The Witch is the third pure class in Path of Exile. Her intelligence makes all her spells powerful and devastating. She can sling curses and diseases as well, increasing the ways she can destroy her enemies. Her weapons are wands, daggers, and staves. She might pick up a mace or claw, but she cannot dual-wield swords and axes. She wears circlets and other light armor. Examples include gloves, slippers or boots, and spirit shields.

Her Ascendancy Classes are the Necromancer, Elementalist, and Occultist.

Strengths and Weaknesses

She has access to passives that boost spell range, duration, and damage right off the bat. Any spell she uses becomes a force of nature. In addition to that, her high intelligence means she has a large mana pool to draw from. It enables her to sling spells one after another without worrying about mana. She also has easy access to the passive skills that improve her undead army’s size, durability, and lethality.

She excels in burst damage or debilitating curses. However, if those don’t work or the opponent finds an opening to counterattack, her shields won’t last long. That energy shield is her main source of defense. If it falls, she will follow soon after. It also has the drawback of allowing poison or chaos damage to bypass it. Foes who use those as their primary element can very easily dispatch a Witch. She also can’t deal much physical damage by melee.

Ascendancy Classes

The Necromancer, as her name suggests, uses zombies, skeletons, and spectres to deal her dirty work. With a good base in minion boosting passives as well as the class’s own, she might not have to lift a finger to defeat all her enemies. Two of her more notable skills are Invoker and Mistress of Sacrifice.

The former increases the maximum life and damage of minions by 20%. It also lets them regenerate 2% of their life per second and decrease convocation cooldown speed by 50%. The second increases skill effect duration by 20%. Also, it makes your Offering Skills affect yourself but only at 50% effectivity. It boosts damage by 40% after eating a corpse, too. Its last effect is to increase attack and cast speed by 2% for every corpse consumed recently.

The Elementalist is master of the elements. Their skills increase elemental damage bonuses but are conditional. They may specialize in ailments, Heralds, or elemental golems. Some of her skills even allow for combinations of multiple damage types! Some of her notable skills are Pendulum of Destruction and Paragon of Calamity.

The skill Pendulum of Destruction grants 75% increased area of effect or 75% increased elemental damage. It alternates between these two effects, each one ending after 5 seconds. Paragon of Calamity leeched 0.5 of elemental damage taken as life. Then it boosts specific elemental damage by 40% and elemental resistance by 8% when damaged by that element. And its last effect is to render her immune to reflected elemental damage.

The Occultist focuses on chaos damage or curses. They’re the class that relies on and maximizes the energy shield the most. They’re also a generic way to generate Power Charges in builds that lack other means to do the same. Her notable skills are Profane Bloom and Void Beacon.

The first makes your curses affect all enemies, even Hexproof ones. Once they’re cursed, killing them will trigger a 25% chance to explode. Exploding creatures will deal a quarter of their maximum life as chaos damage. The second reduces nearby enemies’ chaos resistance by 20% as well as negating their life regeneration.

The Conclusion

The Witch is a trickier class to play. They’re more fragile and vulnerable when compared to Rangers. However, this is mitigated by their more powerful minions and an energy shield. Playing this character will require a bit more thinking and careful observation of shield and life amounts. Investing PoE currency to increase her durability would be good too. Of the three pure classes, the Witch is the most challenging to play.