I'm starting up a game with some college buddies soon and I'm taking to a more support role right now. I'm picking up a Gravewalker Witch, but I'd also like to know what options I can pick up for buffs and debuffs. I'm grabbing the Ancestor patron for Blessings of Fervor and (Mis)Fortune with Cackle. Any other advice?
The game is starting at level 10 for reference's sake.
If you Scar your allies you can use beneficial hexes on them from range.
Split Hex (feat) effectively doubles your Hexing action economy.
Cackling as a move action can pretty much extend the duration of some hexes indefinitely. This is good. Misfortune + Cackle + a nasty save-or-suck is a good combination.
Thanks! Any good ideas for a good save or suck? Right now, I'm mostly feeling Bestow Curse.
Ill Omen is one of your most important spells. Wands of it are cheap and if you invest in UMD and Improved Familiar you can really improve your action economy. Likewise Evil Eye is a really important debuffing tool. Evil Eye for -4 to saving throws then Cackle to extend it and it doesn't matter if they make the save they are still getting the penalty as long as you cackle. Then have your Improved Familiar roll UMD to use a wand of Ill Omen. Net result is you can pretty reliably make one target -4 roll twice to the next caster for them to stick something nasty.
It's always worth having multiple spells to target different saves. Melee enemies will usually have good Fort saves but are likely to have weak Reflex, just as Casters are more likely to have good Will and poor Fort.
Blindness/Deafness can shut down casters by targeting Fort and preventing casting at range. Baleful Polymorph is another Fort save. Feeblemind makes a good anti-caster spell and targets Will. Hold Person/Monster again targets Will. The Slumber Hex is of course pretty snazzy too, but quite a few enemies are immune. Bestow Curse is nice, but the melee range is a bit risky. Unfortunately I can't think of any ways for a Witch to target Reflex to great effect with their normal spell list.
Enervation and Black Tentacles aren't save-or-sucks, but are so good they just deserve mention.
Well, the useful thing about Bestow Curse is that Gravewalkers get to use touch spells as full round actions to use as ranged touch spells via spell poppet. But the rest of those recommendations are great, thanks! I'll definitely pick a good number of those up.