Oh, always excited to see someone cover the Witch class! A tricky part to Witch is that you have a whole separate customizable utility pet which can be tricky to take advantage of. And on top of that, Witch’s are also the BEST specific familiar class. Because of the Witch familiar and the specific familiar rules, they can change out their Specific Familiars *daily* and not have to wait a week (like a Wizard might have to). They also have the Improved Familiar feat innate to them meaning they can access those stronger specific familiars earlier than others. This creates a huge amount of flexibility, especially as more Specific Familiars get added. Good specific familiars are crawling hand, ceru, house drake, and fairy dragon. The new Rage of Elements mood cloud and elemental scamp are also great options. It’s a bit advanced (requires a lot of knowledge on the systems and spells, while also needing GM approval due to the Rare tag), but Spirit Guide opens up a whole new realm of possibility in terms of build direction. But I’m not surprised that most players don’t even know how Specific Familiar works because the rules are pretty complicated to do so. And specific familiars were pretty bad early on so they’ve been ignored by many. Great video! Other good homebrew: make Phase Familiar a hex cantrip and not hex focus spell. Edit: But ya, the Witch class does need help, but the Remaster is very promising!
Witch changes in remaster sound like they can go WILD. Reworked patron features and spells familiars can cast means you can 1-Action command spells, and free action cackle to sustain. 2-action spell or use nails for their hex smite/spellstrike equivalent. This means potentially THREE spells cast within the same turn. More clarity and consistency with this direction sounds so fun and unhinged. I can also see a space of permitting generation of a “temporary focus point” after succeeding with your witch attacks (like the hair, claw) to generate future cackles. I also think there’s the obvious missing element of an eldritch blast equivalent being favorable for transferred players. Maybe make it like Aqueous Blast and similar spells where you gain access to a spell attack for the remainder of the turn, but you cackle to keep the ability to spell attack in future turns.
I gm'd for a witch up to level 6 and honestly it just felt a bit like a wizard with some creepy flavor but slightly less powerful because it didn't have as many spells. I really want to like the class but my inner powergamer will choose wizard every time. I am very excited to see what the remaster has in store for the witch. I'm personally hoping for better hexes, I feel like pf2 is missing a dedicated debuffer and witch feels perfect for that role. Great video as always
This just popped up on my recommended feed but don't actually have time to watch, but it's really worth mentioning that Witch is the class specifically called out as getting heavily reworked for the remaster, so hopefully people see this comment and realize that in less than a year of this video, this video needs to be taken with a grain of salt if it's still relevant at all. Definitely suggest that you retitle the video though to make that distinction, there's enough misleading information about PF2e as is because of a few bad-faith youtubers, I'd hate if a video done in good faith ended up misleading people.
I played in a group that had a Witch and all I really thought is that her character was just a Wizard that casts Primal spells. Not a good look to have. Also, I got the Rage of Elements book in the mail and I'm looking forward to what you think of the Kineticist.
Most of my Witch players do have fun, but everyone admits the options are largely lackluster. I house rule that all Witches receive Cackle for free. It also bothers me that the Witch Familiar, with the exception of like one or two feats, has the same options and abilities that others have in the game. Considering the Witch’s main schtick is their Familiar, this seems boring. Apparently all that is about to change with the Remaster, so here’s hoping they get it right. All that said, the upside to bad feats is the overwhelming number of class levels where archetype feats make more sense. Unlike a Bard, Druid or Sorcerer, whom might find it hard to break away from their rather strong class feats, Witches in my will often archetype into multiple things. Add onto that the free archetype rule we always play with and the Witches at my table are typically versatile and have plenty of spells.
