I played a witch through most of Kingmaker and my DM made me retire her. Why? Because she was too strong.
You are not playing the witch to her strengths. The class is a mediocre blaster at best and really, casters have a hard time out DPS dedicated melee folk - after all that's what they do. The witch should being flying around the battle field dropping hexes and debuffing everything.
You want boss killer? This three round combo will do it almost every time (assuming they are not immune to mind affecting/sleep). Open with Evil Eye, follow up with Cackle/Misfortune, end it with Sleep Hex. You can let one of your pals Coup-de-gras them.
Witches are probably the games strongest debuffers. Blasting really isn't their forte.
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Witches are not damage dealers.
Repeat after me:
WITCHES ARE NOT DAMAGE DEALERS.
If you're trying to play your witch as a damage dealer, you're playing it wrong.
Spellcasters in general are horrible damage dealers in pathfinder/D&D3. The only way to be a decent blaster is to take a sorc bloodline that gives you bonuses according to the damage dice, and use spells that do a lot of dice. Crossblood orc/draconic perhaps. Witches lack most of the good damage-dealing spells, even if you take the elements patron, and have no built-in way of boosting damage.
The only witch that is a decent damage dealer is an Orc scarred witch doctor using a race that lets you put the bonus in Con, like a human with a racial heritage (orc) feat, and taking the Prehensile hair feat, using the hair as a natural weapon with a reach of 10 feet and a strength of 20. A melee witch.
What a witch excels at is save or die, save or suck, battlefield control, and utility. Build your witch around what witches can do well, or accept that you're going to suck. Would you build a fighter around disabling traps, climbing walls, using acrobatics to dance around enemies, using light weapons with weapon finesse to leverage a high dexterity, and telling outrageous lies to people? No, that's the role of a rogue, bard, or ninja. Would you build a rogue with the intention of grappling a foe and shutting him down? No, that's a fighter, monk, or barbarian's job. Would you build a barbarian using UMD with a wand to function as your primary in-battle healer? No, that's the job of a cleric, oracle, or something similar.
While you COULD certainly build these characters, and with enough investment in abilities, feats, traits to acquire class skills, and sheer cussedness, you might be able to rise above the level of utterly abysmal, you'd never be as good as a character whose class was designed to help it do that from the beginning.
If you want a damage-dealing spellcaster, pick wizard with a dip in sorceror, straight sorceror, or something along those lines. You could still call yourself a witch, and have a familiar. But even then, a blasting spellcaster will find himself doing less damage than the classes who get high static bonuses to hitting with weapons.
I happily played a witch for about 9 levels and was never a damager. It just doesn't happen.
I was, however, a rock in the support character slot. I healed, buffed and debuffed, and my familiar scouted and ran messages. I had all the useful but non-combat spells such as Mending, but was never a fireball thrower.
I love the witch class and will play one again, but you have to be aware of the limitations.
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If you are allowed to make a newish character and want a witch theme, while still getting nice DPS, try a Hexcrafter Magus. You get the Evocation spells to give you a bunch of DPS and you still get the SoS hexes that give you a witch theme, and you get a bunch of skills. Now, that said, if you want to stay with the witch class, how about choosing things like spell and elemental focus feats, along with a dip in crossblooded elemental/draconic sorcerer for a nice damage buff.
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The above responses pretty much covered everything. You're support, not DPR.
Witches have a spell list that support being a healer/debuffer/save or suck/save or die builds. Really, you should be focusing on getting the DCs of your abilities/spells as high as possible by skyrocketing your INT score as much as you can and maybe considering a specific focus of your character.
What patron did you choose and what spells do you have or frequently use?
Anyway, if you want to make a damage dealing spellcaster play a Sorcerer. If you want to play a blaster with healing/support spells, play a Oracle with the Flame Mystery (Boring to me but, then again, I don't like blasting). If you want to play spellcaster that is reasonable good at blasting and a fair bit of utility, play an evocation Wizard.
All these choices will make you great at using spells to melt faces but Witch's spells are shut-down spells that make your meanest opponents weak, invalid and probably huddled into a corner murmuring softly while the rocking back and forth while in the throes of their own insanity. A cool way to defeat an opponent mind you, but they'd still be technically alive.
My witch was the most dangerous member of our party, and never once dealt damage outside of a coup de grace with my scythe (named "Dreamreaper"). Generally, the party just supported me, trying to put me into a good position to sleep the bad guys so we could execute them at our whim.
Blasting magic requires a crazy focus on it to be valuable, and Witches are probably the worst blasting class in the game at that.
Witches are all about debuffing and control. Anything else and you'll be disappointed.
RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 16, RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32
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A withes strength is how she makes her enemies suck at life.
