1) Effective against single and multiple targets with locust swarm, darts and GotD
2) Super effective Crowd control with dogs, mass confusion and GotD
3) You can even be a party healer with the much increased chance for health globe drop (Final Gift and Death is life), and you reap the benefit by having Gruesome Feast, which recovers your mana (not like this build is mana intensive) and further increases your damage.
4) BEST AOE nuke in the whole damn game PERIOID 4 dogs x 275% sacrifise x 1.2 (pierce the veil)= 1320% weapon damage nuke to the area! can be further increased by Gruesome Feast.
5) near constant supply of "bombs" zdogs with summon, next of kin, and devolution. with these 3 combined you should be able to release the "Nuke" every 30 secs.
6) with each "nuke" you get at least 1-3 health globes produced by YOU (see point 3)
7) Great consistent single target/boss dps with out sacrifise [(360+20)/8 +180]*1.2 = 273% weapon per second! can be further increased by GF.
8) This build can be achieve as early as level 34! which is only the start of Nightmare
9) Locust swarm can be changed to another skill to provide additional damage source (fire locust/bat or haunt) in high levels, this way you will have 3 damage source (poison, fire and physical)
10) Flexibility to swap passives GF -> jungle fortitude and/or Pov -> Bad Medicne to a more defensive build. sacrifising damage for defence
Con.
1) lack of escape mechanism. this is however backed up by 3 crowd controls, as long as you don't make silly mistakes by running ahead of your dogs with out GotD up and MC on cd you should be fine. if anything goes wrong (waller or vortex) just press that nuke bottom and everything will be alright ;).
2) again, no defensive passive and escape mechanism is probably the biggest flaw in this build, cant think of anything else.
Example battle scenarios :
1) regular monsters: let dogs run ahead, GotD, swarm, pew pew pew to finish
2) Rare monster packs: dogs ahead, Gotd. Swam, Sacrifise Boom!. should have 1-2 dogs left due to next of kin, resummon dog and finish remaining monsters with dart and swarm.
3) champion monster packs: Gotd, Swarm, MC + Sacrifise together -> should have 3-4 dogs left due to devolution and next of kin. Sacrifice again, resummon, sacrifice again if nessasary, if not just finish off with darts and swarm. I really don't think there will be monster packs that can survive 3x1370% aoe + aoe from swarm and gotd and still be alive after...
4) Boss without summons: let dogs tank while you dot and dart the boss, when 1 is about to die sacrifise, resummon, kite boss with gotd while dps with swarm and dart. Sacrifise when necessary.
5) Boss with summons: let dogs tank while you dot and dart the boss, when 1 about to die sacrifise, resummon and continue. When boss summons use MC + Sacrifice, rinse and repeat. When there are no dogs left and all skills on CD... you just have to Gotd kite with dots and darts. Not like any other class will have it easier.
6) remember, every time you use sacrifise on champions and bosses, there will be 1-2 health globes on the ground, save those when you make a mistake.
That is all for the build explanation, let me know if you think this build may or may not work in inferno. If i play solo I will always have templar with me. critizems welcome, as long as you back them up with reasoning.
1.) Grasp of the dead rune. It seems like unbreakable grasp would be much better. You'll need the kiting power for when you blow up your dogs. I'm willing to bet that even if some dogs respawn from your sacrifice, the monsters will run straight for you when you blow them up. Also, you can get unlucky and get 0 dogs to respawn.
2.) I would possibly think about changing the Locusts rune as well. Since you won't be using mana much, I think it would be better to use searing locusts. To make up for the slower infection spread time, you'll just want to cast locusts 2-3 times instead of just once. I think you'll have the mana to do so since your other damage spell is basically free.
I would be a little worried about how this build performs in Inferno. The dogs won't have any DR so they may die pretty quickly. Also, Mass confusion will be less effective since the monsters will have added resistance to CC effects. If this is a problem you may have to drop pierce or veil to pick up some DR... whichever is granting the least damage. With the amount of health globes dropped from this build... I bet it'll be pierce.
I like your build. To help with your concern that you do not have a decent escape mechanism why don't you try horrify instead of mass confusion? Horrify is on a much quicker cooldown and can be more helpful during those 'oh shit' moments.
4) BEST AOE nuke in the whole damn game PERIOID 4 dogs x 275% sacrifise x 1.2 (pierce the veil)= 1320% weapon damage nuke to the area! can be further increased by Gruesome Feast.
Don't forget though their positioning cannot be 100% controlled so the damage tends to be slightly more random than that (specially if you want to "focus" on one target).
