Poison Dart: Descent single target dmg, but the primary problem is that it's not spammable on a single target without a large loss in dmg, as DoTs don't stack.
Splinters: Great single target, and cheap. Numbing Dart: Sucks PvM, maybe usable in PvP but seems lackluster compared to Haunt - grasping spirit. Spined Dart: One would have to use this about 10 times to gain enough mana to cast one high dmg spell. Flaming Dart: Why would anyone even use this over splinters unless they just wanted fire dmg? Snake to the face: Only seems useful in PvP.
Corpse Spiders: Descent single target dmg, but their effectiveness is based completely on the mobs health and how well you aim.
Blazing Spiders: 31% more Damage is fairly good. Spider Queen: No info Leaping Spiders:They get into position quicker, and do more dmg. This drastically helps to offset the aim and mob HP problem that plagues this skill. Widowmaker: Could potentially return quite a bit of mana. Medusa Spiders: Seems rather crappy. Even if spammed it would seemingly only be effective at slowing a few mobs. Far too much chance involved.
Plague of Toads: Medium ranged skill that has a small aoe component.
Explosive Toads: More damage, and explosions. Toad of Hugeness: CC's one mob and does mediocre dmg. Hex seems infinitely better. Rain of Toads: What is the area? Addling Toads: 15% chance to make your opponents fight for you for 4 seconds. Toad Affinity: Crap. How much could you spam this to care enough about the mana cost?
Firebomb:Cheap long ranged AoE, but doesn't do much dmg.
Flash Fire: Removes the small area of effect feature, but allows it to jump to multiple targets, thus making it quite powerful in medium to large groups. Up to 385% weapon dmg on 7+ targets. Roll the Bones: Allow the skull to bounce up to two times. Even if it doesn't direct itself at other targets, it should be quite good at mobs in a line. Fire Pit: +24% dmg if they stand there for 3 seconds....crap. Pyrogeist: Turn a spammable single target dmg ability into a mediocre non-spammable single target dmg ability... Ghost Bomb:+20% dmg in a huge aoe. Now look at firepit, scratch your head and laugh.
Grasp of the Dead: Great AoE slow with a decent radius and dmg.
Unbreakable Grasp: Increased Slow Amount, good stuff. Groping Eels: 30% more dmg, good stuff. Death is life: 5% chance is pretty low, but there is some synergy with certain builds that could make it worthwhile. Desperate Grasp: -2 seconds from cooldown. At higher level of play this might become useful. Rain of Corpses: Lose your slow component, but does massive dmg in that area. The only problem is that WD's rather lack a replacement aoe slow.
Firebats: Solid Frontal cone damage, but requires you to fight quite close.
Dire Bats: Lost the front cone, but gain a arge damage increase, and large range increase. Vampire Bats: Max health and dmg output is unknown, thus making this skill an unknown. Plague Bats: Slow dmg increases usually mean that you will rarely be able to build up to the max, as you need to remain mobile. Though there seems to be some builds that prefer mid range combat. Hungry Bats: Great single target dmg with homing capability. Cloud of Bats: Bats spawn on you, so you have to be close to danger to do similar dmg....
Haunt: Dot that does a ton of single target dmg, its just too bad the runes seem so mediocre.
Consuming Spirit: Gain 155 life per second, but what is max health and dmg output of mobs? It also doesn't scale, maybe OP when leveling? Resentful Spirit: 0% dmg for 0 seconds.... Lingering Spirit: If there is no target, the spirit lingers for 10 seconds. What are the odds I will be in the same area after the mobs die fighting? Seem pretty slim. Also, I don't believe the duration resets when it jumps. Grasping Spirit: 30% slow. Great in PvP. Draining Spirit: You gain about as much mana as it costs, but its not all that expensive.
Locust Swarm: Does massive amounts of dmg, and jumps to multiple targets, but cost a shitload of mana.
Pestilence: Jumps twice instead of once, thus exponentially increasing the speed at which they spread on large groups. Devouring Swarm: Could potentially offset the huge cost, but only on medium sized groups. Cloud of Insects: They swarm takes time to spread, effectively giving you sufficient time to kill the guys in the front. By the time you get to the guys in the back the likely haven't been diseased very long. Increasing the duration in most situations would seem to accomplish littel to nothing. Diseased Swarm: They have to be killed by the locust to spawn the cloud, and the cloud doesn't do all that much dmg. Searing Locusts: 30% dmg increase, good stuff.
