Help on Enchantress

[Dayoh]

Whats the build for an enchantress? I got as far as maxing warmth and enchant LOL.

[Thedutchjelle]

Hmm.. max fire mastery? And all the synergies for enchant.

[Neo]

Warmth, Enchant, Fire Mastery.

Really thats it. You can go like Energy Shield/Telekinesis (if you plan to actually play the sorceress)

Otherwise, you just need Warmth/Enchant/Fire Mastery.

-Neo

[Magician777]

Hmm.. max fire mastery? And all the synergies for enchant.ya that is pretty much it:)

[GrassDragon]

The skills are simple, but much more important is the equipment and mercenary you use. I actually wrote a guide to the Enchantress a while back, since it's my favorite build:

The Enchantress

[A] Overview
[B] Skills
[C] Stats
[D] Items
[E] Strategy

***

[A] Overview

We all know that the Sorceress is the superior class for elemental spells and distance damage, but what about for getting in close to the action? Most would think the Sorceress is too weak and frail to be actually fighting, but this isn't so. With a skill called Enchant, melee fighting is not out of reach of the Sorceress.
Enchant is a skill that bestows extra fire damage and a small attack rating bonus to whoever it is being casted upon. It has one synergy, Warmth, but Fire Mastery works almost the same way a synergy does. The Sorceress can use Enchant on herself, her hireling, a party member, or other party member's hirelings or summons. This makes it a very useful skill to a party; everyone can benefit from it.

[B] Skills

The Enchantress (the name for a Sorceress who uses the skill Enchant for her main damage) has a few skills that are a must, and then can be customized somewhat. The basic skill set is to max Enchant, Warmth, and Fire Mastery for maximum damage. Usually after that comes Teleport for getting around, and Static Field for cutting monsters down. Other damage skills can be built up after that (usually in another tree so that the Sorceress is at least dual-elemental).

-Enchant

Enchant is this builds main skill (duh). It is a lvl 18 skill; that is, you can't get this skill until you are level 18. It also has three prerequisites, Fire Bolt, Warmth, and Fireball. You should already have points in Warmth (it is a synergy), but Fire Bolt and Fire Ball won't be of use to you. Nothing you can do about that.
The way Enchant works is you cast it on yourself (or a party member, or a minion) and it will give you extra damage based on it's skill level at the time of casting. That means if you put a skill point in Enchant, you will have to recast it to get the higher damage, it doesn't automatically upgrade all of your enchants. It gives the weapon of the user it's casted on a red glow to show they've been enchanted. There are a few things to note about Enchant. You cannot cast a lower level Enchant to replace a higher level one. Normally you would want to recast Enchant on your whole party before the timer on it runs out, to prevent yourself from losing the extra damage in the middle of a heated battle (no pun intended). But if you have a higher level Enchant due to a skill shrine or Battle Command when you are enchanting your party and then lose the skill bonus, you can't "recast" over your old Enchant; you have to wait until it complete runs out to replace it. This can really make a big difference, and I don't pick up skill shrines with my Enchantress because of it. Also, you can't cast Enchant on a fellow party member while they are in town (you CAN cast it on their minions however). You'll have to wait until they are out of town before you can enchant them.
Enchant damage is carried in explosive ammo. If you use a bow that has exploding arrows (or bolts) the Enchant damage will get carried to the explosion and all enemies in the are of effect will also take this Enchant damage. This makes using these kinds of items (ones with exploding ammo) very powerful with Enchant.
Your first level in Enchant may not seem very powerful; at slvl 1 (with the one prerequisite Warmth point which is a synergy), you will only be doing an extra 8-10 damage, and that'll cost you 25 mana each time you Enchant. Doesn't seem like such a great skill does it? But when you max Enchant and it's synergies, the damage can get really high, especially with +skill items.
This build really shines when you add in the +skill items, that's where the big "wows" come from. Something to remember about +skill items though, they don't help you with standard synergy bonus. So a +1 skill to Warmth won't give Enchant any bonus. However, Fire Mastery is not a normal synergy, it is a "mastery", which means that +skill items WILL give the bonus to Enchant. So if you have a +1 skill to Fire Mastery, it will give Enchant (and all your other fire skills) a +7% damage bonus per level. Remember that you have to recast Enchant if you add a skill point to it or its synergies (or put on an item with +skills on it).

