In accordance to the following developper's statement for the next phase of balance changes, I would like to send my feedbacks regarding Awakening Witch in light of its current performance in Arena of Solare:



To do so, I will state the improvements she had received last year and how it affected her. I will also comment on the issues she faced during this season of Arena of Solare, and finally, I will provide specific suggestions to address some of the "awkward PvP situations" she may face.

Feedback on this last year's round of buffs

Awakening Witch received a set of very significant changes last year. The game also evolved: the developpers sought to rework slows by reducing its effect and its duration, while also making every skills affected by either speed increase or slows. It meant that Paralysis 50% slow had to go; the mainhand staff lightning slow was halved in effect; Magical Evasion was ultimately sped up...

Elementalization got invincibility at the start, super armor on arrival and the cooldown went from 7 to 5 seconds. The change was most significant to turn Elementalization into a reliable defensive movement, especially effective at defending against grab and retaliating back (if the grab fail animation is long enough). It was well-recieved.

Paralysis was changed to Thorn of Denial. Instead of precision ranged crippling slow, the skill becomes a Super Armor Circle AoE skill with numerous hits able to apply a -30 AP debuff on the enemies. Good damage, with downsmash and cancellable with Teleport, Elementalization, Q block, Magical Evasion. Players started using the skill with +20 DP and -15 human damage addons to impose a significant AP deficit on the opponents. When used defensively while predicting a grab attemps, she's able to debuff the opponents before the grab, and in conjunction with Elementalization cancels, she's able to react to a grab attempt and partially secure herself if the grab happened faster than Elementalization. 

Overall, the interaction between these two major changes managed to help the Witch and solidified a defense pattern. However, there are moments where Paralysis 50% slow for 10 seconds was not only serving the same purpose, it could also be used offensively to shut down very agressively some key threats. But, Thorns is much more reliable and serves a wider array of purposes.

On a more personal note, I have been using Core: Thunderstorm to compliment in full the Thorns + Elementalization interactions against engaging opponents. The additional SA damage skill in the rotation offered freed up Core: Thunderstorm 's stun to be used strategically. And the additional protected skill in the rotation relieved some pressure from Core: Fissure Wave spammable frontal guard. This marked a distance from the 99% Core Fissure Wave usage. I was particularly excited for this.


What the heck happened this AoS season?!

Awakening Witch was simply gravely affected by this surprise Arena of Solare stat ruleset implementation. It derived far from the numerous stat iterations previously offered in the lenght off-season period. Baseline defense was significantly reduced, maximum HP was almost tripled. The effect on the DP and AP makes it so that each individual stats are less significant: AP is added to a large pool of AP; DR is added to a smaller pool of DR. A higher maximum HP also causes flat healing values of skills to be smaller in relation to the maximum HP, nerfing them. In addition, the maximum HP cause problems with Mana Shield's MP-to-HP ratio, effectively reducing its defensive value by a complicated, but dramatic amount. 

To make it short, Awakening Witch's latest changes were all tuned toward defensive stats. +30 DR from Q block, -30 AP from Thorns, +700 MP for Mana Shield. Almost every ruleset changes of AoS attacked Awakening Witch's class orientation. The defensive class becomes squishy and fails to do her role.

What is awkward about Awakening Witch?

1) The mainhand Staff kit in terms of movements, offensive, and defensive capabilities is very lacking.
Outside of supporting, the staff kit, including the rabam skills and magnus skills, is not able to play standalone in a cohesive manner under the current game's direction. Skills playing the role of a dash such as Earth's Response remains unprotected and barely moves. The main offensive skills are locked behind specific pre-requisite casts (fireball, chain lightning, lightning) each of them irrelevant, unprotected to then cast another outdated, irrelevant bigger offensive skill (Fireball Explosion, Risidual Lightning, Lightning Storm). Frigid Fog, Earthquake, Swift Earthquake, Earthen Eruption consist are the protected skills but all share the same pattern of being Circle AoE's around an immobile caster. There's a very good reason why Succession Caster's Prime skill are all vastly different than the Absolute variants: because they couldn't have made a Succession class with the mainhand kit in its current form. They revised the main mobility skill, teleport, to hold 2 charges, earth response is protected and moves, the offensive skills have different AoE patterns and ranges. To conclude, the damage of the mainhand staff has suffered a lot ever since the Pre-Absolute received the PvP dmg reduction. Those were close to 40% dmg nerf, uncompensated, from skills that were not even considered overpowered in the pre-nerf variant. A load of fair dmg skills were nerfed by extreme values technically speaking.

