Skills: Witch

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mouse
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Skills: Witch

Post by mouse » Sun Mar 28, 2004 9:02 pm

Ok, I'll try and keep this up-to-date. Here are the current skills with explanations where need me. Discuss & comment if desired. Witch skills are pretty close to final. I'm still trying to balance the high end damage spells though..Plague of Souls was overkill for a while, it may be weak now.

Tier 1 Skills:

* Animate Ghoul: Prevent a soul from escaping a freshly slain corpse, forcing it to rise again as a ghoul in service of the witch. Ghouls can stun in addition to a vicious claw attack.
* Bone Projection [Bone Spear]: Generate a giant, piercing, projection of bone
* Shield of Bone [Bone Armor]: Protects the witch with magically animated bones
* Concoction [Find Potion]: Attempt to create a potion from the remains of a fallen enemy
* Soft Flesh Hex [Amplify Damage]: Cause enemies' flesh to soften and loosen, lowering physical damage resistance
* Poison Splash: Hurl a tiny, exploding ball of poison

Tier 2 Skills:

* Bone Wave [~Teeth]: Project a wave of magic energy channeled from the bones of the dead
* Blood Pact: Call upon a ravenous loa to devour your life force in return for mana
* Weakening Hex [Weaken]: Weakens the muscles of enemies, causing them to do less physical damage
* Breaking Bones Hex [Iron Maiden]: Dissolve enemies' cartilage and cause bones to atrophy - enemies will break their own bones when they strike you!
* Good Mojo {Aura}: Call upon friendly loas to protect party members from poison, magic and give blessings of good luck (dexterity)

Tier 3 Skills:

* Wall of Bone [Bone Wall]: Create a huge wall of bone to block enemies or channel them where you like
* Strengthen Bones: Increases strength of targets bones, granting more life and damage resistance
* Fear Ward [Grim Ward]: Decorate a gruesome skull and place a fearsome, shrieking loa within. The skull will cause nearby enemies to flee in fear.
* Gastric Release [Poison Explosion]: Cause the gastric juices of a fallen foe to become acidic and volatile, bursting from the corpse and creating a cloud of noxious poison.
* Possession Loa: Coax a friendly loa into temporarily inhabiting an enemy
* The Rotting {Aura}: Allows raw entropic energy to leak into the witch's surroundings, causing enemies flesh to wither and decay.

Tier 4 Skills:

* Rage of Bones [Bone Spirit]: Call forth a fearsome spirit to pursue an enemy and devour a portion of their life force
* Brittle Bones [~Decrepify]: Atrophies bones of enemies, causing them to move slower and take more damage
* Chaos Hex [Confuse]: Clouds the minds of enemies with the voices of mischievous loas, causing them to lose control, forgetting what they were doing and even turning on their alies.
* Envenom [Venom]: Coats a weapon with magically brewed poison.
* Flame Loa: Beseech a fearsome elemental loa to enter this plane and protect the witch.

Tier 5 Skills:

* Bone Construct: Create a fearsome bone commander out of enchanted bones. The commander has an aura which boosts allies' damage as well as coming with a randomly generated rare axe.
* Shatter Bones: Destroys bones inside an enemy, causing massive damage.
* Vile Odor [~Attract]: Coats an enemy with a magical odor so vile that even its friends will attack him in order to drive the odor away
* Poison Loa [Poison Nova]: Release a swarm of angry loas that will poison all nearby enemies
* Plague of Souls: Call on spirits of the dead to devour chunks of enemies' souls - the process is very painful and often leaves enemies chilled.

Tier 6 Skills:

* Bitter Bones [~Blade Fury]: Enchants a pile of tiny bones, filling each one with a bitter loa eager to scar anyone approaching the witch. They will gain additional damage and special attack capabilities from the witches equipment.
* Hex Storm [~Blessed Hammer]: Release the energy of hexes in its raw form - swirling blue energy that will shred anything in its path.
* Viral Hex [Lower Resist]: The most powerful hex, it causes the enemy to be mor susceptible to poison & elemental damage
* Witch Archetype {Passive}: The final journey on the witch's road to power leads to several bonuses. It provides poison & damage resistance and a small bit of mana regeneration as well as increasing the effects of many other abilities.
* Sickness Loa {Passive}: Surrounds the witch, permanently, with microscopic loas that enter enemies' bloodstreams and weaken their immune system, allowing the witch's poison attacks to do more damage.


