Curious, why would you want to have pets out at all? Their damage is negligible. Their tanking is ineffective and they don't even distract opponents very well.
Put 2 CC's or 2 "spike your damage" abilities on your bar instead of 2 pets and you'll be far happier.
WD pets were cute early game; but you are far more effective without them. Sure, you -can- do Act 2 with ZDs/Garg; but why would you? When BBV/FA is 1000x more effective.
And; more pets out there make it harder to see things that are all over the ground. They actually make life harder than it need be. Use em in Act 2 and see if you don't agree.
i would like to add, how bout they tweak the garg and add runes that will make it a tanky garg or a dps garg. lets say, tanky garg will scale from your int (cuz youre a glass canon so youll want it to tank for you). while dps garg that throws fireballs will scale from vit (since youre a tank doctor) and just make the pets receive 30% less dmg like monks and barbs, while getting your res and armor. and give it a buff (perhaps from a passive)
i really hope they fix the wd, its an awesome class and i really have fun playing it. its just that we have certain skills that you need to have. i wanna play around with my skills and still have fun ( without dying too much). as for the mana, i hope they can fix the problems its giving, either making it regen faster, or making our primaries free. its really dumb to have an attack use mana (since its so limited) and have a long cooldown, why not balance it out?
I think a combination of things here would be good to look at.
1) ZD and Garg runes can be changed up a bit. Make it so that each has a Tough, Strong, AoE, Elite, and Burst rune available, so if you want them to be tanks just make them both Tough (like, say Leeching Beasts). The spells have some small amound of scaling base, but ensure that each of these runes affects scaling factors differently according to intent. For example, the Leeching Beasts would probably scale well with Vitality and Armor but have little Int scaling.
2) Include both in Tribal Rites, plus a small baseline reduction in the cooldowns. I'm thinking of roughly 40-45 second base cooldown, so you have a 30-32 second with Rites.
3) Make all of our Primaries spammable. Darts is actually on the expensive side of what I'm thinking, because at the moment no other class runs out of resources on a Primary, ever. Heck, for everyone else, they actually BUILD resources by default. If you don't have Pierce, you shouldn't even notice the expenditure. While at it, most of the runes need some serious buff time to ever be considered (toyed around with Snake Dart for a while in a pet build, wasn't worth it)
4) Improve and consolidate our pet passives! Assuming #1 is implemented, perhaps Fierce Loyalty changes to read "doubles the stat scaling of your pets"
I think this would solve most of the issues we have. I don't have animation issues at 1.6 AS, so I'm willing to bet it's just the emphasis on big and slow that's doing it.
The problem with pets not scaling with gear is simple: You gain max level while you are in hell.
If pets don't scale with gear, then they would be overpowered in hell (if you want them to be viable against inferno diablo). This is why pets need to scale with gear.
That's only a problem if they only scale with your level. If it's a combination of your level and the monsters level, it's not a problem. Basically, you set up pet to last a certain amount of time/deal a certain amount of damage, and then improve there stats to the area the WD is in (or, more likely, the highest cleared area, so that way pets don't get worse if you go back an act or something). If you want to make your pets better, you choose more skills or take passives. This gives people a pet build, and keeps pets as a decently viable CC option for those who just want that. I'm not saying it would be tricky to balance, I'm saying that it makes more sense then balancing it off vit/defensive stats, because then they become redundant (only good when you're already a tank) or OP'd (if they decent for glass cannon builds, their unstoppable for tank builds), depending on how they scale.
Firebomb - base damage increased to 100% (which is still the lowest damage of the WD's primaries). Additionally, all "repeat" runes such as Roll the Bones and Flash Fire can hit the same enemies repeatedly.
Locust Swarm - Base range tripled. The speed of the cloud reduced by 50% every original length (not sure what it was).
Fire Bats - Range doubled. Fire bats spreads out so that it does less damage the farther away the enemy is. Dire bats range not changed.
Hehe, you might wanna rethink that bouncing on the same target for Flash Fire. You are saying that you want it do do 100% + 85% + 70% + 65% + 50% + 35% = 405% dmg / cast ^^?
