wuv's witch guide~ the best crowd control in the game~ videos at the bottom

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This is a Freezing Pulse critical strike chance Witch build that realizes and utilizes Cold Snap for superior crowd control and survivability. The passive tree takes advantage of every nearby Notable passive node and takes the shortest route to it. The only thing that would make this build any less viable is if GGG changed the passive nodes around. There was a nerf to this build in 0.11.0, but that's only because 0.11.0 nerfed all optimized builds. Nothing has changed for better or worse post-0.11.0.

Cold damage will make your life much easier in Wraeclast. Necromancers won't be able to resurrect their undead because they'll all be shattered. Killing frozen Shield Crabs shatters them, preventing them from going into their second form. Cold damage also chills, or even freezes incoming Black Guards and Rhoas. Although cold damage does less than fire and lightning damage, it provides the most utility.

The only downfall to this build is the high level requirement.

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Your passive tree should look like this at level 83. Thanks to azmodael and dessloc for the help. This tree gives you the Strength, Dexterity and Mana you need to use level 20 Haste, Grace, Purity, and Discipline while only counting Eye of Chayula's +20 all attributes. If you get Dexterity or Strength from other items, you can free up some nodes.

Grace and Haste will require 153 Dexterity at level 20.
Reduced Mana will require 109 Strength at level 20.

Passive progression is very simple, it's all dependent on the items you obtain.
Find yourself with a very powerful weapon early on? Put points into the defensive passives.
Are you good at avoiding damage? Start getting your Power Charges first.

When it comes to your auras, use as many as you can until you have roughly 300-350 Mana unreserved. You can lower that number to 250-275, but you will have trouble when attacking less than three targets.
Prioritization: Purity, Haste, Discipline, Grace

Note: Do not put a point into Chaos Inoculation until you are progressing far into Merciless Act 2 or you have over 2,500 Energy Shield. Chaos damage should not hurt enough to force your hand towards Chaos Inoculation until after you've released the darkness.

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Normal: Help Alira for the 40 Mana. All your % nodes stack off of this, and no other passive gives +40 to your base Mana. It's the best option for a Chaos Inoculation user.
Cruel: Help Alira again for the 4% cast speed buff. Cast speed is your best friend and something you really want to pay attention to when you're at end game.
Merciless: Help Alira for the third time, that +1 Power Charge is going to give you 50% critical strike chance and 2% spell damage, a combination that a passive node can't give you.

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2x Reduced Mana gems: These guys allow you to wear the auras. You need two because you'll be housing the auras in two different items. Quality on Reduced Mana does not help with auras.
Eye of Chayula: AnnanFay explains how the -20% Life works with Chaos Inoculation. The reason we use this amulet is for the All Attributes implicit, as well as the Cannot Be Stunned (no one likes being stun-locked). You will need at least a +17 roll. Oh, and there's some rarity there for you mfers.
Dream Fragments: Cold resist, 20% more Mana, 50% mana regeneration, and to top it all off, Cannot Be Frozen. One of my favorite items in the game, by far.
Rime Gaze: If you can't tell by the gems I have in my own Rime Gaze, this is where your Cold Snap will go. You will learn to cope with the slower Energy Shield recovery, and your Life Leech should keep you alive if you're competent. Seriously, with Dream Fragments and Eye of Chayula, you can blast away without worry. The added Mana, 10% cold damage and generally high Energy Shield, along with its Concentrated Effect gem effect, make this helmet potent for picking.
Maligaro's Virtuosity: No explanation necessary, this is a critical strike build after all. You're going to need the Dexterity it gives, too. Don't pay extra for more Dexterity, though. We really only care about the critical strike multiplier roll on it, 50% is max. If you really care about the Dexterity, you will need at least a 29 roll in order to free up that one 10 Dexterity node.

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Your flasks must have Surgeon's on them. This pairs with critical strikes, allowing you to regenerate your flasks quickly.

