[0.9.13] Arc and Flame Witch

Havent played the game for over a year and a half, was planning to use this build during OB. How does the new EE changes affect this build? The wording is kind of fuzzy.

"The Elemental Equilibrium keystone passive skill now grants a flat amount (+25%) of resistance to each element you hit with and a resistance penalty (-50%) to each element not present in the hit."

Doesnt this mean that EE is useless now, no matter if you uses added cold damage support?

The new Elemental Equilibrium, if it works as I understand, will definitely change the build's playstyle. I actually really like this change, it makes the Keystone something players have to think about, rather than being just flat out -50% resistance with no real drawbacks when using constantly hitting elemental attacks like Flame Totem and Added Cold Damage support gems.

I'll change things eventually to my first post, but that'll take some time as I want to test it out personally. Here's few tidbits of how these changes alter this build:

1) Added Cold Damage isn't required anymore. You can still use it if you want to increase the damage output slightly, but I'd rather use Arc with something like Life Leech, Added Lightning Damage or Increased Item Quantity.

2) The following is actually not a change made due to patch notes. I made a small mistake with Flame Totem supports, I initially tested Faster Projectiles and deemed that it simply doesn't work with Flame Totem. With further testing, I can safely say it does work, which makes this support gem the only gem that actually increases the coverage of Flame Totem. As that is something super important, this support gem is basically mandatory. As Added Cold Damage becomes useless in here come Open Beta, we can just swap Added Cold Damage with Faster Projectiles.

3) As expected previously, the Double Totem node is now useless for this build and will not be used.

4) Armor value of items was increased, furthering my previous assumption that hybrid Templar armor is probably the way to go. Although Energy Shield on items was nerfed, so we have to still get some comfortable amounts of it. Passives that increase Elemental Resistance while holding a Shield was increased, if that's still 15% that's a sure pick. Same ring also includes spell block, which together with the new Block Percentage item modifier makes the ring even more interesting.

5) Reduced Totem Life depends on how severe this change was. Flame Totem can't probably just tank absolutely everything anymore, and balance wise this is a good thing. Also gives even more reason to use Armor/ES armor pieces than pure ES.

6) Playstyle wise, the only major change is that if we don't have Flame Totem up, we do less damage now with Arc. This means Flame Totem should be used all the time, and we should "herd" packs of monsters if possible, similar to how Ethereal Knives builds do, to stack them tightly to get the maximum coverage of Flame Totem and the maximum benefit from Elemental Proliferation.

7) Here is an End Game passive skill tree that I plan on using if my assumptions are correct.

Is this build really worth using in OB ? I don't think so.
Flame totem will definetly not apply EE to all targets that will get hit by arc, so more often than not, arc will hit targets that received the +50% resist from the previous arc.

Would this build work if starting from the Templar? It connects up anyway, and I would've thought it would have better survivability in early game.

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Skax wrote:

Is this build really worth using in OB ? I don't think so.
Flame totem will definetly not apply EE to all targets that will get hit by arc, so more often than not, arc will hit targets that received the +50% resist from the previous arc.

I certainly understand what you mean by that, and it's in my list of concerns too. Even then, Arc only applies +25% resist EE. Also, I disagree on Flame Totem having bad coverage, it's projectile is bigger than the stream of fire effect and it's range is absolutely huge with leveled Faster Projectiles.

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evrelia wrote:

Would this build work if starting from the Templar? It connects up anyway, and I would've thought it would have better survivability in early game.

Yeah, if playing HC I'd probably pick Templar for increased early survivability. The only thing you miss or have to struggle to get is that 40% Mana Regen next to Witch start. Don't underestimate it though, Mana Regen is absolutely essential with Eldritch Battery, it scales off the charts, and if starting as a Templar you'd have to seek more of it from gear.

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Alhoon wrote:

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evrelia wrote:

Would this build work if starting from the Templar? It connects up anyway, and I would've thought it would have better survivability in early game.

Yeah, if playing HC I'd probably pick Templar for increased early survivability. The only thing you miss or have to struggle to get is that 40% Mana Regen next to Witch start. Don't underestimate it though, Mana Regen is absolutely essential with Eldritch Battery, it scales off the charts, and if starting as a Templar you'd have to seek more of it from gear.

Templar starts next to a 40% mana regen node too. I'm just worried that it might take too long to reach Eldritch Battery.

what makes EE better than picking up crit nodes?

why dont you pick up crit nodes?

im looking for a really solid build for my first playthrough in open beta

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motoeric616 wrote:

what makes EE better than picking up crit nodes?

why dont you pick up crit nodes?

im looking for a really solid build for my first playthrough in open beta

EE is one point for 50% damage increase at minimum, if used correctly. You can do the math for how many crit nodes would be needed for that, but that'd be a pretty huge number.

Even bigger reason is that Arc has a natural Critical Chance of 4%, which essentially means it scales with Crit extremely poorly. I see Crit Chance as a binary choice, either you stack it or you ignore it, since it's so interlinked with Crit Damage.

I really like your build and will most likely go a similar route.

What I am missing though is Whispers of Doom (2 curses). That would cost 8 points in addition to your build. I may be wrong but I really think that that second curse is worth it (more flexibility).

Do you have a reason to not get it?
Which of your skills would you consider dropping for it?