Also, I don't think Zombie Dogs can trully be called crowd control. More like a diversion, but not true crowd control (disable).
Another thing, it could happen that you get a little unlucky with those "chances to spawn" and have no Zombie Dogs in the middle of a boss/champion/rare fight. Managing cooldowns would be very important.
I like your build. To help with your concern that you do not have a decent escape mechanism why don't you try horrify instead of mass confusion? Horrify is on a much quicker cooldown and can be more helpful during those 'oh shit' moments.
Mass confusion with Devolution rune helps spawning Zdogs which will be sacrificed again... It synergizes well with the build. Horrify doesn't provide this
But I truely think that, with good positionning and a good amount of +gold pickup radius Grave injustice can cut the effective CD of Mass confusion down to about 30s bringing it on par with Horrify (if the AI in higher lvl doesn't make mobs totally ignoring Confused targets ofc )
I didn't think of the synergy between the two before I posted. I can understand the choice now but until we really get to use mass confusion a lot I do not think that we can make any decisions on its effectiveness. I am not too sure if it was ever in beta, I didn't get a chance to try it, but after watching the official video on the skill it looks like it does have a chance to not land and the range of the ability seemed quite small.
My current build for sub 30 was going to use mass confusion but I later decided that horrify would fit it more since I am looking for synergy out of that particular skill's role.
What about dropping pierce the veil in favor of circle of life? If you're already planning to stack gold radius, might be useful to add a 5% chance of a dog on a regular kill? Only played open beta weekend... so I'm just spitballin!
Good thing about this build is that you are not relying on the sacrifise for damage, when the dogs are alive they act as off-tank/distraction.
if you look at the combined damage potential from swam+darts+gotd it comes down to swam (45% wd/s) + darts (180%wd/s) + gotd (20%wd/s) = 245% wd/s times 1.2 (PtV) = 294 wd/s
that is close to 300% wd/s you are dishing out including a pretty decent 60% slow on top of. so even if you are bad luck Brian and left with no dogs you can still kite while doing decent damage.
For those who is worried about mana, swarm is a dot, which means you don't need to spam it like firebat. on single target you cast once every 8 seconds, on multi target you probably only need to cast twice thanks to pestilence rune. that means 250/8 = 31 mana per sec... spamming toads cost more than that. other than swarm there is no mana heavy spells, so mana is a non-issue in this build, thats why i picked PtV as third passive.
of course dot by itself is not enough to kill monsters, that why it is dot(damage over time) while it is ticking you can add more spells on top to stack the damage.
lets look at it this way, firebat are 220% damage, lets say it fires once per second, so over 8 seconds it will cost 122*8=976 mana to maintain 220% weapon damage/s
if you use swarm once, then spam darts that is 225% damage per second, over 8 seconds it will cost 196(swarm) + 80 (8darts) = 276 mana to maintain.
I know i ignored multi target potential of spamming bats, but against single target dot + darts will be much more efficient.
I don't know about you but i find soul harvest hard to use during beta, the time i spend running into middle of the mob to havest and run out to avoid damage, might as well use that 3 seconds to kill. not to mention during harder difficulty, you might get 1 shot if you run in between 5 mobs...
So you swapped out Locust Swarm for arguably one of the most mana intensive spells. I am convinced that Firebats is a fantastic spell, but, as of right now, you're out of mana in roughly 4 seconds since it's a channeled spell. Of course your rune choice will more than likely change how you spam it (such as Hungry Bats, so you can cast less and they seek out enemies).
Anyway, for the OP's build, Sacrifice is not the focus. The purpose for Sacrifice in this build is to gain a little extra damage to explode your dogs to get health orbs (as well as potentially not kill some of those dogs) which would then proc Gruesome Feast to buff your damage. You would cast GotD or Mass Confusion and Locust Swarm once on packs of enemies, then pick everyone off with Darts, a super spammable spell, while Locust Swarm spreads. Thus, mana regen is of no real concern for this build. Granted, you would never want to skip it altogether, but for a build like this, it's non-essential.
I think with any build relying on sacrifice you will use 2 skill slots with a shared 60 second cooldown.. I mean yes it can do 1300 wpn dmg but it costs 2 skill slots and has 60 sec cd!! Worth it? Not in my opinion.. You will have way too much downtime waiting for cooldowns.
Like I said before this build is not focused on sacrifise. Sacrifice is just there to provide easier time with big bad champion packs. How often do you come across champion packs, I wish they come up as often as once every 60 second...
This build is completely viable with decent damage, best cc in the game (imagine confused inferno monsters, unless they immune), good slow and good distraction provided by 4 dogs when they are alive. What else do you need?
