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i have a question out of curiosity. if instead of witch you take shadow elemental damage nodes and take the same tree except for witch spell nodes, does it make any difference? i mean elemental =spell damage as far as discharge and arc go?
i still prefer my ci build but might give this one a spin out of curiosity to compare the two.
but - max res maps seem very risky in high maps, to low lifepool.
chaos damage is a risk.
also i wander about uber atziri trash mobs, i can tank them with molten, but i notice life based mjolners jump around with lightning strike and cant tank at all since the mobs hit like a truck for phys damage i think.
also i think with those stats uber atziri spear wrecks you, not enough life to tank it.

dalfalf, 5 runs are actually pretty accurate considering that the standard deviation of my results was quite low. The numbers that I got for the runs were all very close together. I'm sorry but I think you will understand when I update the build guide for the RT variant. You'll see why it's better than the crit variant. I'm sorry for the inconvenience, but the RT variant does not work on a Witch. Shadow, Templar, and Duelist can all run this build though.

RicoKGB, (disregarding the fact that I have a completely rebuilt tree for my RT version) your tree stats look very promising and I admire your devotion to getting what you like most in a tree. But your tree strays to far from the build and it becomes a new build entirely. The build has no room for giving up damage, which is what you do. You lose a lot of attack speed and a lot of spell damage which makes the build very slow. Yes you regained that damage back with Iron Will. This means no life leech which means is no longer in the "Thundercane Territory" when it comes to builds. Not only do you lose life leech, the attack speed loss is so great that it affects your dps immensely. The other thing I noticed about your tree is that it lacks the most important aspect about Thundercane: the auras. The sheer capability of being able to run 2 purities, Grace, and Wrath on a non lowlife build is where this build shines. I don't know if you can run even 3 auras on your build but Wrath is another example of a huge DPS booster, which it looks like you cannot run. I think you can still run 3 auras so at least you have your Grace for armour. Also, with your lack of aura nodes, I don't see how you can get 87% resistances.
Im sorry if this sounds like I'm attacking you. I really don't mean to make this sound offensive, but giving damage, attack speed, life leech, and aura stacking (the 4 most important things in the build) for extra charges and AOE seems like a very poor choice. You gain extra charges, but you don't even need extra charges because you can't get them in boss fights anyways (usually stopping at 3 or 4 tops) and the clear speed is so fast on the build that it's unnoticeable since you one shot packs already whether it be with 4 chargers or 20 charges.
Now this is all for nothing since I completely rebuilt the tree for RT, but the thing I'm trying to say here is that you CANNOT give up damage, attack speed, life leech, or any aura nodes. It's what makes this build strong and if you take that away, then you no longer have a Thundercane.

Regarding the RT variant, some people may want to stick with the Crit Witch version and so I will keep a miniature guide of at the bottom. But I can assure you, the RT variant has more DPS and more tank. It's much stronger than the crit build (at the cost of Surgeons). Atziri also has an ad phase for a reason and you don't need to spam flasks as much as you think in order to survive until ad phase (the build is quite tanky).

ballsonfire, Yes taking the shadow elemental damage gives you the same damage. The RT variant (which I will post in a day or two) will have a slightly higher life pool, but the build does not need a high life pool. The build leeches so fast that all it needs to do in order to survive is not get 1 shot. The build excels in not getting 1 shot by having 87% resistance and 90% physical damage reduction (with charges up when you're fighting). If you're concerned about life builds in general, I've been working on the RT variant with a buddy of mine who has been running lowlife mjolner (with some pretty godly gear) and he loves this build so much more. The reason being that it can tank a truck of physical damage and pretty much anything that's not an Uber Atziri double flameblast.

Dimensi0n

Got your point (and figured it out from tree difference) and might agree with you that your version is able to produce better dmg output vs bosses (but not sure on that really). And maybe dmg output vs packs on both is allredy so high that it doesnt matter. But I can't agree for now that having 51% less life increased and going RT will make it better vs hard hitting bosses. If you are able to test it at some point pls post your results. Try Death and Taxes, try lvl 77+ map with unique beyond bosses, try Malformation Piety, normall Atziri and if you can - Uber Atziri. If all goes good than we might have a winner.

Edit:

I miscalculated ele dmg from my tree. I have more. I've also totally forgot about 8% area dmg increase. So its 58% less spell dmg vs 24% more ele dmg and 8% area dgm inc and that means 26% less dmg increase from my tree (not that big of a difference really). Now I'm using Iron Will and with my current str its 135% spell dmg increase meaning I have overall 109% more spell dmg increase. I dont feel that this is "slow". For really hard content and Atziri I can swap cwdt - elemental weaknes for cwdt - warlords mark to have double leech engine for a total of 4% life leech that way (but no vaal packt). I have 300 life regen/s on top of that. I've also made some observation vs bosses (that can live long enough to see this ;) - I can reach 5/5 charges most of the time no problem and 5/6 several times during the fight with bosess like Atziri (charges genarated by arc not counted in) with my current attack speed with no blood rage (4.48 aps molten no blood rage, 4.76 aps molten with blood rage). If you have more aps than check if you're not capping yourself with your current max number of charges (I'm almost sure you do).

