Ice Witch

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgMB37CCEEGWBUKusyycVkqVBK-bnqFXKwdjc1PAVOaBEVC71jvh4venK20ZjjwXVCKBwfPxdqKjf8YnqcHFiELyHewYw20Rlp2j_KuOvhEtfIPN-riTEduSODLRRUe1BOQijmT3prb6TUG8eVprZp5xTZrPQ2O3MVj1ncQpT4KbMJcQaTmKfVO2ht3zYG1dxkbX7SDhc4uM6-6ESDyOAW9XyTQKg_d-WQ==


How is this for a build to aim for?

What would you change?

What skills (besides freezing pulse) would you use?

Thanks for the advice!

I'm only level 58 personally so I might be wrong with some of these things.

Here's what I've experienced though: You need to prioritize survivability, dps is secondary.

To achieve survivability there are two options as a cold witch:
Stack crit so you can freeze enemies, preventing them from doing damage.
OR
Stack energy shield and life% nodes so you can tank more hits.

Your build does neither extremely well, so I feel like you would hit a wall in your leveling where you would try to level, but die too often to gain a net amount of exp (my cousin hit this "wall" on his ranger at around level 50).

Here's my build: (personally I hateee dying so I decided to stack both survivability options)


There are things I'm going to change and is not complete. I plan on taking Inner Focus because I will be using 3 Aruas.

I'll copy paste my planned skills from my notepad so you can see what kind of skills you might want and what kind of links you need.

2 Blue 1 Red 1 Green Linked Discipline, Evasion, Clarity, Mana Reduced
2 Blue 1 Red Linked Reduced Mana OR Increased duration, Increased AoE, Frostbite
4 Blue Linked Increased Crit Damage, Added Chaos Damage, Faster Casting, Ice Spear
3 Blue 1 Red 1 Green Spell Totem, Crit Damage, Faster Casting, Greater Multiple Proj, Ice Spear
4 Blue Linked Added Lightning Damage, Increased Crit Chance, Freezing Pulse, Cast Speed

Hope this helped =)

@Way2Saucey : thx a LOT (seriously) for posting your planned gem skills + their support.
Very interesting choices indeed.

2 questions for you :

- Why no freezing pulse anywhere ? (I don't find this "mandatory" don't get me wrong, I am just curious as to "what reason(s) pushed the spell out of your list")

- How are you planning to deal with frost-immune mobs ? (cause I don't seem to see any frost penetration support gem, nor a cold vulnerability curse gem either)

There is a freezing pulse in the last 4L with crit chance, faster casting, added lightning damage. Incase you didn't know why I put added lightning damage, whenever you crit you apply a 40% more damage taken debuff stacking up to 3 times for 120%. Dealing more damage = longer freeze duration.

I use frostbite for mobs that have cold resistance, this is the curse that decreases their cold resistance. Use the elemental resistance curse when you're partying.

Here is my current Open Beta build. I'm still testing and experimenting because a lot seems to have changed from Closed Beta when i last played. I will eventually go for CI depending on much ES i can get.





Unfortunately, Witch pure caster builds aren't as strong as our Closed Beta builds anymore. We are much more gear dependent and the game is starting to lean more toward Hybrid builds such as HP and ES stacking.

I might switch my LMP out to GMP if i have the mana/mana regen to accommodate it. Eventually i will get a 5L or 6L piece and gem increased critical strikes and one other gem to my freezing pulse - probably item rarity/item quantity or maybe more damage, not too sure now.

To help survive for now, stacking HP and ES is a good idea. Having a shield with a good block chance also helps a lot.

Frostbite (curse) does help make mobs vulnerable to cold

"

Ezciel wrote:

Here is my current Open Beta build. I'm still testing and experimenting because a lot seems to have changed from Closed Beta when i last played. I will eventually go for CI depending on much ES i can get.

Cold Witch

Current Build

Current Gear

do you have any extra gear you could hand down to me? lol, looking at your stuff makes mine look horrid.

Are any of you going to take Chaos Inoculation? I have a similar witch build but not sure if that's the way to go now that it's been nerfed.

"

allfrakkedup wrote:

Are any of you going to take Chaos Inoculation? I have a similar witch build but not sure if that's the way to go now that it's been nerfed.

Going CI and relying on it is really constrictive on any build.

If you know how stuns work, the duration of the stun is based upon how much % hp you lose from a hit. Since your hp is 1 every hit, if it lands, will stun you. This basically forces any CI user to get a unique item that provides stun immunity. In addition, you are basically restricted to ES gear with increased ES properties, constricting your character even more... It's still viable though because chaos damage immunity is pretty useful.

"

Way2Saucey wrote:

"

allfrakkedup wrote:

Are any of you going to take Chaos Inoculation? I have a similar witch build but not sure if that's the way to go now that it's been nerfed.

Going CI and relying on it is really constrictive on any build.

If you know how stuns work, the duration of the stun is based upon how much % hp you lose from a hit. Since your hp is 1 every hit, if it lands, will stun you. This basically forces any CI user to get a unique item that provides stun immunity. In addition, you are basically restricted to ES gear with increased ES properties, constricting your character even more... It's still viable though because chaos damage immunity is pretty useful.

I didn't know that stuns would affect a CI character in that way. I would rather pick up extra health nodes to deal with Chaos damage than be gimped with CI. Thanks for the info! Your build is very helpful.