[EDIT2:
OK, I've got the witch layed out for 1.4x, here's the tree:

Code: Select all

1:Voodoo...........................|2:Hexing...........................|3:Osteomancy..........................|
-----------------------------------|-----------------------------------|--------------------------------------|
....POIS.......MISC.....MISC.......|......HEXES.............CONCOCTIONS|MANIPULATE..IMBUE.........INSTILL.....|
-----------------------------------|-----------------------------------|--------------------------------------|
1...Pois Spl...-----.....-----.....|Soft Flesh....-----.....Concoction.|Bone Shi....Bone Proj.....Ghoul.......|
2...-----......[Familr]..Good Mojo.|Break-Bones..[-----]....Blood Pact.|-----.......Bone Wave.....-----.......|
3...Gastric....Possess...Rotting...|-----........Fear Ward..-----......|Str. Bones..Wall of Bones.-----.......|
4...Envenom....Flame Loa.-----.....|Chaos Hex....[Weaken]...----.......|-----.......Brittle.......Rage-Bones..|
5...Poison Loa.Plag-Soul.-----.....|-----.........-----.....Vile Odor..|Shatr-Bones..-----........Bone Constr.|
6...Sickness...-----.....Archetype.|ViralHx......Hex Storm..-----......|-----.......Bitter Bones..-----.......|

so very small changes: addition of familiar (up to 4 familiars possible, you get 1 extra every 8 points of archetype) to fill it the no-new-pet-for-16-levels gap, and the *modification* of weakening hex. I think you guys are really going to like this one. In addition to lessening physical damage done by enemies, weaken will now reduce their FIRE/COLD/LTNG/POIS damage as well. This might just make it equal to brittle/amp/confuse in usefullness. :twisted:
/EDIT2]
Last edited by mouse on Tue Apr 06, 2004 7:50 pm, edited 3 times in total.

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juma87
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Re: Skills: Witch

Post by juma87 » Mon Mar 29, 2004 3:03 am

skill idea: summon witch's cat - summon a cat that increases char dmg or somethin
sorry 4 my poor english, im argentinian!
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Re: Skills: Witch

Post by BrotherDog » Sat Apr 03, 2004 3:27 pm

I agree with Juma up there, on the need for more minions for witchy. She needs something in the interim of the ghoulie girls & the flame loa. How about a vulture? Maybe it could convert corpses to poison damage for allies in x radius :mrgreen: . Perhaps using vulture demon in dark-green shadow overlay ala "blackened" -ish shadows. :mrgreen: Just to keep with the necromantic feel :mrgreen: .

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Imcomplete description of synergy

Post by GoreHunter » Sat Apr 03, 2004 11:53 pm

I saw that bone constructs and reanimate ghouls receive synergy from flame loa but theres no description for it.

PS: Mouse, if you can reply to tell me whats the bonus it would be cool :)

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Re: Imcomplete description of synergy

Post by mouse » Sun Apr 04, 2004 3:50 am

[quote=GoreHunter";p="165086"]I saw that bone constructs and reanimate ghouls receive synergy from flame loa but theres no description for it.

PS: Mouse, if you can reply to tell me whats the bonus it would be cool :)[/quote]

at the moment they get 2% resist all per level of flame loa

i'd like to give her another minion, but then i'd have to remove a skill.
eventually, once the pet ai stuff is figured out, she will probably get some kind of cursing minion and ill remove shatter bones or something. that or everyone will get a new spell. for now its probably going to stay as is though. i'll add some item only skills onto witch items eventually. i think someone kept asking for a black cat - notethat my witch is NOT that kind of halloweeny witch.... - but i'll probably put in a summon pather or something eventually for people that want their black cats.

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.

Post by GoreHunter » Sun Apr 04, 2004 7:52 am

2% at each lvl x 20 = 40% isnt too low? Or maybe Ghouls and bone counstruct gain some resistance at each lvl?

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Re: .