Since this build is Chaos Inoculation, you don't need Life Flasks.
And since you have Mana Leech (or high Mana regeneratopn if no 6L), you shouldn't need Mana Flasks unless you're in a -50% recovery map. Therefore, I use one of every resist flask. You may decide that you need Mana Flasks, and to each their own.

Granite Flask: Roll "of Iron Skin" suffix.
Ruby Flask: Roll "of Dousing" suffix.
Topaz Flask: Roll "of Grounding" suffix.
Sapphire Flask: Roll "of Heat" suffix.
Quicksilver Flask: Roll "of Adrenaline", "of Savouring", "of Heat", or "of Staunching" suffix.

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Freezing Pulse

This is your "main attack". This is what you're going to be spamming the whole time. With a high base cast speed, the ability to chill and freeze enemies, as well as a long range with 20% quality, Freezing Pulse is the best offensive spell in this game. Get at me.

Power Charge on Critical: You have to have this support, you have to. It's a piece of the core of this build (unless you go Static Blows). You can easily get a high base critical strike chance with a Silver/Golden/Platinum Kris dagger and the Blood Thirst nodes, allowing you to get all your Power Charges with a few shots into a pack of monsters. I have a base of 38.1% critical strike chance, and it goes up to 56.1% with 6 Power Charges. You can easily get more.
Greater Multiple Projectiles: I prefer this over its Lesser counterpart because of its larger radius and because of how Freezing Pulse overlaps on itself.
Faster Casting: Cast speed is the best thing you can do to help your DPS at a high level.
Life Leech: This support gem is the only way you can survive this game.
Mana Leech: You won't need any Mana regeneration when you can attach this to your Freezing Pulse. You can cast forever as long as there's something to leech off of.

Prioritization of gems: Power Charge on Critical, Greater Multiple Projectiles, Life Leech, Faster Casting, Mana Leech.

If you only have a 5L chest armor, you'll have to sacrifice some passive points for Mana regeneration until you get a 6L and Mana Leech.

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Cold Snap

This is how you're going to permanently freeze packs of monsters, entire rooms of monsters. Remember how we're using Power Charge on Critical? Read Cold Snap's description. As long as you can keep your Power Charges up, you can freeze monsters forever.

20% Added Cold Damage: The 10% freeze chance from the 20% quality is the reason for using this gem. If you don't have this 20% gem, get one.
Elemental Proliferation: This is the gem that does all the heavy lifting. When you freeze one monster with Cold Snap, it spreads, freezing every monster around it. Even bosses.
Increased Area of Effect: In order to alleviate the side effects of Concentrated Effect from our Rime Gaze, we have to use this gem. I think it helps Elemental Proliferation as well.

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Spell Totem

This is your sidekick. This guy will pull aggro from you, provide lots of DPS, help freeze or chill enemies, etc. He'll also shoot at any monsters in its radius, letting you know if an area is clear or not. Sometimes monsters can blend in or otherwise go unnoticed, so don't forget about him.

Ice Spear: This spell has long range, and it's what I use, but why not just put Freezing Pulse here as well?
Faster Casting: So obvious.
Greater Multiple Projectiles: You will probably want Lesser Multiple Projectiles here, it's just preference.

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Curses

I've decided to only use one curse and Blood Rage instead of two curses, thanks to slemenik's advice and explanation. You might prefer to use two curses if you like having one for offense and one for defense. I recommend Enfeeble for bosses, it makes them miss a lot and when they do hit you, they do little to no damage. It also prevents Cole from one-shotting you in Colonnade.

Increased Area of Effect: This support allows you to curse more enemies at once, but you may prefer Increased Duration.
Temporal Chains: If you cast this onto enemies before you pop a Cold Snap underneath them, they will be frozen for even longer. You can cast Temporal Chains, Cold Snap, then shoot a few pulses, re-cast Temporal Chains, etc.
Frostbite: If anything has high cold resistance, this should fix that. It also gives you a better chance to freeze monsters.

