Elemental bow witch

I don't know why but I love the witch character on this game. This is my third build for a witch and I wanted a twist becoming less than a normal summoner/totem/fire/ice/lightning witch build around there so I made this stuff.

My third witch use bow skills as a tool for damage mainly Rain of Arrows for multiple mobs and Elemental Hit for single targets. At first I don't think this'll work well but it surely does give a dps. I Still lack some decent armors and stuff but I'm aiming to have these tree for future For now this i my current passive tree Advices are accepted though I'm just exploring the advantages of the skill tree.


Edit: I just swap to bow when I got a decent amount of dex, but I started using firestorm first cus I start my passives at getting Blast Radius. I started as a regular witch though but I thought of using bow so I swap for it and actually works for me.

My very first char was a physical Ranger build that i discarded at lvl60, so here is my (limited) advice.
1) Rain of arrow sucks. Its a pure physical skill and won't benefit from any elemental nodes you take. You have no access to physical damage and projectile nodes. They are all over in the ranger area. Use Lightning Arrow instead. With chain and LMP it is a very very effective area skill. Pick up static blows. Unlike ranger builds you can pick it up easily.
2) DEX requirement for a thicket bow is 179. You will need every DEX node you can reach. Maybe you will have to go to the shadow tree.
3) With that low DEX your accuracy will suck. You will have to pick up Resolute Technique, so don't bother investing points in criticals. The only way to avoid this is to get a Lionseye's Glare bow (It never misses. You can therefor make a crit build with it, but its very expensive. 20 exalts or so.)
4)How do you plan to regenerate?
a) You can take Ghost Reaver and a life leech gem. LOH doesn't work with GR.
b) Pick up Zealots Oath, although the 1% from templar is pretty meager.
c) Get rid of ES by taking Eldritch battery. LL will work on your HP pool the traditional way. EB is a serious option, because aside from the Wrath aura you won't need any blue sockets, but lots of green ones. You can forget about pure ES gear therefor. Downside: you will also loose the 50% stun protection every ES user gets. With Unwavering Stance out of reach wearing an eye of chayula for late game is (almost) a must.
Personally i would aim for a pure HP or a pure ES build. CI or EB. You will need the points you save on HP or ES nodes, because your build will probably go in every direction to pick up key nodes.
6) Slaughter? Bows ain't melee weapons.

Actually. Im using rain of arrows with weapon elemental damage and my gears have +elemental damage so its still hurts a lot. Thats the truth

edit: I forgot to tell that I also use anger and wrath aura so it still have elemental damage.

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Saydv wrote:

Actually. Im using rain of arrows with weapon elemental damage and my gears have +elemental damage so its still hurts a lot. Thats the truth

edit: I forgot to tell that I also use anger and wrath aura so it still have elemental damage.

I really can't see how RoA can benefit from elemental damage. It is a skill that increases your PHYSICAL damage. Weapon elemental damage increases the elemental part you have on your bow.
But hey, i ain't no expert on bow mechanics. Maybe i'm completly wrong. You should make a post in the Ranger forum and ask what a good support for RoA would be (incr elemental or whatever?.

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Bada_Bing wrote:

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Saydv wrote:

Actually. Im using rain of arrows with weapon elemental damage and my gears have +elemental damage so its still hurts a lot. Thats the truth

edit: I forgot to tell that I also use anger and wrath aura so it still have elemental damage.

I really can't see how RoA can benefit from elemental damage. It is a skill that increases your PHYSICAL damage. Weapon elemental damage increases the elemental part you have on your bow.
But hey, i ain't no expert on bow mechanics. Maybe i'm completly wrong. You should make a post in the Ranger forum and ask what a good support for RoA would be (incr elemental or whatever?.

It benefits from it perfectly, since you can use (hatred), wrath and anger. You can also use an ELEMENTAL BOW. It apparently can't miss, so it's very good for a witch ele bow build. I also just quickly made up a CI bow witch build, although you'll want to go for a physical bow with hatred and possibly a 45%+ blackgleam. You'll get enough life leech from blood rage if you use physical bow, so you don't have to worry about that. You'll want to get some str from gear tho, 30 should be enough, and you are gonna need pretty good ES gear, something along the lines of 530ES chest, 250 ES circlet, 55 ES belt, 90 ES gloves and 170 ES boots. With that and disc you should get around 4k ES. Support gems would be faster attacks, weapon ele dmg, increased area, conc effect. It's quite a high end build, but if you're going both CI and bow on a witch, you can expect that. Rain of arrows right now is the skill people are switching to, to be able to do really hard maps. They do it with blood magic gem+life leech+conc effect+faster attacks+WED though, to be able to run as many auras as possible, but that is kinda off topic.