Post by mouse » Sun Apr 04, 2004 9:23 am

[quote=GoreHunter";p="165141"]2% at each lvl x 20 = 40% isnt too low? Or maybe Ghouls and bone counstruct gain some resistance at each lvl?[/quote]

yah they get like 5% resist per level, then hit a certain max, say 75 or 90. then the loa resists are added to that. so you could have 130 resist all i suppose. one thing i am NOT sure about is if these resists are before or after the global penalties. i suspect that they apply like normal resists - so a pet in hell with maxed level and maxed loa would probably have 5-10% resist all. not too impressive, but better than -130 all.

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Re: Skills: Witch

Post by gandalf{xan} » Thu Apr 08, 2004 1:41 am

played the witch on realm now, shes lvl5x
first of all: shes a great char, i had a lot of fun playing :D
during play, i got some ideas/suggestions

bitter bones: it gets +3/4 weapon damage. thats not much because i think most witches use some rods with 5-18 dam or something. maybe replayce this with some synergy

bone wave: great spell, amazing optics 8-O but i think it generates too many missiles. 26 blue balls look great, but more than 50% dont hit an enemy. maybe make it +1missile/2slvl & increase the damage slightly

amn-runes: its stats say +1 magic skills, but my bone-wave which does pure magical damage gets no bonus :(

ghouls: the are a bit passiv, which means the are always somewhere behind and not where they belong, between me and the enemy
also, the are too weak in nightmare. maybe you can add a synergie from bone-construct, so the could be boosted but not too early

greetings & good night :)
life´s too short. . .

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Re: Skills: Witch

Post by gandalf{xan} » Thu Apr 15, 2004 8:14 pm

news from the witch :twisted:
act1 hell now, lvl72

AMN runes work, maybe it was i one-time-bug, maybe i was wrong

i greatly suggest to lower the number of missiles bone-wave produces
at slvl31 i have 33 bolts now. ~30% of them are useless because they hit nothing, simply because there are not enough targets
the optical effect is amazin, but creates same lag sometimes, especially when xcolibris herione & potemots trapper were with me
maybe cut the number of missiles by 50%, maybe 1 additional bolt / 2slvls, which will be fairly enough
the damage is just right (3,5k maxdam at slvl31 with lots of synergies) it kills fast enough, but not with one hit, so the monsters get some time to hit me

maybe you can cut the mana-cost of "bone spirit" a little, my mana runs out quickly when fighting big monsters like baal. i think 10-15% will do well

overall you did a great work on the witch, i love playing her :)

greetings :)
life´s too short. . .

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Re: Skills: Witch

Post by MrSwinger » Sat Apr 24, 2004 2:48 am

is it just me, or do +%magic dmg to skills not work?... tried an item with 10% magic dmg to skills and it added no dmg at all

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Re: Skills: Witch

Post by mouse » Sat Apr 24, 2004 7:09 am

[quote=MrSwinger";p="169652"]is it just me, or do +%magic dmg to skills not work?... tried an item with 10% magic dmg to skills and it added no dmg at all[/quote]

you are correct, as near as i can tell its not possible to make it work - its a gap in the code, the stat is there but none of the code functions are activated....so far though - maybe something will turn up later. i tried to remove that mod from all items in 1.45, let me know if i missed any.

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Re: Skills: Witch

Post by MaGiK » Thu Apr 29, 2004 5:19 pm

Hey has anyone else tried a poison Witch? I currently have a level 42 psn witch on the online server, but poison loa seems underpowered. I have maxed all 3 synergies and have 10 points into and and 10 add ons giving it a level 20 poison loa, but it can barely kill normal guys in a3+. Jw if anyone else has tried it and had the same problem thanks.

flammiebc
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Re: Skills: Witch

Post by flammiebc » Sun May 02, 2004 4:10 am

The small shield unique "Embossed Shield" still has the "+8% magic skill damage" mod on it...fyi.

