POE 3.5 Betrayal Witch Popular Starter Builds(PC, Xbox, PS4) - Necromancer, Elementalist, Occultist

The Witch is Path of Exile's pure intelligence class, making her an unmatched master of the elemental and dark arts. She wields the power of raw magic to decimate her foes from a distance. In this guide, poecurrencybuy aims to share the most popular builds about Witch in Path Of Exile Betrayal League.

Recommended Witch Builds

Quick Jump

• POE 3.5 Witch Elementalist Starter Blade Vortex Build
• POE 3.5 Witch Elementalist Starter Arc Build
• POE 3.5 Witch Elementalist Starter Winter Orb Build
• POE 3.5 Witch Necromancer Starter Skeletons Zombie Build
• POE 3.5 Witch Necromancer Starter Summon Phantasm Build
• POE 3.5 Witch Occultist Starter Vortex Cold Snap Build
• POE 3.5 Witch Occultist Starter Herald of Agony Build
• POE 3.5 Witch Occultist Starter Rain of Arrows Build

Witch Elementalist Builds

POE 3.5 Witch Elementalist Starter Blade Vortex Build (PC,XBOX,PS4)- Good Clear Speed, High Damage, Cheap Gear

This build fairly cheap to gear, not gated behind rare/expensive uniques. Good league starter, SSF is possible

Pros

• + Good clear speed
• + Good single target damage
• + Fairly cheap to gear, not gated behind rare/expensive uniques. Good league starter, SSF is possible.
• + Scales exceptionally well in the end-game.
• + Witch

Cons

• - Blade vortex mechanics may feel clunky to some
• - Have to be in melee range to deal damage

Leveling

15point

25 points 

40 points 

63 points 

84 points 

101 points 

There are several possible variations of the tree

Single duration cluster tree with Acrobatics and Phase Acrobatics (level 90): https://pastebin.com/igBYd2qd

Single duration cluster tree focusing on life and damage (level 91): https://pastebin.com/qsiimQQj

Two duration clusters tree (level 92): https://pastebin.com/GNtqxei1

POE 3.5 Witch Elementalist Starter Arc Build (PC,XBOX,PS4)- Cheap, Safe, Fully SSF Capable

This build cheap & fully SSF-capable and capable to do all content & mapmods. You are fairly safe, have lots of damage reductions & ranged playstyle.

Pros

• + cheap & fully SSF-capable
• + smooth gameplay & progression
• + capable to do all content & mapmods
• + immune to all kinds of reflected damage
• + fairly safe, lots of damage reductions & ranged playstyle

Cons

• - not made for facetanking, physical damage hurts
• - good boss damage requires some investment
• - Lightning has a huge damage range

Gems Setup

This is the endgame setup, for Act 1-10 check out the Leveling Section!

Arc, Spell Echo, Controlled Destruction, Lightning Penetration, Added Lightning Damage, Hypothermia

Orb of Storms, Arcane Surge, Increased Duration, Mana Leech

Cast when Damage taken, Immortal Call, Cold Snap

Shield Charge, Fortify, Flame Dash

Clarity, Enfeeble, Cast when Damage taken

Decoy Totem, Summon Lightning Golem, Minion and Totem Elemental Resistance

Summon Flame Golem, Summon Stone Golem, Summon Chaos Golem

POE 3.5 Witch Elementalist Starter Winter Orb Build (PC,XBOX,PS4)- Cheap, Fast, SSF Friendly

Witch Necromancer Build

POE 3.5 Witch Necromancer Starter Skeletons Zombie Build (PC,XBOX,PS4)- High Clear Speed, Cheap, Relaxed Playstyle

A pure melee minion build using fast moving Skeletons and Zombies. Stay alive the easy way. Beefy life based defenses, with high regen and decent mitigation from all damage sources. Clear fast with 100% increased movement speed, and few button pushes.

This build makes a great league starter, Noob friendly, easy to acquire items and gems, and with a super relaxed playstyle. 

Gems Setup

Vaal Summon Skeleton (in Weapon) Brutality > Minion Damage > Melee Splash > Melee Physical Damage > Maim

* For boss fights swap melee splash with ruthless or multistrike, but really this is optional, it only shaves a short time off already fast fights.

* If you manage a 6 link, We recommend minion speed. While this does not give maximum tooltip damage, it keeps your effective damage high, because they will start hitting the enemy sooner, will be harder for fast enemies to kite, and will switch targets faster.

Raise Zombie (In chest) Minion Life > Brutality > Minion Damage > Melee Physical Damage

* If you manage a 6 link, solid options would be minion speed, empower, fortify, faster attacks, ruthless.

Purity of Elements in an unset ring

Enfeeble with Blasphemy + Desecrate and Summon stone golem (in boots or glve)

CWDT with incresed duration, phase run, immortal call (in boots or glove)

Animate Guardian + Raise Spectre + Minion Life + blood magic (in helmet)

* The blood magic gem is for the carnage and host chieftans who have a really low mana pool. With blood magic they spam mass frenzy and mass empower a lot more frequently.

