Claw Witch =]

Claw Witch
First build! I know that Claw witch isn't really common. . . but I do really enjoy claws and I also enjoy the witch. Any suggestions, advice, opinions are welcome!

~Kuraku

Quite interesting, Ive never seen a claw witch before. I suppose if you were commited to using claws, there would be no downturn in upgrading strenght, as it benefits melee damage. Which would give more health and damage. Ive always found the wand pretty weak.
However, this puts her up front where the action is, melee dealer means she receives a lot more damage than a ranger character. So if you use claws, you must improve her defenses.
I must try this out (if you don't mind)

Did you consider Chaos Innoculation and pumping up evasion instead of dropping energy shields? From what I've read you can get some pretty crazy energy shield strength with the right kind of build.

Time to go back to theorycrafting >.>

I like the idea of chaos inoculation, but I feel like if I don't lose health then what is the point of using the life leech on claws? Then again I haven't played around with it enough and actually planned on taking that route last to actually experiment more with how well the life leech works along with an energy shield.

Its true about the strength and the defenses I'm feeling the squishiness even now, and it is actually kind of hard to counteract the health loss with life leech right now since I don't have the extra claw skills as of yet. I'm still fairly new to this game so I'm still mostly learning. Please do experiment with this as much as u like and post what u find because I am pretty limited on game time right now an would really appreciate it actually.

~Kuraku

Edit: Claw Witch 2 Here's what I came up with, decided it would be best to have both health and shields to work with, this build clearly needs to lose points from something though. I can't figure out what to sacrifice though, most of it really stems from the fact that I'm not entirely positive on DW claws or using a claw and a shield or something. Claw Witch 2

Drop the divine toughness node, reroute through Deep Wisdom/Arcane focus.Instead of going for soul raker you could pickup the claws of the pride node series as well. That condenses your node picks.

I also feel like you pushed too hard for some of those red nodes. You could drop the one handed bonus damage and accuracy. That will also allow you further stuff out of agility section (which has some very similar node groupings)

Good point, didnt even know about the deep wisdom and stuff, and completely missed a whole claw circle. ur right about the reds too I kinda went overboard onem. I feel really bad about taking off soul raker, I'm not really sure if the extra strength and damage and block outweigh the extra life leech. I tried to cut this one down as much as possible according to what I "think" I need.
Anyway heres the new one, again more advice would be great.
Claw Witch 3

~Kuraku

Well I can only really give theoretical advice, since I haven't you know... played. If I had to do anything with that build it would be drop the rest of the stuff from the strength area in general, or as much as I possibly could. There's a number of defensive nodes available to you nearer your main node clusters which should save you some expenditure.

Edit: For instance directly below the strength node conected to your start point is +50% ish EShield and there's +24% health in the same node cluster as Arcane Focus. There's no direct need to dip into srength more than absolutely required.

Reasonably Capable of Achieving

Is probably the most reasonable possibility at this point in time. But you really are stretching yourself to thin. Even then

It all looks pretty good, when I get more time I'll have to level her more. Lemme know if you get a beta key, I bought mine the 10$ really wasn't too bad. Though I understand how it is just scraping by. If you think of anything more go ahead and post it here. =]

~Kuraku

I too have been playing around with a similar build. I'm trying to build a DW claw witch, as a red line I'm going for this build:


I would make a beeline for Ghost Reaver and then go straight for Iron reflexes and unwavering stance, wait with CI until I reach merciless and have the gear to support it, problem is I will be very squishy early game. There are many nice dps passives along the line to unwavering stance and can be filled in as necessary once survivability is decent enough. As skills I think going for cyclone as aoe and dual strike for single target will be good. Not sure about all the support gems, but I think bonus cold for slow/freeze effects will be good coupled with faster attacks. Any advice or pointers much appreciated!

Just posted this. Not a definitive guide but some ideas to throw around.
http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/364520