use a flame-totem, but the higher level you get, the more casting a flame totem just slows you down - it's there for fringe situations mostly. Casting it just to get 20% cold pen? Maybe, just maybe worth it, but not at all what I want to be doing. I'd rather just not jump through that hoop and clear faster. What cold skill makes even sense to increase lightning penetration? Herald of Ice doesn't seem like it would count, and that is feeding Curse On Hit. Switching to using Ice Nova for cursing wouldn't be efficient. One of the best parts of the crit arc build is how consistently it deals damage on mobs far away, at the same time freezing and cursing them, with just arc itself.

This is probably about as good as 4% increased cast speed for me, when you take into account how many hoops I would need to jump through to get the effect. Sometimes better, sometimes worse.

Sure, there are probably builds that benefit from this. Maybe Cast on Critical - Discharge is one of them. Maybe it is a build-around-me node. But it is very, very narrow.

I like the flavour. I like the idea of pushing PoE to something else than "spam your one main skill". But this is not the solution to that problem and it is very weak for most builds.


Pendulum of Destruction:
Wait? I have to wait? In this fast paced game? 10 seconds?! When partying, and already rushing ahead as fast as I can with Whirling Blades supported with Faster Attacks just to be "on the front-line with them", am I supposed to say to my party "Hey guys, can you just wait for 10 secs again, while my Pendulum charges?"

Considering that it is an "increased damage", not a "more damage", we are talking about maybe a 20% increased actual damage, every 4/14 seconds. Again, I like the flavour, a chaotic witch out of control, bent on destruction that it can poorly manage even itself. But on a practical level, this is just very much against what PoE gameplay is like: you don't wait around 10 seconds for a good opportunity: you play this game at a fast pace, one second after another.

I feel like this is about equivalent (in practise) to 20% increased elemental damage. Weak.


Paragon of Calamity:
Well, this is a kill-or-get-killed-type of game where most builds are glass cannons to some degree, apart from a few OP "can't die builds". As such, I prefer not to get hit. But of course I do get hit.

Now, it's nice to get 8% reduced damage from elements after the first hit, but what you really have to watch out for in this game is single big hits. This doesn't really help much against those. The scary stuff still kills you in 2 hits, in a second or two; this not enough to stop it. The rest of the time this doesn't matter, because it was easy sailing anyway.

Oh, and you deal extra damage? Well, I guess I could combo that with Lightning Coil, if and when I one day have enough currency for a 6L version. I guess that 40% increased lightning damage would be active often enough. But while this is a realistic way to use this node for benefit, I still think it is very, very narrow to have a design that is only worth it, and even then barely, when either wearing Lightning Coil or Cloak of Flame.

For my current gear, without those uniques, I would rather take 10% increased elemental damage and 2% reduced elemental damage taken, active all the time. Weak.


Shaper of Desolation:
Ignite deals very little damage in practise, unless you rely on something like Flame Blast that hits only every few seconds. For anything that hits multiple times a second, being on fire is very little damage added.

Now, the whole point of crit arc is to use Call of the Brotherhood to keep all the trash mobs permanently both frozen and shocked, that is, if they stay alive for any length of time (which they admittedly do when partying). Chilled is a strict downgrade from frozen. I wouldn't take that downgrade to free up a ring-slot. Besides, my CotB also gives me +14% cold and lightning resistance, +25 intelligence (mana), 23% increased lightning damage and 37% increased mana regeneration rate - so it's hardly like I wasted a full ring-slot just to freeze enemies.

All I get from this node is ignite. That's 80% of initial hit damage taken over the next 4 seconds. When I hit 4 times a second, that is about a 80%/16 = 5% more damage dealt. But crucially, this is damage that doesn't prolong the duration of shock or freeze. And it only happens when I kill an enemy. And even then, only 20% of the time. And I have no trouble mowing down mobs, it's the tough single targets that I worry about (admittedly that is the real one short-coming of arc).

I would rather take a 10% increased spell damage (which is about 2% more actual damage) passive node than this.

Having said that, I see how fire-damage-based-builds will probably find some use from this node (even if it isn't outright love), so it isn't quite as narrow as the previous two.


Beacon of Ruin:
I already keep EVERYTHING ON SCREEN both frozen AND shocked! ...At least when they are not shattering... What more do I get out of this?! Nothing!

I would rather have 1% increased cast speed.


Ok, so there is one more notable node left:

Liege of the Primordial:
I have no idea how good these Lesser Elemental Golems are. Maybe they are good, maybe they aren't. But even if they are amazingly OP, to make most out of them, you would actually want to have some summoner nodes giving minions boosts. It seems off flavour. Anyway, even if it is amazing, that is welcome, but it still doesn't fix the problem that it is the ONLY one of the nodes in the Elementalist tree that I might find worth having.

I also wish it was better communicated, with precise values, what exactly these Lesser Elemental Golems are, but that is more about the presentation than what the skill itself is.

Also, flavour-wise, I think it doesn't make much sense that I would be casting these amazing damage spells in order to get golems. The damage-caster is a bit of an archetype across all fantasy, including RPGs, and often quite separate from the minion-controlling-mage/witch/wizard.


As Snorkle_uk already said on page 9, I understand that creative work is difficult, and I kinda feel sorry for the designer of the Elementalist class. The class has that feel of a quirky build-around-me unique that most players will dismiss, but someone will try to make work. Too bad then that it is the only option given to us elemental spell caster witches. It's like a Marylene's Fallacy that we HAVE to use - it is incredibly restrictive. You have to make the quirks work to your advantage or you've failed - and few existing witch builds can make that happen. That means only very few witch builds will be viable post-Ascendancy, with most of them having been pruned out due to not being able to use Ascendancy skill nodes for profit. In the context it is in, Templar and Shadow just seem so much better at doing what the witch does (and soon will have been known to have done) best.

