Reasonably Successful Physical Melee Witch Build

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEOvqqJgsdY

The following post is out-dated, but still probably represents how to do a reasonably successful melee witch with CI... if you can find enough energy shield. This has become significantly more difficult with changes to CI in 0.10.0, but may still be possible. I honestly doubt it right now. I imagine things will improve in 0.10.1. However, here's how the build went down in closed beta.

This is not the skill tree used in the above video, but represents how I think a theorhetically good melee-witch would be build, passively. There are six remaining points until level 80, I'd advise picking a weapon (axe, mace or sword, claw or dagger) and specializing in the nearby clusters available with those 6 points. Optionally, you could take +40 mana or 8% resists, +4% attack speed, and +1 endurance or frenzy charge.

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgMABAcEswVbB2MMfQ_EEHsQfxFQFE0VUBZAGmwd2R8CJ6kpTysKLL8tHy3SMok2xTrYO3w74TwFPV9DVENjRwZN2E-_UlNXK1fiWPVapl76X2pmnm0ZcU135X5Zf8aBb4M4hX2LeouMjAuMdo-mj_qXlZf0ms-drp3Enjyf36KjpwinK6lotMW3MbiTuMq5fLvWvjrAVMEAwcXB88Lsw23Gntgk2t3bGtvn3Mfi9-Qi5oHsGOw47LDvfPVL_Ks=

I take 2 points in power charges in this build, but it's unfortunately 2 points you'll have to just waste.

Again, everything below the following line is out-dated but how I went about a melee witch build with CI (not using blood rage). It's not conurrent with 0.10.0's balance. At the end of this post, I have provided an alternative life-witch melee build which I think would be more suitable with 0.10.0 balance state.

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I'm not at the above yet, only level 50, but so far, I've been having a lot of fun, and 1-50 was fairly simple to pull off.

The Active Skills:
Leap Slam (major aoe)
Cleave (support aoe)
Double Strike (single target damage)

The Support Skills:
Enfeeble
Molten Shell
Clarity / Purity
Anger
Wrath
Discipline

The Support Gem Setup:
Leap Slam + Faster Attacks + Increased Melee Damage + Increased Melee Damage Whlie On Full Life + Added Fire Damage/Added Weapon Elemental Damage*

*Whichever is giving more damage or whichever gives you the cost of mana you can afford.

Cleave + Faster Attacks + Increased Melee Damage + Increased Melee Damage Whlie On Full Life + Concentrated Area of Effect

Molten Shell + Enfeeble + Increased Area of Effect + Increased Critical Strike Damage

Double Strike + Faster Attacks + Increased Melee Damage + Increased Melee Damage On Full Life

Reduced Mana Cost + Discipline + Clarity/Purity + Wrath + Anger

The Uniques:
Need (rather early on):


Want (for quick leveling):


Want (while you farm up for your best gear):

Want (for 60+ PVE and PVP):


The Stategy:
Turn on auras. Leap Slam around until things die. If you get in a bad spot, cleave can be useful for dealing bonus area damage in a smaller area (due to your passive set up, with concentrated area of effect, cleave retains its 'normal' aoe size while providing 50% more damage!).

The Stats:
The main stats you want to get on your gear are life, energy shield, mana and armor (in that order) until about level 40. At level 40, you will switch to CI. End game stat prioritization is as follows:
Energy Shield
Armor
Mana
Mana Regeneration / Mana Leech
Life Leech
Accuracy / Critical Damage / Attack Speed

Strengths of this build:
You have ridiculous area of effect. You could make this into a ground slam build, but the added mobility and radius of leap slam lets you get away with a relatively small energy shield pool, especially if you don't have ghost reaver (this build gets ghost reaver very late, at around level 65-70).

Ideally, you should rush to the templar starting point, but only after getting increased area radius from the witch start. You can skip on critical damage until late game.

If you do things like I am right now, you don't need any life or mana flasks. You can load up on diamind/granite/resistance flasks to your heart's content.

The Math:
Although you are only getting 5 (at the very most) physical damage passive nodes, you have incredible physical damage potential because of all the "more damage" support gems you can stack, as well as the ease of using auras without reserving your life pool.

Melee Dmg Support Gem + Melee Dmg On Full Life Support Gem + Concentrated Area = 1.3*1.3*1.5; normally, Marauder/Duelist can't afford to use concentrated area of effect, but you can, because you get over +30% increased area of effect from passives, negating the support gem's cost. Because you aren't using blood magic, you can also get ANOTHER bonus 30%+ more damage from the "full life" support gem.

With +(30-40%) [depends if you spec axes or swords] increased physical damage from your passives, you have a lower-end damage potential of 3.549*weapon base damage, which is much better than 1.3*(whatever increased melee damage a marauder can acquire [which is assuredly less than +150%])

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Here is a melee-witch that uses life instead of CI. Obviously, this makes more more akin to a Marauder and is less interesting as a result:

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgMABbUHYwj0Cv8OSA5cD8QQdBEvEZYWvxnVGdcc3CQ8JGomlSepLUcwcTB8MYgzDDZ7N4o6Qjt8RX5JOkk7SVFLeFBCUUdTNVVLVi1XK1ptWqZdCWHibRltbG17cFJw1XJ-crtzU3kDfll_K3_GhxmH24hrjDaNv5u1nyeio6R4pzSnXKp_qrisf7VItve4N7jKvJ_AUcBUwdXB88M6xqLLQc3q1BnUI9aK3MfdqN7l3vbe-OOE45_mged06NbrFPDZ8Xbz6v4r_94=

a melee witch, looks interesting, I hope you can update your advance to see how viable is on end-game

gl

Hit 52 today. I'll make a video when I'm around 58 and post it here.

fixed passive tree; I should probably outline what you should do first

1. Go up to deep wisdom
2. Get the first aoe cluster near witch start
3. Get the second aoe cluster in the middle, travel to templar; take the +30 dex nodes as necessary
4. Get armor/ES from templar start, get AOE near templar start, get +20 str/12% 2h damage, but only take dex if you need to
5. Get +30% ES from the +6% ES cluster
6. Get CI
7. Get Ghost Reaver (I decided to move this up in the build)
8. Get everything else (+10% armor, +crit damage +40% mana regen, +damage with swords or axes, etc.)

