Starter Builds - Question/Help

I've been reading the here and on reddit's forums about starter builds, end game builds. I've never made it to the maps but I'm going to try this season.

My question is, for the first 10 acts, it seems players are using a starter build and after that, they change up their characters to another build? How are you changing the passive tree? How much of the tree is getting changed or are you? or are you starting a new character and run through the 10 acts again with the gear you've collected?

I've always like playing the witch, so I look at what players are using on ninjs's web-site, click on the highest DPS, then I copy the passive tree. I start struggling with survivability around acts 7 or 8.

I've also watched many of the starter/help vids for noobs, but they really only get into the basics of the game but never cover the move from the acts to maps.

Suggestions or advice would be greatly helpful.

TY

edit:spelling

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My question is, for the first 10 acts, it seems players are using a starter build and after that, they change up their characters to another build? How are you changing the passive tree? How much of the tree is getting changed or are you? or are you starting a new character and run through the 10 acts again with the gear you've collected?

Respecting is done using respect points. You get about 20 of these during the campaign, if you do quests, beyond that you will need orbs of regret. This league it will also be possible with a new gold mechanic. Whether you are respecting in this method, or rerolling a second character would probably depend on how many points you need to change. Reasons for doing this might be finding something that enables a different build that you could do on start, or perhaps there is an optimal strategy to go faster by switching builds at some point. If changes classes, you might need a second character.

Starter builds are referring to builds that don't have requirements that might otherwise make them difficult or impossible to use at the start of the league. If your goal is just reach maps, you should be able to find a good build that doesn't require you swap builds along the way.

If they're talking about endgame builds they might be talking about builds that can do ubers. You probably want a starter type build that you don't need much currency to enable it to clear maps.

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I've always like playing the witch, so I look at what players are using on ninjs's web-site, click on the highest DPS, then I copy the passive tree. I start struggling with survivability around acts 7 or 8.

This might not be the best. It's a good place to start looking rather than the bottom of dps, but there might be a few problems. Firstly those builds likely have extremely good gear. It's possible they don't function as well with the gear you are using. Secondly builds with top damage might not have great defense, which might be part of why you are running into survivability problems. Not sure what the best witch build for new players reaching early maps would be, hopefully someone can chime in. If not perhaps look at some streams tier list of what they think will be good for the league. The forum is a pretty good place to get advice if you find you do get stuck in the late acts. Someone will be able to give you some pointers.

I'm looking on your highest ranks witch, the tree looks too spread out to me. It could be that all those nodes are good later on in the build, but it seams to me like at lvl 60 it's not going to be very efficient for damage. If you find someone's build guide to follow on your next build, they will often have an order to build the tree in, that will be most efficient at all levels. If you are taking a lot of travel nodes or pathing to clusters before you need them, even if it's a good build, it might feel a bit sluggish while levelling.

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Starter builds are referring to builds that don't have requirements that might otherwise make them difficult or impossible to use at the start of the league. If your goal is just reach maps, you should be able to find a good build that doesn't require you swap builds along the way.

This is what I was looking for!

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I'm looking on your highest ranks witch, the tree looks too spread out to me. It could be that all those nodes are good later on in the build, but it seams to me like at lvl 60 it's not going to be very efficient for damage. If you find someone's build guide to follow on your next build, they will often have an order to build the tree in, that will be most efficient at all levels. If you are taking a lot of travel nodes or pathing to clusters before you need them, even if it's a good build, it might feel a bit sluggish while levelling.

Your comments and suggestions are greatly appreciated! I'll start looking up starter builds and pay closer attention to how I'm assigning my nodes. Thank you!

I finished my third season and had great success with Pohx Righteous Fire. A lot advantages:

You can take RF to the Endgame and get all four voidstones
Expedition is easy with Explode and gets you currency + gear early
No need for big respecs
Potential to transition into aura stacking (did this first time this league)

The biggest advantage though is the vast amount of content for this build. Pohx has a whole website basically covering everything you need to know.

Yep can confirm righteous fire is a great build for new players.

I haven't played witch for a while so I don't want to throw out any suggestions that might not be relevant currently. There should be plenty of good options though.

This might be a good place to look

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-forum/22

I can see lots of builds listed, you might need to do some reading to figure which one are good for a new player. GL with the league.