Question About CI Synergy

If you pick up CI, is it better to pick up Ghost Reaver or Zealot's Oath? I think picking up both would be very costly and would leave a bit to be desired in the offense department.

On that note, is Ghost Reaver even worth it for a Witch, or will we never really get to the point where life steal on spells is viable for EHP (assuming we are going with a focus on elemental spells like fire, ice, lightning)?

I am not for sure either. Definitely wondering the same thing, whether ghost reaver is worth it with CI or not. Can anyone weigh in at all that might know more?

Suppose my question applies for zealot's oath as well.

I'm pretty sure CI is dead...

I would like to know this as well. For some of the life regen passives on the tree you have to get some life nodes to each them.. like the templar. someone help us :P

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renroval wrote:

I'm pretty sure CI is dead...

Granted I have not played far into the OB and didn't get a chance to play the CB, I did follow the changes to CI, and I don't think we have experimented enough with the endgame play to make such a concrete statement on the state of CI.

It may be less viable than it was in CB, but it is a build that I believe many people still find intriguing, and also a build that I think many will try out at endgame. There are plenty of nodes that support the build, and I'm sure there are plenty of itemization choices to support it as well.

The question is not whether or not the Keystone is dead, but if we pick it up, how should we support it with other nodes? More specifically, as I requested in the OP, how do we decide between Zealot's Oath and Ghost Reaver, or should we avoid both of them?

Since I always played CI (for my witches at least) in CB I kind of like it.

In my opinion it is still viable. It was rather op in CB due to the ridiculous amounts of ES you could reach while being immune to chaos damage.

The concept is still the same, you want it to absorb unavoidable burst dmg, then avoid any damage to trigger the regeneration. Rinse and repeat.

The huge amount made sure that you can survive the big bursts or that you could survive in a scenario, where you wouldn't receive high burst dmg, but steady dmg for a certain amount of time - not allowing you to trigger the regeneration, which was basically the problem, that was countered by the huge amount.

There is no way in hell, to reach the huge amounts of ES again. But now we have the option of regenerating ES aside from the usual regeneration by relying on health regeneration instead.

As you mentioned already, most (life regeneration) nodes are somewhere around health nodes, which are (almost) completely useless to us. Whether or not the regeneration is worth investing into them anyway, is for you to judge.

Additional measures to get some health regeneration (and thereby ES regeneration, given you specced into the node) are from items (those affixes also received a buff with the current patch), Rejuvenation Totem and the Vitality aura. All of them come with down-sides but they remain solid options.

With all that being said, I personally plan to get CI on my latest character. As a summoner I see myself in the position to not get hit too frequently (or at the very least, see myself able to avoid dmg long enough for the regeneration to trigger reliably) so that in theory, I should be fine. Only experience can show me whether I'm right or wrong.

For a "direct" caster, I personally do not believe, that it is still all that good of an option. Maybe if you work GR into your build. Mobs are hitting very hard and have more life than they used to, which denies you the possibility of comfortably reaching the regeneration trigger (because you either have to avoid dmg by dodging it or - what most people did or tried to do - killing/controlling your enemies in a way that left them almost unable to retaliate (i.e. freezing them to death or killing them before they can become a danger).

Almost needless to say, that I believe a CI spec is becoming even more gear dependent.

To sum up, the regeneration could make up for the loss in possible maximum capacity (instead of losing one part of your ES after another until you are finally in the position to wait for the regeneration to trigger, you now have a steady regeneration between the received hits, that should be able to counter the loss in maximum capacity) but comes at a price in terms of gearing,skill point choices as well as the need for certain abilities (Rejuv. Totem, Vitality).

GGG didn't want to annihilate CI (they could have just removed it then) but tone it down to a more reasonable level. How good they did this, only time and experience can tell us.

So I do not believe it is "dead" and even if it is, it won't be for long.

€: As a further addendum, I would like to say that I personally believe, that CI is going to be "more difficult" because you have to know when you will take what kind of dmg etc. Whereas with a life based spec you always can rely on your life flasks saving you (hopefully at least :P)

just do the math all es passive ho was 6% is now 8% if you pick (not shadow part) es passive around witch give to you (lvl 75) only -20% form the original 50% ci and if you pick (lvl 75+) es points near the center of the tree is only -10% form original 50% ci

I'm trying to build towards Claw Witch with Increased Melee Damage on Full Life, Blood Rage, Chaos Inoculation, and Ghost Reaver with the Soul Raker nodes. I need a handful more levels and some better sockets to actually get to put it all together, but it seems fun. Probably not viable, but whatever.

What is CI?