Witch - [3.14] Tanky boss killer who works on a budget. Summon Skeletons + Armor Stacking, CI, Max Block. - Forum - Path of Exile (2023)

At the start of the league you can use many alternatives to this magic wand:

You can also craft a cheap version of this by selling 40% of the sum of the quality of physical gems and any wand and then crafting the "Trigger a socketed spell if you can cast a spell with an 8 second cooldown" mod. Alternatively you can use

or

and there are about 3-4 other cheap unique options, most of which make you a bit more resilient, but I'd highly recommend going for a +2 Convoke Protection later on with a 4 second cooldown. It will be the most expensive item in your build starting at 20 ex mid league and early league you should try to craft it yourself. Can be crafted via the Delve Crafting shown inhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJDPK9J7MsQwith a 1/12 chance of getting a +2 mods combo and also you then need an Aislin slam which is around 4ex but might not give you the trigger so there is a chance of a miss. If you craft it yourself you might get lucky and get it done in about 5ex, otherwise it's about 20ex min.

Early league this is a 1ex base, mid league it is 5c. The enchantment is important and you'll probably have to try to get it yourself early in the league. 1 week after launch, it can be found in stores in the 2-3ex range and the middle league is below 1ex. Try to get good buns, my buns aren't even that good but passable.

Either these or 5 blue - 1 green or 4 blue - 1 green - 1 red versions. This is almost the best body armor in the slot and when corrupted with an implied +1 it's really hard to top. Best possible corruption is +1 to socketed gems and +2 to socketed permanent gems, but almost no chance of finding them in trading. However, keep in mind that I've seen rare chests with more +1 for socketed gem mods than the loyalists/lords skin, and it's possible to craft a rare chest better than this. However, it costs a lot of faceted fossils and a lucky Warlord Exalted slam. It's a very hard/expensive craft and a Lords/Loyal skin is almost always just as powerful at a fraction of the cost.

In the early game, you can go for any 4-5 link chest or tabula.

You would need 1 ring with a base and "The Pariah" is almost always the cheapest option to get many ES. Crusader moonstone ring and unset rings with good es-rolls and mods are pretty good too.

You can use

alternatively paired with

, but synthesized gauntlets with the Determination Reserved 10% Less Mana mod are best for both damage and survivability. As for the actual gloves, try to get Dex and Es mods as high as possible. You can also get Dex on rings, but if you can get it on gloves you should be able to get better rings and more ES overall.

Either Crystal Belt or Stygian Vise:

, Darkness entroned is also a possibility

, but the crystal belt should still be in the slot for the best. They only care about high ES mods, armor/mana (we convert the mana to armor so it's the same here) and resistance mods.

Either go or go Alberon's warpath for dmg

Rainbowstride for spell blockers. Rare Tall ES Boots are also a possibility

, but remember that you need an implicitly damaged "+1 for socketed gems" and that's much easier to find in the unique item trade. Rainbowstride and Alberon's warpath should both be cheap, even with the implicit corrupted.

Unfortunately, the perfect amulet does not even exist. There is a pool of mods that we want for our amulet, but they are all shared by different influences and it is not possible to get the mod combinations we want. What we want is a combination of Elder mod "+1 to max summoned skeletons", Hunter mod "+1 to level of all Intelligence gems", Redeemer mod "Reduced ability reservation" and "Resolve has 25% reduced Mana Reservation". Conqueror Mod. In other words, we have to choose 2 out of 4 and in almost all cases the amulet would be expensive. i went with

because I got it on a discount from a friend but it has no ES and it's not even the best amulet I can get.

The Anointing should be Whispers of Doom (3 golden oils), which is a bit expensive Anointing so you probably won't have it in a league starting scenario. For the league start you should instead go for "Deflection" (1 Teal Oil, 1 Opalescent Oil and 1 Sepia Oil) - much cheaper and not bad at all.

Another option is here

- much cheaper and pretty good too.

The first item you need to find in the trade early in the league is this shield. It's honestly the most important part of the whole build and the only part that really matters. The head can be changed, the body armor can be changed, but unless you're doing a lot of physique changes, this shield is essential. It was unfortunately 1ex at the beginning of the league, but it is really important, so save all your currency to buy it as soon as possible. Mid league, I saw it for 3c. It's dirt cheap, and you only care about roles and implicit damage: either near perfect at 30% quality from petcraft, or near perfect at 28% quality from syndicate but with "physical damage from hits taken as chaos damage" as the implicit damage. This would be an expensive and rare implied, but well worth the money.

