(Sort of) Cheap Fire witch (Fireball/storm - MoM - AA - 3 Curses) for new and confirmed players

Hi everyone,

I've played PoE for quite some time now, and after some players asking details about my build in maps, I decided to make a guide. On the other hand, considering I'm not English, I would appreciate some indulgence regarding the redaction. Additionally, any suggestion for this build will be welcome since it is my first one.

I will explain in detail the choice of some key nodes, while for some confirmed players the motivation is trivial. For this reason, and since the build addresses both types of players, explanations on "trivial" stuff will be placed in spoiler banners.

This build is valid for two skills (namely, fireball and firestorm) : the passive tree is the same, only the gemming of the main skill changes a bit. It is a (sort of) cheap build, since it works just fine with a single item and four links. For some, it will be seen a a mix of several fire witch / MoM / AA build, I couldn't however find anything like mine in lists. It his however greatly inspired from the one from Pohx.

The advantages of this build are a high dps, in mono or aoe, a good survavibility (while not op) , you don't fear elemental reflection even if you're pure fire damage, and you have a high utility in maps (stockstacking or defensive totems, and three curses). On the other hand, the minimum required gear is cheap (1ex), and this price remains low even with rich people since a 6l is quite useless.

I firstly present the basics of this build, and follow with a more detailed argumentation on why I chose this build and equipment. I finally give some tips on how to level the tree (and the character) in first levels.



1. Overview of this build.

A lvl 84 skill tree :


I kill all three bandits in all three difficulties. You can save Oak in normal if you want a bit more life, but it's really not mandatory.

Mandatory Items :
4L Searing touch (1ex)

A searing touch is obviously useful considering your main skill, whether it is fireball or firestorm.

I personally chose fireball over firestorm because it has more mono target dps (and you don't lack aoe damage), and a higher burst of damage. On duration, multiple stackings of firestorms with increase duration and faster casting deal more damage.

Usefull items, by order of priority :
4L Cloak of Defiance (10c)
4L5S Searing Touch
Dream fragments (3-4ex)
Windscream (10c)
5L Searing Touch
5L6S Searing Touch
Fireball build : Quality Fireball - Fire penetration
Firestorm build : Quality Firestorm - Fire penetration
Fireball build : Quality LMP, Quality Fork, Quality Faster Casting (if 5L)
Firestorm build : Quality Increased duration
Quality faster Casting
Quality Added Lightning damage

You don't need any 6L. You don't even want it, unless you're really rich (I am not).

You will want to prioritize pure armor gear, with a maximum of life and elemental resistances. After these requirements, I would advise cast speed, and finally critical strike chance for spells.

2. Details of this build.

2.1. Fire damage and searing touch.

Alright, this is a fire build so you can guess you will deal... fire damage (thanks cap'tain obvious). The motivation behind fire damage is that is is badass, and the unique item "The searing Touch". There is no equivalent in lightning damage or cold damage (although a similar build with Taryn's Shiver and arctic breath is probably strong as well).



In this build, this item is great because it gives a +2 levels to fire gems (namely, you main skill, fire penetration and flammability). It costs around 1ex on trade channel, and a 4L is enough for the build to work. A 5L costs around 4-6ex, and a 6L is more expensive than useful.

So let's be honest, this item will carry you through the entire gameplay. You need it. Gem it in the following way :

Fireball :
4L : Fireball - LMP - Fork - Fire penetration
5L : Fireball - LMP - Fork - Fire penetration - Faster Casting
6L : Fireball - LMP - Fork - Fire penetration - Faster Casting - Empower (Useless)



You can as well replace Fork by concentrated effect. Experiments seems to show you make more aoe damage with fork (enemies hit my many multiple fireballs), while concentrated effect gives more mono dps (flat more damage).

Firesorm :
4L : Firestorm - Fire Penetration - Concentrated effect - Increased duration
5L : Firestorm - Fire Penetration - Concentrated effect - Increased duration - Faster Casting
4L : Firestorm - Fire Penetration - Concentrated effect - Increased duration - Faster Casting - Empower (useless)

In both cases, a 6L is useless (and really expensive). Use the last socket to put flammability, it gets a +2 level from your staff.

2.2. AA, MoM and cloak of defiance.

Most of your survability in this build relies on the synergy between AA and MoM.



