This looked like a good setup with all the mana cost/runestone requirements considered, at least to someone with no experience http://us.battle.net...RQYj!adg!aaZbZZ
All the relevant skills/passives can be acquired at lv 30, I know it doesn't have an AoE skill which I could swap out to(Firebomb w/ Roll the Bones), I just thought this would be for the better in mid-late game.
You've got your single target dps and a secondary that lasts for awhile and regens your health (which I don't know if its any good, Soul Harvest/Siphon says 4K per vs 300hp per sec, no contest, hope that scales somewhat). Moving on you got two buffs (soul harvest for yourself / Big bad voodoo for you and party), a summon and CC.
Now my passives:
less dmg for my summons and I, early access and it's a flat bonus why not?
they do less dmg when hit with poison dmg for x seconds, if I'm working on something big and my summons are tanking it(or party members!).. why not have them last longer since it's a big cool down, also helpful if I'm tanking it when my summons are gone.
Mana regen boost when 4 things on cooldown, not sure how well this will work out but three of my things (buff,summon,cc) have minute or minute plus cooldowns with low mana cost, the 4th thing with a cooldown is 15 seconds which is a buff that I want up all the time, may not be casted on cooldown. Which I think works out good (in theory) if you want to focus on damaging your foes vs casting different buttons all the time to make use of this passive.
I didn't pick Gruesome Feast because of all the commentary I've heard about strategically picking up health globes, so I thought micromanaging that buff it has wasn't worth it, or taking health globes away from party members because I need mana (rude, imo).
Some of these skills runestone selections are above 30 but aren't dealbreakers if I don't have the required level, like 'rain dance' on big bad voodoo or 'mass hysteria' on mass confusion. I feel the passives selection for witch doctor is all over the place, you've got secondaries/spirits/poison/physical/on death/cheat death/all damage for a price, but none that focus on fire dmg?
I originally had grasp of the dead in the secondary but it looked like a high mana cost, you could possibly have Vision Quest up all the time that way between Grasp and Soul Harvest however.
unless your going to hammer them with poison dart all the time Bad Medicine might not be worth taking as you only have 1 poison spell. Perhaps Rush of Essence or Peirce the Veil might be a better option. Only reason im saying that is I did something simular in an earlier build and someone pointed this out to me too.
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Super Cop! He knows where you live, he knows where you sleep.
Whats the point of Raid Dance & Vision Quest? Your dps spells are the cheapest there is.
Well I figured there wont be any runewords with a Meditation aura for infinite mana this time around so I took Vision Quest instead, they[Jay, Devs] said early game regen was easymode but later it wouldn't be so fast. I wonder if the green text will scale/change with improvements, mana cost and skill statistics are both green which kind of throws me.
Rain dance looked like the best return on investment, atleast from the skill calculators point of view(which isn't the best indicator but only thing I've got). Now that I think about it do any of these classes help each other get resources?
lv 54 Haunt/Drainging spirit
2.0 mana per second (Sure hope this scales somehow lol...)
Lv 51 Horrify/Ruthless Terror
16 Mana * however many you can muster in 12yds -22 mana (the level required also not good, almost finished with leveling!)
Lv 37 Big Bad Voodoo/Rain Dance
75 Mana * 20 second duration, I don't see a mana cost but you have to be in the area for regen (I've played plenty of WoW and have experience standing and not standing in area effects)
Lv 32 Spirit Walk/Honored Guest
2 seconds * 15% maximum mana with a 15 second cooldown, it's ok but you can't do any actions, besides running, while regening.
Lv 31 Soul Harvest/Swollow Your Soul
upto 5 * 24 - 36 (I thought the health runestone has a much better deal)
As for the poison passive, it was based on survival co-op play which I hope to play a lot of when it came out. Poison darts does just as much dmg as Zombie charger although it implies a potential to do more damage against multiple targets and I'm unsure how it accomplishes this, last time Diablo had a spell like this it exploded on impact against the target and left a fire trail on the ground from where it was summoned to its demise.. Does the zombie charger flail its arms in the air damaging mobs as it tried to get to the other side of the screen by default?
Locust swarm has potential but again dart could do just as much, 150% over 3 (with the ability to jump) vs 210%, haven't seen firebats in action and its text is unclear if its a channeling spell or how big its radius is, spirit barrage 215% vs 210% darts or 5% dmg increase for 62% more mana plus I dislike proc summons (the only physical focused passive). Acid cloud is also unclear about its radius, 125% + 25% splash vs 210% darts, acid cloud however has an advantage of the possible 6 posion duration for my selected passive and its plash affecting more than one enem and has the mana cost to show for it.