Points: Max it (the build IS named after it after all)

-Warmth

Warmth is a skill that gives you a bonus to mana regeneration, as well as being a synergy to Enchant. Most, if not all, Sorceresses should put at least one point in Warmth. This build will end up maxing it though, for the synergy bonus.
Mana regeneration is a tricky thing to figure out, but once you understand it you will see that it makes perfect sense. If you have no +mana regen items on, and no point in Warmth, your entire mana ball will fill up in two minutes, no matter how much mana you have. So if you have 120 mana, you will regenerate 1 mana per second, and if you have 240 mana you will regenerate 2 mana per second. This means that increasing the size of your mana ball can increase the amount of mana you regen per second.
+Mana regen items and the Warmth skill decrease the amount of time it takes to completely refill your mana reserve. The formula for the amount of seconds it takes to refill mana completely is as follows:

120/(1+WarmthBonus+ItemRegen)

And the amount of mana per second regenerated would be:

TotalMana/(120/[1+WarmthBonus+ItemRegen])

Here's an example: You have 600 mana and a slvl 10 Warmth with a pair of Magefist gloves on (+1 fire skills, 25% faster mana regen). The Magefist would make your Warmth slvl11, and the formula would be as follows:

600/(120/[1+1.86+0.25])

Or about 16 mana per second or about 39 seconds to fully refill your mana.

Points: Max it for the synergy bonus (which is +180% damage at slvl 20)

-Fire Mastery

Fire Mastery gives a boost to the damage of all of your fire skills. The first point in it gives a 51% bonus, and then each point thereafter gives an additional 7%. Unlike normal synergies, +skill items and such DO boost the bonus it gets.

Points: Max it for the bonus

-Teleport

Teleport is a skill that let's you instantly "teleport" to anywhere on screen. Extra points in this skill only decreases the amount of mana required to use it, making one point more than enough (+skill items should make it cheaper to use anyway). A must for all Sorceresses.

Points: 1

-Static Field

Static Field decreases all monsters in the radius's health by 25% of their current health. This means that subsequent castings of Static field have less and less effect (75% health after 1st cast, 56% after 2nd, 42% after the third). Static Field also has a limit in higher difficulties; you can only lower a monster to 33% of its total health in Nightmare, and 50% in Hell. It can also be resisted by lightning resist, and Lower Resist and Conviction don't help it out any.
This may make Static Field look like a useless skill, but that's really not so. It is relatively cheap (9 mana) and very fast, so you can really spam it. Every point in it increases it's radius, so you can reach more and more monsters. It can also do a LOT of damage if the monster has a lot of health; more than regular spells could do. Your Enchantress will already be close to the action anyway, so using a low level Static Field won't be a problem. All Sorceresses should have 1 point in this skill, and use +skill items to make it have a larger radius.

Points: 1 (+skill items will help it, one real point is all that is needed)

[C] Stats

Vitality

Ahh life. Every build needs it, but this build especially. Because you will be in the fray like all the other Barbarians, you're gonna need life like one. But Sorceresses get MUCH less life per point in Vitality. Your only choice is to invest in +life skills. Lots of +life items. Rubies in helms and armor, magic and rare items with +life, and hanging around a Barb with Battle Orders or a Druid with an Oak Sage is a must. The more life the better, but aim for 1000+ by the time you get to Hell.

Energy

This type of Sorceress generally doesn't need as much mana as the normal ones. Because Enchant is a "set it and forget it" skill, you won't be spamming spell very much. Put points into Energy as needed, but don't over do it, you'll need those points for Vitality.

Dexterity

Ranged Enchantresses will need this more so than melee ones. Enough for your weapon is good (the Demon Machine has a dex requirement of 95; I'll explain why I mention this in the items section).

Strength

Only enough for your weapons and armor is needed.

[D] Items

What items will you need for this build? It depends on what path you will take, the melee or ranged Enchantress.

All Enchantresses need life (as mentioned above) and defense, just like any other melee build. Resists are also a must. +Skill items will help you to do more damage, and are therefore put very high on the list. Life leech is not as important, because most of your damage is fire, not physical.

A good early item is the Leaf runeword. It doesn't have very high runes (Tir and Ral) and it has +3 to fire skills. This will really make a difference early on. If you can find a socketed staff with +skill mods already on it, all the better. You can use this kind of staff on weapon switch to enchant, then switch to your fighting gear.

Hexfire is also good for its +3 to fire skills. A melee Enchantress can even use it for her main weapon. This coupled with a +skill shield can be very powerful.

The sorceress is very slow to recover from hits, so faster hit recovery items are useful, as are faster attack items.

