How is an enchantress viable?

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Derrick1001

New member
How is an enchantress viable?

I'm just wondering this. Is it only for really godly gear? Perhaps I'm doing the calculations wrong (which is very possible, I'm not exactly sure how the math is done in the game, I just plugged the numbers in what seemed reasonable), but with max warmth (180%), max Firemastery (163%) and max enchant (74-97 dmg), it just seems like you're not getting enough damage to be viable in NM, let alone Hell. My calculations, flawed though they may well be (and please tell me if they are) only add +544.93-714.3 damage per strike... I don't see how that can work on say, a melee sorceress.

Help please?
 
I never played and enchantress, but IRC the FM gets applied twice. First when you enchant your weapon and than when you strike with it the FM again applies on your total fire damage. This only works for melee IRC.

Another thing is that enchant last a long time, so you can easily prebuff it with a lot of +skill gear (Leaf staff and other +skill gear), to get a large amount of enchant damage on your weapon and then put on your fighting gear.

You can easily get thousands of fire damage.
 
I just started my enchantress recently so I certainly don't know all the answers. I do know that enchantresses are usually going off alot more that a lvl 20 enchance. Most enchantresses usually pre-buff (put their very best + skills gear on) and cast their enchant with a lvl 30 - 40 skill. I don't know what that does for the damages but I do know that a number of people have managed it.

As for the gear, I don't think it requires eilitest gear but I think you do definately need some + skills gear to get your enchant up.

Edit: Dang, slow again.
 
An Enchantress is on my to-do list, and will probably be my next character.

Anyway:

- Fire Mastery is bugged on melee Enchant: it's applied twice, once on the casting then again when you hit stuff. So that's an extra 163% (from your numbers)
- + skills items will bump up your damage somewhat. You get + on Enchant as well as Fire Mastery (which is in turn applied twice, see above).
- Remember that you have your weapon damage as well!

The real downside to the character is that Fire Immunes are tricky. You can get the AR from Enchant to deal with them but you have to provide the alternate damage. Oh, and FE monsters are always a problem - you have no summons, and missile weapons only get the 'reduced' FM bonus.

The best advice could probably come from someone who's taken one through the game, though.

edit: A few quick +skill options:

- Leaf staff: +3 Fire Skills for the price of a Tir and Ral rune. Quick, simple and effective - especially if you have a +3 Enchant/+3 Fire Mastery 2 socket staff :)
- Amulet: Any +2-3 fire skills will do. These are easy enough to gamble as long as you have enough patience!
- Lore headgear: +1 all skills and only costs low-ish runes.
- Vipermagi is the best early(-ish) armour, with +skills, resists and MDR.

It's not too tricky to get +4-5 in the relevant skills, which will boost your damage nicely. Getting more can be tricky... in desperate circumstances you could always reroll Grand Charms to go after +1 Fire Skills GCs.
 
If I remember correctly (and I may not, as I haven't played one) past slvl 20 Enchant starts to grow much faster. So even with +3-5 fire skills you're looking at maybe 1200-1500 damage added per strike. I'm at work so I can't look anything up right now.
 
I think one of the things that makes an Enchant Sorc viable is runewords. Passion and Kingslayer(?) add +1 Zeal, regardless of class, so the sorc gains a multiple swing, melee attack. Also, assuming you max Warmth, Enchant and Fire Mastery, you still have a good 30-35 skill points to put somewhere else. Maybe max Frozen Orb to deal with Fire Immunes? There is a guide here some where I believe. You can also enchant your merc for several hundred (thousand?) fire damage. I believe MongoJerry Matted an Enchantress in Beta, so I would assume it can still be done.

{edit} For prebuff gear check for
Hexfire (+3 Fire Skills)
Magefist (+1 Fire Skills)
Skins (+1 All Skills)
Sigons Shield (+1 All skills)
Ammy (+3 Fire Skills)
Rings SoJ (+1 each)

Thats +11 without any charms, maybe circlets can spawn with +3 Fire skills? That would be +14, Arachnid Mesh would boost you to +15. www.d2skills.com has a skill planner, check the damage and duration for a level 35 warmth.
 