You probably won't need catalyze (I haven't gotten it yet and I'm 59), so save your points.

Hi!

Another melee witch here! I have gone for a mace + shield melee damage build using both es and armor as defence. Here is my build so far:

Passive skill tree build

-Next I will skip Elemental Equilibrium and spec int Electric damage only.
-I use lightning strike as my main dps and two totems too. It has worked well so far.

I find your build a bit wastefull. You have a little of everything but lack focus. A bit crit, a bit sword damage etc. The cool thing about your build is trying to stack aoe damage! Wonder how good it can be.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEOvqqJgsdY&feature=plcp

Did a youtube video of my build for future reference.

The passive build in the youtube description is not optimized, I've discovered a better one, but the one in the video is pretty good.

anu, cool build. What's your chance to hit, as you seem dex light and didnt take RT?

P.

My chance to hit is pretty abysmal, like 75%. It's mostly because I don't have good gear in the video, ideally, you should grab +accuracy on your gear.

I have about 110~ dex and about +20% to accuracy, but a low accuracy base.

I didn't take RT because of the distance and because if I'm going to play Witch I may as well take advantage of the easy critical multiplier. If I take RT then all I can load up on are granite flasks :P, melee witch has very good physical damage, so having a few diamond flasks on hand allows for lots of great burst damage for nasty situations where you can't take the heat for long (plus it's great for pvp).

This build is a little harder to pull off because you get less strength nodes, but I think it's more optimized:

(80 points :: about level 66) : http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAQMAAzkrzAcmypYHjBMsCHrCnAqoMR0L6q9zDTEnnBhdB1ganVm0ILkVpyF52nohnXQyJgJE4ywT8lYtCBVlLxZl6DLquew20hzqPS5LFT23mzc_nl9NQkzWvElHOJxLBiVrTTO-q05ijCdVHH1GV2DFvVzZ3xRguPEIYzq_yGURcrVmxzXbZ2J6uncAFgl8wCHelhxlavU5uo_9mG3TvSG7Vs3KZmOpvwdi9ORqZoksSA-xirh6j7uWdcg5MAGcxUTNxLMnedkJHdn3kn3N5_HQXpN4q_DKkZBcnCM8rNszIri8gbjmrnNxA7QKD1vLQR0Rre3A_e7nGabrpCJJmS1ht7EoYKPZm6gS81_tVr0pmYCThx9-srDHMeLjy_-qBTpWgMkz1etgC43YZqkl5K_cDvhfsjOrNRwyu43Th4AdcII=

(95 points :: about level 80) :

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAQMAAzkrzAcmypYHjBMsCHrCnAqoMR0L6q9zDTEnnBUh4QQYXQdYGp1ZtBv8xw8guRWnIXnaeiGddDImAkTjLBPyVi0IFWUvFmXoMNo5cDHd0d4y6rnsNtIc6j0uSxU9t5s3P55fTUJM1rxJRb6dSUc4nEsGJWtNM76rTmKMJ1ELMnpVHH1GV2DFvVzZ3xRguPEIYzq_yGURcrVmxzXbZzOTc2dierpoFalndwAWCXzAId6WHGVq9Tm6j_2YbdO9IbtWzcpmY6m_B2L05GpmiSxID7GKuHqPu5Z1yDkwAZzFRM3Esyd52Qkd2feSfc3n8dBek3ir8MqRkFycIzys2zMiuLyBuOauc3EDtAoPW8tBHRGt7cD97ucZpuukIkmZLWG3sShgo9mbqBLzX-1WvSmZgJOHH36ysMcx4uPL_6oFOlaAyTPV62ALjdhmqSXkr9wO-F-yM6s1HDK7jdOHgB1wgvUtu7yA7O8Gk6IMBMBxVubCwGT87dl4SOAiIh8=

I think maces are actually best with this build, due to the 15% critical multiplier mace passives and galvantic hammer. Means you can use Frozen Hammer as your main single target skill, which I think is pretty powerful.

The nice thing though, is you can easily spec swords/axes/staves instead if you'd like and use a small number of regrets to switch your weapon proficiency.

canu fix the passvise tree once again?
i want to build a melee witch and i think your build would help

"

AizakkuW wrote:

canu fix the passvise tree once again?
i want to build a melee witch and i think your build would help

I updated the top (and very bottom) parts of my post, retaining the original body.

I would like to stress that 0.10.0 is a lot different from CB. You cannot use CI in melee as it currently stands. I would highly advise against it. You can however build a hybrid life/es or pure life witch and either should probably do pretty good in melee combat.

Focus on mana, auras, attack speed, life, and defenses, and you should be pretty good. If you insist upon trying a CI melee wtich, I've provided a build which stands the best chance of working, in my opinion.