To the best of my knowledge, it is not possible to sustain AA without EB and clarity.



But eventually, when you have more than 300 mana regen per second, you have quite infinite mana. Boring, and non optimal.

This is why I chosed to take MoM via Cloak of Defiance. 40% of all damage you take is taken into your mana before your life. This backdraw is nullified considering you have a HUGE amount of mana and of mana regen. This is an entire additional pool of fast regeneration life. It increases survavibility in an unmatched way with AA. Note that you cannot stack MoM from the cloak with the MoM keystone. On the other hand, MoM keystone is quite far from your start.

Moreover, these two skills combined will make you completely immune to elemental reflection. I tried once to cast 4x3 fireballs in a elem reflect pack in an elem reflect map, I took only little damage.

Again, for this MoM-AA build, Dream fragments is a really usefull item. 20% more mana (good for MoM and mana regen) and 50% mana regen make the perfect synergy with AA and MoM.


2.3. Totem choices.

Depending on your ingame survability, you can have multiple totem choices.

Offensive choices : flame totem - Shockstacking totem.
4L : Flame totem - GMP - faster casting - Fire penetration
5L : Flame totem - GMP - faster casting - Fire penetration - Quality added lightning damage
6L : Flame totem - GMP - faster casting - Fire penetration - Quality added lightning damage - Increased critical strikes or elemental proliferation.



The point of this totem is simply to kill, and potentally shockstack ennemies.



Shock stacking is possible via a quality added lightning (if you have one) with fast casting flame totem and the Static Blows node. On my current gear, my flame totem cast 10 times per second, with 20% chances to shock for each enemy hit (remember there are 5 projectiles), I let you imagine how fast it is to shock stack an enemy.

[spoiler"Flame totem have a low damage efficiency, added lightning damage sucks !"]
True. But the first goal of flame totem is to shockstack. The damage effiency argument is invalid for this purpose.

On the other hand, damage efficiency is there for balance concerns. Since support gems are not normalized on attack and cast speed, a fast casted spell or a fast attack will benefit far more from a gem like added lightning (and the 2H wielders would cry). Damage efficiency is simply saying "Oh, you cast 50% faster ? This support gem does then 50% less damage". It's a simple normalization to avoid imbalance.
[/spoiler]

Defensive choices

You have two main choices for defensive totems : flame totem or summon skeleton totem. While summon skeleton totem will reduced monster aggressiveness towards you (very usefull for people facing troubles not to die), a defensive flame totem will make monsters very weak.

Flame totem
4l : Flame Totem - GMP - Blind - Knockback
5L : Flame Totem - faster Casting - GMP - Blind - Knowkback
6L : Flame Totem - faster Casting - GMP - Blind - Knowkback - Increased duration

Blind give the affected target miss 75% of their hits (spells and attacks) for 4 seconds. Knockback will prevent monsters from getting to you, and to the totem. This choice of defensive flame totem is pretty standard among defensive flame totems.

Summon skeleton Totem
4L : Spell Totem - faster Casting - Summon Skeletton - Minion Life
5L : Spell Totem - faster Casting - Summon Skeletton - Minion Life - Minion and Totem elemental resistance
6L : Spell Totem - faster Casting - Summon Skeletton - Minion Life - Minion and Totem elemental resistance - ?

With this totem, you will summon a huge amount of skeletons (to your cap of 4, 5 or 6, depending on the gem level). The skeletons will randomly attack the enemies, and these enemies will as well randomly attack you and the skeletons, efficiently reducing the number of hits you should take. it is especially usefull against bosses, exiles and unique monsters.

The choice between these three possible totems (Offensive or defensive flame or skeleton) is yours, I prefer the offensive flame for shock staking, you already have lots of survavibility with AA and MoM. Note that on bosses, exiles and unique monsters, the defensive choice of summon skeleton helps the most to kill them without dying.

2.4. Three curses.

Technically, you don't need three curses for this build to work. However, it is quite useful both in solo and party. You can achieve three curses via passive tree and the pair of boots Windscream.



