Witch Ascendancies Suck!

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KingDaMuncha#6025 wrote:

"I've found that the Witch is more about minion, chaos or bones/physical more than magic and spells tbh."

Weird right?

You think HP is useless?

Lets do some maths... My Witch has 600HP (with that ghost robe), 25% of that is 150

+1 maximum Energy Shield per 8 maximum Life = 75ES

So for 75 extra ES Im loosing 150 HP. Thats completely useless.

And her Demonform cant do melee. Im a witch monk, so that ascendancy is completely useless.

And she doesn't have any utility or versatility because she only buffs fire magic.

its funny that you pick up the ES nodes without scaling the ES.

Also how did you get to 600 life? thats sounds pretty lvl 50 to me. At level 90 you WILL have roughly 1.4k life

Well, lets go using your example. You invest into ES, because its utterly broken in its current state and 15 points later you got like 300% increased ES and you turned those 75 ES into 300 ES

infernalist is a really badly made ascendancy, most of it needs a fundamental rework.


the dogo gives you 20% DR and then the damage taken as node gives even more mitigation, so on those 2 things alone people are using it because damage reduction.


everything else is a failed concept.


the demon form is being gamed into something useful by using that stupid unique chest and then flat regen, but that is such a mechanical gaming of the mechanics and not how the thing should obviously work. its bugged and more than bugged it doesnt really work in a sensible fashion for an ascendancy. a whole sublcass feature like that should revolve around a low level unique chest, its idiotic, its terribly designed and bugged.

the whole infernal flame shit is terrible, its not an idea that really works. you spend 4 points into it and have to mitigate/play around this thing in insane ways in order to get what? 20% of damage as extra fire occasionally? thats worse than 1 prefix on a wand. its absolute trash and needs fundamentally reworked.


crit damage bonus that comes with a downside you have to build around? really? no its shit, who is going crit fire spells with that?




people are using it purely for damage reduction and then maybe doing some life reserve for minions. the other 3 big designs in the tree of the crit, the infernal flame and the demon form are all a giant mess that need completely reworked. its REALLY bad as an ascendacy. that doesnt mean people are not using it and doesnt mean that its not resulting in good builds. youre either the sort of person who just sees results or you are the sort of person who can look objectively at the design and see if the thing is working as it should.

It seems you can read either.

"+1 maximum Energy Shield per 8 maximum Life" is what the skill node says.

And I'm wearing "Ghostwrithe" which converts 50% of HP to ES, that takes my Max HP down to 716 (now). And my ES is at 2542.

Yes I am a witch monk. My witch uses Melee staff skills and phys nodes from the Monk tree.

So I want an ascendancy that boosts my elemental/physical damage.

The Witch has lots of Phys nodes on the Witch tree so it fits well.

...except the suicidal witch ascendancies

In POE1 the witch had lots of skills in her ascendancy that boosted elemental damage. e.g. THE ELEMENTALIST ASCENDANCY

Most of the META POE1 character builds relied on Mageblood. It had nothing to do with the build its self.

I rerolled from blood mage into infernalist and it's been night and day way more comfy, despite both being propositions of trading hp for damage. I'm also playing phys spells & hybrid melee, but maces instead of staves.

30% more crit for a drawback you have to build around is both thematic and easily offset, particularly if you're already taking the damage shift node.

20% unconditional damage shift on the doggo is so strong. If building into fire resist, which the ascendancy sure seems to promote, then 20% shifted from cold / lightning is a 12% damage reduction on both of those elements at 90% fire res. Chaos resist is kinda hard to stack but its still a net gain > 0%, or if using CI and ignoring the reserve nodes. The ascendancy pairs so easily with Pain Attunement & CoF too.

2% max fire res is easy to get on crimson jewels, or you can use the soul cores, or that shield.

If spells, Demon form's neat as a leveling/league start ascendancy that you can respec out of after +7s or w/e becomes cheaper too, but I agree that it feels awkward outside of the meta regen build.

Pyro Pact is a cool value tradeoff, unlimited mana for getting bopped when you fill it up, but Seething feels too weak as a conditional 20% damage with 35% uptime (unless rhythmically managing costs), the power it gives relative to the other nodes feels a bit low given how chunky mana costs are rn. Like Pendulum of Destruction but fiddlier. You can't comfily use it for weapon skills either since it'll start draining if mana isn't consumed every 2s - the 2s window is too restrictive. I feel like Seething Body & Bringer should've been 1 combined node.

