Enki's Arc Witch Memorial Page & POE 2 Arc Summary

i read that this build isnt boss viable or sirius and elder viable becauze lack of dmg... is this true `?

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LawsonGD schrieb:

@WorderMostFoul I believe the build guide calls for a Watcher's Eye with the "% of Damage taken from Mana before Life while affected by Clarity" mod. It would increase that defensive layer's strength by 33%, which might be substantial. I'm not sure how to do the survivability math, so I'm hesitant to commit 5ex to find out >.<

The cluster setup seems really strong, giving more mana, block, and reliable power charges (definitely considering the suggestion to taking Whirling Barrier to have 40% chance for a power charge on block).

You are right, that is totally my bad. I didn't realize Enki updated his suggestions for both cluster jewels and WE affix for this league.

So that MoM affix is really valuable, huge increase for survivability if you have enough mana sustain. The ideal WE would have both the MoM and increased recovery affixes, but that's a pipe dream.

Cloak of Defiance provides the same MoM boost as that WE, plus a ton of flat mana and more regen to essentially make up for the additional mana needed to support a 40% MoM. I did the math last league, and assuming you have the mana to support it, 30% MoM provides a 1.43 multiplier to your hit pool (eHP), while 40% provides a 1.67 multiplier. (50% would be a 2.0 multiplier!) So whatever 24% of your life is, that's how much bigger your life pool will be with an extra 10% MoM, be it from WE or Cloak or rare body armor. Either way, it means more of your mana will be eaten up, and the difference is somewhat noticeable unless you compensate with more mana recovery. I see that as the Cloak by itself or the WE with the Redeemer's belt.

The cluster jewels...I am hesitant to wade too far into that discussion right now, but will just say that they afford you the opportunity to get 2x Scintillating Idea from one cluster tree (including Kitava's Teachings), and that is THE best cluster notable, as far as I'm concerned.

Power charges need more discussion, too. I do not think they're a suitable way to consider EO locked in as a buff. If you manage to get to max power charges, you still have a pretty terrible chance of procking EO with Arc alone unless you have a ton of crit chance elsewhere. I just don't think Arc itself will ever be good for that in this build. Chance to crit is rolled per cast, not per chain/fork/echo, so you are looking at an average of many Arc casts without EO before EO manages to proc. If you have a secondary damage spell that doesn't have a 100% penalty to crit chance and rolls many separate chances to crit with only one cast from us, you are going to spend much less time waiting for EO to proc. The bottom line: every Arc cast without EO procked is a missed opportunity for 40% more damage.

The POB on this doesn't work correctly. Any chance you can post an updated version of your recommended skills past lvl 70?

You need to use the Community Fork found here:

https://github.com/PathOfBuildingCommunity/PathOfBuilding

@WorderMostFoul

Since they're a very similar price, Cloak of Defiance seems like a better option to pursue than the Watcher's Eye.

Right now I'm torn between going for a full cluster setup or the cloak. Scintillating Idea is really interesting. Concerned about sacrificing Conjured Wall + Mage Hunter though. 10% extra spell block is no slouch.

As for power charges, I've been fighting some Shaper/Elder minions and I've had the buff up fairly often. I'm using the Whirling Barrier notable to generate power charges (not too consistently), but going up to 40% to get a power charge per block is really interesting (plus the % to get a power charge on mana flask use from the medium cluster jewel). I've only taken the two crit nodes by Witch (3% crit), and power charges take me up to 9% crit chance. I've been looking for a wand or shield with % crit for spells, as getting a 75% roll takes our base crit (no power charges) up to 7%, and we're definitely able to maintain EO uptime during bossfights with 7% crit, let alone the 13% from max power charges.

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LawsonGD schrieb:

@WorderMostFoul

Since they're a very similar price, Cloak of Defiance seems like a better option to pursue than the Watcher's Eye.

Right now I'm torn between going for a full cluster setup or the cloak. Scintillating Idea is really interesting. Concerned about sacrificing Conjured Wall + Mage Hunter though. 10% extra spell block is no slouch.

As for power charges, I've been fighting some Shaper/Elder minions and I've had the buff up fairly often. I'm using the Whirling Barrier notable to generate power charges (not too consistently), but going up to 40% to get a power charge per block is really interesting (plus the % to get a power charge on mana flask use from the medium cluster jewel). I've only taken the two crit nodes by Witch (3% crit), and power charges take me up to 9% crit chance. I've been looking for a wand or shield with % crit for spells, as getting a 75% roll takes our base crit (no power charges) up to 7%, and we're definitely able to maintain EO uptime during bossfights with 7% crit, let alone the 13% from max power charges.

