Newbie Witch: Fire, Lightning, or Cold?

Here is pretty similar.

Cold is the most defensive, especially crit builds that can freeze easily.
Lightning is the strongest damage type but the spells are somewhat meh.
Fire has the most diverse arsenal but a lot of spells require you to be able to tank it and its status effect needs a lot of investment and a special setup to be strong.

My advice is not to play a caster at all if you're a beginner, monster resists are currently too high for it to be much fun in endgame. Play a melee or an archer until they do something about it.

It's a bit different. Cold is still more defensive, thanks to chilling and freezing, but both fire and lightning are all about the DPS, just in different ways.

Whenever you crit with elemental damage, you apply a status effect to all enemies hit. Fire damage ignites enemies, dealing 80% of the damage dealt by the initial hit over 4 seconds. Lightning damage shocks, increasing subsequent damage dealt to the enemy by 30% (stacking up to three times) for a few seconds (depending on the percentage of the mob's max life that was dealt), and cold damage freezes them solid (using a similar time formula as shock). Cold damage can also chill (slowing enemies move, attack and cast speed by 30%), whether or not it crits.

This means that almost all caster builds want to spec into crit pretty hard. As to which element you choose, they're all balanced. It's more a matter of the overall package. If you weren't already aware, most builds tend to focus around only one skill, so you should just pick a skill you like the sound of and roll with that.

The best primary spells to use right now are probably:

-Incinerate: fires a cone of flame from your hands. Gets stronger the longer you continuously cast it. Can't crit.

-Flameblast: Creates a growing circle of fire, which deals more damage the longer you hold it before unleashing. Good for burn builds.

-Spark: Shoots three little balls of lightning that wander around for a couple of seconds and zap the first thing they hit.

-Storm Call: Marks the ground; 1.5 seconds after you place your first mark, lightning strikes at every mark, dealing AOE damage.

-Freezing Pulse: Fires a fast-moving wave of ice that deals less damage the longer it lasts, until it eventually fades away.

If you can't decide, I recommend Freezing Pulse. Significantly easier to play than the others because you can kite very easily.

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raics wrote:

My advice is not to play a caster at all if you're a beginner, monster resists are currently too high for it to be much fun in endgame.

As someone who pretty much only plays casters, I strongly disagree. Getting the appropriate penetration support gem makes things absolutely fine.

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viperesque wrote:

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raics wrote:

My advice is not to play a caster at all if you're a beginner, monster resists are currently too high for it to be much fun in endgame.

As someone who pretty much only plays casters, I strongly disagree. Getting the appropriate penetration support gem makes things absolutely fine.

I would also disagree with myself if we were talking about an experienced player. For a beginner ? No. He probably won't be able to make it work, will get bored with tickling enemies and quit.

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cas5nq wrote:

Must I specialize in a single element? What happens if I face monsters resistant or immune to that element? I am already seeing this in Act 1. I rotate between fire, lightning, or cold depending on the monster resists. I looked at the passive skill tree, and it appears I can circumvent the element-specific bonuses in lieu of general bonuses to spell damage, cast speed, mana, and energy shield.

I am looking for a perfect build, just playing for fun, but also want to be able to play all the way through he game like my Marauder Duelist

I did the exact same thing on my first character, but it's bad, trust me. You get massive bonuses for specialising. Notably, because of the way support gems work, you can only have one or two skills (only one for most casters, since you won't usually want a 2H weapon) supported by five support gems, while the rest have to be stuck with three. You really want those support gems. While there are mobs that resist elements, there is no immunity.

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raics wrote:

I would also disagree with myself if we were talking about an experienced player. For a beginner ? No. He probably won't be able to make it work, will get bored with tickling enemies and quit.

You still chuck the hell out of most enemies though. It's only super-resistant stuff like a rare Golem with the Purity aura (if you're lightning) that you tickle.

well there aren't that many spells out there that can be used to just go out there and kill stuff without using some tricks

you seem like a new player, so I'll just say level a Freezing-Pulse and Fireball - both are two skills that serve rather well while leveling and work endgame.

use Frostnova as long as you can kill stuff with it (roughly beginning act2) and once in Act2 go straight left into the spider cave - might be a little hard but you get the Lesser Multiple Projectiles support gem for Fireball and Freezing Pulse - and that thing is rather important.

But in general you should reconsider using a witch, as her starting area in the skill-tree is just a mess and life is hard to come by. If you want to follow a Build, there is a good one for Freezing-Pulse flying around that can be played as Marauder or Shadow (Marauder doesn't get any spell-gems from quest though...)

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cas5nq wrote:

Must I specialize in a single element? What happens if I face monsters resistant or immune to that element? I am already seeing this in Act 1. I rotate between fire, lightning, or cold depending on the monster resists. I looked at the passive skill tree, and it appears I can circumvent the element-specific bonuses in lieu of general bonuses to spell damage, cast speed, mana, and energy shield.

Fortunately, there are no immunes but some come damn near, for example a rare monster with elemental resist, immune to curses and life regen. Those can be very hard to kill but having more elements won't necessarily help as it can be resistant to all of them, if you want a failproof backup spell grab ethereal knives.

Passives don't force you to specialize, gem slots do. You generally don't have the room for two fully-tricked out elemental sets with appropriate curses and swapping them in and out of your gear is tedious.

You don't need a 6-link, no. You can survive fine on four (although some builds need five). Six is a luxury. And no, you don't need to use only one skill. But the viable multi-skill caster builds are much, much harder to play than the single-spell ones. Are you 100% set on using multiple spells?