I'm not doing this to prove anyone wrong or smtg. I'm curious which one of the given builds might actually perform better in the end game content. Which one to use. Or maybe there's something "in between" that this discussion might be able to bring up to the daylight.

I'm not going to try and sell you my build and be your "winner" per say. And the RT actually has 50% increased life (I think you misunderstood) compared to the crit version because we don't need to spend points into the crit nodes. Though, I'm not really gonna try and argue why the crit witch is the build you should use because it's not. The RT shadow version is much better so I'll post it up and you can see for yourself if it's a build for you. There isn't really a build that is better than others. Some have their weak points and some have their strong points. Everyone has their own "winner" build.

Now regarding my actual RT Shadow, I think you will be pleased with it (compared to the crit witch) since I, too, am not as satisfied with the crit witch. I've already run Atziri with it deathless and no problem at all. Facetank Double Vaals (even enraged Vaal is easy to facetank). Trio was a breeze if you go Cycloner > Tittybitch > Dual Striker. And Atziri was even easier if you just flask for flameblasts and stormcalls.

You can calculate and recalculate your damage and other variables, but when you really get down to it, you're simply giving up way too much for damage that I don't think is actually better. And yes I've actually checked how many charges I get while bossing. It usually hovers around 3 charges each all the time and rarely hits 4.

Now when you say that you max charges, I know exactly what you are talking about. This only occurs on a crit variant. You will see that you have 5 charges and you think: oh! I've capped it!

I'm sorry but... what actually is happening is that your are bouncing between capped charges and 1 or 2 charges. I've played crit mjolners for a long time now and the mechanics to why this happens on crit can be complicated. On a crit build, what happens (and I know this happens to you) is that you will get 5 charges from Mjolner and then you will discharge. But when your discharge crits, you do not get back more charges from Romiras simply because you crit, so you end up with 1 charge (from Arc) for your next discharge and you end up discharging with 1-2 charges for your follow up. And then when you discharge with those 1-2 charges, you usually don't crit so you get back up to 4 or 5 charges again on your next discharge. Crit mjolners builds bounce between 1 and 5 charges where as an RT build is almost always at 3 or 4 charges since EVERY SINGLE DISCHARGE gives you those extra power charges.

This isn't even taking account for the fact that Crit builds also only hit 85% of the time whereas RT builds hit 100% time. So while the damage comes across almost even, the hit chance is significantly higher and yields more DPS. Also the thing with using kingsguard, is that kingsguard benefits more from an RT build than a Crit build since you it does not scale on damage or crits, it scales on the number of discharges and endurance charges consumed, and the RT variant (along with its 100% accuracy) yields much more consumed endurance charges.

I was unsure about this too before, but after I ran some tests (and ran some tests with my friend), we concluded that RT actually does kill faster (assuming my original crit tree) by a very noticeable margin. Now on top of having more damage, the RT build has more attack speed, more life, and ... I'm actually kind of tired trying to explain something that you can't see yourself because I haven't posted it up yet, so I'm actually just gonna hurry up and finish the RT guide.

Hopefully you'd understand when I post it.

I'm just pushing you a little bit to know why you've made decisions with the build that on a first glance looks like they're not optimal. With every explanation you've made so far I'm more and more convinced that this are actually legit and solid choices. What you've just wrote about "bouncing charges" is a turning point. Sorry I've made you so tired. I cannot agree with you that there's no "best" build. With limited skills and itemization there's allways a setup that is overall best (both offence and defence). I hope you will get there so I can follow ;)

Oh haha okay :)
Anyways, to keep you updated on how things are going, my friend and I (the lowlife mjolner player) are just working on fine tuning the build so that we can get every ounce out of it. The skill tree I made is pretty much finished and the gear is the same as the crit variant. It's a very solid and efficient tree and yields much more damage than my previous build (I feel like I've said this 40 times lol).

Anyways, if you want a sneak peak to the skill tree, just send me a message :P
I'm confident you will be impressed

Build updated

Goooood, I'm leveling shadow, about 15 more Docks runs from now and I'll hit lvl 70 and be able to transfer all my gear and gems from a crit version to this new RT version. Will level it up to like 85 on maps. Than I'll do some back and forth runs on different end game content to compare both versions and post my results here. But It will take some time, about a 1,5 weak or so because I'll be flying to Turkey on tuesday for like 7 days.

Dimensi0n

What about:



With cwdt - warlods mark - ele weaknes - immortal call. Than Iron Will in Mjolner and Haste in place of Wrath/Anger in Alphas ?

Windscream isnt a bad option. You can use them if you want, I just prefer 30% movement speed, 90 life, and more resistances than elemental damage and an extra curse. If you are fine with your life though, that would be a pretty significant DPS increase :P I wouldn't use Warlords Mark as your second curse though. We don't need extra leech (since we already have 2 flipping life gain engines that is more than enough lol) and endurance charges aren't a problem either. I'd recommend using Conductivity for some serious extra DPS.

Though when it comes to auras, Wrath > Haste. 22% MORE (multiplicative) lightning damage gives you more than 17% attack speed. You can easily get 12% attack speed on one jewel.