I have 0 problems hitting with Locust Swarm.
I wouldn't mind having the non-Dire bat runes reach a little further. That's the main reason everyone runs ONLY Dire bat runes in a VQ spec.
Okay, so my love of Firebomb got the better of me. But I think that either needs the 100% base, or to hit more than once (maybe not all six, but at least twice)
Also, I think it's a multiplicative reduction. Otherwise it'd be doing negative damage on the last hit (as it stands now, starting at 85%)
And the point with increasing range on LS and FB isn't because we have trouble hitting with it, but because we get hit when we do hit with it. Also, they have to compete with longer ranged skills (such as dire bats) that do just as much damage, and in the case of LS, they do it much faster.
I'll rephrase. I have no trouble hitting with LS without putting myself in any real danger (and yes, I play HC). There are some tricks to it, for example, it does have a small window of travel time which you can use to your advantage. Cast it 1 sec before the mobs chasing you are actually reaching the LS cloud and stuff like that. I also shoots through Waller walls.
I'll rephrase. I think that the low range on LS is not suitably compensanted for. Yes, it CAN do a lot of damage when you're facing a lot of monsters. BUT, because it takes so long, you'll still probably do more damage with a more traditional AoE. So unless you're just going to kite while LS slowly ticks, it's not so great (IMO). It is a fun skill though. I'm just trying to make it more worthwhile without completely changing the skill, or making it much more complicated (such as making the first attack be able to stack, but the spread won't).
I'm assuming Carrion Swarm = Locust Swarm for the rest of us.
"Haunt is great skill" - Yes it is. It's fun and such. But it's far inferior to LS. That was my point. And as you said yourself, there is no real tactical advantage to having both (due to mana issues).
"it deals more damage per mana then any spender skill WD have" - So very far from the truth. If we stay away from theoretical scenarios where a new mob shows up just as the previous one died, thus giving infinite dmg. 1 LS will hit between 5-50 mobs (yes 50, my mighty blow record with LS is 87, Barracks act 3 NM) all depending on which area you are in and which mobs you are killing. And I usually don't cast it when there is less then 5 mobs around (cept for packs), as it's quite costly. Haunt will usually hit MAX 2 mobs for full effect I find (act 1 inferno) before it either fails to jump to another mob (is it just me or does it jump worse the LS?) or the mobs are dead.
"Haunt is cheap" - Half the price of a LS which deals between 2-20 times the dmg I wouldn't call that cheap.
"and its duration is big" - A bit to big imo ('cept with the rune), giving to little dmg/sec compared to it's mana cost.
"Also, Haunt is free if you use the mana return rune" - That's what I was hoping this rune would do. So I could replace my primary attack with Haunt and just use this, but that doesn't really work. As usually mobs tend to die too fast to give the mana cost back. The second issue is, that in the time I run around w8ing for my Haunt to tick, I could have just kited and thrown some Jar or Dart for the same dmg, without risking my mana in the process.
Haunt needs tweaking. I'm not saying it's a crappy skill. I'm saying that LS > Haunt, and there is no real room in your 6 skill slots to have both. That's my main gripe about Haunt. I want to use it... but the theorycrafter in me won't allow it ^^
It's not far inferior to LS. Also Haunt is not secondary skill. You can easily fit something like Splitters, LS and Haunt or Splitters, Direbats and Haunt. But you can't fit Splitters, Direbats and Locust Swarm. Because LS cannibalizes the mana of other secondary skills !
Forget about thrash mobs. Your secondary skills (Zombie Bears, Dire Dats, Acid Cloud) can easily alone take care of those. Haunt is not meant to be used against thrash mobs, it's strict anti-pack and boss dps booster. Haunt damage / cost ratio is 5.8 while LS damage/cost ratio is 1.8, the very ratio of Dire Bats ! It means if you try to cast LC and use Direbats you have absolutly no DPS increment in the long run (think about 1+ minutes fights were your mana allways is drained up) because the mana used to cast LC could be used to cast Direbat and the damage would be execly the same.
