Enki's Arc Witch Memorial Page

Thx for this great guide and all the work you put into it. Chose this for my first character and its just great, currently im at 9000 dps without a 6 link chest and with 2 selffound daggers. I just love love chain lightnings and crits, so im very happy i found this build ;)
Im thinkin about buying a restless ward right now, because the only thing i dont like about this build is the Need to rush to the next pack because of charges.

I have one big question, why dont u use the big lightning node at the top of the tree?

@DarkRogue_3: Yes, tora can only craft crit multi on wands, not sceptres. Another minor difference is possible implicit rolls, wands usually have a slightly higher roll here unless you get an Opal Sceptre. But this is really only highend min-maxing, the main reason to prefer wands is tora crit multi.

Void Batteries are good, but as i'm a player who backtracks alot or takes little breaks i just don't like the damage loss until full charges. This does not mean you can't use them.
Restless Ward is not needed to make them effective, if you don't do the above things like i do and use your quicksilver flask accordingly, you will never run out of power charges. That may change with a possible change i've planned for next passive reset though, but in that case Restless Ward wouldn't help at all.

Not sure why you reply to my reply to Inversoul, but i'm going to reply anyway. Before 2.0, this build required good wands with open prefixes to add catarinas lightning leech mod, or two doryanis catalyst. Together with a doryanis invitation this gave us 3% leech, and due to vaal pact 1.4% instant leech. Life Leech gem nor warlords mark were not needed.
Now, that the leech values were nerfed and aren't enough anymore to reliably sustain reflect i gave up on relying on it, and just switched Empower with Life Leech.
While damage took a huge hit with this and the general arc nerf (i reached 97k tooltip before 2.0), we can on the other hand use Void Batteries without fearing reflect, or use gg wands with flat spell damage instead of the previous lightning leech prefix.
You are right about damage effectiveness, but Arc got buffed in that regard (from 50% to 70%) and it's still a really good boost.

You're still misunderstanding Spell Echo, it doesn't double your cast speed, it repeats your cast while giving a more cast speed multiplier (the only one ingame atm, all others are increased cast speed).
Like with all multipliers ingame, the base value first gets multiplied with all increased multipliers added together, the result then gets multiplied with each more multiplier seperately. In your case, you got 2.15 casts/s after all increased multipliers kicked in. I'll just go and assume you got a Lv19 Spell Echo, which gives a 69% more multiplier, so it's (simplified) 2.15 * 1.69 = 3.6335, or 3.6 casts/s rounded.

I'll need 1-2 days to update the guide depending on the changes being made. There's some patch notes being posted tomorrow, let's see what this one brings.


@Lexodus: Thanks, feedback like this is what keeps me updating this guide!
As explained ingame, the Heart of Thunder wheel had to go in 2.0 as other nodes have become more important, and are more impactful.

Regarding Wands and Scepters, the implicit roll I think only amount to a couple percentage points of difference in spell damage, which I'm not entirely sure is a huge difference in practice. However, there are a couple Scepters with a Resistance Penetration implicit which look potentially fairly attractive, but as you say, Tora can't add Crit multi onto those.

I can understand your play style, as it's essentially similar to mine -- I find even currently, my existing charges tend to disappear before I can get to the next pack. I became very used to walking around quickly everywhere with high movement speed, and this build has much, much less movement speed available. I'm quite bad at utilizing my Quicksilver flasks regularly (mainly because I always want to have a use available for emergencies, so I tend to be very frugal on my usage of them.) However, I was hoping that at some point when I get all the gear together, the Crit would be reliable enough to get those charges back quickly.

I am curiously anxious about what changes you are planning, though, so I'll try to wait around for your update post-reset before assigning any points. I'm glad you're keeping the build updated. I am slightly confused by your comment about "that may change" -- is this in regard to "never running out of power charges"?

As far as my replying to your other responses, I am reading them and had some comments or questions, so I figured I'd ask them, haha. Reading the whole 70+ pages of this thread is a bit much, but I did read the first 3-4 and the last half dozen pages or so to see if anything I was wondering about was already discussed before I posted my first bunch of questions.

