I don't understand what makes the witch desirable to play - they get such a tiny pool of spells to begin with that they seem to be rather a bit too ineffective at first level, and it seems like the only thing they have over wizards is that they can hex, and that they get higher level spells faster.
Is there something I'm missing? some awesome thing that makes witches super great in their own right?
They're one of the only(if not the only!) classes with a highly spammable class ability(hexes). That said, most hexes are just awful and many look like they were built for an NPC class. What makes it worse is that one of the few good hexes is a save or die; and those tend to be anti-climactic.
Hexs...all day long with scaling DC's! They gain spells at the same rate as wizards do.
I'd recommend a Patron with some defensive spells included like mirror image as they do lack early survivability.
Also to a lesser extent they can pretend to be healer while still being a decent wizard not to mention being able to debuff things to oblivion is fun
Witches are quite thematically appealing, the hexes have scaling DCs with high DCs easily attainable. They are also a solid support class with a fair ammount of healing capability. Archetypes are generally also more interesting.
I feel like they can function as a sort of a priest/druid character that isnt caught up in the druid and cleric stereotypes.
That said the class does have some badly developed hexes which can make actual combat kinda boring.