But if you use Haunt you have a effect DPS increment because of the high damage / cost ratio. Mathematicaly Haunt adds value to your mana bar while LC don't. by giving alot of damage and asking little mana.
For the WD, the DPS of skill doesn't matter much. Damage / Cost ratios are far more important.
"Also, Haunt is free if you use the mana return rune" - That's what I was hoping this rune would do. So I could replace my primary attack with Haunt and just use this, but that doesn't really work. As usually mobs tend to die too fast to give the mana cost back. The second issue is, that in the time I run around w8ing for my Haunt to tick, I could have just kited and thrown some Jar or Dart for the same dmg, without risking my mana in the process.
Ok by this setence i see you don't understand how Haunt works. Haunt is not meant to be used in your first buttom as free spell, and it's not meant to be used in your second bottom as your primary damage spell. Haunt is a marginal DPS booster like Hydra, Companion, Sentry and damage buffs such as Magic Weapon. LC doesn't belong to this cathegory because it's damage/cost ratio is the same of an common attack skill, meaning it will only cannibilize resourses.
Try this: Kill Belial (inferno) using LS + mana spender skill you like. Then try killing Belial using Haunt + mana spender skill you like. You will see the boss will die 20%~40% times faster with Haunt.
I'm using http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#aZTdSU!ZYV!aaZZaa right now and I love the spec. I do feel forced into Gruesome Feast to help manage mana cost of the spec, but it gives DPS at same time so I am happy with it overall. (Thank god I don't have to use VQ cause I hate that passive).
I don't mind the range on Locust Swarm most of the time because Pestilence makes it spread like wild fire so I just put it on the closest mob and run back to shoot darts. I don't require the Gargantuan as Hex is a very nice spell imo, but I like seeing the big dude enrage so I would like to see his survivability be buffed some.
I've tried some other specs before and I dislike:
Zombie bears (range of spell + VQ dependant)
VQ (pigeon holed into CD's, limiting other spell choices)
zombie dogs (die too easy)
Spirit Barrage (Animation too slow + low damage vs darts yet higher cost)
I think they need to make darts by default fire 2 darts. This in a way slightly nerfs splinters by only granting a 1 dart upgrade, and buffs the rest of the line.
-I realize the % damage of the base spell would need to be lowered from 100% if this were put into effect.
Mana is a problem. My main is a wizard and when I was a new 60 I could spam shoot 6 Arcane Orb/Tap the Source orbs before my pool was exhausted and I needed to go to a signature skill with 0 cost. Now with the AP on crit I have and my crit chance of 46% I can spam orbs straight up and never stop as long as I have targets to hit. I do the same with Arcane Torrent/Disruption which as a 35 AP cost and my pool is only 112 AP.
Splinters with a 1.5 attack speed almost completely uses my mana regen. This is not like Wizards Sig skills but instead like Ray of Frost/Cold Blooded. Yet RoF has a much higher damage rating %215 and slows the target. It ticks quickly and so will have the same effect the splinters has of punching through something after it is dead and hitting the next guy in line.
Doubling WDs base mana regen may be the simplest solution, buffing items with mana regen by +50% (x1.5) may also be a good idea.
Mana is a problem. My main is a wizard and when I was a new 60 I could spam shoot 6 Arcane Orb/Tap the Source orbs before my pool was exhausted and I needed to go to a signature skill with 0 cost. Now with the AP on crit I have and my crit chance of 46% I can spam orbs straight up and never stop as long as I have targets to hit. I do the same with Arcane Torrent/Disruption which as a 35 AP cost and my pool is only 112 AP.
Splinters with a 1.5 attack speed almost completely uses my mana regen. This is not like Wizards Sig skills but instead like Ray of Frost/Cold Blooded. Yet RoF has a much higher damage rating %215 and slows the target. It ticks quickly and so will have the same effect the splinters has of punching through something after it is dead and hitting the next guy in line.
Doubling WDs base mana regen may be the simplest solution, buffing items with mana regen by +50% (x1.5) may also be a good idea.
