Best way to move forwards with this oddball summon/fire witch?

I'm pretty new to the game and I've managed to take my witch in Ambush league to Dominus on merciless, but now I've hit a wall. I've been relying on fireball (and an incinerate spell totem once in awhile) to deal damage while my relatively tanky zombies (and sometimes skeletons) occupy enemy attention, cursing with enfeeble and temporal chains, but it's not working well on this boss, and I would welcome any suggestions on how to improve what I've got here. I have a couple chaos and not much else to spend.

Current Skill Tree (4 unspent points, all refund points unused):
http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgMAAnEC4wSzB2MI9BCXFE0UsBVQFm8ZhRpsHwIkqiqNKpgsnC0fMYg2xTbYNuk5UjowRAREq0WdRtdI50kbSbJObVWuVcZXK1gHXcZgbWvbc1N5A3qqfRiCEIM4h2WIQI9Gj6aQM5eFmuCboZwtnYCdrqIApqynCKyYr7e1BLiTvDfAVMy8z2XQ0Ngk2Qva3d3z37DjauQi6-7sVeyK73zwH_Pd99f6gA==

Dominus is pretty hard, much harder than some bosses in 70+Maps. When you got only 1977 Life it's even harder. Having only a 152% Life-Multiplier is a tad low, but doable in Softcore if you gather enough flat life, what's missing in many places on your gear.

I like the idea of your spec, but the key may be to focus a bit more on less spells. Any Spell without the Penetration-Support-Gem is doomed to do pitiful damage against resistant mobs. Offensive Curses would help a little, but against Bosses their effect is heavily diminished. I'd drop the Incinerate-Totem and support the Searing-Bond-Totem with Totem Ele-Resistance and Increased Burning Dmg. That Totem is pretty tanky at higher levels and does pretty insane damage.

My tip: Try to farm Docks/Catacombs/Maps for some currency and gear-upgrades (Chaos-Recipe!) and leave Dominus, up until like lvl 80. You'll have a bigger Life-Pool by then, gathered more EQ (PoE is pretty gear-driven in most scenarios) and will have a easier time farming him. By that time your gems are like lvl 18, that alone is a big boost.

Hey, thanks for the advice. I had thought that taking on Dominus was the natural thing to do after killing Piety, so I was caught off guard by how difficult he was. Moved onto my 66-68 maps and things are a lot smoother now.

I'll give searing bond another try. I actually switched away from it because I preferred the incinerate totem's "place and forget" style, especially since I had to kite so much with so little defenses.

Ok, to start this character seems a little confused.

You should try and tighten your skills a little:

For instance, you have an incinerate totem. You could very well use a dual totem fire build along with minions very successfully in conjunction with Minion instability, etc. Dual totems can give you a lot of time to cast desecrate/raise zombie to feed the furnace, so to speak. If you were to go this route you'd probably want to pick a cheaper totem, like Flame Totems or Searing bond, as either of those only really requires a 3-link until very late game. If you want to keep the incinerate totem it's going to take more gear and passive requirements, but it will certainly be powerful; however you really need to focus on it to make it good.

However, if you want to actually physically cast spells you need to optimize your setup. Pick a single fire spell to focus on depending on the gear you have available.I probably wouldn't choose fireball, as you don't have crit or much faster casting or a sufficient mana pool. Flameblast is quick and dirty (heavy on mana), and firestorm does some decent supplemental damage. Probably the most thematically, and oddly enough less passive dependent, choice is Detonate Dead (you'd have to level up your desecrate). If you go the spell slinging route, drop that wasted totem and change it into a summon skeleton totem or a rejuv totem; you should also drop Minion Instability if you do this, as that tends to kill your zombies very quickly, meaning you have to resummon them a hell of a lot more.

I don't know exactly what you're running, but I don't see molten shell/enduring cry/flammability on your gear, so I will recommend throwing those in there, especially if you can get a cast on damage taken. They help a lot. Flammability is also amazing with minion instability. Similarly, get some spectres. Even if they aren't linked with anything, they can be amazing if you get the right ones. A safe bet is to go into the sceptre of the gods and grab the proximity shield guys. They are, practically speaking, immortal and you can hide in the proximity shield if you need to.

