2Handed Mace Witch

Hey guys, I thought I´d put this passive skilltree i planned up for discussion, lvl 13 so far, so not too far into it yet, but criticism is always good.

This is a build I am using in HC atm, and was more of a troll build at first, but I think I´m going to take it to the end :P



So what I did, was first get up to the first +30 strength node I could get to (northwestern one) and then got the +cold dmg and cold resist (that's how far I am atm). the current amount of strength lets me wear up to lvl 36 2h maces, so it'll do for a while. My endgoal is to be able to wear the highest lvl mace (strength 191, in this skilltree i pickup 194, i might have to reconsider some strength nodes, since gear has strength as well ofcourse)

So yeah, any thoughts, skill gem recommendations (using glacial hammer, ground slam, clarity, detonate dead and heavy blow atm) are very welcome :)

Greetz, Magalva

*EDIT; a fair point made by c2; Why am I doing this? Well, it started out as a troll-build after my latest witch died. Now I want to take it as far as it can (hopefully at least being able to clear merciless, maps I don't know anything about so yeh).

There's no real "new" idea involved, it's just another - I smack yo face in - build, or at least, that's what I want it to be :P Focussing around elemental damage moreso than physical, since I have more ele dmg nodes readily available to me than physical ones. And it's kind of a challenge to prove that indeed any start point SHOULD be able to play any way they like xD -suboptimal maybe, but should be possible-
Oh, and I do use glacial hammer/heavy strike/ground slam the most. Just found a rejuvenation totem, which helps out a lot as well.

So again, any ideas, glaringly obvious mistakes I made, point them out, chip them in, I'd greatly appreciate it :)

Lvl 21, act 2 by now

Why? Not to say "you're crazy don't do it" but "What was the goal to wanting a 2H mace witch". It helps build to a specific design.

Ok so I switched to using elemental hit. This did increase the Dex requirement of the build I guess...But this would mean i can probably forget about getting any phys dmg increase nodes as well, which i like xD

It must be very fun to play. A small girl macing down Brutus, in the prison. :D

I'm eager to see how far this char will go.

Zeqqon

I think you may have health problems late game with this build, which is why I probably would have opted for chaos inoculation instead and ignore health altogether. Aside from that the build looks very interesting, I wondered how a melee which would go.

At the moment I have reached cruel difficulty. The act 2 boss gave me zero troubles, the adds he summons actually did more damage than the boss himself, but that would be because my armor rating is incredibly low, and I had my resistances almost maxed.

This is something I can't seem to get around for the time being, sitting on ~500 hp and ~150 ES with ~400 armor doesn't seem too survivable to me at all xD

Did reach the templar starting area though, where I am planning to grab up some more %life and %armour nodes, hoping that that'll be enough to sustain me while I gear up.

Could you update your build. I'm curious since I'm also running a "melee" witch but went defensive 1st than offensive.

My ES cds at 2.5 sec.

This is as far as i got so far (and this has got me past Merveil and act 1 in general on Cruel);



Am lvl 36 atm. And i have had some OSH-- moments, but that was mostly due to me not paying attention at all :P

So far have been sticking with Armor/ES gear, and it's been working fine.

Skill gems in use; Ground Slam mostly, it gives me some dmg on range as well, so kiting + hitting works for the harder mobs. Glacial Hammer/Elemental Hit, interchangeable in my opinion. Glacial easier to fit in the red slot-dominant armor. Clarity lvl 8 and Discipline lvl 3 aura, reserves leave me with 93 mana to use, but using 12-15 per skill and regenning 10.2 per sec is working out pretty nicely. Sometimes i really like the Rejuvenation Totem i picked up along the way, just to pop it down and not worry about potions for a few seconds. Also capped out pretty much all of my resistances, which makes everything except physical and chaos dmg quite easy to deal with.

I'm having real trouble with heavy physical hitters though, i only have about 547 armor.

I've also started gunning mostly for survivability nodes (see the armor/es and %life passives in templar area where im up to now), also going for the reduced recharge on ES after those.

So yeah still hanging on, doing act 2 step by step and hopefully getting some meaningful gear upgrades along the way.. ;)

I see you went for CI, which is actually the single best idea for a melee witch xD But i dont see doom cast... you're going to be a "spellblade"-like creature? and also, what is the cap on cooldown reduction for ES? since you have about 140% in those passives ;)

I don't know where else to get "-ES cd" and I have all of em in the PST (cappd at 2.5sec).

DEFENSE
I've been using tempest shield, molten shell, discipline (ES), determination (armor) leaving me with 90-ish mp to spend. I do have enough mp regen though

OFFENSE
I am using viper strike as my single non spell attack. For huge packs I lay down a fire storm totem, fire trap, and proceed to use fire storm myself.

I recently changed 1 fire storm out to use either shield charge or whirling blades. I need those to buy me that 2.5 sec I need to recharge my ES. Can't really make a choice yet.

WB
+ fast movement
- annoying delay at the end

SC
+ easily chainable
- a little slow for a movement ability

//EDIT//
And for my very own spin on gear, I have 62 "thorns damage"

Hehe sounds good, I used to prefer whirling blades, since it actually makes you go THROUGH mobs, instead of bump into them as SC does. The delay is annoying though.

And as of right now, I'm lvl 38 and have reached ruthless. I partied up with someone for the Cruel Act 2 part, so that went kind of easy, don't think I could've already done it solo.

My main concern is now that, even after 2x 45 base hp from Oak, I'm still only at 750 hp, 424 es (with discipline), and have around 650 armor. I'm squishy as all hell. The guy that helped me was a lvl 38 marauder, we both leveled from like 35 to 38 during act2, and he ended up with approx 1.7k hp, without all %life passives, as he claimed.
Also using Clarity and Discipline gets me down to about 93 mana, which is no problem, but doesn't let me support another aura, unless I grab a few extra int nodes OR get a blood magic support gem on the determination aura, since i want that one the most xD

Also, I really need a new 2h mace, I still got a lvl 27 one, with quite some bonus dmg (i believe it was +117% phys dmg), but it didn't one-shot anymore xD

I also really need a totem support gem, for those nasty necromancer infested mobs.

Also thinking about picking up Resolute Technique (i miss A LOT), it gives me +130 strength, from all the strength nodes, and that comes out at +65 base hp, which is going to help.

I do have an Ambu's Charge waiting for me at lvl 43, which is going to boost my armor and ES by quite a bit, and gives 10% to all elemental resists, which helps alleviate the pressure for resists on other parts of my gear, but it doesn't patch up my glaring lack of health, so I probably need to get some good 4 linker or 5 slots 4linked weapons/armor with +hp to get myself going through ruthless.

We'll see how it goes, I'm off to bed for now, 02:00 right now, and leveled about 10 levels today, good day's work :P