Let's do a bit of math, shall we? Base regen at level 60 is 20/second, with 740 maximum mana. Bear-Spam is the most mana-intensive thing we can do, at 140 per cast, the other big one being Dire Bats at 122. Baseline, with a speed 1.4 weapon (typical build style), this means you get a total of 4 casts in a row (5 with Bats). VQ would bring this regen to 80/second, making 6 bears or 8 bats. I am going to simplify things a bit and only account for base mana and regen items, not going into cost-reduction abilities or Legendaries.
Typical equipment-based regen says +20 to perform, though. This happens to be equal to the first suggestion, doubling base regen, so it makes a good comparison. 40/second base, 740 max mana. Still 4 bears (though more spare mana after, giving a follow-up after another second), still 5 bats (again, quick follow-up). Under VQ now, though, things get interesting. 160/second now, so you can get 20 consecutive bears (if you can stand and shoot for 14.25 seconds). Bats become mana-positive while VQ is active.
If we only do the 50% increase to regen items, typical gear will give 50/second total regen with a 1.4-speed weapon (without VQ this means 5 bears or 6 bats consecutive), or 45 with a 1.0. (7 bears or 9 bats consecutive). Either way longevity is really no longer a problem as any significant amount of time spent not shooting (say, moving regularly to kite or casting a cheap/free spell every 5 seconds or so) means regen will catch up with itself. Anyone who activated VQ will go mana-positive even with Bears or top off in a matter of second while firing bats.
Doing both would be severe overkill, as it turns out. The advantage of doubling base is that it will help out the guys levelling up, the advantage to 50% item regen bonus is that it gets significantly smoother for 60s. I'm in favor of the latter, really, but either will work while still requiring some management.
EDIT: Almost forgot to account for Spiritual Attunement, bringing max mana to 864 and adding 8.6 regen per second base (scaling up as max mana increases with items). Long story short, it essentially adds 1-2 casts each in the first two categories, and makes the +50% regen category go significantly longer. Makes me lean toward that solution even more.
Derwiv33, Mana as a concept is not meant to be infinite. It's a lot closer to it in this game than in most. I am perfectly fine with someone who does not want to use any of the three potential pieces being limited in their offensive options. Even in that case, you still have SA/VQ/BR to support yourself.
Mana is a problem. My main is a wizard and when I was a new 60 I could spam shoot 6 Arcane Orb/Tap the Source orbs before my pool was exhausted and I needed to go to a signature skill with 0 cost. Now with the AP on crit I have and my crit chance of 46% I can spam orbs straight up and never stop as long as I have targets to hit. I do the same with Arcane Torrent/Disruption which as a 35 AP cost and my pool is only 112 AP.
Splinters with a 1.5 attack speed almost completely uses my mana regen. This is not like Wizards Sig skills but instead like Ray of Frost/Cold Blooded. Yet RoF has a much higher damage rating %215 and slows the target. It ticks quickly and so will have the same effect the splinters has of punching through something after it is dead and hitting the next guy in line.
Doubling WDs base mana regen may be the simplest solution, buffing items with mana regen by +50% (x1.5) may also be a good idea.
Let's do a bit of math, shall we? Base regen at level 60 is 20/second, with 740 maximum mana. Bear-Spam is the most mana-intensive thing we can do, at 140 per cast, the other big one being Dire Bats at 122. Baseline, with a speed 1.4 weapon (typical build style), this means you get a total of 4 casts in a row (5 with Bats). VQ would bring this regen to 80/second, making 6 bears or 8 bats. I am going to simplify things a bit and only account for base mana and regen items, not going into cost-reduction abilities or Legendaries.
Typical equipment-based regen says +20 to perform, though. This happens to be equal to the first suggestion, doubling base regen, so it makes a good comparison. 40/second base, 740 max mana. Still 4 bears (though more spare mana after, giving a follow-up after another second), still 5 bats (again, quick follow-up). Under VQ now, though, things get interesting. 160/second now, so you can get 20 consecutive bears (if you can stand and shoot for 14.25 seconds). Bats become mana-positive while VQ is active.
