Hi guys, this is my first post on these forums and I apologies if I have done anything incorrect.
Im curious as to what everyone is thinking of doing for PVP as a Witch Doctor. I know it may be far away, however when you start to spend hundreds of millions of gold on single items like I do, you can't help but think to save yourself the money to gear for PVP instead of PVE.
Here is a list of my believed to be most powerful WD spells!
-GARGANTUAN and ZOMBIE DOGS
Pets will be one of the WD greatest tools in pvp. They will mitigate tons of dmg from you and will give you time to deal some dps yourself. WD having rather low single target dps will need all the time they can get to be attacking all the time. The bruizer rune will be amazing.
- Corpse Spiders (especially slow rune)
With a targetting AI and extremely high single target dps, Corpse spiders will easily be one of the WD's greatest spells for PVP
- Spirit Barage
Another big single target DPS spell with a target tracking function, you should never miss with this one.
- Splinters (snake to the face)
This spell with a 30% chance to stun (or was it 15%) will be very useful in pvp particularly against a barb or perhaps a monk if you're out of his teleporting punch distance.
- Grasp of the dead
A great slow spell to give you time to do some dmg or run away. Reminds me of that assasin spell from d2 I cant remember what its called though. I think this will be very VERY useful
- Sacrifice zombie dogs
This spell has great dps and if you stack zombie dog cooldowns on items, i'm sure you will have some interesting build in your hands (however homonculous' dps makes me want to steer clear from sacrfice builds - -). The Dogs are also very fast and will send a ranged person in a panic.
- HeX and HORRIFY
This spell is going to be absoulty insane for WD vs Melee. I was stressing about how are going to beat a monk with teleport punch but hex would easily deal with this (as would grasp of the dead). Did a 2-hand 200kdps barb just leap on you? Np hex. Horrify works the same I suppose lol.
- Haunt, Locust swarm
Good ol DoTs these will come in handy, particularly haunt. Im actually quite sure that a WD could kite a player for the whole fight with enough CC to keep him safe and keep casting haunt.
- Fetish army
Perhaps the cooldown is a little too long but if you can kill the guy in 15 seconds, summoning fettishes would be the best support you could use. Theyre EXTREMELY fast and their DPS is not great but they can TANK quite a lot of dps so they will be very useful. For 15 seconds.
Anyway I think thats about the most effective PVP spells.
So tell me, what will YOU do for PVP and what the hell should I do!? If I gotta spend 100 mil on a mojo it better last me a good few months! Have you prepared any builds? What have you theory crafted?
I believe a well-geared Sac build should shine when PvP first hits, and then as time passes more builds should be gaining traction.
Based on the fact that we don't diddly squat about how PvP will play out, except that you should expect to die a lot due to the format, I honestly don't know how I'll play it.
Off the top of my head, I'm probably dropping Grave Injustice for Zombie Handler or Pierce the Veil, Leeching Beasts for the one that drops globes, Ghost Bomb for some form of Spiders and try to work in Fetish Army somewhere for insane burst/tanking.
I don't think grasp is going to work for pvp at all. Amost every class has spammable gap closers. If you are actually "running" anywhere you are probably losing.
Also I'm not sure why you think pets will be tanking damage for you. Do you mean stepping in front of spells occasionally? Even with their force armor they're gonna die extremely quick. We're used to fighting monsters that wander around and attack once every few seconds. When we're dealing with players hurling attacks close to 2 a second, they're not going to stay alive long.
The other classes all have skills on their bar right now that seem downright broken for pvp.
a quick example - monk overawe (~50% damage increase) into 7 sided strike (1777% damage) = 2665% damage while the monk is untargettable.
The "unfair" things I think WD have at this point are Hex / Horrify combo, and zero CD Sacrifice with the health return rune. They also both seem in danger of a nerf which is what worries me.
One thing that is pretty well agreed upon is that it's not fun losing a pvp game when you have no control over your character the entire time you are dying. I'm just not sure how blizzard is going to balance crowd control for pvp, but as the crowd control class the choice is going to make or break it.