Flasks have to be mainly defensive and the only offensive one is Bottled Faith. However, Bottled Faith is quite expensive and not a requirement. I've made Maven, Uber Atziri, and The Feared without it and it should only be considered the last item you add to your build once everything else is complete. However, it is very important that you have a granite bottle with the addition "made of iron skin". You need the +3000 armor and the 60-100% increased armor during the flask effect. Other bottles should only prevent you from discomfort (anti-ignite, anti-freeze, anti-shock) and prevent bleeding. If you want to leave, you can use a 75 Spell Blocks chance

Also.

You need it for increasing spell block chance. Put it in place via grazes.

"Gain 9-10% of max mana as an additional max energy shield while affected by Clarity" is really, really important, but try "additional armor while affected by Resolve", "additional physical damage reduction, while you are stricken with resolve". or "Magic Block while affected by Discipline". We will be using Zeloty so as a 3rd mod you can check out some dmg related to Zeloty. This gem alone can be quite expensive even with just the Clarity mod, 4-5 ex for 2 relevant mods and 50 ex for 3 relevant mods. Place it over the witch's starting position.

This is a must and the first gem to find when starting a league. Put it over EE

There is a lot of IT when placed to the left of the life/it cluster meld. Also, the easiest and cheapest gem to get both "corrupted blood cannot be applied to you" and "reduced ability reservation" is Corrupted Implicit. There is a divination card for double corrupted energy from gems, so finding a good combination of corrupted implied ones is cheap.

Just a typical DMG Minion Cluster gem. Renewal, Feastful, Call to Slaughter, and Malicious Bite are pretty good. Either stats or resistances for the 4th mod, but stats are better.

"Blessed Rebirth" is really important here.

Place it to the right of graze. You need it for the DMG it gives you and it can be replaced with other options as well, but it's the jewels that give you the most DMG possible on their own.

Try to get "Energy from Nothing" and stats/armor/it/mana here. 2 points is better.

Bossing-Setup (teuer):

Clear speed (less expensive and optimized for the league launch):

Enlightenment - Determination - Discipline - Diligence

But if you don't have enough reserved reduced mana or reduced destination mana reserved, you can leave

Enlighten - Determination - Discipline - Summon Skitterbots

If you walk even less:

Enlightenment - Determination - Discipline - Vitality

And at the start of the league:

Determination - Discipline - Vitality

With the idea of ​​a free outlet and no need for links. You need to get the talent tree nodes fast next to sovereignty so you have the auras online early.

Enlighten must be lvl 4 and even lvl 5 implicitly damaged in a "+1 to socketed gems".

If you have awakened Hextouch support but are not lvl 99:

Awakened Hextouch Support - Conductivity - Elemental Weakness - Stormburn

If you have Hextouch support enabled and are level 99 or 100:

Awakened Hextouch Support - Conductivity - Elemental Weakness - Persuasion Wave

If you have not enabled Hextouch support:

Hextouch support - Elemental Weakness - Stormburn and a free slot for Animated Guardians.

Flesh sacrifice, profane, sniper mark

clarity

Feeding Frenzy – Summon Carrion Golem
Flame Dash - Second wind support

If you take the Bone Barrier Ascendancy skill point:

Enhance - Level 1 Deviant Storm Shield - Level 1 cast when taking damage

If you take the Ascendancy skill point "Plaguebringer":

Version 1:

Lvl 1/Lvl 20 Cast when taking DMG - Lvl 1/Lvl 20 Molten Shell - longer duration

Version 2:

Any level Cast on Stun - Any level Molten Hull - longer duration

You can also use Molten Vaal Shells, but honestly the benefits are small and not worth the price increase.

At the time of writing this guide, I'm lvl 98, but by the time I reach lvl 99 I'd get Avatar of Fire and combine it with a surge of conviction for a fire-based EE that's also subject to fire, so you're not missing out on much Fire dmg from your skeletons.

When it comes to Ascendancy Points you have 3 choices, 2 of which can be used with almost the same Gem Link setup and the 3rd is something special:

