Biggest problem for pet builds is going to be doing damage. You'll be able to stay alive and keep your pets up while they tank for you. But it's going to be hard to do decent damage I think. I bet they'll add more things that allow pets to regen life also.
Here's one idea I had that uses the "Fetish Sycophants" passive. You could switch in "Pierce the Veil" for "Tribal Rites" maybe to get even more damage without having mana problems I think.
Pet builds like the old revive Necro style? Sounds fun but as the other poster have said it will be extremely mana heavy. Probably not a great idea until you get a good base of runes and gear.
Biggest problem for pet builds is going to be doing damage. You'll be able to stay alive and keep your pets up while they tank for you. But it's going to be hard to do decent damage I think. I bet they'll add more things that allow pets to regen life also.
Here's one idea I had that uses the "Fetish Sycophants" passive. You could switch in "Pierce the Veil" for "Tribal Rites" maybe to get even more damage without having mana problems I think.
Another idea is instead of sacrificing dogs, use corpse spiders for your bread and butter for damage. Crimson corpse spiders do 52% per spider per bite, they have better AI than toads and attack the closest target, so if you toss them on top of an enemy that's 208% per bite. It's not AoE damage, but it is better sustained dps than sacrifice. It also fills out the "pet/minion master" kind of theme trying to be attempted in this thread. The only large issue is going to be mana regen, depending on how large of an issue that really is at higher levels.
edit: I'd also like to point out that this would also give you a better chance to trigger Fetish Sycophants in comparison to using sacrifice as the spiders are a physical realm ability.
Valenir, I'd stay away from making big bad voodoo your mana regen ability, at least until you have an absurdly large mana pool. Big bad voodoo is a 2 min cooldown ability by default, 1.5 minute cooldown with the passive tribal rites. I'd leave big bad voodoo with its crimson rune and put a golden one in haunt instead. Yes that means you're going to have a much smaller burst potential, but your build really does lean more towards a group buff & farming boss/rares build. I say that because you have two 2 minute cooldown abilities that until inferno mode, you probably won't be able to pop at every pack of enemies or even every other pack. They also both work best when used together, and so it's kinda like an all in heavy burst build for bosses or even pvp.
Just my thoughts though, feel free to ignore them if it pleases you.
There is already Crimson Big Bad Voodoo btw. And also do you think you will go oom with 177 mana cost of Haunt (even if you'll spam it) and 89 mana cost of GotD? Doubt it. I agree it is more burst dmg build and it can be used on hard packs and bosses. Gear up abit for mana regen and mana pool (to compesate even so low mana cost of active spells) and rest for intelligence for more dmg. That's the main idea of the build: more dmg from 2 skills you have, dogs and grag are tanking and use Fetish army with BBV to for burst, hard packs and bosses.
There is already Crimson Big Bad Voodoo btw. And also do you think you will go oom with 177 mana cost of Haunt (even if you'll spam it) and 89 mana cost of GotD? Doubt it. I agree it is more burst dmg build and it can be used on hard packs and bosses. Gear up abit for mana regen and mana pool (to compesate even so low mana cost of active spells) and rest for intelligence for more dmg. That's the main idea of the build: more dmg from 2 skills you have, dogs and grag are tanking and use Fetish army with BBV to for burst, hard packs and bosses.
At the moment I'm working under the assumption that as your level increases so will the mana cost of your abilities, that is how mana abilities always work, although in the past they'd get ranks, Blizzard has opted to get rid of ranked spells forever and just use %'s. The mana cost of abilities displayed appear to be the mana costs of the abilities when you first acquire them or normalized as some arbitrary level. If they weren't then there'd be no point to mana or even a resource pool, as the ability costs would stay the same, but your mana pool would keep increasing. That is unless your mana regen was inversely proportional to your mana pool size, and that case is counter intuitive and just messy to a casual friendly kind of game (which Blizzard has been obviously leaning towards lately).
So yes, I'm part of the group that believe that if you aren't careful, you will have mana problems at higher levels, such problems probably won't be noticed until after level 20. I also think that if you can avoid gearing heavily for mana you should avoid it and just opt for one slightly weaker ability that can be used for active mana regen. That will let you trade that mana regen for either stronger damage, durability, mf/gf stats which should further optimize your character. All of this being hypotheticals at the moment, when the game is released and final numbers can be extracted along with a more complete item database, then real optimizations can begin. Until then I have a natural habit of planning for the worst. The worst being that mana is a problem at higher levels.
Active pet summoning skills are Zombie Dogs, Gargantuan and, in a fashion, Fetish Army.
Other active skills which could allow you to do "passive summoning" by adding alabaster runestone are: Mass Confusion, Big Bad Voodoo and Sacrifice (which is also a pet related skill)
There are also passive skills which greatly affect your pets (Zombie Handler, Jungle Fortitude, Fierce Loyalty) or allow you to do "passive summoning" (Circle of Life, Fetish Sycophants)
So many pet related skills make me think pet builds will be viable.