Really depends on how the metagame turns out. Notably, if AoE is weak, I'll be using Fetish Army all day long. Definitely also gearing for multiple forms of CC, including the Bruiser Gargantuan. Basically...
L) Poison Dart (probably Snake to the Face, maybe Splinters)
R) Haunt (Resentful Spirit). Maybe Acid Rain (Corpse Bomb or Lob Blob Bomb) in team PvP situations
1) Spirit Walk (Healing Journey)
2) Hex (Jinx)
3) Zombie Dogs (Plagued, maybe Leeching)
4) Gargantuan (Bruiser), swap to Fetish Army (Legion of Daggers) depending on Meta
P1) Fierce Loyalty (Might drop for Jungle Fortitude)
P2) Blood Ritual
P3) Spiritual Vessel
I do fully expect both team-based PvP and also much lower damage numbers against players. Our damage numbers for the most part are not mitigated against monsters, so when you try to hit someone with 5k armor and 600 resist-all it will start looking puny. I have a feeling these resists are going to also apply to Thorns damage as well (not to mention it's only useful against two of five classes, not a good option unless you know what you will be facing).
Against players, dedicated pet builds just won't work. This includes Sacrifice, to be frank, players will be able to do things like kite and avoid a blast radius. The only thing the four pets are there for is to distract and soak hits while I wail on the attacker, and make no mistake they will be able to take some damage once I finish gearing (and I will be running a shield with high resists, the goal is 10 hits on the dogs before regen). While players will probably (rightfully) ignore them at first, that is a LOT of damage incoming if you try to focus solely on a very evasive player target.
Assuming Vessel isn't nerfed, then PvP becomes a question of surviving for 90 seconds at a time. If I can pull it off, the passive makes me immortal. Just remember that Monks have Near Death Experience as well.
I hope that they reduce the damage by quite a bit. As of now, if you have 70% armor reduction and 70% resist all, if you get hit for 100k, it's still 49k which is more hp than most people have.
It's hard to formulate any kind of strategy without knowing the exact rules.
Against players, dedicated pet builds just won't work. This includes Sacrifice
With zero CD sacrifice you can be gaining 24K life per cast. It's less about them avoiding your blasts and more about massive on demand healing. Depending on how much damage is decreased for pvp, you can't deny this has potential.
I hope that they reduce the damage by quite a bit. As of now, if you have 70% armor reduction and 70% resist all, if you get hit for 100k, it's still 49k which is more hp than most people have.
It's hard to formulate any kind of strategy without knowing the exact rules.
You shouldn't skip school. 100*0.3*0.3=9, not 49.
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Hi guys, this is my first post on these forums and I apologies if I have done anything incorrect.
Im curious as to what everyone is thinking of doing for PVP as a Witch Doctor. I know it may be far away, however when you start to spend hundreds of millions of gold on single items like I do, you can't help but think to save yourself the money to gear for PVP instead of PVE.
Here is a list of my believed to be most powerful WD spells!
-GARGANTUAN and ZOMBIE DOGS
Pets will be one of the WD greatest tools in pvp. They will mitigate tons of dmg from you and will give you time to deal some dps yourself. WD having rather low single target dps will need all the time they can get to be attacking all the time. The bruizer rune will be amazing.
- Corpse Spiders (especially slow rune)
With a targetting AI and extremely high single target dps, Corpse spiders will easily be one of the WD's greatest spells for PVP
- Spirit Barage
Another big single target DPS spell with a target tracking function, you should never miss with this one.
- Splinters (snake to the face)
This spell with a 30% chance to stun (or was it 15%) will be very useful in pvp particularly against a barb or perhaps a monk if you're out of his teleporting punch distance.
- Grasp of the dead
A great slow spell to give you time to do some dmg or run away. Reminds me of that assasin spell from d2 I cant remember what its called though. I think this will be very VERY useful
- Sacrifice zombie dogs
This spell has great dps and if you stack zombie dog cooldowns on items, i'm sure you will have some interesting build in your hands (however homonculous' dps makes me want to steer clear from sacrfice builds - -). The Dogs are also very fast and will send a ranged person in a panic.