We use "commander of darkness" - "mindless aggression" - "unnatural strength" - "bone barrier" and not molten shell, but you can say "commander of darkness" - "mindless aggression" - "unnatural strength" - "plague bringer". and melted peel. The 3rd option is a bit special: you choose "Commander of Darkness" - "Mindless Aggression" - "Unnatural Strength" - "Mistress of Sacrifice" and change some of the jewels to either of them

or

and change

for

with the idea of ​​​​removing the keystone "graze strokes". The idea is to get 75/75 pure block and not get the 65% penalty of grazing. You also have to use Rainbowstrides so you lose some damage, but the main benefit is that you actually gain a lot of tankiness against a lot of hits. You see, our build usually "heals" us from small hits, but a large number of large hits in quick succession can kill us. Normally when a hit hits us, say 1000 damage, resistances or physical damage reduction and armor will reduce it by either 75% or 90%, and the hit itself will then be reduced by another 35% if we block what means the actual hit should be around 100-200 but because of Aegis Aurora we hit recovery ES equal to 2% of our armor so really hit of 1000 heals us for 300es min and with bottles - 800es. Sounds good, but what if we get hit with a 5000 dmg hit? After reduction, it is barely covered by the Es supplement from Aegis Aurora. Of course, we have life regen and zealot's oath, and we can easily withstand 5-8,000 DMG hits - that's why Sirus can't kill us unless we stay in a sword field during the fight or we're unlucky and block not a hit series. The chance of not blocking 1 hit is 1/4, the chance of not blocking 2 hits in a row is 1/16, 3 hits in a row - 1/64, and in a fight against Sirus we basically have 63/64 Ability to safely ignore his hits, just dodge the meteor and you should be fine.

The problem really is that some hits are either too fast or too big for our DMG reduction scheme: you can get past a total of 20 monsters in an ultimatum, each of which has map mods and is also boosted by ultimatum mechanics. This means that 1: your Es on Gain will eventually not be high enough to nullify the damage and healing, and 2: you may have a large number of hits that don't block you. For every hit from those 20 monsters, 15 will negate you and heal you slightly and 5 will hit you. This is a problem and a reason I've died in some very, very heavily juiced maps where the monsters hit are boosted by 8 map mods. The proposed solution to this problem is simple: if you opt for pure 75/75 blocking, you will actually be blocking 65% more dmg by removing Glancing Blows. This would lead to a lot more healing from strikes and blocking dmg - in the previous situation 20 monsters hit us and 15 of the hits heal us, 5 of the hits do us DMG - it will actually make you more absurd for mapping.

Well, it sounds like a good idea, doesn't it? Why not implement? Problem is that even if you do this and solve the cons

or

(which are easy to solve) you still won't be able to block the "real" hits from bosses that kill us and you will also lose a lot of DMG. You can't block Atziri's pizzas, and you can of course tank 1 of them, but if you remove some jewels that you use great, you actually lose the ability to tank individual pizzas. I also don't think we can block the Maven's memory game, and it's also an ability that actually kills me frequently. In short, it just makes us a bit more resilient to mapping while not really making us resilient to other content, and also the loss of dmg is a small downside. I considered this idea but also considered the cons and therefore didn't invest the currency to try it.

By not taking "Rightouts Army", the points leading to it, and the strength point leading to the Fortress Covenant jewel slot, you can free up 7 points that can be invested to unlock Whispers of Doom (thereby freeing the ointment point is) and "Anointed fresh". Then by using a well-rolled "Lead Prize" and Crystal Skin's Anointing we can get +5 to all max resistances. This would give us 80/85/81 max resistances without any Using purities Should make us a lot tankier vs elemental dmg but I'm really not sure you want to lose the dmg If I was playing on hardcore - sure I'd strongly consider it but....for Soft core I'd rather go with the dmg especially when a very large part of our build is pretty much defensive oriented anyway If I had to think of an actual use of that idea it would be Guardian to be able to use the idea and do as much defense as possible so you can make videos on how to block every hit in the game with Uber Atziri's double Flamestrike nature the only hit I can think of is fatal to you.

You can do this, but then you need to get another enchantment and also need to sculpt for gloves and find a place for the Vitality Aura. It's a very expensive amulet, so only consider it if you plan to give 25 Ex for it. My gearbox solution is cheaper.

Personal Opinion: "Herald of Purity" is more annoying to play and has lower clearing speed, "Herald of Agony" has better clearing speed but poor boss kill speed. Herald of Agony is really cheap to build, even cheaper than Summon Skeletons at league launch, but I'd rather go for something that's more enjoyable to play and better against bosses too. I've been experimenting with Herald of Agony and let me tell you this: It took me 30 minutes to kill Sirus because he's teleporting all the time and I'm losing stacks on him. Summon Skeletons kills Sirus in 10 seconds per phase. The map clearing speed is almost the same if you use pierce for summon skeletons.

Herald of Purity needs Arakaly's fang to have anything remotely reasonable clear speed and has a boss kill DMG that's good, but it requires you to be hitting the boss all the time. Doing this via the cyclone can result in a bad boss clear experience. If you do this via the Storm Token, that's fine, but then the map clearing speed will be reduced. I personally like my current build more than the Herald based builds.