In Diablo 2's inception and even quickly after LOD was released necro summnor builds weren't the strongest you had to rely on revives which were decent, but had limited life times and caused a very large mess. They were also known as lagomancers lol. The patch that introduced synergies made the full skeleton warrior/mage build viable aswell as the inclusion of the runeword enigma into the game. After this patch i gave necro's a shot and the summoner build was easily in my top 3 favorite builds for D2. I would hope that the development team would make the summoner build viable from release because being the leader of a small army is just badass.
mana regeneration does NOT increase. period. but his mana does. you only have 60 mana regen per second and that stays the same from 1 to 60. at 60 you will have 3250 mana. nearly 4000 mana if you get the mana passive which also adds another 78 mana per second.
that being said i made a lazy pet high dmg build not requiring mana regen besides your base -
with this pets do a ton of dmg runed and i would stack as much thorn dmg as possible. in the beta thorn dmg is amazing and considering multiple classes have thorn orriented passives i think they are making it viable throughout the game.
all of my spells are cast and forget or on a CD so i cant spam it. the idea of this build is to let your pets do a lot of the work and just throw in your spells when able for massive aoe dmg. spider queen and spirit barrage are single casts and both nearly last 20 seconds each. then grasp of the dead and soul harvest costs almost no mana compared to your 3250 mana pool.
and the pierce of the viel passive will increase all of their dmg as well. also it SHOULD increase thorn dmg, as thorn dmg is part of YOUR dmg and it says "ALL of your dmg". but if not it still increases everything else
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"once the pretty hardcore gamers we had testing inferno found it fairly difficult, we then we doubled it" -trolololol jay wilson
From the youtube videos I have seen so far and they werent few, pet build seems to be so slow for killing. But with zero risk of dieing. Looks perfect for bosses.
This is my first post and also a test to see if posting works(I had some problems).
Also, my first build will be WD and pet build, since Necro was my favorite in D2.
I got a question, which of the pets you summon will follow you?
Is it only gargantuan, zombie dogs and fetish army?
yes. the garg and dogs are permanant and can be out at the same time but the fettish's have a set duration so they will dissapear.
technically you can summon a frog and spider queen but they arent treated as "pets" and cant be attacked by enemies, they just deal dmg for short durations
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"once the pretty hardcore gamers we had testing inferno found it fairly difficult, we then we doubled it" -trolololol jay wilson
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http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#abhTQP!Wfi!baaZZb
Here's one idea I had that uses the "Fetish Sycophants" passive. You could switch in "Pierce the Veil" for "Tribal Rites" maybe to get even more damage without having mana problems I think.
Another idea is instead of sacrificing dogs, use corpse spiders for your bread and butter for damage. Crimson corpse spiders do 52% per spider per bite, they have better AI than toads and attack the closest target, so if you toss them on top of an enemy that's 208% per bite. It's not AoE damage, but it is better sustained dps than sacrifice. It also fills out the "pet/minion master" kind of theme trying to be attempted in this thread. The only large issue is going to be mana regen, depending on how large of an issue that really is at higher levels.
edit: I'd also like to point out that this would also give you a better chance to trigger Fetish Sycophants in comparison to using sacrifice as the spiders are a physical realm ability.
There is already Crimson Big Bad Voodoo btw. And also do you think you will go oom with 177 mana cost of Haunt (even if you'll spam it) and 89 mana cost of GotD? Doubt it. I agree it is more burst dmg build and it can be used on hard packs and bosses. Gear up abit for mana regen and mana pool (to compesate even so low mana cost of active spells) and rest for intelligence for more dmg. That's the main idea of the build: more dmg from 2 skills you have, dogs and grag are tanking and use Fetish army with BBV to for burst, hard packs and bosses.
At the moment I'm working under the assumption that as your level increases so will the mana cost of your abilities, that is how mana abilities always work, although in the past they'd get ranks, Blizzard has opted to get rid of ranked spells forever and just use %'s. The mana cost of abilities displayed appear to be the mana costs of the abilities when you first acquire them or normalized as some arbitrary level. If they weren't then there'd be no point to mana or even a resource pool, as the ability costs would stay the same, but your mana pool would keep increasing. That is unless your mana regen was inversely proportional to your mana pool size, and that case is counter intuitive and just messy to a casual friendly kind of game (which Blizzard has been obviously leaning towards lately).
So yes, I'm part of the group that believe that if you aren't careful, you will have mana problems at higher levels, such problems probably won't be noticed until after level 20. I also think that if you can avoid gearing heavily for mana you should avoid it and just opt for one slightly weaker ability that can be used for active mana regen. That will let you trade that mana regen for either stronger damage, durability, mf/gf stats which should further optimize your character. All of this being hypotheticals at the moment, when the game is released and final numbers can be extracted along with a more complete item database, then real optimizations can begin. Until then I have a natural habit of planning for the worst. The worst being that mana is a problem at higher levels.
Other active skills which could allow you to do "passive summoning" by adding alabaster runestone are: Mass Confusion, Big Bad Voodoo and Sacrifice (which is also a pet related skill)
There are also passive skills which greatly affect your pets (Zombie Handler, Jungle Fortitude, Fierce Loyalty) or allow you to do "passive summoning" (Circle of Life, Fetish Sycophants)
So many pet related skills make me think pet builds will be viable.
that being said i made a lazy pet high dmg build not requiring mana regen besides your base -
with this pets do a ton of dmg runed and i would stack as much thorn dmg as possible. in the beta thorn dmg is amazing and considering multiple classes have thorn orriented passives i think they are making it viable throughout the game.
all of my spells are cast and forget or on a CD so i cant spam it. the idea of this build is to let your pets do a lot of the work and just throw in your spells when able for massive aoe dmg. spider queen and spirit barrage are single casts and both nearly last 20 seconds each. then grasp of the dead and soul harvest costs almost no mana compared to your 3250 mana pool.
and the pierce of the viel passive will increase all of their dmg as well. also it SHOULD increase thorn dmg, as thorn dmg is part of YOUR dmg and it says "ALL of your dmg". but if not it still increases everything else
yes. the garg and dogs are permanant and can be out at the same time but the fettish's have a set duration so they will dissapear.
technically you can summon a frog and spider queen but they arent treated as "pets" and cant be attacked by enemies, they just deal dmg for short durations