2) Lack of protected transitions from Staff to Sphera.
While there are definitively moments where the Awakening Witch is looking to pull out her staff for ranged offense, it is most definitively for support: Protected Area, Healing Lighthouse, Sage's Lighthouse, Meteor...  She ends up requiring a teleport via S + C to stop the cast of a staff skill and force the transition back to Sphera. While Pet Swapping is available, it faces the issue where a staff skill must be fully casted before transition is allowed while also being a busy 1 second or so cast.  It's important to cancel to mitigate the unprotected staff, or simply to relocate immediately. It has been suggested to allow the Witch to Flow: Magical Evasion and Elementalization to transition back to Sphera.

3) No spammable safe mobility for the neutral game.
One of the better defense against grab is to be a moving target. However, once witch expanded her teleport, elementalization or magical evasion, she ends up having to rely on unprotected sprinting or dash spamming. Additionally, the actual movement done via a single usage of magical evasion in Super Armor is not suffisent: it wasn't in 2018 or 2019 and it is even less so in 2025. Lets now follow the tradition by cutting the cooldown by another second (from 5-> 4 in reboot to 4->3 last year or so to  3->2 now?). The problem is that dashes need to be done subsequently and chain together to appropriately move in combat. It was suggested a while ago to introduce two charges of Flow: Magical Evasion but that was year ago; is that bold enough?

4) Very poor offensive initiative in small scale combat.
The Awakening Witch can win some trades, bring some classes to low hp after a combo. However, if they do stand up, chances are they will dash away from the Witch and she has very little margins to capitalize on her small victories. All she gains is breathing room. But if she needs to close the combat, she has lost her Paralysis slow and therefore, lost the only method she had. The reason is simple: a class can sit in block, or simply disengage with speed. If she burns her teleport chasing, she faces a even greater danger. It is okay to have nerfed slows, but ultimately, she was dependant on them to offer some chasing power.

5) Limited combo capabilities (lack of reliable and valuable 0,7 CC skills for the sphera)
Witch's combo are too predictable. It's 1 first cc,  then it's either Fissure wave knockdown or fail.  Her default TWO protected CC are not competent for the job and only one of the core option is competent for a safer and effective combo option.  Yoke of Ordeal's knockback is very difficult (or likely random) to chain with other skills because it only procs its knockback after a 0.8 seconds ish delay + you can't really chain another skill after the first tick except for a dash cancellable skill that CCs (read fissure wave again). Voltaic Pulse also has a cast delay and being Bound turns it in a very poor choice of second CC in the chain.

6) Can't do anything to shield classes playing defensively.
No grabs, no block pressure. Go try against your warrior buddies: full channelled Barrage of Lightning deals close to 10% of a block damage. That block damage value is recovered during 1 head chase. 

7) Has many skills that cannot be cancelled.
If you read or listen to other player's class complaints when it comes to 'skills that they cannot dash from to cancel the skill' you'll realize that they make a big deal out of ever having one skill of sort in their arsenal. Well, turns out that Awakening Witch gets 1 cancellable skill available every year on average. Why wait? What's that half-measure business with Equilibrium Break? Players at max range reaches the Witch before she's done casting Lightning Blast. Thunderstorm?...   It's not only during Witch's cast. It's also after the Witch's cast. Try casting Detonative Flow then hold the inputs for Voltaic Pulse. Why is it so long for the Witch to queue up another skill after the first one is done with? This affects her combo potential, her burst damage and more.

8) For a midrange class, her basic CC skills' range is very short
Yoke of Ordeal range looks alrighty for the damage and the Gorr Roll flow. But the actual range for the knockback is deceptively short. Some melee classes out double (nearly trouble) the range of Yoke of Ordeal knockback window. It is quite ridiculous. Voltaic Pulse is not quite far either: did you know that Succession's Prime Voltaic has more radius than Awakening's? Always has been.