Enchantress SOS

[frozzzen1]

Enchantress SOS

I would like to buidl encha, mainly for buffing my chars for HF rushes, but also i would like to make her a good charachter...

My skill setup would be:

20 warmth
20 enchant
20 FM

1 tlpt
1 static
1 telekin

20 FO
rest in CM

Gear:
Shako (ress jewel)
Highlord's
Passion PB / Azurewrath
Stormshield ( -req jewel +13PR )
Vipermagi (49@)
Arach / Snowclash ( for armor prebuff )
Soj
Raven
Frosties / Magefist
War Traveler

Small charms of vita would be a must for her since her life won't be realy great.

Switch: Memory +9ES

Merc: deffensive
Reaper's
Vamp gaze
Shaftstop/eth Glad bane

I would like to go maxblock route since she's gonna be melle.
Q1: How much dex would i need with stormshield for maxblock on lvl 73?
Q2: Would this setup be ok for me to Mat her with not to much problems?
Q3: It's about ES. Encha will have alot of mana that just stays unused, so i tought about ES to give me more health. Is it going to be useful with only staf as prebuff ( lvl 14 ES ) to be atleast useful or is it going to make my game harder? Mana would be preety good it seems if i use Soj+Frosties.

I never played with Encha or ES skill, so i would apreciate any sugestions.

 

[Neksja]

Re: Enchantress SOS

Q1: 179 dex is needed to achieve Max Block with Stormshield at lvl73
Q2: Should be pretty viable, don't see why not.
Q3: You need to invest a lot to Telekinesis to make ES useful. I'll let the experts answer to this question better than me

Good luck!

 

[udgard]

Re: Enchantress SOS

Btw, have you though about swapping the highlord's for another ammy (mara's maybe). Passion PB doesn't have enough damage, so the deadly strike would be wasted. Of course, that is unless you need the IAS to hit another BP.

 

[NagisaFurukawa]

Re: Enchantress SOS

3) What Neksja said. Still, a minimal ES won't hurt you much since you aren't using mana anyway. Just don't be swapping in mana for life (charms, stat points, etc.) and it won't hurt you in most spots.

Decision is yours to make, but I would recommend prebuffing Enchant and then swapping your gear to the following. (I tried to list gear I know you have, or can get pretty easily.) If you really want more skills for Frozen Orb, just use your weapon switch for that instead of 'Memory'.

Shael'd Kira's Guardian
'Passion' Phase Blade
'Spirit' Monarch
Skin of the Vipermagi
Hsarus' Belt and Boots
Magnus Skin
Highlord's Wrath
2x Raven Frost

Why do I say all that? You have two concerns for most characters, which are of course staying alive and dishing out damage. That setup gives you 65 IAS which is good for 7 frame Zeal, enough skills for 5 hit Zeal, enough AR to actually hit stuff, 95 FHR (something you really need and are lacking completely), and very good resistances (too lazy for math, but should be near max).

EDIT: Forgot to mention that your 'Spirit' should be at least 33 FCR in case you need to Teleport as well.

 

[sirpoopsalot]

Re: Enchantress SOS

- I think that all ES will really add is the fact that you'll have an empty mana pool a lot more often. Since you're not intending to spend hard-points you can certainly try it, but be prepared to ditch the idea if it doesn't work out.

- Although some people like Stormshield on sorcs, I've never been a big fan, especially without CtA. High str requirement + dex for max block is only going to leave you with ~600-700 life end-game... too low for me. I'd rather go with upped Visc. or Moser's Blessed Circle or even Whistan's Guard just so I could save those extra 50-70 into vit and boost my lifepool instead. In my opinion the 35% PDR on Stormshield does NOT make up the difference in life. And Spirit's not a good melee shield for sorcs either, in my opinion.

- Nagisa's suggestion about prebuffing Enchant and then switch to "attack gear" is a very good one.

- Dracul's Grasp (or a LifeTap wand) will be your only hope for having reliable leech. If you want to avoid about 3 million red potions, I'd try to squeeze them in.

- 65 IAS is a good goal too (max-speed for zealing with a Passion PB). Passion + Highlords is only 45, and gloves are the ideal way to get that last 20% (except for my previous point). If you ditch the gloves, have a look at Laying of Hands - probably my first choice for 20 IAS unless you have very nice rare/crafted gloves. If you want to stick with Drac's for gloves, which I recommend, then it puts a little more of a stretch on your gear. Basically I'd sacrifice a socket in my shield/armour/helm for an IAS jewel, and probably use Goldwrap/Nos' Coil for a belt. To me, that socket is worth the extra speed, especially because...