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgMBVysHY-aBEVC71jvhwFTi96cri3ptGcHzoqN_xn5ZJ6nBxSy_hq4V19eGVmPsGMNtHNyTJzdmLKam6zeD6rq0DBEPb55D0gPbKk0VICzpytMZtPqx6mLexs2YvqeNfre2bmnEuNX43Q38xVb63Ub8TmOndEGkwi0fj6ZSUz1fEZado_yrDkinNOOEwFFwUvPqFr_rY7b3ES-IaxnXmZqXlZf0j_rb50cGX2q0GuLLJT8XHZstOrM=

I'm currently playing a Witch (lvl62) just like that. Using Elemental Hit, Faster Attacks and Weapon Ele Dmg for singletarget and Rain of Arrows with Conc Effect and Weapon Ele Dmg for AoE. Also using (low quality) Elemental Weakness and only one Set of Bear Traps. Also using as many Auras as possible, to make this whole build somewhat effective with shitty gear.

My passives look like this: http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgMABAcEswdjCPQTWxRNGS4aOB0UHwIn7S0fMok2xTbpO-E8BT1fTLNN2FJTVElVxlXWVytX4lnzXz9k52aeajttGXKpc1N35XkDfNl-WX_GgW-CHoM4i3qMdozPj0aQVZeVnjyiAKKjpwinK6eErKq53cAawFTB88T2z2XQ0NSP2CTa3dsL4vfjaudS7DjvDu988i_z3fZI-tI=

The Elemental Hit doesn't really benefit from starting as a Witch and taking the AoE nodes, but it is much easier to handle than Rain of Arrows for single target. The problem is also that you will need RT when using Ele Hit, which costs more skillpoints. I don't know the exact mechanics, but from what I've seen Rain of Arrows can't miss. Ele Hit can do slightly more damage than Rain of Arrows.

The damage of the build is, for having bad socketed gear and only one small Attackspeed Roll, really good. However... against mobs with high resists you will run into problems at Merciless (meaning that you will have to kite a lot). Having a Quality Elemental Weakness should really help, aswell as good sockets to use more Sets of Beartraps, which you can link to Added Fire or Culling Strike or something.

Rain of Arrows is, from what I've experienced, much more precise than Lightning Arrow Builds. You can just snipe Necromancers, for example.

I think a Templar or Marauder with such a build would make more sense. Taking at least Iron Grip and maybe getting to the Duelist Area should boost your effectiveness by a lot.

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgMBVysHY-aBEVC71jvhwFTi96cri3ptGcHzoqN_xn5ZJ6nBxSy_hq4V19eGVmPsGMNtHNyTJzdmLKam6zeD6rq0DBEPb55D0gPbKk0VICzpytMZtPqx6mLexs2YvqeNfre2bmnEuNX43Q38xVb63Ub8TmOndEGkwi0fj6ZSUz1fEZado_yrDkinNOOEwFFwUvPqFr_rY7b3ES-IaxnXmZqXlZf0j_rb50cGX2q0GuLLJT8XHZstOrM=[/url][/quote]

This looks similar to the way I want to build/play my witch. Just wondering if there would be any issues with accuracy? Also would there be issues with stuns and freezes?

From my experience, RoA doesn't know accuracy issues.

put rain of arrows in a ranged totem and use poison arrow as your main attack. you wouldn't need to worry about accuracy and you could even go for the dual totem build and cast two of em (the other one could use explosive arrows since thats good for single target and clusters missing a few shots from explosive arrows from a totem is good because it will let the exlosive arrow trigger before the target mob dies). that frees up a lot of nodes that you can use for survivability.

the bow builds are very heavily gear dependant, I play bow shadow, and I am having a lot of trouble already, I honestly think bow is ranger thing, if you are going to go elemental, just use hatred, wrath, anger and use lioneye's glare with lightning arrow with (chain+LMP+WED+Mana Leech).

the huge issue with bow witch for me was lack of dex, it's very challenging to get 212 dex for lioneye's glare (and you do need lioneye's glare because you are pretty much bit far away from marauder tree).

I quit my bow witch before level 70s because she just had lots of problem keeping up with dex requirements unlike my EB/Shadow (and how there are just many unnecessary nodes to take).