Decoy totem *optional* Set in a voideye ring for preference.

POB link: https://pastebin.com/s7iQUgw2

POE 3.5 Witch Necromancer Starter Summon Phantasm Build (PC,XBOX.PS4)- Fast Clear Speed, Cheap, Safe For Boss

This build focuses on those phantasms while supporting them through MASSIVELY CLEVER use of the player and other minions. You will deal a mixture of mainly Physical and Chaos damage, with poison stacking for additional damage. Smite gives you a small portion of extra Lightning damage, but that's sort of insignificant.

Pros

• + Relatively high effective health and sustain: 4k+ ES and 4k+ Life, allowing you to heal yourself for over 700 ES for every maxed Spirit Offering (9 corpses).
• + Safe for most bosses: Even if your phantasms die, you can quickly resummon them as meatshields or to focus targets at a distance and keep them at bay.
• + Fast clear speed: Not a top-tier clearing build, but comfortable nonetheless. The new minion nodes in the passive tree allow for faster leap slams.
• + Cheap startup: You don't need a 6-link to start dishing out your damage (although of course a 6-link chest will greatly increase singletarget damage).

Cons

• - Zombies die quickly under extreme circumstances, resummoning them takes a while and leaves you more vulnerable.
• - No CWDT setup (if you consider that a con).
• - No ailment immunity, relies on flasks for freeze / bleed / shock removal.
• - Weak against maps with "no regen" mods due to low amount of unreserved mana.

Gems & Gear Setup

Weapons: Soulwrest

Gems: Minion Damage Support, Vile Toxins Support, Summon Phantasm on Kill Support, Controlled Destruction Support, Faster Projectiles Supportm, Lesser Projectiles Support

Body Armor: Lightning Coil

Gems: Raise Spectre, Minion Life Support, Blood Magic Support, Maim Support, Withering Touch Support, Raise Zombie

Jewels: Ghastly Eye Jewel

Gloves: Allelopathy

Gems: Temporal Chains, Spell Cascade Support, Cast while Channelling Support, Desecrate

Threshold Jewels: Spreading Rot *2

Boots: Two-Toned Boots (Fire and Lightning Resistance)

Gems: Faster Attacks Support, Leap Slam, Fortify Support, Dominating Blow

Helmet: Bone Helmet

Gems: Blood Magic - Blood Rage - Increased Duration - Flame Dash

Jewellery

Citrine Amulet, Sapphire Ring, Gloom Whorl Two-Stone Ring, Stygian Vise + Ghastly Eye Jewel             

Get most of your life and resistances here. If you don't have an Envy amulet, switch out a ring for an Unset Ring with Haste.

Flasks

Seething Divine Life Flask Of Animation, Avenger's Amethyst Flask Of Staunching, Rotgut, Witchfire Brew, Avenger's Granite Flask Of Curing

Despair aura helps you nuke down nearby targets faster. Rest is utility and can be any combination you desire.

POB link: https://pastebin.com/ctepsfJD

Witch Occultist Builds

POE 3.5 Witch Occultist Starter Vortex Cold Snap Build (PC,XBOX,PS4)- Cheap, Strong

POE 3.5 introduced a new way to scale the cold spell - cold damge overtime multiplier, coupled with the new Occultist nodes, it basically doubles the damage of cold damage over time skills. This build is life based because it is a league starter, and so that we can buy cap resistance and at the the time find more damage on gear more easily.

Gems Setup

On Weapons

Frostbolt - Greater multiple projectiles - Increased Critical Strike chance (To proc EO)

Desecrate - Increassed Duration (Corpse lasts longer that trigger spell cooldown -> good for the Helmet) - Spell cascasade OR equivalent setup:

Unearth - GMP - LMP ( I think it looks nicer, less lag on my machine)

Movement: Lightning warp - Reduced duration - Faster casting - fourth link can be Arcange surge / Swift affliction.

Cold snap setup: Vaal Coldsnap - Bonechill - Efficacy - Hypothermia

Vortex setup on body armour

Vortex - Elemetal focus - Efficacy - Swift affliction - Hypothermia - Controlled destruction

Why Elemental focus? Because Bonechill with the coldsnap is enough (It affects both skills) and we use instead Elemental focus for another large modifier.

Curse setup: Blasphemy-Enfeeble-Temporal chain on helmet

POB link: https://pastebin.com/ZuGQ4JNz 

POE 3.5 Witch Occultist Starter Herald of Agony Build (PC,XBOX,PS4)- Good Clear Speed, Easy, Cheap

This isn't a super expensive build by nature.The build relies primarily on gem and tree interactions so you don't strictly need any specific gear.

Pros

+ 180%+ peak increased move speed.
+ Super curses. Mobs barely dent you with the super enfeeble and temporal chains.
+ 7k+ life.
+ Easy to maintain fortify.
+ Strong recovery via LGoH.
+ Agony Crawer does all the work.
+ Can handle EVERY map mod in the game
+ Good clear speed via minion augmented profane bloom explosions. 
+ Good league starter. The base gear is dirt cheap and no six links are required.