- Melee sorcs are fragile. If you're expecting her to be a good tank just because she's a melee build, you're sorely mistaken - swarms can/will overwhelm you. So your play tactics should mostly be 'picking away at the edge of the pack / guerrilla tactics.' So I found strategic use of teleport an integral part of my melee sorcs.

 

[frozzzen1]

Re: Enchantress SOS

- I think that all ES will really add is the fact that you'll have an empty mana pool a lot more often. Since you're not intending to spend hard-points you can certainly try it, but be prepared to ditch the idea if it doesn't work out.

That was first thing i was afraid... But i'll test it... it cost me basicaly nothing...

Other things that i seem to underestimated was leech... Seems from your post that it is preety important... But PB has preety low dmg and I'm not sure how much effect would leech have... Guess dracs are realy best choice since lifetap realy gices nice leech.

But noticing that with my barb I had 13% ll from 3000 Avg dmg weapon. Leech was actualy quite weak... I know barbs have ton of life and it's not best seen but my hp were falling down both with 6 ll and 13 ll. I realy did not noticed diference...

As for stormshield... I realy did not mean to focus on that shield but big CR and DR seems good thing for melle char always. I intended to go Maxblock routine but SS is not realy necesary. Only that investing a bit more str would gice me more flexibility with other gear...

Preebuff gear will be there for sure...

Tnx all for your input I'll try mixing something...
Seems that 1.07 valk helm would fix some problems for sure :whistling:

 

[sirpoopsalot]

Re: Enchantress SOS

Without LifeTap, you won't have enough damage for leech - plain & simple. LifeTap doesn't suffer difficulty or 'leech effectiveness' penalties though, so it's going to be 50% of your physical damage, no matter what (monster's physical resists/immunity still affect the physical damage you do, of course)... but even with only ~100 physical damage, that's still 50 hitpoints leeched per hit... not fantastic, but definitely helpful.

As for how important leech is... you can get by without it, as long as you're willing to quaff potions left, right, and center. I'm not, so I recommend having some form of LifeTap. Prayer+Insight mercenary will help too, but won't really be enough health-regen on their own.

 

[smilts]

Re: Enchantress SOS

I have a expanded question related to using ES on a enchantress. would ES on a enchantress work oif one were willing to forgo anything but enchant and ES skills? Sorry for the slight hijacking...

 

[sirpoopsalot]

Re: Enchantress SOS

@smilts, yep.

The problem in single-player, of course, is finding sufficient backup damage for fighting fire immune monsters.

Passion's +Berzerk is adequate, but no more than that. I tried upgraded Ribcracker on weapon switch (with Might merc, +damage charms, etc.) and couldn't get my physical damage to be quite high enough to make that a very good solution (though that was before I made Fortitude).

After trying a few things my conclusion was that it was just as easy (and safe) in the end to ditch ES and have a cold-attack backup like FO. You can check out more details if you want (i.e. more details than you'll want to know ) by reading my twin melee enchantress writeup in the Mat/Pat compilation thread.

 

[Johnnymc]

Re: Enchantress SOS

Hmm, fire immune problem seems nasty. Could you put a single point in cold mastery and use VoR PB on switch? It wouldn't proc too fast with a regular attack, but it does ok cold damage, and pretty sick phys damage as well to undead/demons...

The biggest FI problem I can think of is chaos sanctuary, where physical damage can get you killed, so this might not be the best solution...but this saves you 25+ skill points.

Would it be stupid to use spirit monarch and not go max block? High hit recovery would partially make up for the low block. On the other hand, if you're already using phase blades, you've already begun pumping dex...Idk, just rambling at this point.

 

[NagisaFurukawa]

Re: Enchantress SOS

poops: Life Tap might help I guess, but it'll be even more unreliable than usual (unless going by charges), due to the monster flee overriding it. Still usable, but in the end just more reason to be annoyed by the existence of Dol runes. .

Johnnymc: 'Voice of Reason' might work, but hardly quick, especially if only a single point CM. As for the physical damage, a big percent of just 31-35 is still a small number. . As for 'Spirit', I do like it as referenced above, but one thing to remember is the lack of FBR, and the horrible sorceress blockrates.

 

[sirpoopsalot]

Re: Enchantress SOS

@nagisa, very true. Drac's certainly isn't reliable enough to enable you to tank swarms, but it'll definitely help keep you alive sometimes, and it'll save a lot of potions too.

And there's always teleport for tracking down those runaways (though I admit they annoy the crap out of me too ).

