After messing around with the new calculator I found a possible awesomeness between the alabaster runed big bad voodoo, alabaster runed mass confusion, and golden runed zombie dog. (calculator if ya need it http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#ZjTQef!XYa!babaYZ )
My question: will you be able to have more than 4 dogs out because of the runed abilities or will the passive ability of zombie handler still make the cap 4?
Either way I really want to try this build and I dont even like summoners all that much. The summons are used as a burst damage and health/mana gain instead of a meat shield.
I believe you are capped at 4 dogs out at once which limits this build, i had also considered it but that effect is only useful with sacrifice to remove and gain back dogs. It may prove to be quite viable though;
Well what makes me think it will work is that the spells are separate and maybe the the zombie handler passive only relates to the zombie dog spell. I dont see the difference between..
A giant zombie plus a few zombie dogs made from the two runned spells (which is possible without even having "zombie dogs" on your toolbar)
and
The zombie dogs made from the normal spell plus the dogs made by the two runed spells. (What I hope will be possible)
They both are made by one spell and two other runed spells. It feels like their would not be as much synchronization in these type of builds if more than 4 could not be out. I guess my point is: why not? It is creative and your are giving up runed skills and putting it all into one type of summon.
Edit: sacrifice wouldn be op because mass confusion only lasts for 8 seconds and big bad voodoo has a giant cooldown. Having said this I wouldn even mind if the rune made dogs only lasted a certain amount of time.
The main thing I'm curious about is whether the dogs spawned by runestone effects will have the runestone effects of summoned dogs. I assume yes. If so, the runestone spawned dogs would only really provide mana savings. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. I'll probably use a similar build, keep zombie dogs on my bar, but only for beginning a fight. Once you start killing stuff the dogs will be spawned on their own, allowing you to cast offensive spells. Sounds like a viable build to me. Mass Confusion and Big Bad Voodoo are both great abilities on their own, but if they summon runestone active dogs for you, even better. That's my opinion, anyway, I'm sure others will disagree.
I think maybe the idea of the mass confusion and big bad voodoo runes is so you can make zombie dogs without actually having to take the skill? Maybe.
good point, definitely gotta look into that..
but if you are using those two spells in combination to try bringing in dogs without having the dog skill on or other runes/passives to benefit dogs, it may not pay off vs. just taking other runes for confusion and bbv. They both have some other awesome rune effects, so if you opt in the direction of a summon build for these two spells, you had better be bringing more dogs and other summons to the fight because you will be missing out on the other potential benefits from the runes
which, by the way, is definitely something i wanna try IF you can summon 4 and spawn more from the runes. The more pets the better, i miss my 24 skeleton warriors/25 mages/25 resurrected cows.
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im still using BBV for the team damage buff (might switch for horrify for the increased run speed) but the focus of the build is definitely dogs. Using sacrifice to do massive AoE damage with hopefully the large amount of dogs (not expecting more than ~6 but i hope the 4 limit on the spell isnt the overall cap on how many you can have). Sacrifice with alabaster gives 70% chance to spawn new dogs from sacrificed ones, and Mass confusion gives me a 99%.
The thing this build is most dependent on is whether the rune effect for Mass Confusion overlaps to the rune effect of Plague of Toads. If confused enemies from the Toads are also affected by the rune from MC, then this build will consist of many, many dogs spawning/sacrificing/spawning again
I threw in the gargantuan for the added CC (crowd creation, not crowd control) since the passive buff helps him out anyway. This i may also switch out for horrify for the run speed buff from that, but the gargantuan with crimson rune seems awesome.
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My question: will you be able to have more than 4 dogs out because of the runed abilities or will the passive ability of zombie handler still make the cap 4?
Either way I really want to try this build and I dont even like summoners all that much. The summons are used as a burst damage and health/mana gain instead of a meat shield.
A giant zombie plus a few zombie dogs made from the two runned spells (which is possible without even having "zombie dogs" on your toolbar)
and
The zombie dogs made from the normal spell plus the dogs made by the two runed spells. (What I hope will be possible)
They both are made by one spell and two other runed spells. It feels like their would not be as much synchronization in these type of builds if more than 4 could not be out. I guess my point is: why not? It is creative and your are giving up runed skills and putting it all into one type of summon.
Edit: sacrifice wouldn be op because mass confusion only lasts for 8 seconds and big bad voodoo has a giant cooldown. Having said this I wouldn even mind if the rune made dogs only lasted a certain amount of time.
good point, definitely gotta look into that..
but if you are using those two spells in combination to try bringing in dogs without having the dog skill on or other runes/passives to benefit dogs, it may not pay off vs. just taking other runes for confusion and bbv. They both have some other awesome rune effects, so if you opt in the direction of a summon build for these two spells, you had better be bringing more dogs and other summons to the fight because you will be missing out on the other potential benefits from the runes
which, by the way, is definitely something i wanna try IF you can summon 4 and spawn more from the runes. The more pets the better, i miss my 24 skeleton warriors/25 mages/25 resurrected cows.
Does anybody really care?
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#hbZQjT!Xde!ZacZaa
im still using BBV for the team damage buff (might switch for horrify for the increased run speed) but the focus of the build is definitely dogs. Using sacrifice to do massive AoE damage with hopefully the large amount of dogs (not expecting more than ~6 but i hope the 4 limit on the spell isnt the overall cap on how many you can have). Sacrifice with alabaster gives 70% chance to spawn new dogs from sacrificed ones, and Mass confusion gives me a 99%.
The thing this build is most dependent on is whether the rune effect for Mass Confusion overlaps to the rune effect of Plague of Toads. If confused enemies from the Toads are also affected by the rune from MC, then this build will consist of many, many dogs spawning/sacrificing/spawning again
I threw in the gargantuan for the added CC (crowd creation, not crowd control) since the passive buff helps him out anyway. This i may also switch out for horrify for the run speed buff from that, but the gargantuan with crimson rune seems awesome.
Does anybody really care?