Don't forget the rune for sacrifise and mass confusion also spawns more dogs, so you can detonate them way more often than once every 60 seconds.
I think with any build relying on sacrifice you will use 2 skill slots with a shared 60 second cooldown.. I mean yes it can do 1300 wpn dmg but it costs 2 skill slots and has 60 sec cd!! Worth it? Not in my opinion.. You will have way too much downtime waiting for cooldowns.
I think a sacrifice build can be viable but I also think that any sacrifice build will require grave injustice.
Spirit walk seems a more viable spell if you are running hardcore, ignoring damage while healing you or something, an oops moment spell.
I don't think you understand how Spirit Walk works. You can get hit while Spirit Walk is active. In fact, if you take too much damage while spirit walk is active the skill will cancel
Darnit. Oh well, go for horrify instead then. Spirit walk must be an extremely shitty skill if it doesnt even protect you during that measly 2sec.
Yeah... the base skill is crap imo but I like the mana regen rune for it so I include it some of my builds. It can be good with gruesome feast to pick up hard to reach health globes though.
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http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#SaYVjZ!YdW!aaZZZb
pros:
1) Effective against single and multiple targets with locust swarm, darts and GotD
2) Super effective Crowd control with dogs, mass confusion and GotD
3) You can even be a party healer with the much increased chance for health globe drop (Final Gift and Death is life), and you reap the benefit by having Gruesome Feast, which recovers your mana (not like this build is mana intensive) and further increases your damage.
4) BEST AOE nuke in the whole damn game PERIOID 4 dogs x 275% sacrifise x 1.2 (pierce the veil)= 1320% weapon damage nuke to the area! can be further increased by Gruesome Feast.
5) near constant supply of "bombs" zdogs with summon, next of kin, and devolution. with these 3 combined you should be able to release the "Nuke" every 30 secs.
6) with each "nuke" you get at least 1-3 health globes produced by YOU (see point 3)
7) Great consistent single target/boss dps with out sacrifise [(360+20)/8 +180]*1.2 = 273% weapon per second! can be further increased by GF.
8) This build can be achieve as early as level 34! which is only the start of Nightmare
9) Locust swarm can be changed to another skill to provide additional damage source (fire locust/bat or haunt) in high levels, this way you will have 3 damage source (poison, fire and physical)
10) Flexibility to swap passives GF -> jungle fortitude and/or Pov -> Bad Medicne to a more defensive build. sacrifising damage for defence
Con.
1) lack of escape mechanism. this is however backed up by 3 crowd controls, as long as you don't make silly mistakes by running ahead of your dogs with out GotD up and MC on cd you should be fine. if anything goes wrong (waller or vortex) just press that nuke bottom and everything will be alright ;).
2) again, no defensive passive and escape mechanism is probably the biggest flaw in this build, cant think of anything else.
Example battle scenarios :
1) regular monsters: let dogs run ahead, GotD, swarm, pew pew pew to finish
2) Rare monster packs: dogs ahead, Gotd. Swam, Sacrifise Boom!. should have 1-2 dogs left due to next of kin, resummon dog and finish remaining monsters with dart and swarm.
3) champion monster packs: Gotd, Swarm, MC + Sacrifise together -> should have 3-4 dogs left due to devolution and next of kin. Sacrifice again, resummon, sacrifice again if nessasary, if not just finish off with darts and swarm. I really don't think there will be monster packs that can survive 3x1370% aoe + aoe from swarm and gotd and still be alive after...
4) Boss without summons: let dogs tank while you dot and dart the boss, when 1 is about to die sacrifise, resummon, kite boss with gotd while dps with swarm and dart. Sacrifise when necessary.
5) Boss with summons: let dogs tank while you dot and dart the boss, when 1 about to die sacrifise, resummon and continue. When boss summons use MC + Sacrifice, rinse and repeat. When there are no dogs left and all skills on CD... you just have to Gotd kite with dots and darts. Not like any other class will have it easier.
6) remember, every time you use sacrifise on champions and bosses, there will be 1-2 health globes on the ground, save those when you make a mistake.
That is all for the build explanation, let me know if you think this build may or may not work in inferno. If i play solo I will always have templar with me. critizems welcome, as long as you back them up with reasoning.
Thanks and Regards,
There are only 2 things I would change:
1.) Grasp of the dead rune. It seems like unbreakable grasp would be much better. You'll need the kiting power for when you blow up your dogs. I'm willing to bet that even if some dogs respawn from your sacrifice, the monsters will run straight for you when you blow them up. Also, you can get unlucky and get 0 dogs to respawn.
