*sigh* I keep on running into the enrage timer on Zultan Kulle, usually at about 25% to go. Didn't think I'd ever have to do this, but can anyone suggest an upgrade and/or skill swap to help?
I'd originally looked to replacing the Ceremonial Knife, but mana seems to be a recurring issue for times where I can actually stop moving away from threats and burn him. Since that blade has both a good amount of max mana and also decent regen, it seems ill-advised. Currently running with the Templar, the health regen has been a real lifesaver.
Bracers and amulet look like possibly your weakest pieces, or at least the ones you could maybe replace the easiest. Also Helm could be good as you can get crit and >100 int for not too much I'd guess.
As the red balloon pointed out, Dire bats might not be a great choice for a fight where the guy is running and teleporting around. The issue is missing ,even a few times, is really going to cut down on your damage for the fight. I used to run Dire Bats all the time, and no matter how used to the spell you get, I feel you still miss on about 20% of your bats. Hex and Horrify are really sweet for locking ZK down, so I like that about your spec. I usually start the fight by running far away from him, casting hex, and he usually teleports right to me and is turned into a pig.
Maybe switch to Blazing Spiders as a spell you'll never really miss with, and some kind of AOE nuke to mana dump and deal with his big robots. Acid Rain or Explosive Beast?
+mana and +mana regen are nice if you're rocking lots of damage, resists and health, but until then I'd suggest forgetting about the fancy stuff and focusing on the basics - higher dps, health and defensive stats.
As for your build, there's a hundred ways to git 'er done, but since you seem to be focusing on summons with your passives, I'd recommend switching that up a little. First off, with your passives devoted to pets, why not use every pet? I'd be using the garg in addition to dogs. Blood Ritual works well if your health is very high but at ~20k I'd drop it for jungle fortitude. Spirit vessel is nice if you die a lot but the goal would be to avoid that, so I'd drop it for zombie handler.
But in truth act 2 might be a bit much for your gear. While I'm sure you *can* do it, butting your head up against a wall is always frustrating. What kind of dough do you have to spend?
Ended up swapping Hex to Garg and 1-shot him. Belial kicked my tail a couple of times, so I'm going to go farming until Lefey gears up.
Anyway, for the future, I have about 1.2 million banked. I've basically had zero luck with good sellable drops, and what mediocre ones I get tend to go to my alts (or sell for five to ten thousand). In fact, looking at my profile, the only pieces there that actually dropped for me were the chest, amulet, and necklace.
Your damage as a stat on paper doll is pretty solid, I don't think you really need to upgrade any gear so much as your build. Overall I'd really work on getting more HP/resist/crit. You can easily get 30% crit 35k-45k and 600 resist for under 1 million gold. But that's just an overall recommendation, you should be able to beat ZK but I find your build lacking the ability to capitalize on your damage.
Essentially you only have 3 damage dealing abilities.
1. Rain of Corpses. I feel like this isn't that great of a choice as a rune (and blizzard forgot to buff it) for a level 53. 80% over 8 seconds is just low. If you consider the 320+80 that's 400, groping eels is 416% over 8 seconds. If you're going to use this as a main damage dealing ability it needs to be up *as soon as it's off cooldown* Otherwise you're missing out on dps.
2. Leeching Beasts. I think the jury is still out on Dogs post 1.04. I personally feel Blizzard wanted to see us using dogs with sacrifice/circle of life+next of kin. I see that your hp is extremely low, so I understand that you want some regen, but the damage of dogs just seem so low. Dogs make a nice addition in damage to an already well rounded damage build, but not as a main damage dealer.
3. Dire bats. DB makes perfect sense, nothing that needs to be done there, especially with your mana pool/blood ritual.
4. Hex builds are good for elites, but vs bosses they obviously aren't as effective. ZK can be hexed but his constructs can't if I recall. Even getting the 10% damage increase from him being hexed, you're getting a 10% gain on what's already pretty low damage output. I forget the duration of hex, but it certainly doesn't last 8 seconds, so it's not as though you're getting that 10% gain on grasp damage like you are on direbats.
5. Horror also makes sense since you'll want armor being that you could use all the armor you can get. Not having a shield or a lot of hp makes you incredibly squishy.
All in all I feel that you have a glass cannon setup, but are more like a glass watergun.
I was debating swapping out my Grasp, but I really wonder what to swap TO. I need to find something that fits a different niche than DB, so maybe Poison Dart (debating between Splinters or Spined) or perhaps Pile On.
The Leeching Beasts rune is going to swap out to Burning Beasts or Plague Hounds as soon as my health pool breaks 30k (or, more specifically, once they have 500 regen and can take 5 hits). The regen is not for me, it's for the dogs themselves to be able to stand up to punishment.
Hex is going to swap at the same time my Hounds do. First will be to Jinx, and if I'm still holding up cleanly then I'll try either Garg (Bruiser) or BBV (Rain or Slam, not sure which).