If we only do the 50% increase to regen items, typical gear will give 50/second total regen with a 1.4-speed weapon (without VQ this means 5 bears or 6 bats consecutive), or 45 with a 1.0. (7 bears or 9 bats consecutive). Either way longevity is really no longer a problem as any significant amount of time spent not shooting (say, moving regularly to kite or casting a cheap/free spell every 5 seconds or so) means regen will catch up with itself. Anyone who activated VQ will go mana-positive even with Bears or top off in a matter of second while firing bats.
Doing both would be severe overkill, as it turns out. The advantage of doubling base is that it will help out the guys levelling up, the advantage to 50% item regen bonus is that it gets significantly smoother for 60s. I'm in favor of the latter, really, but either will work while still requiring some management.
EDIT: Almost forgot to account for Spiritual Attunement, bringing max mana to 864 and adding 8.6 regen per second base (scaling up as max mana increases with items). Long story short, it essentially adds 1-2 casts each in the first two categories, and makes the +50% regen category go significantly longer. Makes me lean toward that solution even more.
You assume no PtV which is like skipping Glass Cannon on a wizard. PtV turns 122 into 158 for bats. With my AS of 1.5 that is 238 mana/second which means I need 59.5 mana/second regen to be mana neutral. It isn't possible.
Additionally I am stuck with iLevel 62 items because of my limit to mana regen. Yet your idea ties improvements only to gear which means only the richest WDs will see a solution since Blizzard will make it apply to new gear only.
Derwiv33, Mana as a concept is not meant to be infinite. It's a lot closer to it in this game than in most. I am perfectly fine with someone who does not want to use any of the three potential pieces being limited in their offensive options. Even in that case, you still have SA/VQ/BR to support yourself.
So a wizard with best gear can "break the game" with infinate Archon but a BiS WD is now only as efficient as a mid-geared Wizard?
Let me first premise by saying Witch Doctor was the first class I leveled, so it's near and dear to me! But alas, I've decided to explore other aspects of the game after hitting a wall with him. Now I haven't been back since 1.03 other than an hour or two here and there, I feel it's a bit of an uphill battle when playing him. Currently I have a Monk with a Wizard on the way.
But with 1.04 and developer blogs soon to come out, I'm hopeful that I'll have good reason to come back and visit the WD as I think it is probably the most interesting class to play. Here are some things that I'm looking forward to, and I'm looking to see what other people are hoping to see Blizzard acknowledge about this class overall.
Animations: While the witch doctor has some of the neater animations (raining toads anyone!??) they're all far too long, even with a ceremonial blade or fast 1h. In inferno I feel sometimes that while running from Fast affixes or just faster moving creatures, stopping to cast grasp/wall of zombies runs a risk of taking damage sort of defeats the purpose of casting the abilities in the first place.
Mana: At this point after playing a monk fully through inferno and a wizard into hell (I actually play and not farm Leorics manor for each difficulty). Resource management on those classes just feels so much more natural. Diablo 2 felt like resource spending game, Diablo 3 feels like resource generation game. This point has been argued so heavily that if Blizzard doesn't make some kind of change -- whether it be in skill mana adjustment or a buff elsewhere -- I'd say it's clear that they don't play WD nearly as much as Barbarian (which seems to be the most well thought-out.
Pets and summoning: For a class that has 3 passives dedicated to pets, 1 of which is unlocked at level 45, this is lacking. Where the witch doctor has so much potential in the pet department it certainly falls short. But this has been acknowledged by Blizzard during their AMA (I think, if it wasn't there it was a blue tracker). Especially considering that the promotional video for the WD in the days before release featured "foul beasts" at your disposal, it would only seem right for this to be buffed. As it is, having sacrifice and zombie dogs on your bar is close to pointless at most difficulties.
Overall build variety: The truth is that you can get through this game with pretty much any build no matter how crazy. I'm sure somewhere there's someone angling to prove that pets can work with a toad of hugeness/spider queen build and will be posting within the next few days a youtube of them soloing various champion packs. There's just simply a lack of variety and at the end of the day most people are just increasing the amount of splinters they've shot. WD may be the least played class, but he's got the best lungs -- you don't blow that many darts through 4 acts and 4 difficulties without having nice lung capacity.
