[3.13 / 3.14] Transitioning Enki's Arc Witch into a 50M+ DPS Boss Killer

EDITS:

3.14

All the POBs and numbers in this guide still reference patch 3.13.

So far, the manifesto for 3.14 alludes to the following changes we care about:
‣ RF scalar reduced
‣ Wave of Conviction exposure reduced

Will be a DPS decrease, but shouldn't break the build. For now I'm cautiously optimistic that we've survived the nerfs with minor bruising at worst!

_________________________________________________________________________

OBJECTIVE

Provide a bridge from Enki’s Arc Witch starter to a full on 50M+ Sirus DPS boss murdering build.

I used Enki’s Arc Witch (https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1147951) as a league starter in Ritual (3.13). Loved it and was able to easily cruise through red maps. I started having trouble with the super end game bosses (Cortex, Maven, Uber Atziri, The Feared). It may be doable, but the fairly low ceiling on damage makes it hard. This build is my attempt to see how far I could push Arc, keeping the character and much of the gear from Enki’s Arc Witch. Enki’s build was easily able to farm up enough currency for this transition and this build allowed me to very easily do all game content.

_________________________________________________________________________

OVERVIEW


Pros/Cons

+ Massively more damage with 50M+ boss DPS
+ Defenses get better, but not by a ton

- More expensive. Took me about 15 ex to get to 25M DPS. Current gear is ~80 ex and I have 55M Sirus DPS. Quite a bit of room for further improvement. Numbers may have since drifted.

- Less fluid play. Greater Spell Echo locks you in place for an instant while it casts which can take some getting used to. Doesn’t end up mattering if everything dies instantly.

Gameplay

‣ Bind Arcane Cloak to left click so it casts on cooldown
‣ Toggle on all 5 Golems, Wrath, and Righteous Fire ahead of time
‣ Flask piano, Arc, Flame Dash, and repeat for killing mobs
‣ Drop Sigil of Power, Vaal Righteous Fire, and Wave of Conviction for bursting bosses (18M DPS without these 3 which is plenty for mobs, 55M with them for bosses)

_________________________________________________________________________

EXPLANATION

What is Changing?

Crit from ditching Elemental Overload for a massive DPS increase
Greater Spell Echo via Pledge of Hands gives a fat more multiplier
Shock from ditching Ele Focus also makes space for arcane surge in our arc 6L
Righteous Fire always on for more "more" multiplier. We use Agnostic to live through it and have the vaal righteous fire for big bosses.
Bastion of Elements (lose Heart of Destruction) for more defense as we take less life
Curses - Adding Assassins Mark and Ele Weakness to Conductivity. Second curse from anointing amulet with Whispers of Doom. 3rd curse from lvl 5 awakened hextouch.
Gear - Jewels + Flasks changing to accommodate crit, with the rest of the gear largely unchanged from Enki’s build

What is Staying the Same?

‣ Golems (5) and those ascendency nodes
‣ Mastermind of Discord for enhanced exposure and mana regen
‣ Arcane Cloak and MOM for defense
‣ Sigil of Power for damage
‣ Flame Dash setup is fine as-is
‣ Wave of Conviction stays though it’s manual cast


_________________________________________________________________________

GEAR

General

‣ Uniques: Cloak of Defiance, Crown of the Inward Eye, Atziri’s Foible, and Essence Worm are all fine to keep from Enki’s build
‣ On remaining items, get mana everywhere you can. Mana regen is secondary but still important.
‣ New glove base with 30% reduced mana but 30% chance to refund is really nice
‣ Assassin’s Mark on ring
‣ Mana recovery rate on belt
‣ Culling strike on gloves (or in gems if you must)
‣ Other than these noted, you can fill your rares with damage / resist mods, use my POB for ideas

Jewels

‣ Anima Stone for your final golem
‣ Watcher’s Eye - 2 wrath stats if you can afford it
‣ Pure Talent if you need stats
‣ Clear Mind is great as we only have wrath left
‣ Large Cluster needs Scintillating Idea - lots of other decent options beyond that
‣ Medium Clusters for crit (See Optionality for other ideas)
‣ As much crit multi as you can stack on the remaining rare jewel slots
‣ No small clusters, we prefer to use those slots for rare crit multi jewels

Flasks

‣ Bottled Faith, Cinderswallow, and a diamond flask really juice your crit
‣ Replica Lavianga’s is a nice mana flask for damage, though a normal enduring eternal is better in other respects

_________________________________________________________________________

OPTIONALITY

Tree

My POB has a tree for “Non-Controversial Minimum” that has 111 fairly clear points to take. There are a bunch of options for the last 10-12 points and I have a few in the POB as separate trees.

