Just how do you survive as a witch?

A Flame Totem linked with LMP and Blind will tank unlimited amounts of physical damage for you while you progress through the game (assuming you have enough mana to summon it (or life if you use blood magic)). If you ever use an ignite build, you can use a Cloak of Flame to help with physical damage. Arctic armor and Cloak of Defiance are also great options.

If you can, find a way to use blind in your build. It will make your life easier. A Flame Totem linked with blind works fairly well if you're having trouble with physical hits, but that's what I use. Find something that works for you. Another option is Cold Snap + Added Cold Damage + Elemental Proliferation.

Really though, huge physical hits are usually avoidable. If you got a lag spike, then unfortunately you did nothing wrong and there isn't much else that would have helped you survive. My advice is that you get the largest HP/ES pool that you can, stack some block, and then get some armor/evasion (basically, build tanky, which sounds like something you were already doing). Unless you can get iron reflexes and run grace, you probably won't have enough armor to mitigate large hits without a granite flask. Even with iron reflexes, you'll still take a lot of damage from large physical hits without a granite flask. CwDT + Immortal Call can also save your character from bursts of physical damage. Aside from everything I've said, it's generally best to kill stuff quickly from a range to completely avoid being hit.

I wish I could give you more advice, but I'm just out of touch with progression problems at this point. I don't consider 1600 HP to be too low for the area that you died. At the very least, the solutions I've stated above should help with many situations. I hope at least one thing I've said can help you.

i think you should have got more life nodes/life on gear and already specced eldritch battery. Then you would run arctic armour + use a granite of iron skin which would mitigate a fair bit of physical damage together. Energy shield can be used to get a huge "life pool", like 9k+, or you can convert it to mana where your excessive regen is used to gain mitigation through arctic armour and possibly mind over matter (often meaning a cloak with a witch). Thats basically the int defense mechanisms, nothing wrong with stacking regular armour, evasion, using flasks etc on top of that. I would say some level of hybrid defenses is fairly standard.

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Sesamia wrote:

A Flame Totem linked with LMP and Blind will tank unlimited amounts of physical damage for you while you progress through the game (assuming you have enough mana to summon it (or life if you use blood magic)). If you ever use an ignite build, you can use a Cloak of Flame to help with physical damage. Arctic armor and Cloak of Defiance are also great options.

GMP is a much better choice. Also Knockback is what you're thinking of, not Blind. Blind lowers enemy accuracy to 25% of normal, but does nothing against non-attack physical damage. Knockback pushes all enemies away and this helps prevent them from ever using their ability, regardless of damage type.

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Sesamia wrote:

If you can, find a way to use blind in your build. It will make your life easier. A Flame Totem linked with blind works fairly well if you're having trouble with physical hits, but that's what I use. Find something that works for you. Another option is Cold Snap + Added Cold Damage + Elemental Proliferation.

Cold Penetration does much more than Added Cold Damage. Trap futher does more damage and will proc when enemies are close. Mine does the same but is controlled. Added Cold Damage should only be used as a fourth support choice.

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Natharias wrote:

... Blind lowers enemy accuracy to 25% of normal...

Pretty sure they nerfed it to 50% of the normal.

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Exialis wrote:

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Natharias wrote:

... Blind lowers enemy accuracy to 25% of normal...

Pretty sure they nerfed it to 50% of the normal.

Didn't see the change, but wiki reflects it.

Unfortunate.

same way as any other build.

mitigation and or leech

Thanks for your replies. I'll try getting more life/arctic armour sustain next time.