These are actually pretty general things that I would imagine Blizzard will be looking at and I hope they do. The class is really fun with some really cool abilities they just seem all over the place. I would really like to start playing him again and seeing more people doing the same.
Because Barbarians were in the previous 2 games, they've had time to develop the class. Of course the other classes are very similar to other classes in the previous game, but are unique in their own way and I think they lost a bit of direction. Honestly the odd one out in the mix is the Witch Doctor, which is similar to the necro from d2.
Not sure how hard it would be to code but as an avid pet user I would really appreciate the option of tinkering with their AI, if only a little bit. Just by giving me the option of setting whether pets would act aggressively (more focus on targets I'm attacking) or defensively (standing closer to me, prioritizing whatever is attacking me etc) would by itself give me a lot more control as a summoner.
Pets should be movable by shift + middle mouse clicking or something imo.
Other than that I'd really like to see ToH be able to target elites ( unless they ninja buffed it while i wasn't looking ;P ). Using Toad + Hex to double cock block elites would be so awesome.
Pet scaling from vit/all res/dps would be nice and a total change to to resource management. Like mana on hit skills or something, kinda like DH gets or atleast lower costs and make VQ not to clunky with 4 on c/d skills.
Pet scaling from vit/all res/dps would be nice and a total change to to resource management. Like mana on hit skills or something, kinda like DH gets or atleast lower costs and make VQ not to clunky with 4 on c/d skills.
It's much easier with 5.
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Playing Diablo since 97. I know nothing and having nothing good to say, I be a troll.
What. Almost every single Fury spender has a form of use. Throw weapon, Seismic, Whirlwind, CDs always have a use, sprint is awesome as well - Fact is the only one on the top of my head that is "worthless" is the 270% dmg Rune on Hammer of Ancients. But then again it's discussable if it's all that worthless IF discussed outside of Inferno.
Actaully all the CD's are awesome, when talking fury spenders I am referring to ancients, rend, WW etc... Seismic is decent for the CC aspect, but overall I think many other skills are more useful for my right click button.
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Playing Diablo since 97. I know nothing and having nothing good to say, I be a troll.
Animations: While the witch doctor has some of the neater animations (raining toads anyone!??) they're all far too long, even with a ceremonial blade or fast 1h. In inferno I feel sometimes that while running from Fast affixes or just faster moving creatures, stopping to cast grasp/wall of zombies runs a risk of taking damage sort of defeats the purpose of casting the abilities in the first place.
attack speed = faster animation. Do your homework before you complain.
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Put 2 CC's or 2 "spike your damage" abilities on your bar instead of 2 pets and you'll be far happier.
WD pets were cute early game; but you are far more effective without them. Sure, you -can- do Act 2 with ZDs/Garg; but why would you? When BBV/FA is 1000x more effective.
And; more pets out there make it harder to see things that are all over the ground. They actually make life harder than it need be. Use em in Act 2 and see if you don't agree.
i would like to add, how bout they tweak the garg and add runes that will make it a tanky garg or a dps garg. lets say, tanky garg will scale from your int (cuz youre a glass canon so youll want it to tank for you). while dps garg that throws fireballs will scale from vit (since youre a tank doctor) and just make the pets receive 30% less dmg like monks and barbs, while getting your res and armor. and give it a buff (perhaps from a passive)
i really hope they fix the wd, its an awesome class and i really have fun playing it. its just that we have certain skills that you need to have. i wanna play around with my skills and still have fun ( without dying too much). as for the mana, i hope they can fix the problems its giving, either making it regen faster, or making our primaries free. its really dumb to have an attack use mana (since its so limited) and have a long cooldown, why not balance it out?
anyways, just my opinion thanks!
1) ZD and Garg runes can be changed up a bit. Make it so that each has a Tough, Strong, AoE, Elite, and Burst rune available, so if you want them to be tanks just make them both Tough (like, say Leeching Beasts). The spells have some small amound of scaling base, but ensure that each of these runes affects scaling factors differently according to intent. For example, the Leeching Beasts would probably scale well with Vitality and Armor but have little Int scaling.
