Armor - how important for witches? (in merciless)

I play cold witch without CI, i have 2,5k hp and 1,5 k shield lvl 80. I also have:
Cast on damgae taken + Molten shell + Immortal Call + Decoy Totem to survive gapclosers
also
Ice Spear + Life Leech + Spell Echo + Greater Multiple Projectiles
also use Vitality Aura
high mana regeneration from crafted rings
also use:
Spell Toem + Summon Skeleton + Minion and totem resistance (to tank dmg when boss is rly hard or mobile or many ranged)
I do maps 70-72 rare currently, and i play PoE about 1 month.
also 75 /75/75/0 resists

The amount of misinformation contained in this thread is just hilarious.
Stacking armor for a witch rarely makes sense. For a basic physical defense setup, get your CwdT sorted! Example:



This will help immensely against leapers, chargers and whatnot.

Next, you either need to go for a tanky build, that means evade or mitigate lots of dmg and regenerate/replenish your HP or shield quickly.

Or, you get loads of DPS and kill stuff before it kills you. I'm playing a lvl89 CI physical wander in Bloodlines at the moment, and I follow this approach :P It is loads more fun imo.
Witch is still one of the strongest classes in 1.3 due to the fact that wanders got a new OP skill with kinetic blast. Sure, a ranger can get more DPS than me with worse gear, but his defenses pale in comparison. ANd once you start getting really good gear, the sky's the limit for a wander really. I have 6500 ES with decent gear, and leech back all of it within 1-2shots. All the while being immune to physical damage from my CwdT setup.

That said, you always have to play with your head. Not every situation is tankable by every character. Sometimes you just have to retreat, or change tactics.

Finally, if you do want some armor, get Iron Reflex Keystone and run Grace aura, and/or get your mana regen up and run a high level Arctic Armour. You'd be amazed how many problems just disappear with having AA.

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therealjcool wrote:

The amount of misinformation contained in this thread is just hilarious.
Stacking armor for a witch rarely makes sense. For a basic physical defense setup, get your CwdT sorted!

This thread was made in Feb. 2013! :P It predates both CwDT and AA being introduced into the game, so of course they are not going to be talking about those things at that time. I have no idea why Menouthis2 decided to necro it after almost 2 years of it being buried.