Having said that, thanks for the clarification on the Leech stuff. I think that was probably from before I started playing again, so I didn't know that Leech was that much more powerful in the past. For what it's worth, I did try Catarina's Lightning Leech briefly on my other character, but even with automatically hitting 5-6 targets per shot, it was giving me far less life leeching than her Glacial Cascade with the Life Leech gem, so I quickly replaced that mod with a Spell Damage boost instead. This also makes me wonder if the Doryani's leech really makes all that much of a difference, especially when the majority of the leech comes from the gem anyway.

That DPS tank looks pretty painful, though. I believe you recently said your DPS hit around 40k, which is less than half of your 97k with Empower. Regarding the damage effectiveness, though, gems such as Added Lightning Damage, HoI, and HoT would only apply 70% of their flat damage to Arc if I'm understanding this correctly. Is this also applied to the flat damage added to spells provided by Wands and Scepters?

For Spell Echo, it's only level 18, but yes that calculation looks like it explains the numbers. However, that then means that the 'casts per second' statistic actually does list the 'real' casts and doesn't include the 'echo'd' cast? This means to calculate mana per second consumption, I actually can simply multiply the 'casts per second' stat with the mana cost of Arc, and not have to deal with dividing by two or anything else?

I'll have to keep an eye out for those patch notes as well; thanks for the heads-up on that.

Hello, I was wondering what your tooltip dps was for arc with no auras and powercharges. Also, your total life and ES. Thanks. Loving the build just wanted to make sure I was doing it correctly.

@DarkRogue_3: All good, was just a bit confused why you replied to that.

The maraketh sceptres with 2% penetration are pretty good, slightly worse against low res targets but getting better the more res an enemy has. But it's nothing i would go out of my way for, if you could get a wand with similar stats for half the price get that one.

Once you got all the gear together and the majority of crit nodes and power charges, you will reach 50%+ chance to crit. Note that this is true chance to land a crit, as spells aren't affected by accuracy which gets rolled twice in the crit formula (chance to crit * chance to hit * chance to hit).

The dps loss was lower than those numbers may seem. You are omparing 40k with life leech to 97k with lv4 empower. I haven't specced the build atm, but i should reach around 50-60k with empower slotted. Most of the damage loss came due to the changed gem setup, also the loss of dps clusters like Heart of Thunder due to needing more investment in other parts of the tree.
And i've sold my 6l +1 gem level chest, which was another big loss (added like 12k back then).

Doryani's Leech is not currently needed, better use a good life belt and real crit wands.
I will look into gear-based leech again after next patch, i think i've read somewhere they'll be reworking leech a bit.

You are correct about damage effectiveness, it means that percentage of all flat damage from gear/gems/auras is added to the skill. So for Arc, a wand with 1-100 flat lightning dmg added to spells would result in 70 lightning damage added to the top-end of your arc, before any increased/more modifiers.

Your character sheet includes the echoed cast, as it is also a "real" cast that happens. It just doesn't cost any mana, that's why you need to divide your casts/s by 2 (since every second cast is free) to calculate your mana needs.

I can't say much yet about future changes as i wanna test them before boasting around big what may come, and then isn't as good as expected or not working at all.
Aside from that, i'm curious if there's gonna be a jewel that changes the behaviour of Arc.


@Cerch: Sorry, i currently don't have the build specced so i can't check, but i remember fully charged with vaal haste up was at 40-41k (with life leech). I assume without charges, auras etc it'll be around half that.
But don't worry, if you followed what the guide says you're doing it correctly.

I'm a bit curious as to why resistance penetration is touted as "worse against low res targets." The way I understand it from reading the wiki, and feel free to correct me again if I'm misunderstanding, is that penetration works to provide additional damage regardless of whether or not the target has overcapped resistances. At the same time, this resistance penetration (and resistance reduction via curses and such) is able to force the target to go below zero resistance and continue going into negative values. This should mean that whether the target is at 200%, 75%, or 0% resistance, penetration will always add that extra damage. In this case, wouldn't the 2% penetration guarantee an extra 2% damage? I suppose if you take it as a percentage difference in final damage dealt after accounting for the resistances, it would change, but the basis should still be that you're always dealing 2% more base damage.