2) Include both in Tribal Rites, plus a small baseline reduction in the cooldowns. I'm thinking of roughly 40-45 second base cooldown, so you have a 30-32 second with Rites.
3) Make all of our Primaries spammable. Darts is actually on the expensive side of what I'm thinking, because at the moment no other class runs out of resources on a Primary, ever. Heck, for everyone else, they actually BUILD resources by default. If you don't have Pierce, you shouldn't even notice the expenditure. While at it, most of the runes need some serious buff time to ever be considered (toyed around with Snake Dart for a while in a pet build, wasn't worth it)
4) Improve and consolidate our pet passives! Assuming #1 is implemented, perhaps Fierce Loyalty changes to read "doubles the stat scaling of your pets"
I think this would solve most of the issues we have. I don't have animation issues at 1.6 AS, so I'm willing to bet it's just the emphasis on big and slow that's doing it.
That's only a problem if they only scale with your level. If it's a combination of your level and the monsters level, it's not a problem. Basically, you set up pet to last a certain amount of time/deal a certain amount of damage, and then improve there stats to the area the WD is in (or, more likely, the highest cleared area, so that way pets don't get worse if you go back an act or something). If you want to make your pets better, you choose more skills or take passives. This gives people a pet build, and keeps pets as a decently viable CC option for those who just want that. I'm not saying it would be tricky to balance, I'm saying that it makes more sense then balancing it off vit/defensive stats, because then they become redundant (only good when you're already a tank) or OP'd (if they decent for glass cannon builds, their unstoppable for tank builds), depending on how they scale.
I'll rephrase. I think that the low range on LS is not suitably compensanted for. Yes, it CAN do a lot of damage when you're facing a lot of monsters. BUT, because it takes so long, you'll still probably do more damage with a more traditional AoE. So unless you're just going to kite while LS slowly ticks, it's not so great (IMO). It is a fun skill though. I'm just trying to make it more worthwhile without completely changing the skill, or making it much more complicated (such as making the first attack be able to stack, but the spread won't).
It's not far inferior to LS. Also Haunt is not secondary skill. You can easily fit something like Splitters, LS and Haunt or Splitters, Direbats and Haunt. But you can't fit Splitters, Direbats and Locust Swarm. Because LS cannibalizes the mana of other secondary skills !
Forget about thrash mobs. Your secondary skills (Zombie Bears, Dire Dats, Acid Cloud) can easily alone take care of those. Haunt is not meant to be used against thrash mobs, it's strict anti-pack and boss dps booster. Haunt damage / cost ratio is 5.8 while LS damage/cost ratio is 1.8, the very ratio of Dire Bats ! It means if you try to cast LC and use Direbats you have absolutly no DPS increment in the long run (think about 1+ minutes fights were your mana allways is drained up) because the mana used to cast LC could be used to cast Direbat and the damage would be execly the same.
But if you use Haunt you have a effect DPS increment because of the high damage / cost ratio. Mathematicaly Haunt adds value to your mana bar while LC don't. by giving alot of damage and asking little mana.
For the WD, the DPS of skill doesn't matter much. Damage / Cost ratios are far more important.
Ok by this setence i see you don't understand how Haunt works. Haunt is not meant to be used in your first buttom as free spell, and it's not meant to be used in your second bottom as your primary damage spell. Haunt is a marginal DPS booster like Hydra, Companion, Sentry and damage buffs such as Magic Weapon. LC doesn't belong to this cathegory because it's damage/cost ratio is the same of an common attack skill, meaning it will only cannibilize resourses.
Try this: Kill Belial (inferno) using LS + mana spender skill you like. Then try killing Belial using Haunt + mana spender skill you like. You will see the boss will die 20%~40% times faster with Haunt.
I don't mind the range on Locust Swarm most of the time because Pestilence makes it spread like wild fire so I just put it on the closest mob and run back to shoot darts. I don't require the Gargantuan as Hex is a very nice spell imo, but I like seeing the big dude enrage so I would like to see his survivability be buffed some.