Rabid Dogs: Dots don't stack, and the dmg increase is pathetic anyways. Final Gift: They can't possibly die often enough for this to be terribly useful. Life Link: Not bad for PvP, but inferior to leeching beasts for PvM. Burning Dogs: 2% dmg, enough said. Leeching Beasts: They don't hit hard, but it helps to keep them and you alive. They are solely tanks after the changes, and this is the only rune that reflects that.
Horrify: Mass AoE CC, but it causes the mobs to run in all directions, this eliminating capabilities with AoE.
Phobia: +2 seconds on fear. Maybe useful on higher levels. Stalker: +20% increased run speed. meh. You would likely get further away with the extra 2 seconds, but it would help you get away assuming some mobs didn't get feared. Face of Death: Doubles the diameter, making it fear almost everything. Frightening Aspect: 100% armor after casting for 8 seconds. Seens lackluster compared to the other defensive options. The mobs should be feared for 4 seconds + run time equates to this being near useless. Ruthless Terror: Terrible. This spell is situational in iteslf and has a CD, thus the average mana gain is nothing extraordinary.
Spirit Walk: Why would this really ever be useful? And in the rare situations it would be useful, other defensive skills would be better.
Jaunt: Increases the duration to 50%. Honored Guest: Regen 30% of mana Umbral Shock: 85% dmg after spirit walk ends...Aren't you supposed to be putting range between you and them? Isn't that the point? Severance: 100% weapon dmg when you run through enemies. Meh, how often would you want to run through mobs? Healing Journey: Regen 14% of max life.
Hex: Fetish that periodically CC's, and causes them to take more dmg.
Hedge Magic: Periodically heals allies for 1861. Is this a lot? Does it heal pets over you? Jinx: Increases the dmg chickens take to 20%. Not bad, assuming they can chicken champions. Angry Chicken: So the enemy turns into a chicken and has a chance to die? Painful Transformation: 12% dmg ensures this can't be good, no matter how long they stay as chickens. Unstable Form: Hexed enemies explode when they die. This is decent considering they take more dmg than the other mobs around.
Soul Harvest: Great dmg buff, however, its tricky to apply and diminishes in value with gear.
Swallow Your Soul: Just bad. The buff last 30 seconds, and an extra tad of mana over that time frame is not even remotely worth it. Siphon: 2171 life per target...Sounds good, but how much is that compared to your max? Langush: 60% slow added to harvested enemies. Might make the buff less dangerous to apply, but nothing amazing. Soul to Waste: Doubles the duration, thus you need to use it far less. The problem is a lot of your time is actually spent running between areas, so the added duration doesn't do a heck of a lot. Vengeful Spirit: 70% wpn dmg. Not a lot of dmg, but not bad considering you get it for buffing yourself.
Sacrifice: Large dmg, but you lose your tanky dogs.
Black Blood: Huge slow in a large area, and for a long duration. Next of Kin: Only really useful for a build built around sacrifice. Pride: Gain Gain 300 mana per dog. Almost certainly restores almost all your mana. For the Master: 6200 Life per dog. Likely nearly a full heal. Provoke the Pack: 5% dmg boost per dog for 30 seconds is fair. Doesn't seem worth it to lose your pets for a damage buff.
Mass Confusion: Forces your enemy to fight themselves for 12 seconds. 1 min CD
Unstable Realm: -15 Sec from CD. Pretty good. Devolutiong: Not bad, particularly useful for a sacrifice build. Mass Hysteria: More CC, good. Paranoia: +20% dmg Mass Hallucination: 22% wpn dmg per second spirit rampages, but how big/fast is it.
Leprous Zombie: How long does the vapor stay, regardless it seems to kinda suck. Undeath: Potentially triples the range. Not bad. Wave of Zombies: 3* 72 = 216% Hardly even a dmg increse & hard to aim. Explosive Beasts: 236% dmg explosive + AoE + fast + longer range Zombies Bears: Huge dmg boost, but short range.
Spirit Barrage: Rather expensive, but not much bang for the buck.
The Spirit is Wiling: Reduces mana cost by almost half, but the dmg isn't much better than splinters, so why even bother? Well of Souls: Not bad, extra 90% wpn dmg to random targets. Phantasm: Mediocre AoE DoT. Phlebotomize: Good amount of lifesteal. Manitou: Not bad, passive dmg is good.
