Advice for Witch Infernalist

Hi all,

I'm playing my L71 Infernalist witch, having tons of fun. Yet there are some things that I still struggle with, and I'm more than happy to see if other people have come up with ways to make this less of an issue, whether it is gear, skills, anything, really.

The first issue I have is with chasing mobs. Every now and then there are packs of monsters where not one type, but all of them are of the fast, chasing type. They squeeze through your skeletons without issue and, even though I kill them in the end, I find it incredibly frustrating to have to run around and evade them, jumping around, while my skeletons are dealing with them. I've got reasonably good resistances but the Witch is still squishy, so I can't tank them. In the most extreme cases, with some Faridun running super fast, I've had to retrace my steps to a safe area to deal with them. So, is there any strategy for this? Any skill combination I'm missing? I've got 400 spirit, 18 skeletons in total (2 from the Sceptre, just meat, 7 Reavers, 6 Snipers, 2 Clerics, 1 Cold Mage) and I use the Vulnerability Curse with the Corrosion command, which kills most mobs rather quickly.

Second issue, I tried to complete a L66 Djinn Barya to get my 5th and 6th Ascension point. Got up to the Terracotta Warriors without issue, but they blasted me. I had 3k honour, and a single hit took 1k; after two mistakes I was done. I'm running an INT based witch, with Energy Shield and Mana, but no armour. Is this feasible at all? I can deal with bosses when there's no honour involved, but for these two, even though I was doing pretty good damage, it just took a few mistakes to completely obliterate my honour. I've got all resistances 50%+. Any advice on how to reduce the hit to my honour? Besides dodging better, xD.

So, that's it, if anyone can offer me some insights, I'd be grateful : )

Sorry, I forgot to add: I'm doing Endgame right now! Completed the game without issue, I'm just doing maps right now : )

Sounds like you're dealing with chasing mobs by kiting them until your minions kill them. That sounds like the correct counterplay, and you'd only be able to improve the situation by getting tankier, getting more move speed, or getting more damage to kill the mobs faster.

As far as defenses, resists (which you should get to 75+) are essential but only one piece of the puzzle. How big is your life/es pool? Are you using mitigation layers like block or evasion? Many builds that spec heavily into one defensive layer hit a wall in maps where they need to diversify. That's why you see so many Deadeye/Amazon players swap into hybrid ES/evasion in the endgame.

I think you're seeing this play out in your Sekhema runs. Getting some amount of armor and more block chance will help you deal with small hits, but to tank things like slams you'll need to use relics with honour resistance on them. Ideally you'll have 75% honour resist through those on top of your 75 all res. That should help make you more than tanky enough to complete the trials without issue.

GL!

Go get 5-6 Vaal guard spectres….serious game change for infernalist……

I agree with the post above, if your PC can handle it, switch your Arsenists with Vaal Guard Spectres, the damage is at least x10, I promise!

you should try skeletal storm mage，mobs be dead the moment they show their face，no need to evade，do not use arsonist，they bad for your gpu and eyes

Hi. I'm playing infernalist too and I know well your problem. There is several ways to solve this, as previous repliers said.

here is my solution : What you need is crowd control.

Use Bone cage to pin them, or use icewall (with the support making it a circle) and cast it around you to protect you.

The few cold mages are really good for dealing with the charging mobs, just drop it at your feet as you move away and it will slow anything down it doesn't kill outright. If you take all the area increases available the ice bomb covers around half the screen, you don't need to be very accurate to hit mobs with it.
It does get very slow to cast if you use echo but well worth it.

Ice armor gives the same sort of benefit if you can spare the spirit for it.

I started switching over to armor and energy shield around your level. I was finding any map that had melee mobs that ponce on you made it impossible to keep my energy shield up. I'm finding it much easier now with 51% armor and 36% block.

For the trials you are going to need to find or buy relics to get as close as possible to 75% honor resistance. Armor also helps a lot in the trials but lose you the previously free "you have no armor" affliction.
After the honor resistance, max life is really nice on an infernalist just remember to allocate the extra spirit.
Max honor, monster damage reductions, movement speed and merchant buffs are all nice secondary.