Defense is the best offense - Tanky CI/Vaal Pact/Ghost Reaver Witch

Hello everyone,

This is the first build i have designed myself. It is not tested yet, although I currently level a character for it.
The basic idea behind this build is to be able to facetank most mobs. In order to do so, we build high energy shield and block/spell block chances and complement them with life leech/ghost reaver later on. We try to avoid mana issues by turning a major weakness in CI into a bonus - stuns. Making heavy use of Cast when Stunned, we are able to avoid most mana issues.

This build is made to solo maps; running in groups is possible as you can provide a frontline, but you dont have enough dps to be of great usage.

Passives
Spoiler

We start by taking energy shield nodes and spell damage. Then we move towards the Templar, grabbing our first block nodes on the way. In the Templar area, we take more block nodes, increased energy shield and some elemental resistances.

Now we expand towards CI and then move downwards towards the Shadow, taking block nodes and ghost reaver. Finally we move down from the Templar past the Marauder, taking more block nodes on the way and finishing with vaal pact.

Full build:
http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgMBAW8EBwW1CSELYQzyEVAVUBXXFkAXLxmKGo8bJR0UHU8egR8CIuonqSlPKjgrDSycLL8tHy3SNbk2xTrYPC1CS0NjRKtHBkuNS65Ms0z_TdhPfVAwUWBSDVWuVdZWY1j1W_dca18_X2pjQ2TnZp5nm20ZcLtxTXfjeA15aHy7fll-4n_GgFaApIIQhEiFfYXFhq6Leox2j0aPpo_6lSCaz5u1ncSgtKKjpcunCKcrqW6pla4-r2y0xbcxwQTBxcHzwuzDbcWK0NDYJNlb2j3b59-K37DfvuL35FHo1ukC7BjsOPLh8wb22vrS-wn7qv8c


Gems
Spoiler

We use, as mentioned above, Cast when Stunned gems with almost every other spell we use.
Our main gems are Enduring Cry, Blood Rage and Discharge. The first two produce endurance and frenzy charges which are used up by Discharge, our main damage tool which we combine with life leech. Other notable supports for Discharge are Increased Area of Effect for more splash, Concentrated Effect for more damage, but smaller explosion radius, or increased critical strike chance to enhance the critical chance which we have from our power charges.
Our CwS setup also contains some defensive spells. These are Molten Shell and possibly Arctic Armour or Immortal Call.

Detailed description of defensive gems
Spoiler

Molten Shell is a must take. This spell provides you with high armour, giving you significantly more physical survivability. The damage when the shield is broken is a nice bonus.
Immortal Call greatly increases your survivability by giving you long periods of physical invulnerability. However, it also reduces your damage since it depletes your endurance charges.
Arctic Armour is strong defensive spell, reducing all incoming physical and fire damage. Its downside is a high amount of mana depletion; running this gem requires a lot of mana regeneration, especially on high levels.


Besides these, we use some auras to buff our defenses further and give us at least some mana regeneration, namely Discipline, Tempest Shield, Purity of Elements and Clarity. We run our auras in a link with Reduced Mana to ensure we can use them all.

Our last defense is a Vaal Discipline gem. This gem allows your energy shield to regenerate even while taking damage for three seconds, basically giving you invulnerability for this time and usually leaving behind a full energy shield when expiring.

To be able to fight non-attacking enemies like necromancers, we also take a damage spell which is not linked to Cast when Stunned - Incinerate. This spell requires you to stand still while casting it, synergizing well with the "stand and let the enemies come"-mentality of this build. It has decent dps which severely increases over time, once again working quite well with our tanky attitude. Finally, this spell cannot critically strike, and therefore it can be used to safely build power charges with Romiras Banquet. The greatest disadvantage is the small range, which can, however, be severely increased with a Faster Projectiles support gem.
When using this spell in a 4-link, I recommend to take Spell Echo and Fire Penetration as well for higher dps.

We use Enduring Cry and Discharge several times to ensure that they proc regularly - Cast when Stunned has only ~50% chance to trigger when you are stunned, even if it is level 20. Furthermore, the chance that you are stunned is reduced by 50% as long as you have energy shield (that is, as long as you are alive, since we use CI), so a single CwS isn't really reliable. The other spells only need to be cast once to take effect since they have durations or are toggles, therefore it is not necessary to take these several times.

If you have the possibility to place more gems, consider lightning warp or enfeeble linked with CwS. Enfeeble reduces enemy damage, thus increasing your survivability further, while lightning warp will move you to your enemies without having to interrupt your incinerate. However, lightning warp can also go terribly wrong, teleporting you into a room where you face tons of enemies. Should that happen, either run out immediately (Quartz and Quicksilver Flasks can help) or hope that you can survive the storm.