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Re: Skills: Witch

Post by mouse » Sun May 02, 2004 7:17 pm

[quote=flammiebc";p="171091"]The small shield unique "Embossed Shield" still has the "+8% magic skill damage" mod on it...fyi.[/quote]
thanks, fixed it (for next version). in the future please post stuff like this is the bug/info thread ;)

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Re: Skills: Witch

Post by gandalf{xan} » Fri May 21, 2004 7:04 am

after playing the witch in the harder 1.45, i have some experience to share (&some things to complain)

summons:
bone construct is great, with enough synergies it is nearly invencible. great blocker
ghouls are far too weak. even with tons of synergies they do not much damage & the worst thing: they die faster than i can recast them (lvl27 summons, all strengthening synergies at 20, max strenghten bones, lvl2 sanctuary-aura)

curses:
just learned that in 1.1, lower resist (viral hex) doesnt lower magic resistances, leaving my bone-witch with no proper curse.
it would be great if u could make viral hex lower magic resis too

bone-spells:
bone wave is a great spell, but ppl complain about me slowing their pcs :lol: maybe it would be good to lower the number of bolts (1 bolt per 2 lvls)
rage of bones: theres some discrepancy with the mana cost:
bone wave at lvl37 shoots 38 bolts, each doing 5,xk dam at a mana-cost of 23
rage of bones at lvl27 does 1 bolt doing 3,0-5,4k dam at a mana-cost of 38 :?: i would suggest lowering mana-cost & increasing the damage could make this spell very usefull, especially as a boss-killer

greetings :)
life´s too short. . .

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Re: Skills: Witch

Post by Angband » Sun Jun 06, 2004 9:18 am

Okay, after observing witches and finally making one myself I decided to post my comments about them.

Every witch I have seen has used Bone Wave as their main skill; and sadly after some experimenting I've realized it's because the rest of their skills suck. Bad.

The witch encourages almost no diversification; they all get Bone Wave because without it they're practically useless.

Hex Storm: Good damage, but it leaves the witch wide open to attack way too easily. This is not a bad thing but since it doesn't work totally like Hurricane (where it follows you) it's not a great spell. Figure in the high mana cost, the TERRIBLE synergies (I like my synergies so that it's useful to actually use a couple or at least one, but the witch only uses one curse at a time and basically you won't be using two of the other curses hardly any of the time, one of the worst synergies in EftA). Plus the fact that I've only been playing hardcore lately and you'll see that this would be a bad move to go with when playing hardcore.

Shatter Bones: I actually was trying to go with this for my witch, it looked like a useful spell so I started to max the synergies; I finally hit level 32 and to my horror and dismay casted it once and saw that it had a cooldown.......... the cooldown makes this spell useless. Where I could be doing more damage to more people (since shatter only hits one target at a time) with Bone Wave, this spell is TOTALLY worthless. Needless to say I was totally f'd now that I had maxed the synergies -- so I don't know what I'm going to do with my witch now. I can see how you think that maybe it needs a cooldown after cast, but I'm not so sure -- raising the mana cost, and removing the cooldown may work just as well, seeing as how it only targets one enemy at a time and would eat up your mana I think that's a fair balance. Monsters are a LOT tougher now in 1.45 and I really don't even know if that's a viable option even. Rethinking the synergies would've been a better thing as well, rather than having to max one useful and one totally useful hex when it'd be more fitting to max another spell on the same tab.

I'll probably edit this and add in more comments, but this is what the witch looks like now and I think it's quite a waste.


EDIT: I've decided to try the last resort it seems. I'm in the process of making a Plague of souls witch. From what I can tell the damage is still nowhere close to bone wave, but the synergies for the most part aren't a terrible waste... I hope. More to come, hopefully I stay alive to get her to a nice level. Edit2: Okay, from what I can tell the damage isn't that great and not only that it's rather unreliable; I can't count on it hitting the units that I want it to hit and with the cooldown that it has you may get in trouble because of that. I suppose I see why every witch uses BW, it's her only useful skill.
Last edited by Angband on Tue Jun 08, 2004 2:27 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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Re: Skills: Witch

Post by distributer » Thu Jul 15, 2004 10:56 pm

hi,

the cone construct is cool, with synergies from the ghouls and loa and strenghten bones its a very good blocker. my bone construct also deals a max dmg of ca. 7000 with a 29 might-aura.

i tested a bit with possession loa :D
dont know if this is possible, but ...
what if u make this spell 1-time use and the monster/pet gets a bonus life/att/dmg/resi.
so a witch could walk throuth an area find a monster and get one of them as a pet to fight for her till it dies.
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