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hqDM#6633 wrote:

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The ascendancy pairs so easily with Pain Attunement & CoF too.
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I dont think it is that easy thou to pair with pain attunement. Picking that node means low life and self igniting, and self igniting means interrupted es recharge. Alternatively doing just low life without es is kinda weak unless doing with mind over matter, but then you cant use pyromantic pact.

You could probably pull it off with ignite effect or duration reductions, but that isnt really entry level stuff.

edit: im about grinning immolation

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ScyVelayn#7415 wrote:

I agree they suck, but for different reasons.


Infernalist is not my style, but she gets ways to mitigate or skip the suicidal abilities.

Blood Mage is more up my alley but she only gets a stupid mini-game of picking up heal orbs to mitigate her HP cost and is forced to take the HP cost node, which together with micro-managing minions and constantly having to deal with enemies that ignore your minions, just turns the whole playstyle into a fumbly mess.


I am hoping for the 3rd ascendancy to be something more fitting both thematically and mechanically, like Lich Mage with powerful auras maybe.

3rd ascendancy isn't hard to guess if you look at three demo videos for each class during the character selection screen, showcasing three themes for that class. For witch the missing one is for chaos damage spells, not necro, and if resources were already allocated, changing development to some other theme now is unlikely.

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hqDM#6633 wrote:

Pyro Pact is a cool value tradeoff, unlimited mana for getting bopped when you fill it up, but Seething feels too weak as a conditional 20% damage with 35% uptime (unless rhythmically managing costs), the power it gives relative to the other nodes feels a bit low given how chunky mana costs are rn. Like Pendulum of Destruction but fiddlier. You can't comfily use it for weapon skills either since it'll start draining if mana isn't consumed every 2s - the 2s window is too restrictive. I feel like Seething Body & Bringer should've been 1 combined node.

you already have unlimited mana essentially, and you can use it as a damage pool etc if you keep it as mana. its purely a massive nerf you have to suffer and build your entire character around in order to get the buffs from the nodes after it and the buffs are absolute dogshit. theres nothing positive about pryo pact, its 100% massive downside.






im playing self found, the game has to work self found. you cant just get +2 max res jewels, i havent found a single one, i will probably not find a single one if i play another 100 hours. you cant base an ascendancy around shit like this.



its such a badly designed subclass, its awful.

picking pyromantic pact they could change skill tree- change no longer useful mana mini nodes, notables and keystones to something to build around pyromantic pact. It would be both cool and solve some issues.

Like for example mana regenerations modifiers in passive skill tree could be replaced to life recoup from fire damage taken to better deal with self inflicted fire damage (or maybe energy shield recoup?). Mind over matter keystone could be replaced into smth cool which would work with pyromantic pact.

I could write a lot more on possible changes, but will stop here for now.

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Echothesis#7320 wrote:

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ScyVelayn#7415 wrote:

I agree they suck, but for different reasons.


Infernalist is not my style, but she gets ways to mitigate or skip the suicidal abilities.

Blood Mage is more up my alley but she only gets a stupid mini-game of picking up heal orbs to mitigate her HP cost and is forced to take the HP cost node, which together with micro-managing minions and constantly having to deal with enemies that ignore your minions, just turns the whole playstyle into a fumbly mess.


I am hoping for the 3rd ascendancy to be something more fitting both thematically and mechanically, like Lich Mage with powerful auras maybe.

3rd ascendancy isn't hard to guess if you look at three demo videos for each class during the character selection screen, showcasing three themes for that class. For witch the missing one is for chaos damage spells, not necro, and if resources were already allocated, changing development to some other theme now is unlikely.

Chaos damage spells was what I was aiming at before I realised the chaos skills in POE2 were rubbish, theres only ONE usefull skill with hex blast and that just doesnt do enough damage.

I can only conclude from the comments from the thread maker that they are just dense and don't know how to build a character. Like actual bruh. Complains about not being able to scale lightning (why are u on witch then????) then turns around and spits at the person trying to help them by pointing out the nodes on inferanalist that do help.