Acid Rain: Larger Area. Lob Blob Bomb: Slightly more DoT dmg Slow Burn: Slightly more DoT dmg Kiss of Death: Need to be in close to do basically the same dmg....maybe even in a smaller area. Corpse Bomb: More dmg, and its instant.
Wall of Zombies: Good defensive skill, with good dmg, but rather long CD now.
Barricade: Double the size, double the protection. Unrelenting Grip: Great slow component. Creepers: Does it make holes in the wall? Are they invincible pets for 5 seconds? Sounds good. Pile On: Lose all the defense, but huge dmg CD. Dead Rush: So zombie chargers that split up and go in all directions?
Humongoid: Cleave would be a huge dmg increase on average. Relentless Giant: Huge Increase in his power when you need him the most. Wrathful Protector: Absolutely terrible. Turn your best Pet into a bad dps CD. Big Stinker: Decent dmg, would work well with bad medicine. Bruiser: Periodically stuns, but how often?
Big Bad Voodoo: 20% Atk and movement speed boost for whole group. Primarily for group play.
Jungle Drums: +10 second duration Rain Dance: Huge mana regen. Slam Dance: 30% dmg increase Ghost Trance: 5% heal per second Boogie Man: Good for spawing dogs for sacrifice build or on boss fight.
Fetish Army: Summon 5 annoying fetishes. 20% wpn dmg each for 20 seconds. 2000% wpn dmg assuming they don't die.
Fetish Ambush: 250% wpn dmg to nearby enemies when they are summoned. Sounds good, but do you want to be surrounded by mobs in your face? Sounds like a bad game plan to me. Devoted following: -30 second CD. Ok, but it needs to be worth a skill slot for me to care. Legion of Daggers: Summons 8 feishes. Potential 3200% wpn dmg. Tiki Torches: Summons 2 fetishes that AoE. Meh, the legion of daggers yields 60% more, this is only 30%. Chances they AoE enough to merit the loss in #s and dmg seems slim. Head Hunters: Summons 2 ranged fetishs. Meh, the melee ones seem pretty quick.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?"
I'm..... I'm sorry. Not to troll or flame, but how can you rate on skills you've never used?! There's so many little factors that don't show up on the tooltip! GJ on putting this together, but it honestly means nothing.
I'm..... I'm sorry. Not to troll or flame, but how can you rate on skills you've never used?! There's so many little factors that don't show up on the tooltip! GJ on putting this together, but it honestly means nothing.
No offense, but because I am smarter than both of you.
Though I am not infallible, which one don't you agree with?
Hmm... yes. You are clearly more intelligent.
Edit; Whelp, seeing how another one of your threads is quickly turning into a flame war, I bid you good day sir.
By god...you don't know jack shyt about the WD....or even basic math for that matter....
Spinned Dart: Let's say I have an attack speed of 2.0, and a mana regen rate of 30 per second. If I use Spinned Dart for 1 second, my mana regeneration rate will shoot up to 58 mps. That's major increase.
Spider Queen: AoE deals 16% damage per second as poison for 15 seconds. It's called REASEARCH. n00b
Grouping Eels: I did a extensive post about this awhile ago that I posted on bnet forums. Sadly, everybody was to preoccupied with sharing their pointless WD names and it didn't get over 15 views. Grouping Eels's damage is multiplied by your attack speed. The reason skill calc show's 26% is because it's not being multiplied by anything. With a 2.0 atk speed, GE does 52% w-dps and it reflects that number in the tool tip.
Spirit Barrage/Willing Spirit: Unlike Poison Dart, Spirit Barrage homes in on targets *reaserch*. Therefore, it's better.
As a result it costs 11x more than Poison Dart. Do you see why Willing Spirit might be a good choice? Combo it with Blood Ritual and SB will have a net cost of 48 mana per cast. Willing Spirit is the perfect un-kiteable skill (PvP).
Draining Spirit: *sigh* Ok...let's say you have a mana regen of 30 per second (again), and you cast Draining Spirit on 1 enemies.
Do you know what that adds up to? You're mana regen will shoot up to 40mps for 12 seconds. It will only take 2.25 seconds to recover the mana lost.
Rabid Dogs: Poison damage to proc Bad Med *derp*
Frightening Aspect: "100% armor after casting for 8 seconds. Seens lackluster compared to the other defensive options" .......No
Without the right rune, poison dart just sucks because dots don't stack.
