[3.0] Balance - A CwC Frostbolt EE MoM VP guide

My initial obvious concern is that this build is not res capped. This is typically due to an over-emphasis on unique items. Looking at your build, only 1 item is non-unique.

The build also has 4147 life and 1680 es. It appears as if you are hybrid accidentally. You would want to shift items that contain ES into armor/evasion/strength based pieces with life on them for improved survivability when possible. I'm specifically looking at Le heup, your Crystal belt, and windscreams once you resolve your +1 curse issue.

For the life of me, I cannot rationalize why you are wearing an infernal mantle.

Your crit rate on frostbolt appears to be 38.75%. It's a neat idea to utilize choir in this way, however I believe the overall usefulness of this is low. Your multi is very low. Crit builds need multi. I would suggest Elemental overload at this rate...

Lightning walker adds almost no damage to the build.

The constitution wheel should likely have been completed by level 90.

Overall, I believe there weer a lot of possibilities to get more hp and damage from the build that were overlooked, and too many uniques added. Not unplayable obviously, but plenty of fine-tuning to do.

Hi there,

I am new to the POE world only logged about 200hrs of playing and this was the first build I started for Harbringer league.
Do you mind checking out my build for the frostbolt witch? Currently using bisco to MF and my regular amulet is in my inventory.

What upgrade do you think I can improve on and why. I've watched your YouTube video and I am just amazed how fast you were casting!
I've been using Storm Orb to proc my AMark and arcane surge, using WLMark as an aura. Life is about 4.7k ES1.4k and mana about 1/2 reserved with 1000 usable resistance are almost capped with fire at 73 rest 100 and capped at 75.

I can manage creep waves till tier 16 but can't do anything about the bosses cuz I'm so fragile and would die almost immediately or out of mana due to mind over matter.

Best regards,
Paul

Sorry for the wait on the reply!

Welp, I've been looking over your version of the build, and I only have minor things to state. Getting to Tier 16 maps is awesome, I wish I had done so with it. That said I can't speak to the build's capabilities beyond that. However:

Your character loaded into PoB shows 4568 total life, with 1855 total mana with mom (975 unreserved). The issue of mana being lost when damage taken is legitimate, one of the ways I had addressed this was with one of our rings having the 'damage taken gained as mana over 4 seconds' vaal corruption. I specifically purchased a ring for that corruption. It worked fairly well to me.

You spent 10 points after VP to get a total of:
8% Max Life
71% Projectile Damage
28% Stun avoidance
+30 dexterity
+10 intelligence
20% projectile speed

I think I would have spent those 10 points differently.
Walking over to Devotion gives almost double the amount of hitpoints, and about 70% of the damage.
Walking up to Purity of Flesh gives twice as much life as well, with chaos res and opens up more spell crit opportunity. Also can drop curse ring for 11 points instead of 10.

Your approach put a lot of emphasis on evasion nodes it seems. However, it only ended up with 1119 evasion rating. Seems really low, I would emphasize a different type of defense at that point. Higher block values and more armour would be ideal. Your consideration of Arctic Armour isn't bad, but it does suggest dropping MoM to make it work. Meh.

After doing so much walking to get to the constitution wheel, Cruel prep, and Discipline & Training, I personally like to get the full hp contribution of those nodes. ~40% more hp sitting there. (8 points)

THe initial build made up for crit by using the staff crit nodes. Even then, crit felt really low. Since you're not using a staff, I believe you should adjust for crit with a crit main hand. Probably not Catalyst. The Binerots are also weird... you're not fire capped.

You could and should consider a wise oak and a rumi's considering your approach. the sorrow of the divine flask seems unnecessary.

I do like your inclusion of the alchemist wheel. A lot, actually. But I didn't have the points for it on my version. I'm not sure if you do, or if other nodes are better. I want to say that the build has other priorities, but again you went farther than I did in building the character so it's up to you.

The rathpith is cool, and it looks like it is fun to use... but it's only 25% block chance. block chance means complete attack damage negation. I prefer block to any other type of defense in-game. I would likely not use it in favor of a higher block chance shield.

And finally.... Three Dragons is giving you ignite damage, but ignites are really gutted. I don't think that hat is doing you any reasonable good. I would scrap it for a high HP and lab enchanted rare.

Hope some of that helps you press on, would love to hear that you manage to down a guardian with the build.

Cheers

nice idea! I'd like to try it on 3.1, and I make some changes for VP and other possible changes.

I'm still worry about the mana issue if take MOM, but I prepare to use Blood Magic instead. It gets high life regeneration(about 10%, if we abandon a little damage, it can get over 13%). Hard to speak clearly with my poor english :p

https://pastebin.com/g8Gry23W

Please give some suggestions after you check my pob, thank you very much :)

Hello!

Thanks for your interest. Your version didn't look like it included blood magic? I am curious how you plan to use it.

Some of your points could be better, but still very good.

I don't think you will need totem resistance for your spell totem. I don't think you will be happy with arcane surge only on your flame dash, but that is up to you.

Chance to Ignite is fine as a 29% more multiplier. Empower is definitely better when you can make it work, and having a red socket for life leech is a nice quality of life option.

I would likely prioritize fire penetration over ignite chance personally. At that point, damage is not the issue, however monsters with elemental resistances would be.

7k+ hp with MoM is good, I look forward to your blood magic changes. Also, I'm looking at volley carefully as it might be amazing.

Thanks for your reply!

I calculate the Chance to Ignite and Fire Penetration with Mastermind of Discord and EE, against monsters with 0%, 40%(the shaper) and 75% fire resistence. Only against 75% FR issue makes Fire Penetration do more damage than Chance to Ignite. And 'the multiplier' of Chance to Ignite is even higher than Lv3 Empower. But yes, the red socket gives more options between damage(Lv4 Empower or FP) and survive(LL). In gerenal, it's better than Chance to Ignite, as you say.

Totem Resistance and Arcane Surge, I will adjust them to the real battle effects, but still hard to spare enough sockets for Kaom's Heart equipped.(Sigh...)

With MOM, we get more ehp(over 9000) than with Blood Magic(about 7800). If the node 'Battle Rouse' - '3% damage taken gained as mana over 4 seconds when hit' can solve the mana problem(empty when tons damage taken in short time), it's not neccessary to pick Blood Magic. Changes I supposed with Blood Magic like these:

use stone golem instead of ice golem
use vitality aura with essence worm

It provides 1050+ life regen totally. You can also find that I pick a lot of life regen nodes on passive tree. This build will lose VP likely on 3.1, the leech cap limits the recover speed, that's why I try high life regen and then think of Blood Magic.

However, if MOM can work well, Blood Magic won't be the first choice.

"

Kwitch wrote:

7k+ hp with MoM is good, I look forward to your blood magic changes. Also, I'm looking at volley carefully as it might be amazing.

Hey Kwitch. What do you mean by "volley" here?

I'm running this in Turmoil with some minor changes - more life instead of the staff cluster, and using a Kaom's Heart. It's fun! A little fragile for me, but I'm used to playing characters that reliably leech to full HP three times a second. Thanks for the build.

Thanks for the build! Do you happen to know what the Stat Priorities would be?

When I played the build, I had no real issues with fitting or stat priorities, however life, strength, and mana were all very nice.

Hello,
looking for a witch build for next league, and just see your's. Just try it before,
and look very fun, like it. thx for this, just found my build for the 3.1 :)