Question about Orbs of Alchemy

Hello everyone. I have been going crazy trying to get a Searing Touch or a Pledge of Hands. No luck at all. My question is as follows... I am gonna try and transmute a staff and try my luck and get one. Should I use an Orb of Alchemy or a Chance Orb? Another question is do I have to have the correct number of sockets in them and linked before I transmute them. In other words, lets say I have a staff with two sockets and I transmute it. After I transmute, will the staff have have the max number of sockets or can I change the number of sockets with a Jeweler's Orb after it is tramnuted and then link them with an Orb of Fusing. Sorry for the long post and I appreciate any information.

By the way, I will be using staffs found in The Fellshire Ruins on the Merciless level. I hope they will be high end to get what I want.

Thanks again!

The Witch class forum is kind of a weird place for that question, but here's my 2 cents:

Your chance of getting a unique from a normal item using orb of chance is extremely low. If you do end up getting a unique after using hundreds of Chance orbs, it will most likely be a lower value unique that you don't want.

You can't get a unique by using Orb of Alchemy or Orb of Transmutation. But you won't lose your 5L or 6L setup by transmuting or alching. Many times when I find a 6L white with a good implicit, I'll alch it and scour it repeatedly until the stats are solid, then voila you have a strong 6L you can sell for hopefully more than you spent on it. Sometimes this method backfires and you never get good stats, so be warned.

And with that profit, you buy your Searing Touch on poe.trade :)

thanks for the info and I guess I posted this in the wrong forum.