I've tried some other specs before and I dislike:
Zombie bears (range of spell + VQ dependant)
VQ (pigeon holed into CD's, limiting other spell choices)
zombie dogs (die too easy)
Spirit Barrage (Animation too slow + low damage vs darts yet higher cost)
This spec is better honestly... you just need like +10 regen. You can get Jaunt instead of Healing Journey if you have good life regen.
I've pretty much realized that using Poison Dart without Locust Swarm is extremely tedious. Farming Act 1 with Locust Swarm is 100x easier.
-I realize the % damage of the base spell would need to be lowered from 100% if this were put into effect.
Splinters with a 1.5 attack speed almost completely uses my mana regen. This is not like Wizards Sig skills but instead like Ray of Frost/Cold Blooded. Yet RoF has a much higher damage rating %215 and slows the target. It ticks quickly and so will have the same effect the splinters has of punching through something after it is dead and hitting the next guy in line.
Doubling WDs base mana regen may be the simplest solution, buffing items with mana regen by +50% (x1.5) may also be a good idea.
Let's do a bit of math, shall we? Base regen at level 60 is 20/second, with 740 maximum mana. Bear-Spam is the most mana-intensive thing we can do, at 140 per cast, the other big one being Dire Bats at 122. Baseline, with a speed 1.4 weapon (typical build style), this means you get a total of 4 casts in a row (5 with Bats). VQ would bring this regen to 80/second, making 6 bears or 8 bats. I am going to simplify things a bit and only account for base mana and regen items, not going into cost-reduction abilities or Legendaries.
Typical equipment-based regen says +20 to perform, though. This happens to be equal to the first suggestion, doubling base regen, so it makes a good comparison. 40/second base, 740 max mana. Still 4 bears (though more spare mana after, giving a follow-up after another second), still 5 bats (again, quick follow-up). Under VQ now, though, things get interesting. 160/second now, so you can get 20 consecutive bears (if you can stand and shoot for 14.25 seconds). Bats become mana-positive while VQ is active.
If we only do the 50% increase to regen items, typical gear will give 50/second total regen with a 1.4-speed weapon (without VQ this means 5 bears or 6 bats consecutive), or 45 with a 1.0. (7 bears or 9 bats consecutive). Either way longevity is really no longer a problem as any significant amount of time spent not shooting (say, moving regularly to kite or casting a cheap/free spell every 5 seconds or so) means regen will catch up with itself. Anyone who activated VQ will go mana-positive even with Bears or top off in a matter of second while firing bats.
Doing both would be severe overkill, as it turns out. The advantage of doubling base is that it will help out the guys levelling up, the advantage to 50% item regen bonus is that it gets significantly smoother for 60s. I'm in favor of the latter, really, but either will work while still requiring some management.
EDIT: Almost forgot to account for Spiritual Attunement, bringing max mana to 864 and adding 8.6 regen per second base (scaling up as max mana increases with items). Long story short, it essentially adds 1-2 casts each in the first two categories, and makes the +50% regen category go significantly longer. Makes me lean toward that solution even more.
Additionally I am stuck with iLevel 62 items because of my limit to mana regen. Yet your idea ties improvements only to gear which means only the richest WDs will see a solution since Blizzard will make it apply to new gear only.
Wizard = Sorc
DH = Amazon
Witch Doctor = Necro
Monk = Paladin
Barbarian = Barbarian.
Expect an expansion soon with 2 new class types that resemble Druids and Assassins.
Pets should be movable by shift + middle mouse clicking or something imo.
Other than that I'd really like to see ToH be able to target elites ( unless they ninja buffed it while i wasn't looking ;P ). Using Toad + Hex to double cock block elites would be so awesome.
It's funny because a lot of fury spenders are worthless.
It's much easier with 5.
Actaully all the CD's are awesome, when talking fury spenders I am referring to ancients, rend, WW etc... Seismic is decent for the CC aspect, but overall I think many other skills are more useful for my right click button.