3.5 Crazy Build Idea: Shield Flingin' Witches

[Chadvoluted]

One of my favorite things about playing in Standard, is that when I get bored with something, I can take stock of my Stash, and work on trying something new.

This time, I'm thinking about a Witch (Elementalist Ascendency) to make an Elemental Spectral Shield Throw Character.

My idea, is to use a "Stat Stick" in the main hand. I have a few lying around from pre-nerf, but none of them are truly stunning. Preferably a Scepter, since they have the Baked in Elemental Damage increase from the Implicit as well.

Anyone else mess with something like this? I have some ideas, but I'm going through Path Of Building Right now, to try and figure out how to make it work "optimally".

[Chadvoluted]

As an update:

Calyapeus, is a level 78 Elementalist Witch.
3 Labs Down.
Currently easily handling T5 Maps.
Res Capped
5200 ish HP
10K Armor

I'm keeping track of my progress on the official forums, Here, and I'm currently working through a few build iterations in Path of Building to try and figure out how to get the most out of it.

So far, I am able to handle Phys Reflect Maps (which I was worried about, based on how I'm working to scale my damage.), and the only time I've had problems is a random "Beyond" Shaper Map that I hit, where it was SLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW.

Will keep updates on the way that it goes. I'm hoping that I am able to hit Atziri in the near future.

[Concillian]

I guess I don't fully understand the goal of the build, but it seems to me, you'd get a LOT more damage by using Hrimsorrow / Hrimburn to give complete phys conversion to elemental, and then moving to an elemental overload build that works more around the Templar area and less around the Scion area. This would give slightly less attack speed, but a huge amount more damage (almost 2x, near as I can tell.):
https://pastebin.com/TbznzhqD

And it seems you have enough mana that you can run War banner for a small accuracy bump, but this is small.

If you can work up the currency to get Xoph's Blood (or trade for breachstones and farm Xoph's Domain for it... Xoph's domain is fun, and Xoph himself isn't so difficult, drop rate is low though) then you can switch your supports from Phys to Lit --> Combustion and from Added Fire Damage --> Cold to Fire. As you level, get the three fire pen nodes and that enables that one gearing improvement to bump DPS another ~100% to about 3x of where you are now: https://pastebin.com/DeXL8a3X

Seems like the tree is quite a bit stronger this way, but again, perhaps I don't quite understand everything you're going for by pathing all through the Scion area. The way I've laid out does drop some physical mitigation, but I'd think the damage increase would make up for it.

[Chadvoluted]

Thanks for the pastes. I will check them out.

The Goals of the build:
1.) Build my Damage based on physical damage, that gets scaled / increased based on Elemental Damage scaling like the Shaper Weapons, Added Fire, Phys to Lightning, Hatred, etc...
2.) Using the Elementalist, I can nullify the reflect of my biggest source of damage, making both reflect map mods a moot modifier, and allow them to be run without fear.
3.) Because of Elementalist, and the three Golems, as long as my golems stay alive, I'm immune to being frozen, ignited, and shocked, and my golems are immune to Elemental damage. This, is HUGE. This is the first build that I've had where I'm actually considering 20% all of my Golem gems, because of the importance of them staying alive.
4.) Using the shield, I also have a much larger effective health pool against Elemental damage.

Basically, I wanted to dish out Ele damage in spades, while reducing my incoming damage to primarily Physical / Chaos Damage.

I have toyed with using Hrimsorrow / burn, but I didn't pull the trigger on it, as in a previous build (Frost Blades Scion) I am 100% Elemental Conversion, and while it's fun, I was trying to achieve DPS a little different this time. I'll admit this is getting mixed results. In Maps, Even maps with additional elemental resistance, I'm ok. In Incursions, I'm floundering.

I am Resolute Technique, so as long as I am properly aiming, I hit. No need for accuracy. I have been thinking about the Dread Banner, as further damage mitigation, and DPS boost. I haven't tried it yet, though.

I have been dedicating my breechstones to my "Main", as the Xoph's is BiS for him, and I try to not trade for farmable things. I may give up on that thought, as I'm nearing 2 dozen kills of Xoph, and I've seen plenty of the upgrade stones, helmets, and a few bows. I haven't seen the necklace yet.

The main reason for pathing the way I did, was to pick up as many Jewel sockets as possible. From everything that I've checked (and I'll admit, I haven't completely researched the build you propose yet), Jewel Sockets are my highest source of DPS. My BiS Jewel has

Global Phys
Attack Speed
Attack Speed While Holding a Shield
Projectile Damage

This Jewel is worth 12% (low roll) to 16% (perfect roll) DPS increases, and using those, Attack Speed is my #1 Passive DPS increase, with Phys Attack While Holding a Shield Clusters are #2.

Things I've changed recently:
Passives
Fixed my passive allocation that was DW instead of the Shield Cluster. I don't know how I picked the wrong wheel to select when I was changing things, but that's been fixed.

Removed the beginning of the Fire Pen wheel that I was speccing into as well, as even PoB was showing that the additional pen from that wheel was not as multiplicative as just simply attacking faster. Used those points to get over to the better attack speed wheel by ranger, and spec into that. I'm still confused as to how PoB calculates Pen into DPS. So far, I haven't noticed a difference one way or another.