Big, scary monster that eats barbarians alive and whole? She turns it into a newt, puts it into a cage, and keeps it until she can use it against another enemy. One charm monster spell and one dispel magic spell targeted at only the polymorph spell and you are now an evil pokemon trainer.
The big bag that is making all the saves when the party wizard casts spells on them? You destroy them with so many debuffs that they will always fail, and then you trap them in ice. Or turn them into a newt. Or put them to sleep. Or lay so many curses on them that death would be merciful.
You can go the buffing route too. This isn't nearly as effective and the options for it are more limited but sometimes there are foes you can't do anything against. Your paladin would love rolling twice and taking the best result. Your barbarian could enjoy a bit more AC. I know your gunslinger would love to have several named bullet spells cast on their ammunition.
I would talk to your GM about either switching to a class that deals damage, like the alchemist or magus, or rebuilding your witch to switch the focus. Look at the various builds here to find a way to both build and play a witch optimally.
Did you take Vacuum as your patron? That could be the problem right there.
The witch is an awesome class that can utterly destroy encounters from level 1 onward with a minimum of min-maxing. They are not "really" suited for blasting because so many abilities play to the "anvil" type character, though you could try a frost themed blaster going winter witch archetype/PC for an easy cookie cutter approach. Rime spell to offset your lower damage with good debuffing.
If you're grouped with semi-optimized characters focused on damage dealing you'll most likely feel a bit underwhelmed unless you have heavily invested in buffing your damage capabilities. Check out Brewer's Guide to the Blockbuster Wizard to see how DD wizards can be built if you're dead set on continuing on being a DD Witch. Look at the patrons to see which will give you the spells you need.
My recommendation is to take the Shadow Patron and utilize Shadow Evocation and Shadow Conjuration. Check out the excellent guide for Shadow Conjuration / Evocation to see how they play. If your game will continue to to end tier, remember the grand hex that summons spirits - you can just summon up an 18 HD wizard to blast at that point. Also you have summoning spells also. The witch is a swiss army knife.
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But how do you choose a class based on flavour alone when it has none of the mechanics you want, while there's a perfectly suitable alternative that has all of them?
Side note: what I tend to love in my chars are (1)high skill points, (2)asymmetric tactics, and in-your-face (3)damage.
These two quotes are contradictory.
Why didn't you make a Wizard?I suspect it has something to do withI love the flavor of the witch, I love the style,
The problem is that this is blatantly untrue. The OP likes what they *think* the witch is, not what the witch *actually* is.
frankly they would be better off playing a Wizard (or Magus as you suggested) and just call it a witch. You don't have to have witch class levels to play a witch after all.
While there have been a few moments where I contributed in a big way I truly feel like a PC witch was designed to be a support character, which is just not me. I have held out till level 10 in the hopes that I'd get more powerful as time goes by but it's just not happening. Most of my powerful spells are effectively "save-or-be-screwed" spells and guess what? The Big Bad will almost always save (in fact, they've only ever not saved once). This may be due to really good rolls, or it may be due to the GM not wanting his dramatic boss battle to end in the first round (which is not an irrational desire on his part), but either way...Lightning Bolt is probably my most-used spell.
I dunno...should I give up on the witch and reroll or what? Advice, please.
Well first of all, there are dms out there that dont let their big bads fail saves. In that kind of group, a debuffer like the witch can struggle. Oh yea, witches are debuffers, not damage dealers. Seriously, you are in fact (and I had saying this) playing the witch wrong. Luckily there are several ways out of this.
1. Focus on Debuffs and other things the witch is good at. There are several options that work even if your make your save. Evil eye followed by cackle if they save for instance. Or buff your allies (fortune for instance).
2. You probably should have been a hexcrafter magus. Magi do damage, tons of damage. Same skill potential as the witch, and it has room for those odd spells for tactical tricks.
3. Super genius games has a class called the helion. It is a 3/4 bab d8 hit die, 6 level caster version of the witch, that can (with the right options) be much more damage focused then a usual witch. Even then though it probably isnt your best choice if damage is important to you, but it keeps the flavor and style of the witch while making damage a descent part of what you do.
If you think your GM is fudging rolls to keep the BBEG from dying on the first round, appease him by holding off on the save-or-die hex until the third round or so. Spend the first few rounds buffing the party, shutting down the mooks, or summoning a monster for support.
Make this clear to him as well. "I suspect you're not wanting to have the big battle be an anticlimax, so I'll refrain from using hexes that one-shot the encounter if the save fails, until at least a few rounds in, that way the other players can play a major role as well, and you can show off the awesomeness of the big bad. I hope this helps make everything more fair."
Let's face it, there's nothing worse for a GM than to spend hours crafting a BBEG perfectly, finding the most awesome combination of monster + template + class levels, and then he topples over on a failed save vs. a slumber hex on the first round, followed by a CdG by the axe-barbarian on the next round.