The biggest FI problem I can think of is chaos sanctuary, where physical damage can get you killed, so this might not be the best solution...

Actually, all of my teleporting melee characters have never had any real problems with Chaos Sanctuary - with the Enchantress you lure the FI Abyss Knights away (if you're lucky you won't get hit with IM here, and you can kill them first - otherwise, leave them to last). Once you've got enough space away from the abyss knights, you can telebomb the OK's pretty easily (at close range, the OK's will all override whatever curse you're under with Decrepify).

The biggest risks here, as is usually the case, are impatience and waking up another pack while you're telebombing/zealing the OK's. Otherwise, it's pretty easy with a little caution.

Would it be stupid to use spirit monarch and not go max block? High hit recovery would partially make up for the low block. On the other hand, if you're already using phase blades, you've already begun pumping dex...Idk, just rambling at this point.

Like I mentioned earlier - such a large investment into str AND dex is a risk with a low-life melee character like this. Even if you scrounge 800 life (which may be a stretch without CtA), that's only ~65 damage required to force hit recovery - and most monsters can do that much. Even with FHR from Spirit, sorcs are still pretty slow at hit recovery. Throw on the slow (and crappy) blocking you'd get get from Spirit, and I think you'd be stuck immobile in some form of recovery much too often.

I'd rather pick Stormshield for a melee sorc if you're going to spend that much in str - and I already mentioned my case against that.

 

[Johnnymc]

Re: Enchantress SOS

What if you used a big *** 2h passion weapon and used ES for defense?

 

[bcoe]

Re: Enchantress SOS

I've always thought that Gerke's Sanctuary seemed like an ideal shield to use with an ES sorc - fabulous blocking, not as much strength required as Stormshield, and fabulous integer damage reduction... Not that I've ever done it, but we're talking theorycrafting here....

 

[sorcererbob]

Re: Enchantress SOS

@Johnnymc: I think a PB is the defacto for Passion due to the huge speed that PB's get. I imagine you'd be swinging slower with a big 2H weapon - and since the vast majority of the damage is fire-damage and it doens't change depending on what weapon you're using, surely you'd be better off maximising the amount that you swing. If you really don't want a shield its not illegal to use a PB and an empty slot

Its my understanding that %PDR, like that on shaftstop and stormshield, is applied after ES has already reduced the damage. Integer damage reduction is the same. And as such an ES sorc wants to focus on integer reduced damage (both magic and physical). So therefore I'd definitely choose Gerke's Sanctuary over Stormshield. Actually, it should be focused on at the expense of resistances as well, because they're applied after ES and after integer damage reduction too.

Lets crunch some numbers. You have a level 1 ES with +12 skills (because you're prebuffing). Your level 13 ES absorbs 65% of damage. So lets say you get hit with a fire attack dealing 200 damage. 65% of that is immediately gone, so you actually are taking 70 damage. Because you've ignored resistances totally, you're wearing an iron pelt (16 damage reduced on both) and a gerke's sanctuary (16 on both again) and getting another 7 reduction from a socketed Mal and Sol; one in your shield and one in your helm. So a total of 39 reduction on both fronts. You end up taking 31 damage (less whatever your resistances are) so lets drop another 20% because you have positive resists to make it more like 25 damage taken.

So assuming that you have 10 damage reduction just on some piece of equipment you happen to be wearing and 75% all resist and you get hit with the same attack. ES deflects like last time; so its down to 70 damage again. Drop 10 because you have something with DR on it, so its 60. Then reduce it by 75%, which means you take 15 damage to your health.

Although in that test the resistance gear came out on top I'd argue with that being the best answer. As ES skill level increases, more damage gets redirected to mana. This means that integer reduction will be more effective at higher ES levels. If you take hits less than about 200 damage (which is rather frequent) then integer damage reduction dominates all over percentage. Also, consider that getting high percentage reduction of physical damage and high resistances simultaneously requires a significant investment in equipment (and that integer damage reduction comes in both types often on the same piece of gear - allows more customisation of other gear), and will substantially reduce the amount of +skills you can have in your battle attire. As I've shown, Gerke's+Iron Pelt is enough to reduce most of the damage you'll take. If you find maybe one more piece of DR gear (Sol Sol rare helm?) or socket your Iron Pelt and your helm both with Sols then you have a bunch of slots with which you can do anything you want.

You still haven't put on an amulet, rings, boots, belt or gloves and you've pretty much negated whatever damage will be thrown at you. [I imagine the weapon will be Passion pb.]

