Give it to me straight, how bad is Witch now

[BigBallinChester]

I loved using this character, having minions distract and wall up enemies while I pepper them with curses and spells. I only use my wand during boss fights and I loved it.

How bad is it now?

[Pervy]

Originally posted by Three-Headed-Monkey:

Originally posted by Tired Insomniac:

I'm using unearth with unstable and 25% faster cast.
And skeleton snipers with 2 extra shots and last grasp(4 seconds alive)? To spam the boom from fire plus gas.

How long can i use this for? or is something better then that burst dmg?

sniper/arsonist/frostmage/reaver are all usable during the campaign + cruel, been switching it up a lot every few levels to gauge their performance.

once you get t3 support gems i'd switch to arsonists though, snipers work too but arsonists will perform a bit better.

with t3 gems you can then put stuff like flame exposure on your doggo which will always be active because of his fire aura.

(you probably already do this since you use snipers, but i'll mention it just in case, you wanna use flame wall if you use projectile based minions for the fire buff)

arsonist are going to get a nerf to there spirit cost tho.

[Three-Headed-Monkey]

Originally posted by Tired Insomniac:

arsonist are going to get a nerf to there spirit cost tho.

i'd have to log in to compare the values but the patch notes said they will cost the same as the other mages, i dont think mages were "that" much more expensive to not make them useful anymore.

either way its not a huge deal imo, that'll only cost you 1 arsonist in total if you are already able to field a large number on them.

like instead of 14 arsonists + 1 storm mage i'd probably be only down to 13 arsonists + 1 storm mage ... more then half gets stuck on terrain anyway so not a huge loss.

edit: looks like mages are roughly 25% more expensive

[Wild]

Infernalist is still one of the top 3 builds in the game, besides the super "exploity" stuff, and probably top 1 for hardcore.

[Pervy]

Originally posted by Three-Headed-Monkey:

Originally posted by Tired Insomniac:

arsonist are going to get a nerf to there spirit cost tho.

i'd have to log in to compare the values but the patch notes said they will cost the same as the other mages, i dont think mages were "that" much more expensive to not make them useful anymore.

either way its not a huge deal imo, that'll only cost you 1 arsonist in total if you are already able to field a large number on them.

like instead of 14 arsonists + 1 storm mage i'd probably be only down to 13 arsonists + 1 storm mage ... more then half gets stuck on terrain anyway so not a huge loss.

I would like to know what the numbers are too. No one seems to care about the real numbers, only that THERE build got nerfed and its just oooh so much worse now. Its obnoxious to say the least.

[StarGazer]

It just puts more stress on the gear itself.
You now need to get a near perfect amulet with spirit implicit + minion level instead of being able to compensate otherwise with just having one of those stat's.
Its around +11 for the implicit and then 40+ on a roll.
So for the short answer yes but practically no.
Unless you have 500 ex ofcourse.

[StarGazer]

Originally posted by Tired Insomniac:

Originally posted by Three-Headed-Monkey:

i'd have to log in to compare the values but the patch notes said they will cost the same as the other mages, i dont think mages were "that" much more expensive to not make them useful anymore.

either way its not a huge deal imo, that'll only cost you 1 arsonist in total if you are already able to field a large number on them.

like instead of 14 arsonists + 1 storm mage i'd probably be only down to 13 arsonists + 1 storm mage ... more then half gets stuck on terrain anyway so not a huge loss.

I would like to know what the numbers are too. No one seems to care about the real numbers, only that THERE build got nerfed and its just oooh so much worse now. Its obnoxious to say the least.

The real numbers were that around 4k dps per skeletal arsonist was considered *decent*
With this nerf the amount is around -2 / 3 skeletons.
People were reaching 14+ with insane gear.

Damage becomes a struggle or a hurdle perhaps thats a better phrasing around tier 14 maps.
Here is where gem level and spirit comes into play. The static spirit cost has now been increased so thats a nerf.
I believe around 200k dps was reasonably asperational or perhaps even pushing 500k.
But nothing near 2+ mil (the real big boi hot chug around the block numbers)

[Pervy]

Originally posted by Gopnik Destroyer:

Originally posted by Tired Insomniac:

I would like to know what the numbers are too. No one seems to care about the real numbers, only that THERE build got nerfed and its just oooh so much worse now. Its obnoxious to say the least.

The real numbers were that around 4k dps per skeletal arsonist was considered *decent*
With this nerf the amount is around -2 / 3 skeletons.
People were reaching 14+ with insane gear.

Damage becomes a struggle or a hurdle perhaps thats a better phrasing around tier 14 maps.
Here is where gem level and spirit comes into play. The static spirit cost has now been increased so thats a nerf.
I believe around 200k dps was reasonably asperational or perhaps even pushing 500k.
But nothing near 2+ mil (the real big boi hot chug around the block numbers)

So at max level it will cost 9 more sprirt.

[StarGazer]

If its from the old 29 to 41 its by definition 12 per skeleton.
That is very substantial.

[Pervy]

Originally posted by Gopnik Destroyer:

If its from the old 29 to 41 its by definition 12 per skeleton.
That is very substantial.

Sure, however i do think its a good idear to make them fall in line with the rest of the mages.
I dont see a good reason for WHY it was cheaper?

[Killing_Time]

I was trying to make something centered around Bone Critical/Bleeding blood mage, maybe opt for cursing auras type of deal and it absolutely sucks. I was avoiding minions cause I was hoping to do something different, but I can't seem to get anywhere with her. Damage is crap, clear is crap, survival is crap. All I took was physical damage and spell damage and bone storm is and her other stuff is so lackluster.

My first character, was what everyone said was too hard (warrior) and I absolutely blasted through the game easily. Way more DMG, way more durability.

Im finding witch way worse and way harder than warrior and feel like I wasted my day. Probably gonna put her on pause and see what the other weapons and skills have to offer and maybe salvage it.

[OmniD]

I beat bosses in under 1 minute as a witch....

[ClAyMoRe*]

If you focus around witch skills you will have hard time until like end game, Her skills are not good at all, you can have decent, but still bellow average clearing speed for mobs, but there is nothing that I found so far that can make boss fights easy.
Most skills are just terrible to combine with minions, and as it is chaos damage, your only way to actually get items that increase it come later into game, leaving you basically relaying on skill tree.
But if we talking about which in general, ofc there are builds that can preform very good, I could probably just equip bow and do better. without using any minions , or which specific skills.

[Kalonji]

My bloodmage manages to do even less damage now after the patch...

[Geo]

Raging Spirits+flame wall is pretty good for damage combined with Skeletal Arsonists and Pain Offering.
Loyal Hellhound ascendancy for the reduced damage taken by 20% which is massive.

minions are a bit clunky, lot of micromanaging compared to walking simulator minions in poe 1 that clear screens.

[Sixgun]

Just made it to Act 3 with LV35 Infernalist Witch running Arsonist and it still slaps. Using Raxx's build.