It's Passion for +1 Zeal/Berserk, Kingslayer for +1 Vengeance.

And you shouldn't post a link to that skill planner.
 
It is certainly viable.

Though even more +skills would help a ton.
I had a +2 fire circlet, skins of the vipermagi (+1), a +2 to fire amulet (for prebuff), leaf made from a +2 echant staff, and Hexfire Shamshir (+3 to fire) for most of the game. (rings, gloves, boots, and belt did not have any +skills, the gloves were Laying of Hands, very nice for the attack speed bonus).

My merc outkilled me on the fire immunes by about 3-1.
Before doing the ancients, I ran the countess for a Mal rune to complete a Call to Arms phase blade, finally retiring Hexfire.

My fire damage went down, but with the increase in attack speed and physical damage, now the merc and I are about even on fire immune killing, plus I can prebuff almost 500 extra life points (battle command, battle orders).

I think I could have made it through with Hexfire, I probably would have had to have been a lot more picky about the ancients I fought though.

Last night I finally gambled a +3 fire amulet. Millions spent, everytime I hit the max stash, I would go gamble a few amulets.

Gewürtztraminer
 
well its been answered pretty well so far. let me have a go on weapons

the two melee weapons to beat seem to be kingslayer and passion.

passion provides a passive AR bonus, nice damage as well as zeal and berserk, zeal speeds up the rate you dish out your damage, both by increasing AS and AR so you swing faster and better, hitting more often. It also has berserk which adds alot of damage to take down fire immunes and PI's.

Passion has -% enemy def, CB, OW, PMH and vengeance. vengeance is really powerful as the elemental damage is multiplied by the sorcs mastery. so the fire mastery adds even MORE fire damage with vengeance and points can be put in to lightning mastery and cold mastery to increase damage output. also its impossible to get a monster immune to vengeance *pwnage smiley*

ranged weapons seem to be kuko shakuku and demon machine. Fire mastery doesn't apply twice to ranged attacks but the enchant damage is carried in explosive arrows so it can affect crowds. meaning AR is optional
 
The damage adds up fast if you can gather up all the pre-buff gear.

+3 amulet
+3 circlet (2x faucet)
+3 enchant/firemastery leaf staff
+3 enchant ormus (faucet)
+2 sojs
+1 arachnids
+1 magefist
+1 call to arms
+8 skill charms

= lvl 48 enchant @ 4103-4742 dmg (443%AR, 21 minutes)

Put back on your normal gear, keep 6 charms in your inventory, and you're looking at about a level 29 fire mastery. So that means 226% more of the damage you see above, placing the final damage total for swinging a melee weapon at 13,375-15,458 damage. Thats a heck of a lot of damage to be throwing around.

Lets say you're at level 90, which means you'll probably put 10 points in cold mastery and 20 points in lightning mastery and consider a kingslayer phase blade. You'll probably have around a level 4 vengeance, at 90% damage, giving you about 231 elemental damage of each element, which means 753 more fire damage, 960 lightning damage and 500 cold damage, on top of whatever physical damage you might be dishing out (33% CB).

Anyhow, the damage potential is huge, albeit a little difficult against FIs (at least you have static field).

A less optimal setup, consider:

+3 amulet
+3 circlet
+3 enchant leaf staff
+3 enchant ormus
+1 magefist
+6 skill charms

You're still looking at 2703-3155 fire damage @ 19 minutes and 389% AR.

Take into consideration fire mastery's second application, and you have a final fire damage of 8244-9622. As you can see, you still have a mighty chunk of damage you're dealing.

Take out the skill charms and the ormus robes and you're left with 1603-1920 @ 15 minutes and 308% AR. With a final fire damage of 4215-5000, which is still nothing to scoff at.

So you don't necessarily need godly gear, but at each benchmark of 'costliness', you're looking at about 5000 fire damage, so it ramps up considerably.

In the end, even if it isn't a powerful character, you can camp your enchantress in town to give your characters a VERY nice boost. I intend on doing this for some of my weaker builds that I'm making for the novelty, I don't mind having an extra 4000 damage.. lol.
 
Hey, thanks everyone!