2.) I would possibly think about changing the Locusts rune as well. Since you won't be using mana much, I think it would be better to use searing locusts. To make up for the slower infection spread time, you'll just want to cast locusts 2-3 times instead of just once. I think you'll have the mana to do so since your other damage spell is basically free.
I would be a little worried about how this build performs in Inferno. The dogs won't have any DR so they may die pretty quickly. Also, Mass confusion will be less effective since the monsters will have added resistance to CC effects. If this is a problem you may have to drop pierce or veil to pick up some DR... whichever is granting the least damage. With the amount of health globes dropped from this build... I bet it'll be pierce.
Don't forget though their positioning cannot be 100% controlled so the damage tends to be slightly more random than that (specially if you want to "focus" on one target).
Also, I don't think Zombie Dogs can trully be called crowd control. More like a diversion, but not true crowd control (disable).
Another thing, it could happen that you get a little unlucky with those "chances to spawn" and have no Zombie Dogs in the middle of a boss/champion/rare fight. Managing cooldowns would be very important.
I didn't think of the synergy between the two before I posted. I can understand the choice now but until we really get to use mass confusion a lot I do not think that we can make any decisions on its effectiveness. I am not too sure if it was ever in beta, I didn't get a chance to try it, but after watching the official video on the skill it looks like it does have a chance to not land and the range of the ability seemed quite small.
My current build for sub 30 was going to use mass confusion but I later decided that horrify would fit it more since I am looking for synergy out of that particular skill's role.
if you look at the combined damage potential from swam+darts+gotd it comes down to swam (45% wd/s) + darts (180%wd/s) + gotd (20%wd/s) = 245% wd/s times 1.2 (PtV) = 294 wd/s
that is close to 300% wd/s you are dishing out including a pretty decent 60% slow on top of. so even if you are bad luck Brian and left with no dogs you can still kite while doing decent damage.
For those who is worried about mana, swarm is a dot, which means you don't need to spam it like firebat. on single target you cast once every 8 seconds, on multi target you probably only need to cast twice thanks to pestilence rune. that means 250/8 = 31 mana per sec... spamming toads cost more than that. other than swarm there is no mana heavy spells, so mana is a non-issue in this build, thats why i picked PtV as third passive.
lets look at it this way, firebat are 220% damage, lets say it fires once per second, so over 8 seconds it will cost 122*8=976 mana to maintain 220% weapon damage/s
if you use swarm once, then spam darts that is 225% damage per second, over 8 seconds it will cost 196(swarm) + 80 (8darts) = 276 mana to maintain.
I know i ignored multi target potential of spamming bats, but against single target dot + darts will be much more efficient.
I don't know about you but i find soul harvest hard to use during beta, the time i spend running into middle of the mob to havest and run out to avoid damage, might as well use that 3 seconds to kill. not to mention during harder difficulty, you might get 1 shot if you run in between 5 mobs...
So you swapped out Locust Swarm for arguably one of the most mana intensive spells. I am convinced that Firebats is a fantastic spell, but, as of right now, you're out of mana in roughly 4 seconds since it's a channeled spell. Of course your rune choice will more than likely change how you spam it (such as Hungry Bats, so you can cast less and they seek out enemies).
Anyway, for the OP's build, Sacrifice is not the focus. The purpose for Sacrifice in this build is to gain a little extra damage to explode your dogs to get health orbs (as well as potentially not kill some of those dogs) which would then proc Gruesome Feast to buff your damage. You would cast GotD or Mass Confusion and Locust Swarm once on packs of enemies, then pick everyone off with Darts, a super spammable spell, while Locust Swarm spreads. Thus, mana regen is of no real concern for this build. Granted, you would never want to skip it altogether, but for a build like this, it's non-essential.
Like I said before this build is not focused on sacrifise. Sacrifice is just there to provide easier time with big bad champion packs. How often do you come across champion packs, I wish they come up as often as once every 60 second...
This build is completely viable with decent damage, best cc in the game (imagine confused inferno monsters, unless they immune), good slow and good distraction provided by 4 dogs when they are alive. What else do you need?
Don't forget the rune for sacrifise and mass confusion also spawns more dogs, so you can detonate them way more often than once every 60 seconds.
I think a sacrifice build can be viable but I also think that any sacrifice build will require grave injustice.
I don't think you understand how Spirit Walk works. You can get hit while Spirit Walk is active. In fact, if you take too much damage while spirit walk is active the skill will cancel
Yeah... the base skill is crap imo but I like the mana regen rune for it so I include it some of my builds. It can be good with gruesome feast to pick up hard to reach health globes though.