I list here different choices of three curces depending on your party or if you're solo.
Solo : Flammability - Elemental Weakness - Enfeeble
Hard bosses solo : Elemental Weakness - Enfeeble - Temporal Chains
Most of parties : Elemental Weakness - Enfeeble - Critical Weakness
Hard bosses on parties : Elemental/Critical Weakness - Enfeeble - Temporal Chains

Beeing three curses is part of the build, not a detail. With flammability, elemental weakness and enfeeble, you deal around 100% more damage while taken less than half damage (this doesn't count MoM and AA). You can switch curses to have even higher dps (critical weakness) or more survavibility (temporal chains). This curse stacking is, on my personal opinion, one of the most underated source of dps and survavility of the game.

A word of advice tough : if you have a high dps in parties, don't bother to put three curses except on tough rare monsters. On many unique / exiles and bosses, casting three curses is generally useful.

If you intend to spam the curses, warn your party about your build, ask them not to override your curses. Otherwise this part of the build is useless.

2.5 Other build details.

Auras : using clarity and discipline is mandatory for AA and MoM. You can use a last aura of your choice depending on what you want, like purity of elements if you haven't 75% in all resistances. I personally cast haste for additional cast speed and run speed. With these three auras, the build and a reduced mana gem, I'm left with around 700 mana and more than 300 mana regenration.

Molten shell + increased duration : it's just a pure armor buff. You're only casting it for this reason.

Lightning warp + reduced duration (possibly with faster casting as well) : this spell will occasionally prevent you from dying due to the provided mobility.

3. Leveling Guide.

While you could save Oak to have 40 more hp, it is not mandatory, and I personally killed him. I kill them all in other difficulties as well (4% cast speed is really low from alira in Merciless).



More fire damage please.



Massive mana regen to spam fireball, statistics nodes for gems and equipment.



All the reduced mana nodes and increased effect of auras are very usefull (less mana used in auras, more mana from EE => more survability with MoM and AA). You can take a shortcut to whispers of doom via the intell nodes on the left side of EB. I didn't since I want to take serpentine stance later.





Final part of the build : life, more area damage, etc.



Critical strike chance since you have nothing left to pick.

4. My current gear - maps.



I've done nearly any map, without facing any major difficulty anyone else does not. Of course, you fear sock stacking, lightning thorns, that bloody lightning apocalypse Piety spells (sort of lightning storm and orb), chaos damage and leaping mobs. If you're not stupid you will survive. Notice that if you're stupid, you will die with any gear and build.

It's a bit hard on maps where you have no mana and life regen, but with one or two mana pots, maybe a blood magic gem and caution you'll be fine.

5. Conclusion.

This build is cheap - high dps - ok survability build for fire witches. You can use both fireball and firestorm with the same passive tree and gear. You are immune to elemental reflection. You cast three storms.

And you're badass as f***.

More seriously, if you have any questions or suggestions regarding this build, feel free to give them, I'll be happy to think about it.

Updated

Updated for some typos

Hi, I'm following this build right now...

Why you don't pick at last the Critical Strike Multiplier for Spells in the Shadow zone?

Something like this:



Of course I put 120 points, remove the Intense Zeal node entirely, and remove some dex/str nodes (In the case you don't need more stats).

I think you have more Critical Chance and Multiplier for Spells in that way, and also you can get more fire damage.

It's a suggestion, I don't know if this work or don't :P.

Greetings!

You can pretty well take it, but like sad in the build, critical strike chance and critical strike multiplier are picked when there is nothing else to pick.

The motivation behind this is that you're wielding a staff, you have low critical basis chance, critically hit with fire damage is less interesting in my point of view than with lightning or cold.

Hey there I'm curious how much health do you have? I'm now Level 59 with around 1800 HP, though at level 63 I should have at least 2200.