Swapped from Herald of Purity to Herald of Ash.
Tooltip shows a DPS loss, but PoB assures me that it is a net gain, because the Elemental Pen from the chest is superior to the extra 430 DPS. This doesn't take into the account the Spectral Gents from Purity, but I'm ok with that. in the few maps I've run since the change over, I haven't missed them as much as I initially feared I would.

Gems
Took Summon Holy Relic off the CWDT. It looks like if I just level it up to 20, it wont be that terrible to keep alive.

Added Arc to CWDT. From what I was reading (and I hope I didn't read something terrible) Arc Shocks are a noticeable difference in DPS.

Traded in Div cards for a Level 21 Golem Gem. Hit Lightning Golem. Using that for now.

The Problems that I'm having right now.
I'll admit, I'm probably not twitchy enough to ever play perfectly, and this build needs to zoom around with Whirling blades a lot. Large Phys hits can still flatten me hard and fast. This is probably a sign that 5600 HP + 700 ES isn't enough for me, or that I'm just bad at moving (probably the latter)

The Ele Pen on the chest can feel really underwhelming at times. It's most notable in the incursions, when every mob has Ele Resistance baseline, and then map mods. It's almost impossible for this character to run Incursion missions in Yellow Maps, even though I'm torching T7 / T8 maps with efficiency.

The gear could definitely use an upgrade in a few spots. The Head, Chest (?), and Shield, are the only pieces that I'm not looking to upgrade right now.

Upgrade options:
I Have a Stygian on another character that I could move over, and use, that would be a big DPS increase (increased Cold, Increased Elemental Damage, and Increased Elemental Damage with Attacks modifiers)

To be honest though, Im only using a Stygian because of the Abyss Socket granting me more life and Mana from the chest. I have yet to find an abyss jewel that gives a "significant" DPS increase. Because I'm generating the damage with my Shield in my off hand, a lot of the standard mods don't give much DPS. I may have to look into more defensive minded abyss gems, for some things.

Gloves:
I will probably end up staying with Gripped Gloves, unless I do take the plunge on a unique set that would bring something to the build.

I just need to find better gloves.

Boots: Probably just going to stay rare on the boots, and find better rolled boots as well.

Jewelry: Again, outside of the Xoph neck, I just need better stuff.

Anyway, lots of rambling. Thanks for the pastes. I'll take a look at them, and see if I can make this thing work better.

[Concillian]

I'll admit this is getting mixed results. In Maps, Even maps with additional elemental resistance, I'm ok. In Incursions, I'm floundering.

Yeah... this is what I was thinking. I dropped a Nebuloch on elder with my Toxic Rain Raider and this started me playing an EO Wild Strike Jugg with dual Nebuloch & Shroud of the Lightless... level 85 now, and I feel the same way. The concept works pretty similar to your build without the elemental reflect resistance. Obviously more traditional and higher DPS than spectral shield throw... especially on trash, but single target is a bit slow. Maps are great (aside from ele reflect, but I vaal these and if they don't change, can run them with the sextant mod that negates reflect,) the build can farm lab over and over with relative safety (6 ubers in an hour ~hour and a half lastnight,) but incursions are so-so. I have more DPS than you and can do them, but they don't feel great. The trash is no problem, but the architects are slow. The Betrayal encounters are a little bit similar in that aspect, but not to the same extent.

The build scaling is very similar to yours, but starting in Jugg saves lots of travel and maces have more good clusters than shields and Jugg gets so much defense in the ascendancy that you can pretty much ignore it on the tree outside of endurance charges & life nodes. I picked up Loreweave and Molten strike for when I need single target & swap Hrimburn for the full conversion. With the same tree it completely melts anything. Izaro phases in the time of a flask, and I'm not in super gear outside of the chestpieces... it's slower with the hoards of trash... but not that much slower (Wild Strike is fun for hoards of trash.) It's kinda sad how good Molten Strike is with a tree not specifically optimized for it.

[Chadvoluted]

Right now, with Herald of Ash, Trash (non incursion) is melting. The explosions from the projectiles, and ignite damage work out well on Trash. Single Target is "ok", but it's still not my Molten Strike Jugg (but as you pointed out, little is)

I've worked out two separate variant builds that I MAY try in the new league. One, still witch, (because I like doing non conventional builds), focuses just on scaling the elemental damage, and would definitely benefit from further ele conversion, and one that is a Scion, that works similarly to this, but achieves a much higher level of DPS on single targets.

I'd probably start out with an MS Jugg, as they seem to be the "best" my type of build at getting started, and farm up as much as I need to actually get an SST build going.

https://www.pathofexile.com/account/view...characters
(feel free to poke around, and look at all my wierd characters)

My MS Jugg is Banoxtik. He's still not in "best" gear, but I'm easily clearing T10/11 maps, and could probably do higher, if I had them to run. He's pretty typical. I don't have a Loreweave yet, and I'm not sure I'd use it if I had it. With Belly, I'm comfortably over 7K HP, and when standing still, I can easily achieve armor cap with just the Lightning Flask popped. If / when I find a Dying Sun, I'll replace the Lion's Roar. As it is, under Lion's Roar I generally blow a boss up before it's over.