Items
Spoiler

We use a wand or sceptre, focusing on high spell damage.
The priorities when taking a shield are energy shield, block chance and armour. An Aegis Aurora is optimal, providing very high block chance along with a bit of energy shield and armour. Another very important point is the energy shield increase on block which gives us more survivabilty, especially when hit by many attacks in a short period of time.
On chest and helmet slots, energy shield is our highest priority.
We take Doedre's Tenure for our gloves. These gloves provide a malus to cast speed, but this does not affect our CwS gems. The increased spell damage is really nice and the main reason to take this unique.
We take Stone of Lazhwar for additional spell block.
Our first ring is Romira's Banquet for power charges. Our second ring is Voideye. We use this to run our Vaal Discipline to ensure we survive those curcial three seconds.
On the belt, we want elemental resistances and, if possible, some energy shield.
We use Rainbowstride as our boots to gain more spell block and some resistances and energy shield.


As I have written above, this build is untested so far; if you have any questions/critics about it, be sure to leave a comment! I am grateful for all feedback!
Last edited by XML4ever on Oct 30, 2014, 8:40:51 PM
I played a cws+tempest shield build back in domination that was fairly decent, so I'm interested in what you come up with.

A few things I noticed about cws in general:

-Useless in groups. Fairly obvious but just thought I'd point that out.

-Highly inconsistent clearspeed. "Monsters, why do you no do damage? Why are you running to the other side of the map instead of attacking me? Why is this necromancer not dead?" *Necro summoning shit offscreen and never attacking you* Etc.

I had to use one slot for a manual cast spell, although this may not be needed depending on your skill choices.

-To go with the above, greatly favours large hit damage and/or ignite builds.

-When you are in a map with relatively fast mobs you can simply walk around picking up loot as everything kills itself instantly. The ideal situation, but not always the case.

About your build specifically:

-You took no damage nodes. I guess you didn't go crit or take additional charges because you are using romira's, but at the very least I would pick up aoe nodes and some generic spell/ele damage.

Overall, I would look into methods of generating power charges without romira's, but I guess it is something you won't really know until you test it out

While it is true that defense can be good offense, more often than not, the reverse is also true.

Obviously dead mobs deal no damage, but with cws specifically: If you are stunlocked and do not deal enough damage to outheal incoming damage, your chances of death are quite high. Your aegis+life leech tempest shield will help with this, but it is something to keep in mind.

-Way overkill on block nodes. Aegis is 34%, tempest shield adds 4%, and your tree adds 52%. Block caps at 75%.

Good luck.
My builds: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1629242
Thank you for your answer! I will try to go through your comments, answer them as best as I can, and will definitely make some changes to my build.

"
"[...] Why are you running to the other side of the map instead of attacking me? Why is this necromancer not dead?" *Necro summoning shit offscreen and never attacking you* Etc.

I had thought about situations with nonattacking enemies (namely atziri's healing stage), but I wouldn't have thought it would be such a common problem. I guess I will need to fix it, as you said, an offensive spell should do this (possibly incinerate, but I haven't decided yet).

"
Monsters, why do you no do damage?

The enemy damage should not be such an issue, since I do not take any life. Since attacks have a 100% chance to stun, provided they deal more than 50% of the maximum life (before chaos inoculation is applied), this should be fairly decent even on low damage enemies.

"
Useless in groups. Fairly obvious but just thought I'd point that out.

Good point. I have played a bit in groups with my leveling character, and usually it tends to work out badly since I am not attacked often enough to trigger the CwS groups.

"
You took no damage nodes. I guess you didn't go crit or take additional charges because you are using romira's, but at the very least I would pick up aoe nodes and some generic spell/ele damage.

"
-Way overkill on block nodes. Aegis is 34%, tempest shield adds 4%, and your tree adds 52%. Block caps at 75%.


Definitely true. I hadn't even looked at that, I knew of the block cap but didn't sum up all my block nodes :/
My original thought was that I didnt have enough passive points to take sufficient block, es and damage. However, since, as you pointed out, I way overdid on block chance, I will transfer some points from block to damage/charges.

"
Obviously dead mobs deal no damage, but with cws specifically: If you are stunlocked and do not deal enough damage to outheal incoming damage, your chances of death are quite high. Your aegis+life leech tempest shield will help with this, but it is something to keep in mind.

I haven't had that much trouble with this; although it can happen (and is a nightmare when it happens), I currently run a vaal discipline which helps out a lot. It practically guarantees three seconds of invulnerability and a full energy shield afterwards. I will include this in the build.

Once again, thank you! Your comment really helped me by highlighting some major flaws :)

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