I would go with the Cloak and then tinker in PoB about cluster jewels. Someone noted this a few pages ago, but if you use a Blue Nightmare below the scion start point, you get 9% spell block chance, which would basically make up for the lost block chance on cluster notables. (You can actually get 14% spell block with it, but you'd need to put it where the Thread of Hope would go.) Lightning clusters also have some really interesting other notables too, like Supercharge and Snowstorm, and a slew of notables with defensive properties, as well. Since they're such a pain to roll, a lot of it ends up being what's available and what you can afford, but Scintillating Idea is too good for me to pass up (plus you can get a second one on a small mana cluster jewel).

So I can see power charges working well enough in maps where you have momentum and are constantly hitting enemies at regular intervals. Mapping with this build is a breeze anyway, so I guess I am thinking more of the Awakener and other hard phased bosses that don't allow you the kind of consistent access to landing hits when I say I have doubts about our ability to proc EO sufficiently with just Arc and < 10% crit chance.

Consider starting one of the Awakener's fight phases. You have no EO. You have no power charges, so 7% crit. You are probably trying to manually dodge everything you can in a fight like this, which means you won't be blocking as much. You're constantly needing to reposition, so you're maybe you're only hitting him, on average, twice per second. How many Arc casts does it take, on average, to proc EO in this situation with 7% crit? Maybe 10? (I really don't know how to do probability calculations.) So you have to cast 9 Arcs before you can start taking advantage of this 40% more buff...it is just too much downtime, in my opinion. Same for basically any boss with a lot of life and invulnerability phases.

Also, it really sucks to have to stack a significant amount of crit chance in a non-crit build, raising our gear costs or forcing us to make compromises elsewhere. It was fine in Harvest, but way more burdensome now.

This has been my experience in the past, but your results will speak for themselves, of course! If EO is nearly always up for you in boss fights, there's no problem to fix.

What about putting Orb of Storms or Storm Brand on your CWDT set up?

CWDT - Tempest Shield - Wave of Conviction - Orb of Storms / Storm Brand

It would replace Blood Rage, but that isn't useful on bosses anyway.

I think this would keep your EO up all the time, I will test at home later.

EDIT - I think I will try Storm Brand in the wand instead of Spell Cascade as well.

This may have already been answered before but is the gear section up to date? I'm brand new to the game and everything that comes with it and I can't seem to find most of the pieces.

@WorderMostFoul Just crunched a bunch of numbers. I tested out three different cluster/non-cluster setups in my personal PoB with my gear.

Conjured Wall and Mage Hunter -> Liquid Inspiration -> Blessed
4.3k life
7.2k mana
1.27m DPS
48 block / 54 spell block

Scintillating Idea and Supercharge -> Liquid Inspiration -> Scintillating Idea

4.2k life
7.7k mana
1.46m DPS
48/44 spell block

No cluster Jewels, instead taking more nodes south of Scion, using Blue Nightmare

4.5k life
7.4k mana
1.24m dps
48/53 block

The cluster node requires 13 skill points, whereas going for Blue Nightmare and Battle Rousing only costs 9 Skill points. Those 4 remaining points can be spent on the Forethought notable, which gives massive DPS.

Blue Nightmare + Forethought + Battle Rousing is
4.19k life
7.75k mana
1.41m DPS
48/53 block

It's also absurdly cheaper.

For maximizing DPS, I removed Whirling Barrier, Sanctity, and leveled for an extra skillpoint to get:
Double Scintillating
4.17k life
8k mana
1.63m DPS 48/44 block.

I'm not sure how valuable the the 10% spell block is, but that seems to be the deciding factor (is spell block worth losing dps?)

edit: did some more crunching:
Replaced Blessed in the Mage Hunter Cluster setup w/ a Scintillating Idea (also made the optimizations to get Forethought Notable):
4.17k life
7.7k mana
1.52m dps

48/54 block.

I think these bottom two setups have the most promise, and the main decision is whether 100k dps is worth 10 spell block.

For operating on a budget, I'd definitely go for the Blue Nightmare option, likely pursuing a Cloak of Defiance first while maintaining decent DPS and almost optimal spell block.

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LawsonGD schrieb:

I'm not sure how valuable the the 10% spell block is, but that seems to be the deciding factor (is spell block worth losing dps?)

Probably not; the build at the higher-end doesn't really struggle from damage, it's more-so defences during gaps when cloak isn't up, and mana sustain on bosses - which is a huge problem that I'm not sure can even be fixed.