‣ I personally took 2 medium crit jewels

‣ If I were pushing to 100, I’d ditch those for a bunch of life / mana recovery and maybe even a flask regen cluster. (suggestion from u/PaleoclassicalPants on reddit)

‣ If I were to hit 100, I’d strongly consider getting a second large cluster in the left of the tree for a couple of good notables and 2 extra jewel slots to stack crit multi

Other

‣ Replacing Wrath with Zealotry is a marginal DPS decrease and the watcher’s eye for that is waaay cheaper. Probably just a good idea until you are really deep into min-maxing. (suggestion from u/zixav on reddit)

‣ I took out clarity, but it does offer massive mana regen at the cost of not being able to use clear mind (easily replaced with a rare crit multi jewel), a gem slot, and some reserved mana (which will decrease DPS). If you find yourself running out of mana before everything dies, this is a strong move. (suggestion from u/PaleoclassicalPants on reddit)

‣ A main con here is greater spell echo basically stunning you. We have damage to spare, so consider a weapon swap for mobs and we can always switch back to pledge of hands for bosses. (suggestion from u/anne_dobalina on reddit)

‣ Wave of Conviction is a little clunky to use. Storm brands can apply our conductivity and weakness more easily but you give up the exposure. Hydrosphere is also an option (suggestion from AsceticPOE) and it has exposure, but less than WoC. Damage-wise, WoC > Hydropshere > Storm Brand. Decide on a skill based on your usability vs damage tradeoff.

‣ This general structure would work for a variety of lightning skills. With minimal tweaking, you could use ball lightning, crackling lance, or a handful of other skills instead of arc.


_________________________________________________________________________

Welcoming questions, critiques, feedback, thoughts.

Last edited by choco11#0687 on Apr 12, 2021, 7:32:09 PM
Last bumped on Jun 25, 2021, 3:10:05 PM
One suggestion to keep the costs down at startup is that while the ideal 4 crit stat jewels are 4ex+ each, you can get 3 stat jewels for next to nothing. Not sure these are the best setup searches but they are what I use:

Good enough jewels
https://www.pathofexile.com/trade/search/Ritual/porMvXXS0

Better jewels
https://www.pathofexile.com/trade/search/Ritual/j8gMZElSX
"
BuckFutter9 wrote:


This is real close to my search. Personally, I had plenty of crit chance from flasks / gear, so my focus was 3 x crit multi mods. Even if the 4th mod was a complete banana, that's a lot of damage. And I can always garden craft non-crit to crit to maybe hit the right critical chance in that 4th slot for a ridiculous jewel.
"
choco11 wrote:
"
BuckFutter9 wrote:


This is real close to my search. Personally, I had plenty of crit chance from flasks / gear, so my focus was 3 x crit multi mods. Even if the 4th mod was a complete banana, that's a lot of damage. And I can always garden craft non-crit to crit to maybe hit the right critical chance in that 4th slot for a ridiculous jewel.
I am going to have to copy this idea. What do you feel is a good crit chance to be at for a minimum, assuming flasks are running? I can't recall what mine is but I do notice that at times I burn down bosses and other times there is a period of lackluster damage - which I assume means the crits are not hitting at that point.
I took a look at my POB to confirm, and it looks like I literally have 0 crit chance on my items directly.

‣ Bottled Faith / Cinderswallow / Diamond Flask
‣ Assassins' Mark (ring)
‣ Watcher's Eye
‣ Tree per POB

Just those things get you to 85%+ crit chance which should be plenty. Its possible to hit 95% if you go the two medium crit jewel route but that may not be optimal.
Can this build run 100% Deli T19 maps, any videos to showcase this build ?
As opposed to 100% Deli, this is a bossing build with B+ survivability, A- clear, and A+ bossing. I was killing conqueror's before they finished their first attack animation.

I'm speculating a little here because I didn't even try 100% Deli given that my computer would melt. I suspect the build will struggle. Plenty of DPS / clear, but with so much damage coming at you and greater spell echo making movement choppy, I think you'd die a lot.

I've never recorded gameplay. I'd figure it out but I'm done with league. Next time I write something up, I'll make sure to take some video.
Last edited by choco11#0687 on Mar 1, 2021, 10:01:31 AM
Hey man great guide! What would say is the optimal path to begin transitioning to this build? Getting a 6L pledge of hands and respec'ing?
"
pulsereaction wrote:
Hey man great guide! What would say is the optimal path to begin transitioning to this build? Getting a 6L pledge of hands and respec'ing?
That's what I would do, get the 6L and be ready to go before changing your tree around. You will need to make sure you deal with any resists on your wands, map it out in POB to see what all you need to change. Be forewarned, the damage only really comes on line once you get the jewels and curses setup in place. You can map without them but the real crazy damage only comes when you have Awakened Hextouch at level 5 and can curse enemies with both Conductivity and Elemental Weakness. Again, neither is really needed for maps but those are what will allow you to burst down bosses. The build is also quite squishy but the damage makes up for it - I was able to do Maven last night and only used one or two portals, the phasing happens quickly with all the damage so you don't have to dodge a ton. During boss setup put out three Storm Brands, start casting Wave of Conviction, as soon as you see the curses applied let loose. Sometimes you will die but most often the burst is sufficient to phase or kill.

The damage is absurd but you need to put in a fair amount to make it work.
"
pulsereaction wrote:
Hey man great guide! What would say is the optimal path to begin transitioning to this build? Getting a 6L pledge of hands and respec'ing?


Yep - step 0 for the transition is to get crit up and running so:
‣ 6L Pledge of Hands
‣ Second Curse via amulet enchant + assassin's mark ring
‣ Cinderswallow + Diamond flask
‣ Jewels
‣ respec tree

This should be a material DPS increase and crit should be largely online.

You can wait on the rest including bottled faith, 3rd curse (awakened hextouch), and better gems (awakened spell echo, anomalous golems, etc).

Report Forum Post

Report Account:

Report Type

Additional Info