Looks like an enchantress is definately possible. I already have some decent equipment too, it looks like. I can make a passion phase blade with my current runes (I used my Um and I don't have a Gul and doubt I will find one anytime soon so Kingslayer is out). I have a socketable phase blade, so that's good. The only thing I don't like about it is the 25% make monster flee, but eh, it's just a lem rune really :). I did actually find a +3 Enchant Ormus Robes as well the other day. This is definatly looking doable.

What's a good shield here? Tiamat's? I need to look up max block rates and all that jazz.

Thanks for the help everyone! :)
 
Derrick1001 said:
Hey, thanks everyone!

Looks like an enchantress is definately possible. I already have some decent equipment too, it looks like. I can make a passion phase blade with my current runes (I used my Um and I don't have a Gul and doubt I will find one anytime soon so Kingslayer is out). I have a socketable phase blade, so that's good. The only thing I don't like about it is the 25% make monster flee, but eh, it's just a lem rune really :). I did actually find a +3 Enchant Ormus Robes as well the other day. This is definatly looking doable.

What's a good shield here? Tiamat's? I need to look up max block rates and all that jazz.

Thanks for the help everyone! :)
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tiamats doesnt have anywhere near high enough block. you'd be looking at 300+ dex for max block AFAIK.
Stormshield is probably the best but if you don't have that then moser with 2 pdiamonds, the ward is a stretch but it can work, sanctuary runeword in a tower shield (troll shield if you are going big def), up'd pdiamond visceratuant has good block and +1 skill, also gerkes sanctuary is very good, res, block, mdr and pdr

Toppo said:
Edit: corax beat me to it... how embarassing is that
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hang your head in shame!
 
Derrick1001 said:
What's a good shield here? Tiamat's? I need to look up max block rates and all that jazz.
Click to expand...
I'm guessing a Stormshield would be nice if you have one.

Edit: corax beat me to it... how embarassing is that ;)
 
I would almost go so far as to say stormshield is a must. The melee sorc is weak where it counts. I would think you would DEPEND on the 35% DR.
 
nethervoid said:
I would almost go so far as to say stormshield is a must. The melee sorc is weak where it counts. I would think you would DEPEND on the 35% DR.
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that depends entirly on playstyle. Mongoherry's sorc didnt have SS. cattelya i think it was is making a scythe wielding enchantress and is up to act 4 hell IIRC
 
corax said:
that depends entirly on playstyle. Mongoherry's sorc didnt have SS. cattelya i think it was is making a scythe wielding enchantress and is up to act 4 hell IIRC
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Actually, she's still in NM, so I can't say anything about her hell viability. But she's kicking heiney right now, even without godly equipment. (L30 Enchanct with leaf and a +3 Fire skills amulet for prebuff.) I've found that teleport is her best friend.

Of course, she also does a reasonable amount of physical damage as well. Especially with the Amp on her rouges WWS.
 
Enchantress' lose a lot of killing power in Hell. My has pretty good gear and she is having a hard time killing above P1. She does 7k average damage in the LCS and that's without Ormus' or the FM bug so damage obviously isn't a problem, it's dealing the damage at a fast rate which is a *****.
 
corax said:
that depends entirly on playstyle. Mongoherry's sorc didnt have SS. cattelya i think it was is making a scythe wielding enchantress and is up to act 4 hell IIRC
Click to expand...

Just adding my 2 cents in. Mongoberry used a passion phase blade because where zeal is concerned, speed is far more impt than damage.

On the other hand, if you go with kingslayer for venegence, damage is "king" So use a crytic sword or beserker axe if you're going 1-H and elite axes for the 2-H approach.

There wasn't any real mention abt this in previous posts but elemental damage from equipment+charms is also boosted by your weapon mastery.
So several lightning charms+mastery could help out against the FIs.

This guide will elaborate more on the use of vengence.

Myself, I'm starting a 2-H Titan enchantress but there's no way I'm getting her into hell until I managed to get my kingslayer axe or craft her endggame equipment.
 
I have an enchantress in act 1 Hell, and she's definitely viable with a backup attack (I went with FO). Sure killing speed isn't up there with a pure caster or something, but she is a heck of a lot of fun to play.
 
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