Remember when they said they wanted you to use every skill? They're still competitive with eachother even if you get aontherr one 20 levels later.
edit: got around to watching a witch doctor skill preview video not sure how old it was but it sheds light on some of these skills that don't discribe what they do in their tooltips so I could see using zombie charger over dart once it's available.
Blizzard has posted videos of some of the skills for each class in their game guide on the D3 site, Acid Cloud is one of them.
The reason that some of the numbers are green is that there is SOMETHING that will change that number, some of them scale with attack speed, other will likely be affected by Affixes, as was revealed on this site, there is an affix for every skill that we have, which will probably change more than just the damage of a skill.
The mana return from Haunt is based on damage, that's why it seems so low, its no where near as good as it was before, but we'll have to wait and see how this tuning pass of our mana ends up. Before, Spiritual Attunement and Haunt for mana regen could sustain almost any build that didn't go over board with high cost spells. Locust Swarm is a skill I'm a bit worried about, if it's like Haunt and will jump only once the initial target is dead I don't know how worth it it will be, but we'll see.
Big Bad VooDoo is a good skill for group play and solo play, but there are other options for getting health and mana back, and the increases to the group would be better off than something that only affects you. I'm going to guess that while it seems low Haunt will still provide a decent enough mana regen.
I really hate Soul Harvest, unless you stack gold picup radius to stand further back, it's going to be a very dangerous ability, but in group play it's not as bad, but it will requires you to be very smart with the way you use your spells, it all depends on how damage buffs are calculated in skill damage, if it's like WoW and DoT buffs are updated on a per tick basis (which it seems like they won't be) then it won't matter as much, but otherwise you'll need to lead off with soul harvest to get the best effect from it, and then drop your DoT's and such, and it requires sacrificing either damage, not as big of a deal because of the buff, or defensive stats on your gear to get the increased damage, and then still only affects 5 enemies, so I dont' really like it, but that's play style differences, not the skill being bad.
All in all the build is okay for a mid range build that isn't concentrating on Inferno, but once you hit level 60 it would need to be tweaked depending on what other players seem to be doing the most, random groups will require players to really adapt their own builds much more to account for how others are playing, verses playing solo when you can make a build that works, and will work the whole time. If playing with a consistent group, then you won't need to adapt as much, and can concentrate on gear that affects those specific build choices verses just being all around stats.
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http://us.battle.net...RQYj!adg!aaZbZZ
All the relevant skills/passives can be acquired at lv 30, I know it doesn't have an AoE skill which I could swap out to(Firebomb w/ Roll the Bones), I just thought this would be for the better in mid-late game.
You've got your single target dps and a secondary that lasts for awhile and regens your health (which I don't know if its any good, Soul Harvest/Siphon says 4K per vs 300hp per sec, no contest, hope that scales somewhat). Moving on you got two buffs (soul harvest for yourself / Big bad voodoo for you and party), a summon and CC.
Now my passives:
less dmg for my summons and I, early access and it's a flat bonus why not?
they do less dmg when hit with poison dmg for x seconds, if I'm working on something big and my summons are tanking it(or party members!).. why not have them last longer since it's a big cool down, also helpful if I'm tanking it when my summons are gone.
Mana regen boost when 4 things on cooldown, not sure how well this will work out but three of my things (buff,summon,cc) have minute or minute plus cooldowns with low mana cost, the 4th thing with a cooldown is 15 seconds which is a buff that I want up all the time, may not be casted on cooldown. Which I think works out good (in theory) if you want to focus on damaging your foes vs casting different buttons all the time to make use of this passive.
I didn't pick Gruesome Feast because of all the commentary I've heard about strategically picking up health globes, so I thought micromanaging that buff it has wasn't worth it, or taking health globes away from party members because I need mana (rude, imo).
Some of these skills runestone selections are above 30 but aren't dealbreakers if I don't have the required level, like 'rain dance' on big bad voodoo or 'mass hysteria' on mass confusion. I feel the passives selection for witch doctor is all over the place, you've got secondaries/spirits/poison/physical/on death/cheat death/all damage for a price, but none that focus on fire dmg?
I originally had grasp of the dead in the secondary but it looked like a high mana cost, you could possibly have Vision Quest up all the time that way between Grasp and Soul Harvest however.
