[2.2] King's "Jupiter Ascendant" - 4 curse hybrid/CI non-crit Occultist Witch [HC&Beginner friendly]

Hey everyone - I'm fairly New to the game. But After researching for hours and watching videos, I've chosen this as my first build :) I need some advice though - I have just stumbled across Alira.
What Choices Should I make to benefit me most for this build?
On Normal:
Alira gives +40 Mana
Oak gives +40 Life
Kraityn gives 8% All Resist

On Cruel:
Alira gives +4% Cast Speed
Kraityn gives +4% Attack Speed
Oak gives +12% Physical Damage

On Merciless:
Alira gives +1 Maximum Power Charge
Kraityn gives +1 Maximum Frenzy Charge
Oak gives +1 Maximum Endurance Charge

thanks a lot for your advice!

"

MasKScarin wrote:

Hey everyone - I'm fairly New to the game. But After researching for hours and watching videos, I've chosen this as my first build :) I need some advice though - I have just stumbled across Alira.
What Choices Should I make to benefit me most for this build?
On Normal:
Alira gives +40 Mana
Oak gives +40 Life
Kraityn gives 8% All Resist

On Cruel:
Alira gives +4% Cast Speed
Kraityn gives +4% Attack Speed
Oak gives +12% Physical Damage

On Merciless:
Alira gives +1 Maximum Power Charge
Kraityn gives +1 Maximum Frenzy Charge
Oak gives +1 Maximum Endurance Charge

thanks a lot for your advice!

I'm glad this will be your first expirience in a great game :) good choice!

On Normal: Kill Alira and Kraityn, save oak for 40HP. On Cruel: Kill everyone. On Merciless: Kill everyone.

Oh really? That 40 hp makes a difference? I figured an extra skill point would help more. But I guess you only need so many skill points to get everything you need.

Thanks for the quick response!

"

MasKScarin wrote:

Oh really? That 40 hp makes a difference? I figured an extra skill point would help more. But I guess you only need so many skill points to get everything you need.

Thanks for the quick response!

Yeah most new players don't know that the +40 maximum life is not just a flat +40 to your life but to your maximum life pool. This means if you take a lot of life nodes that increase your life % that +40 to maximum you got from Oak will scale up, making it far more valuable than the small resist or the skill point for builds that take life nodes.

Yea, +40 hp goes to base life which is then multiplied by %increased life. We have around 180% life from tree, so that's 40 * 2,8 = 112 life added to our life pool :)

So I have a fairly important question. I found a half decent Sire of Shards on my first HC character in this league and I remember Sire of Shards being really good for Ball Lightning last patch. Is this still true? Would using Sire of Shards with this build be worth my time or am I sort of just wasting it here? Also if it wouldn't work well for this build, any suggest where it might work better?

I made some change on the Arc version of this build : Here the tree

Summary of the changes with the one proposed by the OP :
+20 dex
+20% crit chance
+5% max life
+79% dmg (spell + ele + lightning)
+3% pen lightning
+2% cast speed

-30% max ES
-1 jewel socket
-Ghost reaver (leech on ES)

I don't really understand what Ghost Reaver give to this build, so I skipped it.
It's between 123 pts trees, but you can take out ES/life/dmg nodes as necessary.

I haven't taken ghost reaver (yet) myself. I'm level 84, sitting at 4.5k life, 3.5k ES. I find by far the biggest threats to my life are from chaos damage, so moving my leech to ES seems like it might be counterproductive.

Obviously in a general sense it is reasonable to have leech apply to your "first layer" of defense. Without GR the leech isn't doing anything for you when you're just taking ES damage - but chaos damage kind of throws that for a loop. I've been doing some phantasmagoria maps and I'm quite certain the boss would have killed me if I couldn't leech. I suppose there's always the option to just cube up maps with chaos bosses, but you still run into chaos now and again just with random monster spawns.

I am planning to follow this guide with the CI variation.
Should I kill all bandits in normal difficulty for the extra skill point or the extra mana would be better ?

"

Roxanne wrote:

I am planning to follow this guide with the CI variation.
Should I kill all bandits in normal difficulty for the extra skill point or the extra mana would be better ?

Warlord's mark pretty much handles the mana demands of the build. Arc isn't expensive.