why aren't more witches blood mages?

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Hey, sorry for spamming your thread but I really want to ask you something.

I've started playing two days ago and to day I went to the forums to sort out some ambiguous wording on some of the passive skills that confused me. I soon began to read about builds and I stumbled upon this thread, which caught my eye. I am playing a Templar that I wanted to make a caster, and my idea was to take a lot of the life nodes making the character easily played throughout the game and tanky for PvP/endgame later. I never considered blood magic because it’s so far away from the starting point but your vanilla build inspired me, and the whole idea of a very tanky caster with no mana intrigues me A LOT and I’ve decided to try it out. So far my build looks like this.



And now to my questions:

1) I picked Marauder because it seems to me that by being a Witch you waste the first 4 skills on your path to the left edge of the skill tree, whereas your build actually goes all the way to the Marauder starting point. Am I missing something?

2) Since I am completely new to the game I have no idea what kind of gems (and support gems) I should use. Especially because not many skill points are left to boost damage, after spending so many points in the life nodes. I was thinking lightning was the wisest choice, since I got access to “static blows” and can take the route into more lightning stuff from there (if I will wield wand especially), but I still have no idea which lightning skills are considered good and which are not. What do you recommend?

3) And finally: What kind of gear should I try to get?


I hope you can find time to answer my questions.

Best regards.

As far as I can see, Blood Magic seriously gimps your DPS because of where you end up on the tree compared to where you could be had you headed towards CI / Shadow etc. Better just take a Blood Magic support gem or two and be flexible about it.

Thanks for posting. Your build looks good to me.



1) You get a small amount of spell damage and inner focus, which is nice. But overall you're right, marauder is a more logical starting area. I only play witch/ranger though because I don't like the other character models.

2) For gems I'd go spell totem + skeletons, freezing pulse + iron will + faster projectiles (it increases the life span of the projectile) + lesser multiple projectiles + added lightning dmg if you want to proc shock stacks with your frost damage.
The reason people skip damage nodes is because 1 passive point for 6% increased dmg is nothing compared to the +~100% you can get on just one wand. Freezing pulse has the best aoe damage since it pierces in a wave, but shock stacks are great too. You can proc shock from added lightning dmg.

3) For gear the prefix should always have +life. I prefer energy shield mods for the other two prefixes just because there's not a lot else. (Amulets/rings/weapons obviously stack dmg/life). Suffixes are fairly limited, you'll end up with +resist.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0ArsB7KohOhhpdHoyZzU2WVZZNXQxMDg4MVk1b0FGbkE#gid=1

there is no right way, if your way works for you. I have a fire witch, mainly because I wanted to see if I can and summoners witches make my friends, who stream the game, crazy, because no1 can see what's going on with all those damn pets. lol

I saw blood magic down there and wished a way to get there without losing crits and such. In the end I figure I will try a blood magic build with another class.

I personally like your idea. I actually always thought about going BM as a caster. Not sure about the Witch class, though. I'm in the same boat when it comes to models of characters, but I wouldn't let that gimp my approach (it's not that bad, but it's suboptimal).

If you start as a marauder I think you'll be running into some Int issues, won't you?

Templar might be the better idea. (also has the most useful quest rewards to me for other char projects).

Generally speaking I absolutely love high HP regen. And as you mentioned, as a pure direct caster, you don't benefit all that greatly from auras anyway (lacking purity or determination - or both - sucks, but is not game breaking). Still not sure what good the ES will do you in the end. Without any nodes, it'll be pitiful anyway.

And either way, the build seems to be a late bloomer. Because it's a long way down to BM - and you have to take care of the regen first.

Still, I like the idea. I'm quite sure I'll look into building a character like that myself soon.

as a witch you get a lot of int and have access to a lot of mana and mana regen nodes.
You also have very few hp nodes near the starting position

Thanks alot for your reply! What do you mean when saying +approx. 100% from wands? And what curses should I use?

@ fayde

My point is if you want to go blood magic passive don't start as a witch. In our discussion earlier you told me you would have more hp. No you wouldn't. I can make a freezing pulse build with 285% life and 50 max health, use EB, have more defensive auras and still do the same amount of damage as you with iron will. If you take the blood magic passive you cannot run the same auras. You also are assuming that because you are EB you dont wear armor gear. This is not true. 1 good ES piece and disc is all you need to run 6 auras. The rest are armor. Your build is totally viable and an awesome idea. But it's an awesome idea for a templar, maruader, or duelist. Starting it as a witch is less efficient than the other characters. If you absolutely want to be a witch and have the blood magic passive then by all means play it. It can work. But it would be ridiculously expensive, hard to play until end game, and very difficult to farm early maps with. You dont have any way to mitigate reflect damage on your freezing pulse and because you are using iron will you are going to crush yourself on reflect. The gear you would be looking for would be the exact same gear as the EB build but you wouldn't get the same benefit. You would have more energy shield, and your effetive health would be higher. But you will still get 1,2 or 3 shot even if you have 7k effective life because you dont have the same defensive stats. You are saying you haven't been proven wrong yet. Kripp is a marauder and doesn't even take the passive for freeze pulse. Neither does prozon. Also the information I'm giving you isn't really opinion. These are key differences in the build that change as you progress from act 2 cruel - merciless a1 - merciless 3 - early maps -late maps- end game. I honestly believe your build won't work AS WELL AS a blood magic support gem build until end game.

Because they are witches and not marauders. Why would I travel across the universe as a witch to get blood magic and not start templar/marauder instead if that is what I am going to do.

Plus who has mana problems, especially if you go CI. Without HP to worry about rolling on gear you can easily get as much mana regen as you need, or you can just link Mana Leech to your Pulse and not worry about it. Hell linking mana leech to cold snap and casting it into a mob on cooldown will basically keep the mana leech rolling in at max pace anyways if you don't want to waste a link.

Sure you COULD go blood magic instead as a mana battery but like I and many others have stated before, why would you do this on a WITCH instead of another class. Witches are basically the furthest possible position from Blood magic in terms of points to get there and you would have to take tons of useless points.