Having said that, if the appropriate scepter appears with all the right affixes, I suppose there won't be any reason not to use it, assuming I can pair it up with another scepter. Otherwise, I'll continue to look for Wands for greater crafting flexibility.

I do hope that my Crit chance improves to around 50% soon. I'm sitting at 35.05% right now without power charges and it doesn't feel reliable enough. I'm curious why accuracy is rolled twice for normal crits, though. Is this because on the evasion side, when you receive a Crit, your evasion is rolled again (thus being compared again to accuracy) to see if you can dodge the incoming Crit?

Thanks for the breakdown on your DPS differences. Hopefully the upcoming changes will help things out. There was that one skill gem that gave a more damage modifier in exchange for reduced Crit Chance -- probably not great for this type of build, but I am thinking of ways to use it, probably for other builds. I'm surprised you sold your 6L with +1 Gem level, though. That sounds like the best combination to have.

Good to hear the Doryani's Leech isn't anything critical, though as you say, things might change in a month. All these potential changes is making me very hesitant about how much I should be spending on gear right now. Having said that, I did finally pick up a decent pair of boots to use in the interim, which finally allowed me to cap my resistances and allowed me to swap in the CotB for the first time. Still looking for ultimately better boots, but this pair should work decently for now:



I haven't played with it enough yet, but I did finally manage to kill the Crematorium map boss for a Zana daily for the first time without dying, which is something of significance for me. It was just barely, though, as I brought two Ruby flasks and I still basically ran out of charges on every flask, and desperately trying to Flame Dash to a better position to Arc.

Regarding Spell Echo, I think I understand the disparity now. That second cast is indeed free, but I realize now that it also takes time to cast it, which does actually delay the next 'real' mana-costing cast. I suppose I should have also realized that when I swapped in Spell Echo, the pressure on my mana was relieved slightly due to the free casts. Thanks for taking the time to explain it to me, though. Dividing by 2 it is! That means that at 5 casts per second, you need 2.5x the mana cost of Arc being regenerated per second to sustain it. Okay.

I'm hoping the changes you come up with work out well, and I'm anxiously awaiting the patch to land so I can see what you've discovered. If nothing else, I feel like the new skill gems should help out my Flame Totem MF character immensely.

@DarkRogue_3: You're understanding resistance penetration correctly, it is always a more multiplier. It's just that against an enemy with low cold/light res the up to 20% increased damage from wand implicit adds more damage than a simple 2% more.
But, the more resistance the enemy has, the less effective this 20% inc dmg gets due to being mitigated, and on the other hand the 2% more from penetration gets stronger in relation.
Let's imagine worst case scenario with an enemy having 75% or overcapped cold/light res, this means we only deal 25% of our damage after all inc dmg multipliers are applied, while with 2% penetration we'd deal 27% (more due to having light pen gem but you get the idea).

You could also pair a sceptre with a dagger to use whirling blades + fortify - you'd lose a cast speed roll but gain some good crit on top.

Accuracy is counted twice on the attack-based crit formula to check if you land a hit at all, and then again to check if you land a crit. If the second one fails, you only do a normal hit, if both fail you miss. But spells are completely unaffected by accuracy, thus the shown crit chance is the real chance to land a crit.

I've sold my 6l +1 gems legacy CoD because i simply didn't want it to lose more value than it already had. DPS-wise it was great, but rare chests are simply superior stat-wise currently.

Killing Megaera is indeed something significant, she's one of the mechanically more challenging bosses in this game. Once you figure her mechanics she'll be a little easier, but can still hurt alot if you get caught in the firestorm. A surgeons quicksilver and ruby flask is key in this fight for us.

Can you recommend me any jewels to the tree?

is lightning coil the ultimate upgrade if the colors are alright (5b1r)? I wanna upgrade my chest but i have so many opinions towards which chest to go for

Hi, think your buid is amazing for new builds, but can't find any section with your current gear. Could u please post it? cos your gear,shown in videos differs from that in equipment section. thanks for nice build