The generation skills mostly suck...some can yield huge chunks of your mana on use. Why would you even bother with these shitty skills that give single digits back?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
One is never hurt by being given additional choices, only by taking them away. A QUADRILLION MAGIC FIND is worthless if you can't kill shit!
It's not clear at all what "angry chicken" does. Who, exactly, is turning into the chicken? The fetish? You? The hexed enemies? It's not clear.
If you are turning into an exploding chicken; it's the most awesome skill ever developed. For any game. Ever. I doubt this is the case though. I'm sure it means the fetish.
Cuz that skill kinda sucks, really. The fetish doesn't turn foes into chickens often enough. A spell that does damage is far more effective. This -might- be okay in like inferno. But there, I'd much rather choose mass confusion over this any day.
Of all the classes, WD has by far the most difficult choices. Most of them are predicated on how far you want to be away from the action.
If you like being up close, I'm not sure anything will beat explosive toads. That's a single target -or- aoe destroyer. But you have to be really close or their effectiveness is severely reduced.
Cloud of Bats: Bats spawn on you, so you have to be close to danger to do similar dmg....
Yeah, this really depends on your build. Like most of your "red" skills you are assuming things. If you want to be a close range WD. Then you would want cloud of bats. And you'd want explosive toads. There are viable options for having this class close to the action - spirit walk with severance for example (although this was severely nerfed a few betas ago - used to be 375% weapon damage per second). Spirit walk with cloud of bats sounds pretty decent to me as a run thru the crowd combo. Start it off with a soul harvest and good times. Good times.
Edit; Whelp, seeing how another one of your threads is quickly turning into a flame war, I bid you good day sir.
Not my fault, some people can't conduct themselves properly within threads that challenge their views.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?"
Without the right rune, poison dart just sucks because dots don't stack.
The generation skills mostly suck...some can yield huge chunks of your mana on use. Why would you even bother with these shitty skills that give single digits back?
By god...you don't know jack shyt about the WD....or even basic math for that matter....
Spinned Dart: Let's say I have an attack speed of 2.0, and a mana regen rate of 30 per second. If I use Spinned Dart for 1 second, my mana regeneration rate will shoot up to 58 mps. That's major increase.
Spider Queen: AoE deals 16% damage per second as poison for 15 seconds. It's called REASEARCH. n00b
Grouping Eels: I did a extensive post about this awhile ago that I posted on bnet forums. Sadly, everybody was to preoccupied with sharing their pointless WD names and it didn't get over 15 views. Grouping Eels's damage is multiplied by your attack speed. The reason skill calc show's 26% is because it's not being multiplied by anything. With a 2.0 atk speed, GE does 52% w-dps and it reflects that number in the tool tip.
Spirit Barrage/Willing Spirit: Unlike Poison Dart, Spirit Barrage homes in on targets *reaserch*. Therefore, it's better.
As a result it costs 11x more than Poison Dart. Do you see why Willing Spirit might be a good choice? Combo it with Blood Ritual and SB will have a net cost of 48 mana per cast. Willing Spirit is the perfect un-kiteable skill (PvP).
Draining Spirit: *sigh* Ok...let's say you have a mana regen of 30 per second (again), and you cast Draining Spirit on 1 enemies.
Do you know what that adds up to? You're mana regen will shoot up to 40mps for 12 seconds. It will only take 2.25 seconds to recover the mana lost.
Rabid Dogs: Poison damage to proc Bad Med *derp*
Frightening Aspect: "100% armor after casting for 8 seconds. Seens lackluster compared to the other defensive options" .......No
Pulling #s out of your ass doesn't change the fact you only get 14 mana from poison dart, and its hard to spam. Its crap. There are far better options for getting mana.
I was going to just red tag spider queen as I recalled it sucked, so I couldn't motivate myself to scour the internet to find the outdated details fo the skill.
I already said grouping eels were good....
Spirit barrage spirit of the willing - Its easy not to miss....unless you suck.
Haunt- Draining spirit - Why are you considering regen? That makes no sense. If its a spell that's supposed to restore mana, then it should be able to do that. This one, not so much. At best you might break even, making this rune ok.
Bad medicine pretty much sucks outside of group play, and there are far better ways to apply it beside pets.