Other good curses: Elemental Weakness, Critical Weakness.

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You always want to cast your curse of choice first, next cast Cold Snap in the middle of the monster pack to freeze them, then use Freezing Pulse to trigger your Power Charge On Critical. These Power Charges will let you cast Cold Snap multiple times if you need to freeze separate packs.

The base duration of Freeze is proportional to the damage relative to the target's maximum Life dealt by the Cold Damage. So, when you want to freeze a map boss for a long period of time, you need to cast Cold Snap onto a weakened minion, making sure not to hit the boss at all if possible.

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PRE-0.11.0 DEMO
PRE-0.11.0 (MOSTLY) FULL CATACOMBS MAP RUN
PRE-0.11.0 SOLO COWARD'S TRIAL PART 1 AND PART 2
SOLO COWARD'S TRIAL PART 1 AND PART 2
I HATE PIETY
FULL LUNARIS/PIETY RUN
TEAMING UP WITH DISCHARGE
WUV VS PIETY

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Freeze
Chill
Freezing Pulse
Power Charge On Critical
Power Charge
Cold Snap
Elemental Proliferation
Blood Rage
Frenzy Charge

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Necrogue wrote:

Vaal Pact
Vaal Pact + Elemental Adaptation

Note: These builds will require you to have more Dexterity on your items.

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Static Blows

Simply swap PCOC with Added Lightning Damage. Having 20% quality on it will you give +10% shock chance, making your chance to shock enemies 30%. If you use Conductivity curse, you will have 40% chance to shock.

Note: This tree has enough Dexterity to use level 20 Grace and Haste with only Eye of Chayula's +20 all attributes, if you have more Dexterity from jewelry or other items, you can save some nodes.

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Bada_Bing wrote:

2x dispels frozen on flasks? Removes bleeding and removes burning stopped being useful for CI?

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azmodael wrote:

You can cut off 3 useless nodes near the shadow area if u take the Power Charge duration node and remove the nodes comming from the upper side.

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Adultery wrote:

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Bada_Bing wrote:

2x dispels frozen on flasks? Removes bleeding and removes burning stopped being useful for CI?

i forgot to mention that i haven't been prioritizing my flasks. i still need to re-roll the armor to be a higher %, dispel frozen on Sapphire, etc.

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Rules wrote:

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Adultery wrote:

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Bada_Bing wrote:

2x dispels frozen on flasks? Removes bleeding and removes burning stopped being useful for CI?

i forgot to mention that i haven't been prioritizing my flasks. i still need to re-roll the armor to be a higher %, dispel frozen on Sapphire, etc.

You don't need Dispel Frozen- your ring does that for you.

You need Dispel Burning, Dispel Beelding, Dispel Shock and 20% + 20% run faster.

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Adultery wrote:

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azmodael wrote:

You can cut off 3 useless nodes near the shadow area if u take the Power Charge duration node and remove the nodes comming from the upper side.

as it turns out, you will probably need the 10 strength node. i have to use one 30 strength node, that 10 strength node that leads into the Shadow tree, and then i think you'll have enough strength for lvl20 Reduced Mana with a 35 strength heavy belt. i'm using that 44 strength ring.

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dessloc wrote:

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Adultery wrote:

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azmodael wrote:

You can cut off 3 useless nodes near the shadow area if u take the Power Charge duration node and remove the nodes comming from the upper side.

as it turns out, you will probably need the 10 strength node. i have to use one 30 strength node, that 10 strength node that leads into the Shadow tree, and then i think you'll have enough strength for lvl20 Reduced Mana with a 35 strength heavy belt. i'm using that 44 strength ring.

You can drop those three nodes as suggested and take whichever +30 strength node you do not currently have (the one near inner force or the one on the way to CI). You get net +20 strength and save a passive point vs the current set up.

Also wondering if you considered running a spork totem + static blows instead of ice spear? With a cold/crit build I imagine you have a lot of success locking mobs down with FP + proliferated cold snap alone.