And one last thing, your flask setups is terrible. Get a few glassblower baubles and augments and roll your own flasks. Having one or two hallowed instant flasks for you and your minions can save your bacon.

Good luck!

You gotta fix your gear first imho :

- The ruby ring is very good, however the rest sucks pretty much. I mean, I almost have better gear in invasion a3 normal and the only thing that I bought is a reduced mana gem !

- Focus on getting life rolls and cap your resistances, the rest comes second.

- use a shield + dagger/scepter/wand instead of a staff, yes you won't be able to use a 4L with +2 ire gem, but the spell damage that you can potentially get from 1H + shield should boost your dps anyway. You can still buy a a cheap wand/scepter/dagger with +2fire gem ( the corrupted Blood Bite Imbued Wand for one chaos as an example ! )



And just forget about merciless Dominus for the moment, he's not worth it, not unless you fix your gear at least =).

Get a lightning resist flask/life flask with remove bleeding.
Cast skeletons or raging spirit linked with blind.

This 2 tricks will help you a lot.


Mid term:
-farm Piety or a level 60+ area for chaos

Replace your gear with something that give at least 50+ hp or IIR

On the long run you should probably pick EB to run a high level arctic armor
A cloak of defiance could be great if you have 400+ unreserved mana

Hey, just in case anyone cared to know how their advice helped, I've beaten Dominus on merciless. I did use end up using 2 tps since I have a bad habit of jamming the keys to ALL my flasks whenever I take the slightest bit of damage and ran them down much earlier than I had to.

@Toartmark: I was reluctant to trade in the incinerate totem and focus on searing bond exclusively for my totems, but it was the right choice. The dps simply can't compare. I also did use the chaos recipe a couple times to get some currency, so thanks for that tip.

@IdleAltruism: The original idea behind the build was to use zombies to tank while dealing damage with fireball. Later, I added in the totems. I've found out to my dismay that you are indeed correct that fireballs without crit just aren't that great, but that's what this character is built to do, so I did the best I could with it. I did put in a cast on damage taken/decoy totem/immortal call combo to take advantage of that trigger. I did put in an instant flask like you suggested, but I tend to use my flasks before I really fall into the danger zone so I really don't like the lessened heals.

@Fruz: Your advice (and the advice of my guildmates) really opened my eyes about what was really key in gear. Previously, I overlooked +spell damage in wands and sceptres, and focusing on life/resists was indeed the answer. I managed to buy a decent infernal mantle for a good price, so I was able to still get at least +1 fire gems on my 4L fireball.

@Galax201: I don't really know if it helped or not against dominus, but I did get a cure-bleeding flask after I died mapping to some kind of puncture, so that's good advice.

In case anyone's curious, here's how my setup changed thanks to your advice for the successful kill:

I'm happy that you are doing fine.

You could take +1 spectre node and snapshoot 2 flame sentinels :) it's could work well with your fire themed summoner.
You can get them with a high level desecrate inside eternal laboratory.

About your skill setup you can improve:
-lightning warp movement speed with faster casting
-searing bond DPS with increased burning damage

2 skills that could help you:
Arctic Armour - it's a great spell to nullify fire based monster/reflect
Vaal summon skeleton - inside your swap gear to help you out with bosses

"

Zathy wrote:

@IdleAltruism: The original idea behind the build was to use zombies to tank while dealing damage with fireball. Later, I added in the totems. I've found out to my dismay that you are indeed correct that fireballs without crit just aren't that great, but that's what this character is built to do, so I did the best I could with it. I did put in an instant flask like you suggested, but I tend to use my flasks before I really fall into the danger zone so I really don't like the lessened heals.

Glad to hear that you've had some success with your own build.

Fireball is a rough skill to try and pull off without a fully dedicated build and a 5/6link.

I also play a summoner. The key difference is that I utilize the 3 10% flask efficiency nodes in the beginning of the witch tree, as that makes a substantial difference in flask economy (changes a 392 into a 510 heal). Depending on the map I run 4-5 of them, and I use them more often than not to keep the zombies up against AoE. I tend to be pretty impulsive with them as well, but I run so many of them that I don't typically notice. I also run rejuv totem which keeps me topped off between fights. I can see how these differences could lead to instant flasks not being as beneficial to your build.