Frightening Aspect:- Mobs are supposed to be feared, you shouldnt need an armor bonus. There are better options that this rune. Though horrify is mediocre compared to mass confusion anyways.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?"
You're not challenging anyone's views, you're spouting off crap. The only people with any expert insight at this point are Blizzard and anyone else lucky enough to be in the internal testing, and I'm fairly confident that not one of those people would call themselves an expert.
I can't even believe you put expert in the title, it just blows my mind.
You're not challenging anyone's views, you're spouting off crap. The only people with any expert insight at this point are Blizzard and anyone else lucky enough to be in the internal testing, and I'm fairly confident that not one of those people would call themselves an expert.
I can't even believe you put expert in the title, it just blows my mind.
If I wasn't challenging your views, you wouldn't even bother post.
Except maybe to say +1. But that's just boring, who wants to just take turns circle jerking?
The problem is that some people have trouble forming rebuttals in a constructive manner. They are products of the internet, so they only know how to flame, troll, insult, and act like an internet tough guy.
I think Lob Blob Bomb is a 'need more info' rune. If it is pulsing damage that can stack it may become a decent damage dealer.
I kinda thought that too. I was hesitant on it, but I generally dislike acid rain in general, so I might have been a bit bias on that one.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?"
Many of your opinions are mostly based on your ideal build... and thus don't take into consideration on how strong other skill/rune combinations could very well be quite effective.
And in all reality calling yourself an expert isn't probably the smartest thing to do, maybe saying you've studied the class thoroughly would be more accurate
It is not possible for you to be an expert when the game isn't out, and you give opinions on skills/runes you couldn't possibly have used yet even in beta. Worthless.
I think ppl who don't know much about Witch Doctor/casual/or just a bit less skilled...could use alot of these description as a starter information.
While I don't really like ur attitude, I have to disagree with ppl blaming this thread. Actually these ideas, reasonings do make sense. I think most ppl don't hit this level when it comes to understand spells, so gj.
Btw, you shouldn't jump into heated debates and flaming when someone dislikes your thread. Read there flame and move along. You have a reasoning, they just throw nonsense flame here. Well done anyway
EDIT: I think the reason why ppl start flaming is because u r a bit cocky and they r all right about that, tho because of that ppl shouldn't blame what u said for the spells.
Many of your opinions are mostly based on your ideal build... and thus don't take into consideration on how strong other skill/rune combinations could very well be quite effective.
And in all reality calling yourself an expert isn't probably the smartest thing to do, maybe saying you've studied the class thoroughly would be more accurate
That is a very distinct possibility. I tried to look at it from a buildless perspective, but I am sure bias leaked in based on my preferred ideal of how a WD should be played.
I will be honest, I put the "expert" thing in just to piss off the kiddies.
I find it makes for a better conversation when I can easily identify where everyone is coming from.
Then again, without playing the game, I am probably as close to an expert as you can get I think.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?"
Pulling #s out of your ass doesn't change the fact you only get 14 mana from poison dart, and its hard to spam. Its crap. There are far better options for getting mana.
I was going to just red tag spider queen as I recalled it sucked, so I couldn't motivate myself to scour the internet to find the outdated details fo the skill.
I already said grouping eels were good....
Spirit barrage spirit of the willing - Its easy not to miss....unless you suck.
Haunt- Draining spirit - Why are you considering regen? That makes no sense. If its a spell that's supposed to restore mana, then it should be able to do that. This one, not so much. At best you might break even, making this rune ok.
Bad medicine pretty much sucks outside of group play, and there are far better ways to apply it beside pets.
Frightening Aspect:- Mobs are supposed to be feared, you shouldnt need an armor bonus. There are better options that this rune. Though horrify is mediocre compared to mass confusion anyways.
Frightening Aspect:- Mobs are supposed to be feared, you shouldnt need an armor bonus. There are better options that this rune. Though horrify is mediocre compared to mass confusion anyways.
Haunt- Draining spirit - Why are you considering regen? That makes no sense. If its a spell that's supposed to restore mana, then it should be able to do that. This one, not so much. At best you might break even, making this rune ok.
Z-Oh my fucking god. *facepalm*
Lets say have 500 max mana and a regeneration rate of 30 mana per second. Then I cast Draining Spirit that costs 100 mana, and generates 10 mana per second. Do you see the correlation between the two bolded passages?