Think it's reasonable/viable?
A QUADRILLION MAGIC FIND is worthless if you can't kill shit!
Super Cop! He knows where you live, he knows where you sleep.
Rain dance looked like the best return on investment, atleast from the skill calculators point of view(which isn't the best indicator but only thing I've got). Now that I think about it do any of these classes help each other get resources?
lv 54 Haunt/Drainging spirit
2.0 mana per second (Sure hope this scales somehow lol...)
Lv 51 Horrify/Ruthless Terror
16 Mana * however many you can muster in 12yds -22 mana (the level required also not good, almost finished with leveling!)
Lv 37 Big Bad Voodoo/Rain Dance
75 Mana * 20 second duration, I don't see a mana cost but you have to be in the area for regen (I've played plenty of WoW and have experience standing and not standing in area effects)
Lv 32 Spirit Walk/Honored Guest
2 seconds * 15% maximum mana with a 15 second cooldown, it's ok but you can't do any actions, besides running, while regening.
Lv 31 Soul Harvest/Swollow Your Soul
upto 5 * 24 - 36 (I thought the health runestone has a much better deal)
As for the poison passive, it was based on survival co-op play which I hope to play a lot of when it came out. Poison darts does just as much dmg as Zombie charger although it implies a potential to do more damage against multiple targets and I'm unsure how it accomplishes this, last time Diablo had a spell like this it exploded on impact against the target and left a fire trail on the ground from where it was summoned to its demise.. Does the zombie charger flail its arms in the air damaging mobs as it tried to get to the other side of the screen by default?
Locust swarm has potential but again dart could do just as much, 150% over 3 (with the ability to jump) vs 210%, haven't seen firebats in action and its text is unclear if its a channeling spell or how big its radius is, spirit barrage 215% vs 210% darts or 5% dmg increase for 62% more mana plus I dislike proc summons (the only physical focused passive). Acid cloud is also unclear about its radius, 125% + 25% splash vs 210% darts, acid cloud however has an advantage of the possible 6 posion duration for my selected passive and its plash affecting more than one enem and has the mana cost to show for it.
Remember when they said they wanted you to use every skill? They're still competitive with eachother even if you get aontherr one 20 levels later.
edit: got around to watching a witch doctor skill preview video not sure how old it was but it sheds light on some of these skills that don't discribe what they do in their tooltips so I could see using zombie charger over dart once it's available.
The reason that some of the numbers are green is that there is SOMETHING that will change that number, some of them scale with attack speed, other will likely be affected by Affixes, as was revealed on this site, there is an affix for every skill that we have, which will probably change more than just the damage of a skill.
The mana return from Haunt is based on damage, that's why it seems so low, its no where near as good as it was before, but we'll have to wait and see how this tuning pass of our mana ends up. Before, Spiritual Attunement and Haunt for mana regen could sustain almost any build that didn't go over board with high cost spells. Locust Swarm is a skill I'm a bit worried about, if it's like Haunt and will jump only once the initial target is dead I don't know how worth it it will be, but we'll see.
Big Bad VooDoo is a good skill for group play and solo play, but there are other options for getting health and mana back, and the increases to the group would be better off than something that only affects you. I'm going to guess that while it seems low Haunt will still provide a decent enough mana regen.
I really hate Soul Harvest, unless you stack gold picup radius to stand further back, it's going to be a very dangerous ability, but in group play it's not as bad, but it will requires you to be very smart with the way you use your spells, it all depends on how damage buffs are calculated in skill damage, if it's like WoW and DoT buffs are updated on a per tick basis (which it seems like they won't be) then it won't matter as much, but otherwise you'll need to lead off with soul harvest to get the best effect from it, and then drop your DoT's and such, and it requires sacrificing either damage, not as big of a deal because of the buff, or defensive stats on your gear to get the increased damage, and then still only affects 5 enemies, so I dont' really like it, but that's play style differences, not the skill being bad.
All in all the build is okay for a mid range build that isn't concentrating on Inferno, but once you hit level 60 it would need to be tweaked depending on what other players seem to be doing the most, random groups will require players to really adapt their own builds much more to account for how others are playing, verses playing solo when you can make a build that works, and will work the whole time. If playing with a consistent group, then you won't need to adapt as much, and can concentrate on gear that affects those specific build choices verses just being all around stats.
Tired of the same regurgitated blue posts? Want more in depth coverage of
the aspects of the game you want to know about? Check us out!