Fire Witch Builds?

Hi all,

I have browsed around and was wondering if there is a straightup spellcaster build somewhere.

Most I see involve Chaos Inoculation or other such keystones, or seem to need specific items.

I am looking for a build which is basically a nuker with decent life/ES (survivability) not necessarily a top DPS one etc, just a good old "fire wizard" type.

Would something like this be feasible? Or is it extremely unviable? Or is there a build which has situational flexibility (i-e, nodes for cold/fire/lightning, master of none, but average at all, so can switch skill gems as needed?)

Fire Witch build

This is 101 points (around level 80?)

101 of 120 points used
* Avatar of Fire: 50% of Physical Damage Converted to Fire Damage, 50% of Lightning Damage Converted to Fire Damage, 50% of Cold Damage Converted to Fire Damage, Deal no Non-Fire Damage
+50 to Dexterity
+230 to Intelligence
+50 to Strength
+20 to maximum Mana
20% Elemental Resistances while holding a Shield
17% additional Chance to Block with Shields
25% chance to Avoid Interruption while Casting
8% increased Area Damage
104% increased Armour
80% increased Burning Damage
6% increased Cast Speed
55% increased Critical Strike Chance for Spells
50% increased Defences from equipped Shield
3% increased Effect of Buffs on You
20% increased Elemental Damage
20% increased Elemental Damage with Spells
90% increased Energy Shield from equipped Shield
84% increased Fire Damage
80% increased Mana Regeneration Rate
20% increased Radius of Area Skills
20% increased Spell Damage
114% increased maximum Energy Shield
104% increased maximum Life
44% increased maximum Mana
12% of Block Chance applied to Spells
0.4% of Life Regenerated per Second
10% reduced Mana Cost of Skills
+28% to Chaos Resistance
+15% to Fire Resistance
+26% to all Elemental Resistances

I dont have a good grasp on magic damage (as you can tell!), as I play melee (sovyns' lazy templar which suits my slow playstyle very well!) and thought would try a spellcaster.

any thoughts are appreciated. Thanks in advance.

You don't need avatar of fire as you already deal 100% fire damage.
Instead of all those shield nodes you need crit. Fire builds live off the burning damage which presupposes a decent crit rate.
I would build something like that:

Fireball - lesser multiple projectiles - concentrated effect - fire penetration - life leech
Support (in case of reflect): fire trap - fire penetration - concentrated effect (if you can handle the smaller radius)
Wear armour or armour/ES hybrid gear. If you need more mana, take Eldritch Battery.

Thanks! I wasnt sure on that avatar node.

So I dont need any passives which are weapon specific (Staves/wands etc) right?

I will try this out :)

There is 3 types of Fire builds.

There is the Shotgun Fireball build. It uses Fireball, LMP, Power Charge on Crit. It also uses Arctic Armor to negate reflect and rapid fire mobs(ie titty bitches). It requires lots of mana and lots ES with CI. The object is to practically face tank things so all 3 fireballs from LMP hits. Its major weakness is that it is lousy at large mobs, but great at taking out bosses. Very gear dependent. It is best to build this using Freeze Pulse until you have enough armor, ES and crit chance.(just avoid those Element specific passive nodes which don't add much anyway)

There is the Fireball Burning Proliferate build. It uses a single Fireball with lots of crit to damage one mob to burn all the other mobs around it. Depending on playstyle you may want to go without Power Charges because you are not fireballing enough stuff to keep them up. You first cast Temporal Chains on your target then hit them with Fireball until it crits which you will know because they are ignited. Then try to keep the mobs in that area plus keep yourself alive. Not nearly as gear dependent. You will go long ways with just a Searing Touch. It works great against large mobs but is slower but alright against bosses.

Finally there is the Incinerate build. Incinerate doesn't have crits, but you need to be more tanky since you need to stay in one place to keep up the last stage in Incinerate. If you are running a CI you will need some minions around you to absorb some of the damage since even with Arctic Armor you will take a lot of Physical Damage. If you are running Life, then you should start as a marauder and go Blood Magic. You shouldn't have much problem with reflect, but you will have a HUGE problem with lightning thorns. Thorns will kill an Incinerator in seconds. So you have to have a back up weapons like Fire Traps or something like it.

thanks a lot for the detailed post. I will play around with these builds and see which suits my extremely lazy, slow reflex playstyle :)