(500 - 100 = 400) <--- That's my total mana
... (30 + 10 = 40) <--- That's how much I'm regenerating per second
How long will it take me to regenerate the 100 mana lost from casting Draining Spirit? 2.5 fucking seconds
I'm..... I'm sorry. Not to troll or flame, but how can you rate on skills you've never used?! There's so many little factors that don't show up on the tooltip! GJ on putting this together, but it honestly means nothing.
This.
sorry bro. and your definitely no expert. your knowledge is mediocre at best
your post is nice and pretty though
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
While I disagree that you called yourself an ''expert'' of a game that isn't even out yet, I can see why this topic could be helpful, but only with skills showed in the beta (at the latest patch) since you didn't saw 1/8 of the game, didn't saw any real bosses, any real threathening packs etc, some skills you said were useless could prove the be the strongest in a build I say you can rate skills showed in the beta since you used them in several occasions, but those skills like Big Bad Voodoo that weren't ever in the beta how can you possibly claim that they are horrible, useless and that everyone should believe you without complaints?
say that for the skill/runes/passive in the beta at the latest patch and that could be good, although again mostly your opinion, we could accept it, but anything you said about things gained higher than lvl 13, are invalid
Yellow = Ok
Red = Bad
Green = Not enough Info
Poison Dart
Poison Dart: Descent single target dmg, but the primary problem is that it's not spammable on a single target without a large loss in dmg, as DoTs don't stack.
Splinters: Great single target, and cheap.
Numbing Dart: Sucks PvM, maybe usable in PvP but seems lackluster compared to Haunt - grasping spirit.
Spined Dart: One would have to use this about 10 times to gain enough mana to cast one high dmg spell.
Flaming Dart: Why would anyone even use this over splinters unless they just wanted fire dmg?
Snake to the face: Only seems useful in PvP.
Corpse Spiders
Corpse Spiders: Descent single target dmg, but their effectiveness is based completely on the mobs health and how well you aim.
Blazing Spiders: 31% more Damage is fairly good.
Spider Queen: No info
Leaping Spiders:They get into position quicker, and do more dmg. This drastically helps to offset the aim and mob HP problem that plagues this skill.
Widowmaker: Could potentially return quite a bit of mana.
Medusa Spiders: Seems rather crappy. Even if spammed it would seemingly only be effective at slowing a few mobs. Far too much chance involved.
Plague of Toads
Plague of Toads: Medium ranged skill that has a small aoe component.
Explosive Toads: More damage, and explosions.
Toad of Hugeness: CC's one mob and does mediocre dmg. Hex seems infinitely better.
Rain of Toads: What is the area?
Addling Toads: 15% chance to make your opponents fight for you for 4 seconds.
Toad Affinity: Crap. How much could you spam this to care enough about the mana cost?
Firebomb
Firebomb: Cheap long ranged AoE, but doesn't do much dmg.
Flash Fire: Removes the small area of effect feature, but allows it to jump to multiple targets, thus making it quite powerful in medium to large groups. Up to 385% weapon dmg on 7+ targets.
Roll the Bones: Allow the skull to bounce up to two times. Even if it doesn't direct itself at other targets, it should be quite good at mobs in a line.
Fire Pit: +24% dmg if they stand there for 3 seconds....crap.
Pyrogeist: Turn a spammable single target dmg ability into a mediocre non-spammable single target dmg ability...
Ghost Bomb:+20% dmg in a huge aoe. Now look at firepit, scratch your head and laugh.
Grasp of the Dead
Grasp of the Dead: Great AoE slow with a decent radius and dmg.
Unbreakable Grasp: Increased Slow Amount, good stuff.
Groping Eels: 30% more dmg, good stuff.
Death is life: 5% chance is pretty low, but there is some synergy with certain builds that could make it worthwhile.
Desperate Grasp: -2 seconds from cooldown. At higher level of play this might become useful.
Rain of Corpses: Lose your slow component, but does massive dmg in that area. The only problem is that WD's rather lack a replacement aoe slow.
Firebats
Firebats: Solid Frontal cone damage, but requires you to fight quite close.
Dire Bats: Lost the front cone, but gain a arge damage increase, and large range increase.
Vampire Bats: Max health and dmg output is unknown, thus making this skill an unknown.
Plague Bats: Slow dmg increases usually mean that you will rarely be able to build up to the max, as you need to remain mobile. Though there seems to be some builds that prefer mid range combat.