[E] Strategy

There are two main builds for an Enchantress, the melee and the ranged build. A melee Enchantress will use a fast weapon to maximize damage, and a high block rate shield. A melee Enchantress has an advantage over a ranged Enchantress in terms of Enchant damage due to a bug (or feature you might call it). When using a melee weapon, your current Fire Mastery bonus is figured in an additional time. That is, your Fire Mastery bonus is multiplied into your total Enchant damage twice when attacking melee; once at the time of casting, and then again when you attack. Ranged attacks do not get this bonus. Using a Hexfire or other +fire skills weapon will increase your Fire Mastery level at the time you attack.
Ranged Enchantresses take advantage of the fact that Enchant damage is carried over the explosion from any exploding bolts or exploding arrows mods on bows. Kuko Shakuku and Demon Machine both have exploding bolts and piercing. The only thing you have to be careful of as a ranged Enchantress is that you can't carry a shield. This will make you weak, but playing in a party and staying in the back lines (where you should be) will help prevent you from taking damage.
Be careful of fire immunes in nightmare and hell. Immunes are always a problem to single element characters, and the Enchantress is no exception. Traveling with a party will help you with fire immunes, and the party will enjoy your enchanting company anyway (pun intended :P)

That concludes the guide to the Enchantress. Look for a guide to Zeal and non-Paladin characters next issue.
Looking back over it I glossed over a few things, but hopefully that will at least get you started. Once you fill in the main three skills, you might spread into an AOE cold skill in case you run into FIs or to slow enemies.

[Anoiktos]

Essentially, an enchantress has two main objectives, the same one every other character does:

1. Do damage (using enchant)
2. Stay alive

Due to the problems with a purely energy-reliant build, I do not reccommend using energy shield for the 'staying alive' part.

Thus, your choices:

Damage:
Melee: More damage, more risk
Range: Less damage, less risk

Staying alive:
Life: due to the percentage nature of many potion types, more life means faster regeneration. It also means that you can take more damage before dying. Unfortunately, as the above poster noted, sorceresses get a very low vit -> life ratio. As such, I would reccomend, as they did, using items to boost this.

Armor: Sorceresses can use the same armor as barbarians: The trick is to find armor that has both good resists *and* good AC, as well as a shield with decent block. And *then* balance in +skills - if you care more for damage, get more skills, if you care more for survival, focus more on block. There are some cheap shields with *very* good block out there, but with fairly crappy everything else.

Tal Rasha's is always an option - it's a fairly cheap set (okay, not for a beginner, but you aren't, are you?), though from experience I can assure you it's harder to find than one might like (everyone wants it). The main bonus it grants is massive +skill bonus as well as massive +resists and not-too-shabby armor. If you go this rout, you'll need a very good shield (stormshield's good, but expensive)

If you're going for range, focus more on +skill and +resist; melee, more on +armor and block.

Either way, equipment choices are tight - and skill choices are (relatively) cheap, due to the single-element nature of enchant. If you're soloing, I highly reccommend considering and working around with a character planner to fit either frozen orb into your build (which requires no synergies to be effective) or to level up / have enough +skills for your static field to get things to 50% safely before fighting.

Another absolutely *wonderful* ally, for a higher-level sorc, is an act 2 mercenary (from nightmare, with the holy frost mod!(defensive)) that you've treated well (keep him alive, dammit! Give him some nice cheap armor and resists - griswolds' with some pDiamonds works well if you're low on cash), as that will allow you to run around and either hit things without tons of retaliation (because everything's slow) as melee, or kite spectacularly as ranged. If you become so incredibly rich as to be able to get one of those polearms that grants the consecration aura (illumination runeword?), GRAB IT and put it on your merc. Suddenly, almost all your problems vanish, as even fire immune enemies feel your previously insignificant wrath.

[Neo]

Actually the energy shield is to supplement the Enchantress's skills -- like for example after you enchant yourself and your mercenary, your mana then becomes pretty much worthless.

At this point, it can't hurt to dump left over points into telekinesis, and then try to get as high an energy shield as possible. You may also wish to dump some points int Shiver Armor for the defense bonus.

Energy shield isn't really there like it is for pure ES-Based sorceresses who can tank Lister, it's there to absorb the occasional damage thrown at you.

Plus if you have enough life sources, you could actually go Str/Dex/Energy instead of Vitality. A friend, I believe, once did an Enchantress-Bear setup, who ended up with like 5000 mana and 1200 life. Pretty insane o.o;;

-Neo

[Anoiktos]

Energy shield isn't really there like it is for pure ES-Based sorceresses who can tank Lister, it's there to absorb the occasional damage thrown at you.
I'll agree with that. Considering the very valid point that you won't be using your energy for anything else, well, you might as *well* at least have the spell. I just wouldn't try to rely on it and only it as is so very tempting with most ES-sorcs - it will fail you, and you will die, if you come to rely on it in a build not meant for it.

...the thing is, for a character where you don't already have enough resources to get decent HP from items, you *will* need to put points into VIT (especially at the beginning). If you *do* already have enough life sc's and +life items, then it's not as big a deal and I'd definitely say Neo's plan sounds awesome.

[Neo]

Well that and every-other person on battle.net uses CTAs :/ Which means that mana/life issues become null.

-Neo