And this is me complaining from the perspective of me having picked up THE MOST POPULAR witch build out there, indeed one of the most popular builds in all of PoE, as a sure bet.

Yes, there needed to be an Elementalist! NO, this is not the Elementalist we needed. I am fine with narrow classes on the side giving other options to what a witch can be (summoner + whatever the 3rd class will be: curser/phys spell/chaos/DoT/AoE/Energy Shield whatever - also note how many things there are to cover there: wouldn't it have been better to cover them more in the Elementalist class to some degree through open-ended design, rather than this very specific, restricting and narrow design), but straight-up elemental damage is the core of the witch class and this is not something they want.

And PS: IGN was a terrible choice of site to post this reveal on. It just doesn't work with half the browsers. And they didn't post an image of the skill tree. Thanks to those in this thread that did.

Elementalist needs a rework - and it's not why you think. It's because Elementalist is blatantly geared towards lightning skills over others when it comes to clear speed.

Mastermind of Discord synergises with multiple element skills, and also conversion. The only conversion you can complete 100% for this is Lightning to Fire, by using a combination of Avatar of Fire, The Brotherhood and if you want, Pyre or Cold to Fire).

This allows you 20% more "MORE" damage no matter what, which brings it closer into line with the Templar, when you account for the fact the elementalist can still maximise their bonuses while using multiple resistance curses (in fact improving their bonuses).

Lightning damage also has the highest top end, allowing for the biggest chill/ignite/shock if you plan to go for conflux.

The order in which the conversion skills benefit should be approximately equal by going down the conversion order, i.e. Lightning -> Cold, Cold -> Fire. This also means it's even more expensive to use lightning- which with its high top end, is always going to outclass the others for inflicting elemental statuses.

Come on GGG.

Sorry to go on, but...

What I would've wanted was either the stuff Inquisitor or Assassin got, so no need to make duplicate classes, or then one or both of the following:

1) Better single target damage. Yes, I am using arc. Yes, that is my own fault. But arc is not the only skill used by witches that would rather have a better way of dealing with bosses than more boost to their ability to wipe trash mobs off the screen. All the Elementalist nodes boost abilities (killing trash mobs) that we were already effectively over-capped on: adding more makes no difference: they still just die.

2) Better survivability, especially against tough and hard-hitting bosses. For example, these bosses tend to be immune to elemental status effects. So how about a node that says "Enemies cannot be immune to elemental status effects"? Would that have been too much for the Elementalist? It's pretty open-ended and would be fairly widely-liked since if you are doing elements, there is a good chance you are doing elemental status effects (I mean, not everyone is crit, but then again, that's why there are twice as many nodes to choose from than there are nodes you can take). Since Assassin gets crazy crit chance / crit multi and power charge boost; and Inquisitor gets full penetration of elemental damage (on crit, and 10% otherwise), then I don't think it would have been too much. Maybe witch would still be the weakest of the 3 elemental casters, but at least it would have a class node it could use.

Other ways to boost survival while keeping the Elementalist theme:
- really dramatic reductions to elemental damage taken (You are in tune with the elements)
- 10% of elemental damage taken being GIVEN as mana instead (Very thematic with elements charging the witch up! Plus makes witch have a special, unique combo with Mind Over Matter, that is also very thematic, since witch is THE intelligence class and MOM is near.)
- 1-2% life leech on elemental damage dealt
That's just three examples of open-ended designs that I came up with in 2 mins that would entice people to still play witch in the future.

Even elemental damage leeched as mana would have been nicer, even if thoroughly unexiting.

Adding to what I said earlier about the build being geared towards lightning, I think that Elementalist should have RANDOM conversion between elements as one of their nodes, and have elemental or spell damage nodes on the trees double dip for these conversions as a unique feature of the class

But GGG needs to rework the entire conversion engine for an actual conversion class to work.

GGG PLEASE READ!!!!!!

I. Tree Influence

* Witch - Best class specializing in ONE element.
- Heart of Flame cluster
- Heart of Thunder cluster
- Heart of Ice cluster
- Fire/Lightning/Frost walker clusters

* Templar - Best classed for MIXED elemental damage.
- Celestial Judgement node
- Celestial Punishment node
- Elementalist node

II. Sub-class Problems

* Witch
- Elementalist class
- Mastermind of Discord - Promotes mixed elemental casting, while witch tree promotes elemental specialization. See the problem?
- All nodes on this witch ascendancy class tree should promote and reward maximizing ONE element.

* Templar
- Inquisitor class
- Inevitable Judgement - Promotes critical strikes with any element, and completely ignores elemental resistance, while the witch node reduces by only 20% ONLY IF used in conjunction with MIXED elemental casting! BIG PROBLEM...
- Why would a hybrid class (Templar) have a stronger elemental node, which is also crit based, than the primary elemental caster class (Witch)
- The witch nodes should be THE BEST ELEMENTAL CASTER NODES.

III. Solution Suggestions
- Swap Mastermind of Discord and Inevitable Judgement
- Consider adding a stacking damage buff the more a caster uses a spell of the SAME element.
- Consider adding bonuses to cast speed.
- Consider adding AE bonuses to spells casted.
- Consider adding ELEMENTAL LEECH in this class, since a lot of builds in this class type are glass cannon, this would utilize the high damage for added survivability.
- Paragon of Calamity is much too build specific and will hardly be taken.

THANKS FOR YOUR TIME, PLEASE CONSIDER MY ARGUMENT!!!!!!!