Cons

- Something not for all players

Gems Setup

Herald of Agony + Pierce + Minion Damage + Vile Toxins + Damage on Full Life or Minion Speed

Enfeeble + Blasphemy

Static Strike + Ancestral Call + Chain + Fortify (+ Poison)

Molten Strike + Multistrike + Greater Multiple Projectiles (+ Poison) + Withering Touch + Ancestral Call (if you can get it)

Convocation

Shield Charge + Faster Attacks (+ Fortify + Poison)

NOTE: You could also fit in desecrate/spirit offering instead of fortify/poison on shield charge, but I don't think it's worth it.

NOTE: for Static and Molten Strike, if you don't use Mortem Morsu you need to add poison support through Elder pseudo 5 links.

POB Link

• Early mapping: https://pastebin.com/hUzn8gRQ
• Endgame: https://pastebin.com/asAUQDB0

POE 3.5 Witch Occultist Starter Rain of Arrows Build (PC,XBOX,PS4)- Good Clear Speed, Cheap, Funny

This build is created to be pretty well-rounded. It has good clear, great survivability, and really strong single target.

Pros

• + Good clear

• + Good single target (Elder, Shaper and Uber Elder down)
• + Great survivability, with over 10K ES, three curses, and very quick start of ES recharge
• + Cheap to get started - all required uniques are cheap, and ES gear is on average cheaper than their life counterpart
• + Can do all map mods
• + No need to worry about resummoning your minion, he's invulnerable to damage and summons/unsummons itself
• + Fun to play ("It's like a minion build but not boring" ~ Rockell)
• + Can take everything down up to Shaper without heavy investment (I'd say on a 1 or 2 ex budget), and can take down Uber Elder with some further investment (a faster start of ES recharge Watcher's Eye is almost mandatory)

Cons

• - The Agony Crawler doesn't have a perfect AI, and will sometimes get stuck behind walls, altough this can be solved by having a Convocation gem (now that it's instant cast, it's confortable to use)

• - Requires one six-link for HoA, and one for sustaining poison - you can play with a five-link for your poison setup, but you'll only have two curses
• - Off-colours can be hard to get on chest (4 green 2 blue)

Gems Setup

Herald of Agony + Damage on Full Life Support + Minion Damage Support + Vile Toxins Support + <>Vicious Projectiles Support + <>Added Fire Damage Support

Damage on full life does apply to the Crawler's attacks (confirmed by PoB). Since the Crawler is immune to damage, it will always be full life. Concerning Vile Toxins, the Crawler doesn't deal any poison damage, but we poison enemies, which makes the Crawler deal up to 45% more damage against enemies affected by 9 poisons. It provides a nice damage boost against target we poison a lot, i.e. in single target.

Note on level 21 Herald of Agony

Virulence grants several buffs per stack to the Crawler, one of them being attack speed. It goes from 2% at lvl 1 up to 3% at lvl 20, and at lvl 21 it goes up to 4%. That means that the overall attack speed buff from virulence increases by 33%, which is huge. In PoB, a lvl 20 gem displays around 750K dps, and with the lvl 21, it's over 1M. Plus, quality is useful on HoA, but not mandatory (it's minion movement speed), and there are cheap-ish lvl 21 gems (I bought mine for 1ex mid league), so it's a valuable late game upgrade.

Rain of Arrows + Poison Support + Curse On Hit Support + Temporal Chains + Enfeeble + Projectile Weakness

The Poison Support gem, along with the HoA buff, puts us at 80% chance to poison, which is more than enough. If you can only have a five or a four link for this, drop one or two curses, according to your preferences, although I wouldn't recommend taking out Projectile Weakness when packs have a decent density.

A six-link Herald of Agony reserves a lot of mana, so we only have the mana for another aura. Of course, we use Discipline

Note that, in order to use both Herald of Agony and Discipline comfortably, you'll need to either have a lvl 3 Enlighten on Discipline, or take the 4% reduced mana reserved node near Chaos Inoculation.

Summon Chaos Golem + Summon Lightning Golem

For the Golem, you can use either a Chaos or a Lightning golem. I started out with a Lightning golem, but I found I was always at maximum virulence anyway, so I opted for a Chaos golem to try and compensate the fact that we have no armour.

Blink Arrow + Faster Attacks Support

For mobility, Blink Arrow linked with faster attacks is perfect.

In the Cast when damage taken (level 1) setup, Immortal Call is used to allow the ES recharge to start more easily, and Phase Run for invisibility / mobility.

Immortal Call + Cast when damage taken + Phase Run + Increased Duration Support

For the other gems, feel free to use whatever you like using (Fortify setup, golem in another, high-level, CwDT setup, ...)

The following is an optional setup for single target, if you struggle to sustain Virulence with Rain of Arrows (see next part for more details).

Barrage + Poison Support + <>Lesser Poison Support + Faster Attacks Support

POB link: https://pastebin.com/jHPLkTub