So I tried building one like you have. I deleted her around level 25 because I decided I'd end up using FO with enchant/zeal as a weak secondary attack. When I try again I'll be going 20 TK, 20 ES, 20 Enchant, 20 Warmth, 20 Fire Mastery. And yes, I'll be using DR gear instead of resistance gear

ps. I imagine that blocking is applied before ES, but I'd like to make sure. Does anyone know?

 

[Drystan1]

Re: Enchantress SOS

I tried two HC ES Zeal Enchantresses, focusing mostly on integer damage reduction - unfortunately, no chance of rebuilding as I lost both Gerke's I had - and she was a powerhouse. Nothing could come close to touching her, except for the almost instakills of manaburn, both in A5 Hell! One was two groups of mana burners, who I didn't check the mods for, while the other was a unique Gloam pack, rescuing Anya which I survived one lot of bolts, but a misclick teleported her into the wall she was standing next to, not on the other side of it. She took the second lot of bolts with no mana shield, but then again, with mana burn, not sure if it was only luck that made her survive the first lot.
I can't remember her life/mana, but I'm pretty sure life got to 800 and mana was well over 1000.

Basically, with a merc with meditation [RWM] (possibly prayer merc?) and Enchant, damage wasn't that bad. The merc could kill easily, and the sorc could tank very well. Max ES/TK/Warmth/Enchant/FM was to be their build, aiming for as much integer damage reduced first with life, then resists, and other mods. Worked well while the mana shield was up, but versing mana burners, caution is very much required.
Since I've forgotten what I was going to try to answer, I'll just say ES Enchantresses are very much possible, and quite fun IMO.

~Dryst

Edit - Neither went block.

 

[sorcererbob]

Re: Enchantress SOS

Why didn't either one go block? why did you choose that? What was your passion weapon?

 

[Drystan1]

Re: Enchantress SOS

Just personal preference. Blocking on non-paladins has put me in more danger, more often, than it has provided safety.
In addition, against most, ES takes most of the damage, -pdr/mdr takes much of the rest, and some form of healing gives the minute amount lost back. It's just the mana burns that give way too much damage to mana that's the problem.

Plus, against most of my deaths, blocking would have only increased the chance of dieing. Gloams/elemental attacks can't be blocked. Zombie charges I don't know about, but they can do over 1000 damage with the wrong mods anyway, so if you block one, you're too close and will be charged again.
Also, on a character that struggles to get 800 health, placing a large number of points into dex removes even more life against unblockable attacks.
It may have helped one ES Zeal enchantress from a death, but even then, chances are decent that it wouldn't have triggered, and the death would've occurred faster from lower hit points.

Basically, personal preference. My style makes blocking a danger, and I don't like the 'chance.' Others' styles may make it an invaluable asset, and a must have.

Passion Weapon? Possibly a Berserker Axe - I don't know anymore. I'm pretty sure I worked out eventually that it wasn't the best choice.
Is a Phase Blade the most efficient Passion weapon in terms of speed/damage/range?

 

[sirpoopsalot]

Re: Enchantress SOS

...Zombie charges I don't know about...

Those can't be blocked either.

And the reason's you laid out are party of the reasons why I'm not a non-paladin blocking fan either. However, if I'm using something like a PhaseBlade, with a high investment in dex required, then I'm likely to go that extra little bit for max-block (though I'll seldom choose a shield that requires more than 200 dex end-game).

Passion Weapon? Possibly a Berserker Axe - I don't know anymore. I'm pretty sure I worked out eventually that it wasn't the best choice.
Is a Phase Blade the most efficient Passion weapon in terms of speed/damage/range?

With a sorc at least, I think the IAS is the biggest factor. You only need 40 IAS (on top of the 25 inherent to Passion) to get max-speed zeal with the Phase Blade - which is a pretty tolerable cost considering melee sorcs are a little stretched on satisfying other equipment needs without focusing on having a ton of IAS gear.

But with a weapon with even a -10 base speed you need quite a bit more IAS to get that same speed (and, iirc, BA's are base speed 0, so they'd be even worse). So if you settle for a slower attack to have more power, are you really gaining anything? Not really, once you consider your elemental damage is going to overpower your physical damage, no matter what.

And (as always) having nice speed can be important for helping avoid 'getting in a jam'.

So I think that all adds up to make the Phase Blade the clear 'best choice' for a melee sorc's Passion.


Of course, the Faith bow I made for a rogue merc can change a lot of those points, but there aren't many SPFers with that as an option, so I think it's mostly a moot point.