Lots of optimization holes in the build:
1) 124% Life? Sure, you CAN do any maps, but you sure as hell wont be doing them quickly and will be quite paranoid.
2) Everyone loves taking those aura nodes... do you know why you're even taking them? If you're getting 300 regen and 700 unreserved, you should consider spending those 11 points more wisely
3) Very often you don't need Discipline to run MoM. I always recommend keeping at least ~1-1.3k unreserved for damage. Due to the mana reserved from disc, you usually trade off unreserved for more regen.
4) Your note on LMP vs. GMP is incorrect. One of the main reasons to use FB is for its shotgunning effect. Due to your low survivability, you're incapable of doing that, thus stay a screen away and use LMP. A more typical fireballer will have ~3x your DPS due to them shotgunning.
5) Conc Effect>Fork in virtually 95% of situations
6) 3 curses? Sure, it sounds cool and maybe it can be useful in 77/78 maps.. but in 95% of situations casting 3 curses is a waste of time. Just use your damage spell and kill them. Windscream are pretty good starter boots, so I would respect out of the Whispers of Doom/hex master cluster.
7) Faster Cast on fireball? In 95% of situations that's a bad idea since the increase in DPS is in direct proportion to increase in mana costs. More than that, even a 20/20 FC (49%) will give you give a smaller damage increase than a Lvl 1 Concentrated Effect (50%), and probably for less mana costs. Switch them out and compare DPS/mana.
8) There's a LOT of wasted points in the templar area.
9) You should really take that 12% life/mana node in the beginning of the witch's tree. It's probably one of the top reasons to make a witch in the first place.
10) For flame totem, take the other 10% shock node next to Static Blows and try something like
Flame-Blind-Added Lightning-Ele Prolifiration. You'll see improvements immediately.

Btw - you say that 5/6L is a waste? How can you say that without running life leech? Pots are nice and all, but I'll take leech over it any day for sustain.

@MissionUK I currently have around 2.5k hp with my current gear. Not much compared to some max life builds, but AA and MoM provide enough survability on my personnal point of view. Lats time I died was when I was fighting the cleave jumping exile, around level 55-60.

1) As far as I'm concerned, the life I have is a decent amount to do any map I ever encountered. Yes, you're not godlike, but AA and MoM provide really lots of survavibility. You can't be stupid, that's true.

2) I take the aura nodes for additionnal mana via Discipline and EB, and additionnal regen for Clarity. Moreover, the reduced mana nodes give me more mana for MoM synergy.
3) I take Discipline to be able to cast AA in the first place. If I was not casting it, I would agree with you : more mana = more survavibilty.

4) Exactly : I'm not as tanky as I could be, which is why I need to saty away, hence the LMP. This is a choice I've made. The reason is simply that if you're getting close, you'll take really a lot more damage. To be able to survive this, you will need to take additionnal life nodes. And still, you'll be in more danger than just simply staying away. What I did here is a simple choice of gameplay.

5) Yup. Unless you're facing a thick pack. In this case, Fork deals damage more far than conc effect. Like I said, you can switch the two, I was just tired in solo and maps not to be able to kill the totem or gardian making the path immortal.

6) In solo, it's not that useful : you have enough damage. In maps however, casting an elem weakness, a crit weakness and enfeeble benefits to almost all builds. On tough mobs you can switch one of the first two for temp. chains. It's utility mainly, but it proved many times usefull to me. Again, it's a choice, these three curses can provide you either a good dps or a good survability via debuffs.

7) Argument accepted in full : switch FC with Conc effect. Altough I have to check if I'm still completely immune to fire reflect. With faster cast, you deal less painfull balls, and take less reflect.

8) Which ones exactly ? Most of them are auras (already debated earlier), area of effect damage (for FB), effect of buffs and life.

9) That's right, I forgot it in the link. I have it on my char, I just checked.

10) I'm currently trying that. It ***should*** be better, but I don't feel a real difference for now.

Thing is : I'm broke. And I usually put flammability on the last socket of my staff to get a +2 level. Life leech is really a good option, but like I said... I'm poor. Anyway, considering I currently have no major problem surviving, if I was rich enough i'd simply put an empower as a 6L.

Just made a test : somehow I actually deal more damage with my quality faster cast than with conc effect. And considering I have no mana problem, I think I'll keep it.

"

Serrã wrote:

Just made a test : somehow I actually deal more damage with my quality faster cast than with conc effect. And considering I have no mana problem, I think I'll keep it.

What kind of test?
The choice faster cast - conc.effect depends on what game content you are playing. If you are focussing on piety runs and are one shotting the mobs up to piety with fc, there is no point in switching to CE for more damage, it would actually lower the clearing speed. If on the other hand you focus on gaining XP and therefore aim at playing higher maps you longer one shoot even white packs. Here CE is a far better choice than faster cast: More damage not only means faster clearing speed, it also means better protection: the faster you kill them the less they hit you.
Speaking of game content: it would be nice if you could clarify what game content you are playing with this build (piety runs? Maps? what maps?) so one can put the "low" life you have into perspective.