- HeX and HORRIFY
This spell is going to be absoulty insane for WD vs Melee. I was stressing about how are going to beat a monk with teleport punch but hex would easily deal with this (as would grasp of the dead). Did a 2-hand 200kdps barb just leap on you? Np hex. Horrify works the same I suppose lol.
- Haunt, Locust swarm
Good ol DoTs these will come in handy, particularly haunt. Im actually quite sure that a WD could kite a player for the whole fight with enough CC to keep him safe and keep casting haunt.
- Fetish army
Perhaps the cooldown is a little too long but if you can kill the guy in 15 seconds, summoning fettishes would be the best support you could use. Theyre EXTREMELY fast and their DPS is not great but they can TANK quite a lot of dps so they will be very useful. For 15 seconds.
Anyway I think thats about the most effective PVP spells.
So tell me, what will YOU do for PVP and what the hell should I do!? If I gotta spend 100 mil on a mojo it better last me a good few months! Have you prepared any builds? What have you theory crafted?
Which Final Fantasy Character Are You?
Final Fantasy 7
Based on the fact that we don't diddly squat about how PvP will play out, except that you should expect to die a lot due to the format, I honestly don't know how I'll play it.
Off the top of my head, I'm probably dropping Grave Injustice for Zombie Handler or Pierce the Veil, Leeching Beasts for the one that drops globes, Ghost Bomb for some form of Spiders and try to work in Fetish Army somewhere for insane burst/tanking.
Also I'm not sure why you think pets will be tanking damage for you. Do you mean stepping in front of spells occasionally? Even with their force armor they're gonna die extremely quick. We're used to fighting monsters that wander around and attack once every few seconds. When we're dealing with players hurling attacks close to 2 a second, they're not going to stay alive long.
The other classes all have skills on their bar right now that seem downright broken for pvp.
a quick example - monk overawe (~50% damage increase) into 7 sided strike (1777% damage) = 2665% damage while the monk is untargettable.
The "unfair" things I think WD have at this point are Hex / Horrify combo, and zero CD Sacrifice with the health return rune. They also both seem in danger of a nerf which is what worries me.
One thing that is pretty well agreed upon is that it's not fun losing a pvp game when you have no control over your character the entire time you are dying. I'm just not sure how blizzard is going to balance crowd control for pvp, but as the crowd control class the choice is going to make or break it.
L) Poison Dart (probably Snake to the Face, maybe Splinters)
R) Haunt (Resentful Spirit). Maybe Acid Rain (Corpse Bomb or Lob Blob Bomb) in team PvP situations
1) Spirit Walk (Healing Journey)
2) Hex (Jinx)
3) Zombie Dogs (Plagued, maybe Leeching)
4) Gargantuan (Bruiser), swap to Fetish Army (Legion of Daggers) depending on Meta
P1) Fierce Loyalty (Might drop for Jungle Fortitude)
P2) Blood Ritual
P3) Spiritual Vessel
I do fully expect both team-based PvP and also much lower damage numbers against players. Our damage numbers for the most part are not mitigated against monsters, so when you try to hit someone with 5k armor and 600 resist-all it will start looking puny. I have a feeling these resists are going to also apply to Thorns damage as well (not to mention it's only useful against two of five classes, not a good option unless you know what you will be facing).
Against players, dedicated pet builds just won't work. This includes Sacrifice, to be frank, players will be able to do things like kite and avoid a blast radius. The only thing the four pets are there for is to distract and soak hits while I wail on the attacker, and make no mistake they will be able to take some damage once I finish gearing (and I will be running a shield with high resists, the goal is 10 hits on the dogs before regen). While players will probably (rightfully) ignore them at first, that is a LOT of damage incoming if you try to focus solely on a very evasive player target.
Assuming Vessel isn't nerfed, then PvP becomes a question of surviving for 90 seconds at a time. If I can pull it off, the passive makes me immortal. Just remember that Monks have Near Death Experience as well.
It's hard to formulate any kind of strategy without knowing the exact rules.
With zero CD sacrifice you can be gaining 24K life per cast. It's less about them avoiding your blasts and more about massive on demand healing. Depending on how much damage is decreased for pvp, you can't deny this has potential.