Blood Ritual stays for now, that 15% cost cut is saving me TONS of mana and the regen is nice to have even on its own. I still die too much to be able to let go of Spirit Vessel (and let's be honest, I use two of the skills it reduces the cooldown of anyway), but perhaps a little time without Loyalty might be a nice experiment. What to replace it with is the million-gold question, though, since the only decent options either require me to regear (Gruesome Feast, Circle of Life, Grave Injustice), are defensive in nature (Zombie Handler, Jungle Fortitude), or will only pop up as useful situationally (Spiritual Attunement would only be really useful during boss fights, since I don't get to stand-and-shoot all THAT often)
Honestly, I think you need to have a Primary to spam while you are low on mana. I suggest the mana spiders, personally.
Also, Spiritual Attunement wouldn't be terrible for you since your max mana is already so high. It would about 12 extra mana per second. If you have to move for more than 2 seconds Spiritual Attunement will give you more mana back than Blood Ritual will save if you're using Direbats.
It seems to me that right now you're running a feast of famine style of mana management, which is unnecessary given the new mana changes. Just use a Primary and replace that blue ring.
I was debating swapping out my Grasp, but I really wonder what to swap TO. I need to find something that fits a different niche than DB, so maybe Poison Dart (debating between Splinters or Spined) or perhaps Pile On.
The Leeching Beasts rune is going to swap out to Burning Beasts or Plague Hounds as soon as my health pool breaks 30k (or, more specifically, once they have 500 regen and can take 5 hits). The regen is not for me, it's for the dogs themselves to be able to stand up to punishment.
Hex is going to swap at the same time my Hounds do. First will be to Jinx, and if I'm still holding up cleanly then I'll try either Garg (Bruiser) or BBV (Rain or Slam, not sure which).
Blood Ritual stays for now, that 15% cost cut is saving me TONS of mana and the regen is nice to have even on its own. I still die too much to be able to let go of Spirit Vessel (and let's be honest, I use two of the skills it reduces the cooldown of anyway), but perhaps a little time without Loyalty might be a nice experiment. What to replace it with is the million-gold question, though, since the only decent options either require me to regear (Gruesome Feast, Circle of Life, Grave Injustice), are defensive in nature (Zombie Handler, Jungle Fortitude), or will only pop up as useful situationally (Spiritual Attunement would only be really useful during boss fights, since I don't get to stand-and-shoot all THAT often)
Well don't get me wrong, grasp is pretty good now as it got a nice buff. Honestly I'm not sure how the damage is calculated on RoC if it's like "bears of the sky" if it counts each corpse as 80% then it's probably not that bad, though it needs to drop at least 6 corpses to be better than Eels right now. Additionally the thing about grasp is that you need to keep it constantly in use, with the nice buff it got, you dont' want to be letting it sit on your bar idle, or for when you need it. It is possible to place preemptive grasps.
Blood ritual is a great ability as an addition through subtraction. I'm not sold on fierce loyalty JUST yet. While regen is great, but the thorns bonus is just stupid. The gear for thorns that drops is laughable and the only way to make it effective is to get max rolls on thorns which would leave you with a lot of terrible stats elsewhere. You're exactly right about spirit vessel your HP is simply too low to go without it.
Basically my entire point is, if you're going to have that low of HP with that kind of mana, you're best going all-or-nothing on damage. You're just not capitalizing on the damage you can do, you want to find a way that you can supplement that DB damage with some nice secondary damage. Remember it all adds up, and even if locusts or acid rain ticks for 3k, it all adds up.
Main advantage of Rain of Corpses is that each of the corpses has a high chance to proc and also they ignore things like Waller and LOS, plus they hit a small area as opposed to a single target when they land. Not exactly sure what each corpse lands for, though.
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http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/PsyBomb-1235/hero/5749566
I'd originally looked to replacing the Ceremonial Knife, but mana seems to be a recurring issue for times where I can actually stop moving away from threats and burn him. Since that blade has both a good amount of max mana and also decent regen, it seems ill-advised. Currently running with the Templar, the health regen has been a real lifesaver.
130% weapon damage every 2 seconds (cleave)
OR 100% every 2 seconds and 200% + stun every so often
Also Jaunt as a Spirit walk rune is kinda nice... +50% invuln duration.
I'll try the Gargantuan, but I definitely need the Mana from Honored Guest too much at the moment to be able to drop it.
As the red balloon pointed out, Dire bats might not be a great choice for a fight where the guy is running and teleporting around. The issue is missing ,even a few times, is really going to cut down on your damage for the fight. I used to run Dire Bats all the time, and no matter how used to the spell you get, I feel you still miss on about 20% of your bats. Hex and Horrify are really sweet for locking ZK down, so I like that about your spec. I usually start the fight by running far away from him, casting hex, and he usually teleports right to me and is turned into a pig.
Maybe switch to Blazing Spiders as a spell you'll never really miss with, and some kind of AOE nuke to mana dump and deal with his big robots. Acid Rain or Explosive Beast?
As for your build, there's a hundred ways to git 'er done, but since you seem to be focusing on summons with your passives, I'd recommend switching that up a little. First off, with your passives devoted to pets, why not use every pet? I'd be using the garg in addition to dogs. Blood Ritual works well if your health is very high but at ~20k I'd drop it for jungle fortitude. Spirit vessel is nice if you die a lot but the goal would be to avoid that, so I'd drop it for zombie handler.
