How to level Witch?

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raics wrote:

The numbers say that scaling factor (some number that quantifies how well a spell scales added damage) for Flameblast is 166 and 148 for Firestorm, with the average across the spell roster being around 170. It isn't the kind of difference that would define either spell as unsuitable for scaling with added damage, like we could say for Fireball or Frostbolt which have only 108 and 106, respectively.

I mean does added fire damage to spells from for example http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Ashcaller
or http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Abberath%27s_Horn really give some edge in comparision to 20-30% Spell damage increase? What about lvl 40+ wands with huge added fire damage?

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Sure enough, and it would be very important if you were racing but I wouldn't rack my head that much about reaching endgame half an hour sooner.

It just can get annoying pretty fast.

P.S. Teach me multy-quoting sempai :3

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I am thinking about dual wielding this http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Shade_of_Solaris with Firestorm. Sounds insane with all this spell damage and extra chaos damage. Tried it guys?

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SunL4D2 wrote:

I mean does added fire damage to spells from for example http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Ashcaller
or http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Abberath%27s_Horn really give some edge in comparision to 20-30% Spell damage increase? What about lvl 40+ wands with huge added fire damage?

Depends on a lot of things but it isn't that hard to calculate

If we assume you got, say, 200% increased damage already, another 50% increased damage will result in a 16% boost.

On a level 20 Firestorm, a top added fire damage wand roll of 49-85 will net you 10% more dps and a level 20 anger would give you 13% more. And that's where things get complicated, if you got a level 23 firestorm, adding anger would give you 10% more dps and adding a wand bonus on top of level boosted firestorm and anger would only net you 6% more dps.

So, the conclusion is you should try to add what you're lacking the most because increases have natural diminishing returns, if you got a lot of cast speed and increased damage you should go for added damage, and if you got a lot of added damage (+ spell level counts as added damage unless you got 'added as' somewere in there) and cast speed you should go for damage increases.

Of course, I'm not doing all this by hand, you should use an excel table if you do this often.

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raics wrote:

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SunL4D2 wrote:

I mean does added fire damage to spells from for example http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Ashcaller
or http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Abberath%27s_Horn really give some edge in comparision to 20-30% Spell damage increase? What about lvl 40+ wands with huge added fire damage?

Depends on a lot of things but it isn't that hard to calculate

If we assume you got, say, 200% increased damage already, another 50% increased damage will result in a 16% boost.

On a level 20 Firestorm, a top added fire damage wand roll of 49-85 will net you 10% more dps and a level 20 anger would give you 13% more. And that's where things get complicated, if you got a level 23 firestorm, adding anger would give you 10% more dps and adding a wand bonus on top of level boosted firestorm and anger would only net you 6% more dps.

Of course, I'm not doing all this by hand, you should use an excel table if you do this often.

But what about early levels and low level uniques? Lvl 11 Firestorm for example. Boost should be significant, right?

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SunL4D2 wrote:

But what about early levels and low level uniques? Lvl 11 Firestorm for example. Boost should be significant, right?

Not really, scaling factor doesn't vary all that much over the levelling course except very early on when things go all over the place because of rounding and high relative gains per gem level. Added damage sources like supports, auras and gear bonuses also go up at a certain pace so there aren't significant differences early on unless you got a unique that adds a ludicrous amount of added damage for its level.

Early on you don't have much damage and cast speed increases, so going for those is generally very effective, I like using Lochtonial gloves and Asenath myself.

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raics wrote:

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SunL4D2 wrote:

But what about early levels and low level uniques? Lvl 11 Firestorm for example. Boost should be significant, right?

Not really, scaling factor doesn't vary all that much over the levelling course except very early on when things go all over the place because of rounding and high relative gains per gem level. Added damage sources like supports, auras and gear bonuses also go up at a certain pace so there aren't significant differences early on unless you got a unique that adds a ludicrous amount of added damage for its level.

Early on you don't have much damage and cast speed increases, so going for those is generally very effective, I like using Lochtonial gloves and Asenath myself.

Thanks! Now the main question is - dual wield Axioms or dual wield Abberath's Horn or even something else? :P

For Firestorm, any of those will work until you can use Amplification Rod, hard to beat a ghetto 6,5 link if you can handle the mana cost. Some like to combine that with Dark Seer in HC because you get blind consistently.

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raics wrote:

For Firestorm, any of those will work until you can use Amplification Rod, hard to beat a ghetto 6,5 link if you can handle the mana cost. Some like to combine that with Dark Seer in HC because you get blind consistently.

Amp. Rod is really sweet though and Dark Seer is really great as well, but I plan to use Tabula for my Firestorm and at this level dual wield http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Shade_of_Solaris. Mana cost will bane me >_<

Also can I use Wand (Rod) + Spectre (The Dark Seer) again? This always confuses me.

You can't, this is no Torchlight.

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raics wrote:

You can't, this is no Torchlight.

Dang. Btw do people even use EE with Firestorm considering how fast the latter hits?

with a crit build, Ive reached very high dps levels with pair of these. ice nova for packs and freeze pulse for single target. Was using them all the way up to ~lvl 70