[1.3]Fireball Witch guide for beginners

Is the Infernal Mantle worth using as a chest, or is it too hard to cap resists when you don't have any on your chest?

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Radagastt wrote:

Is the Infernal Mantle worth using as a chest, or is it too hard to cap resists when you don't have any on your chest?

It's a good chest for a fire witch. Shouldn't be too difficult to get the resists on the other gear pieces.
Just make sure you don't run too many auras as you will take double damage from spells if your mana drops below 34%.

@Funadept
It really wouldn't make much sense posting it as i recoloured the sockets and switched some support gems so i can use the toon in PvP two days ago. It would just be confusing.
Suffice it to say that i play with selffound stuff only (well almost). I never bothered spending orbs to get bis gear, so i have ar/eva hybrid pieces where ar or ar/es would be more optimal.
Good news is, this build works with mediocre gear.

Thanks.

I try to play with self found stuff too but it's quite long to find good stuff in that way.

I was given an Infernal Mantle (with 5SL, it helps a bit !) and I looted Moonsorrow but the rest is pretty crap.

My character is 74 nowadays and I'm around 40% cold and lightning resistances. My armor only reduces physical damage around 10%...this is pretty shit.

Then, how can I expect to find stuff myself if I can't face Dominus or even Piety ?

I keep making runs of catacombs and low levels maps but...

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Funadept wrote:

Thanks.

I try to play with self found stuff too but it's quite long to find good stuff in that way.

I was given an Infernal Mantle (with 5SL, it helps a bit !) and I looted Moonsorrow but the rest is pretty crap.

My character is 74 nowadays and I'm around 40% cold and lightning resistances. My armor only reduces physical damage around 10%...this is pretty shit.

Then, how can I expect to find stuff myself if I can't face Dominus or even Piety ?

I keep making runs of catacombs and low levels maps but...

If it gets frustrating invest a bit of currency. No point making a religion out of selffound. With 1-3 chaos spent on a single gear piece, you can upgrade your gear to obtain max resists / sufficient life or ES by replacing 2-3 pieces. Use http://poe.xyz.is/ (turn on the buyout only button) to search for affordable stuff.

I'm now up to level 66 and here are my impressions so far of the build, and my trials, tribulations and thoughts!

1. Life nodes in this life build is a MUST and a BLESSING, my high health pool has saved me from SO many deaths, especially in Merciless. I'm having about 2.5k HP at level 66 now, and playing with my friend (a cold witch), he has 760~ HP, he dies a LOT, I barely die, but it's close sometimes.

2. finally bought a 5L Chest, went from LMP + Fireball + Faster casting to

and even though the tooltip DPS went from 2k to 1.1k (omitting the faster cast), the DPS is DEFINITELY Higher. As Bada_Bing says, DON'T be fooled by tooltip DPS. Although the new setup is taking a huge toll on my Mana, so I have to switch from spamming fireball to throw traps and putting curses to let the mana recover, although I guess that is the optimal way of dealing damage.

3. Starting Merciless I found myself running around a LOT. Enemies hits like a truck and I constantly need to keep my distance. I read the guide again and found Bada_Bing talking about Spell Totem + Summon Skeletons, tried it out and it works wonders! mosnters are constantly targetting my skeletons and I just stand back and nuke them. #1 key to survive, PERIOD.

4. I'm currently working my way down through the crit shadow section of the passive tree, and noticed a +20% increased trap damage/ + 1 trap node only being 2 steps away from the tree, I think Bada_Bing pointed this out, but it really rocks as my fire traps rip mobs to shreds also, and is also really important for:

5. Take heed, in Merciless you REALLY need to take care of yellow monsters rocking the Elemental Reflect mod. If you don't want to look through the mods in clear text it is signified by blue arrows shooting out from the monster. My insane damage does so I oneshot myself. 90% of all deaths in Merciless has been because of this. Good thing we have fire-traps, eh!

Next step now is getting to Docks and even out the resistances (My fire res is really low at the moment..), step 2 is getting a Divinarius dagger and then i'll take it from there!

Here is my full gear at the moment, everything self-found apart from the weapon, feel free to propose upgrades. i really like the helm though!

The newly buffed Shadow starting area is a little more damage than the Immolation circle (46% Ele damage vs 43% fire damage for the same number of points) and it opens up another 16% damage node.

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dtlol wrote:

The newly buffed Shadow starting area is a little more damage than the Immolation circle (46% Ele damage vs 43% fire damage for the same number of points) and it opens up another 16% damage node.

It is slightly better if you don't use fire traps, but as the dot from the burning ground is affected by fire and burning passives, but NOT by spell passives, taking immolation is a little bit better (42% fire damage vs 30% elemental + 16% spell damage).

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Bada_Bing wrote:

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dtlol wrote:

The newly buffed Shadow starting area is a little more damage than the Immolation circle (46% Ele damage vs 43% fire damage for the same number of points) and it opens up another 16% damage node.

It is slightly better if you don't use fire traps, but as the dot from the burning ground is affected by fire and burning passives, but NOT by spell passives, taking immolation is a little bit better (42% fire damage vs 30% elemental + 16% spell damage).

Hmm. Good to know. Thanks.

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Bada_Bing wrote:

the dot from the burning ground is affected by fire and burning passives, but NOT by spell passives

So by this logic, I should be looking at sceptres instead of wands, right?

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dtlol wrote:

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Bada_Bing wrote:

the dot from the burning ground is affected by fire and burning passives, but NOT by spell passives

So by this logic, I should be looking at sceptres instead of wands, right?

All other mods being equal a 15% elemental damage implicit mod on a void sceptre is a bit more beneficial for a build that aims at burning damage than a 20% increased spell damage implicit mod on an opal/prophecy wand.