For any boss fight you're having trouble with, having haunt and locust swarm plus a spammable mana eater loaded will work well since it gives you good damage output. Something like this maybe - http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#acYTeh!adg!aacaac
But in truth act 2 might be a bit much for your gear. While I'm sure you *can* do it, butting your head up against a wall is always frustrating. What kind of dough do you have to spend?
Anyway, for the future, I have about 1.2 million banked. I've basically had zero luck with good sellable drops, and what mediocre ones I get tend to go to my alts (or sell for five to ten thousand). In fact, looking at my profile, the only pieces there that actually dropped for me were the chest, amulet, and necklace.
no mana = signature shitty spells
bears and cloud = damage. other spells = no damage.
I'm using this buil (solo fast hunt act I for legendaries)
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#fRUdTX!YcT!caZcYZ
And this for act 3:
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#fRUdTQ!YeT!caZcYb
First of all you need to buy this babe (20 yards spheres + talent)to have infinite mana:
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/item/thing-of-the-deep
this is the WD quintessence in 1.0.4.
My poor WD.
Essentially you only have 3 damage dealing abilities.
1. Rain of Corpses. I feel like this isn't that great of a choice as a rune (and blizzard forgot to buff it) for a level 53. 80% over 8 seconds is just low. If you consider the 320+80 that's 400, groping eels is 416% over 8 seconds. If you're going to use this as a main damage dealing ability it needs to be up *as soon as it's off cooldown* Otherwise you're missing out on dps.
2. Leeching Beasts. I think the jury is still out on Dogs post 1.04. I personally feel Blizzard wanted to see us using dogs with sacrifice/circle of life+next of kin. I see that your hp is extremely low, so I understand that you want some regen, but the damage of dogs just seem so low. Dogs make a nice addition in damage to an already well rounded damage build, but not as a main damage dealer.
3. Dire bats. DB makes perfect sense, nothing that needs to be done there, especially with your mana pool/blood ritual.
4. Hex builds are good for elites, but vs bosses they obviously aren't as effective. ZK can be hexed but his constructs can't if I recall. Even getting the 10% damage increase from him being hexed, you're getting a 10% gain on what's already pretty low damage output. I forget the duration of hex, but it certainly doesn't last 8 seconds, so it's not as though you're getting that 10% gain on grasp damage like you are on direbats.
5. Horror also makes sense since you'll want armor being that you could use all the armor you can get. Not having a shield or a lot of hp makes you incredibly squishy.
All in all I feel that you have a glass cannon setup, but are more like a glass watergun.
The Leeching Beasts rune is going to swap out to Burning Beasts or Plague Hounds as soon as my health pool breaks 30k (or, more specifically, once they have 500 regen and can take 5 hits). The regen is not for me, it's for the dogs themselves to be able to stand up to punishment.
Hex is going to swap at the same time my Hounds do. First will be to Jinx, and if I'm still holding up cleanly then I'll try either Garg (Bruiser) or BBV (Rain or Slam, not sure which).
Blood Ritual stays for now, that 15% cost cut is saving me TONS of mana and the regen is nice to have even on its own. I still die too much to be able to let go of Spirit Vessel (and let's be honest, I use two of the skills it reduces the cooldown of anyway), but perhaps a little time without Loyalty might be a nice experiment. What to replace it with is the million-gold question, though, since the only decent options either require me to regear (Gruesome Feast, Circle of Life, Grave Injustice), are defensive in nature (Zombie Handler, Jungle Fortitude), or will only pop up as useful situationally (Spiritual Attunement would only be really useful during boss fights, since I don't get to stand-and-shoot all THAT often)
Also, Spiritual Attunement wouldn't be terrible for you since your max mana is already so high. It would about 12 extra mana per second. If you have to move for more than 2 seconds Spiritual Attunement will give you more mana back than Blood Ritual will save if you're using Direbats.
It seems to me that right now you're running a feast of famine style of mana management, which is unnecessary given the new mana changes. Just use a Primary and replace that blue ring.
Well don't get me wrong, grasp is pretty good now as it got a nice buff. Honestly I'm not sure how the damage is calculated on RoC if it's like "bears of the sky" if it counts each corpse as 80% then it's probably not that bad, though it needs to drop at least 6 corpses to be better than Eels right now. Additionally the thing about grasp is that you need to keep it constantly in use, with the nice buff it got, you dont' want to be letting it sit on your bar idle, or for when you need it. It is possible to place preemptive grasps.
Blood ritual is a great ability as an addition through subtraction. I'm not sold on fierce loyalty JUST yet. While regen is great, but the thorns bonus is just stupid. The gear for thorns that drops is laughable and the only way to make it effective is to get max rolls on thorns which would leave you with a lot of terrible stats elsewhere. You're exactly right about spirit vessel your HP is simply too low to go without it.
Basically my entire point is, if you're going to have that low of HP with that kind of mana, you're best going all-or-nothing on damage. You're just not capitalizing on the damage you can do, you want to find a way that you can supplement that DB damage with some nice secondary damage. Remember it all adds up, and even if locusts or acid rain ticks for 3k, it all adds up.