Hungry Bats: Great single target dmg with homing capability.
Cloud of Bats: Bats spawn on you, so you have to be close to danger to do similar dmg....
Haunt
Haunt: Dot that does a ton of single target dmg, its just too bad the runes seem so mediocre.
Consuming Spirit: Gain 155 life per second, but what is max health and dmg output of mobs? It also doesn't scale, maybe OP when leveling?
Resentful Spirit: 0% dmg for 0 seconds....
Lingering Spirit: If there is no target, the spirit lingers for 10 seconds. What are the odds I will be in the same area after the mobs die fighting? Seem pretty slim. Also, I don't believe the duration resets when it jumps.
Grasping Spirit: 30% slow. Great in PvP.
Draining Spirit: You gain about as much mana as it costs, but its not all that expensive.
Locust Swarm
Locust Swarm: Does massive amounts of dmg, and jumps to multiple targets, but cost a shitload of mana.
Pestilence: Jumps twice instead of once, thus exponentially increasing the speed at which they spread on large groups.
Devouring Swarm: Could potentially offset the huge cost, but only on medium sized groups.
Cloud of Insects: They swarm takes time to spread, effectively giving you sufficient time to kill the guys in the front. By the time you get to the guys in the back the likely haven't been diseased very long. Increasing the duration in most situations would seem to accomplish littel to nothing.
Diseased Swarm: They have to be killed by the locust to spawn the cloud, and the cloud doesn't do all that much dmg.
Searing Locusts: 30% dmg increase, good stuff.
Summon Zombie Dogs
Zombie Dogs: Good little tanks.
Rabid Dogs: Dots don't stack, and the dmg increase is pathetic anyways.
Final Gift: They can't possibly die often enough for this to be terribly useful.
Life Link: Not bad for PvP, but inferior to leeching beasts for PvM.
Burning Dogs: 2% dmg, enough said.
Leeching Beasts: They don't hit hard, but it helps to keep them and you alive. They are solely tanks after the changes, and this is the only rune that reflects that.
Horrify
Horrify: Mass AoE CC, but it causes the mobs to run in all directions, this eliminating capabilities with AoE.
Phobia: +2 seconds on fear. Maybe useful on higher levels.
Stalker: +20% increased run speed. meh. You would likely get further away with the extra 2 seconds, but it would help you get away assuming some mobs didn't get feared.
Face of Death: Doubles the diameter, making it fear almost everything.
Frightening Aspect: 100% armor after casting for 8 seconds. Seens lackluster compared to the other defensive options. The mobs should be feared for 4 seconds + run time equates to this being near useless.
Ruthless Terror: Terrible. This spell is situational in iteslf and has a CD, thus the average mana gain is nothing extraordinary.
Spirit Walk
Spirit Walk: Why would this really ever be useful? And in the rare situations it would be useful, other defensive skills would be better.
Jaunt: Increases the duration to 50%.
Honored Guest: Regen 30% of mana
Umbral Shock: 85% dmg after spirit walk ends...Aren't you supposed to be putting range between you and them? Isn't that the point?
Severance: 100% weapon dmg when you run through enemies. Meh, how often would you want to run through mobs?
Healing Journey: Regen 14% of max life.
Hex
Hex: Fetish that periodically CC's, and causes them to take more dmg.
Hedge Magic: Periodically heals allies for 1861. Is this a lot? Does it heal pets over you?
Jinx: Increases the dmg chickens take to 20%. Not bad, assuming they can chicken champions.
Angry Chicken: So the enemy turns into a chicken and has a chance to die?
Painful Transformation: 12% dmg ensures this can't be good, no matter how long they stay as chickens.
Unstable Form: Hexed enemies explode when they die. This is decent considering they take more dmg than the other mobs around.
Soul Harvest
Soul Harvest: Great dmg buff, however, its tricky to apply and diminishes in value with gear.
Swallow Your Soul: Just bad. The buff last 30 seconds, and an extra tad of mana over that time frame is not even remotely worth it.
Siphon: 2171 life per target...Sounds good, but how much is that compared to your max?
Langush: 60% slow added to harvested enemies. Might make the buff less dangerous to apply, but nothing amazing.
Soul to Waste: Doubles the duration, thus you need to use it far less. The problem is a lot of your time is actually spent running between areas, so the added duration doesn't do a heck of a lot.
Vengeful Spirit: 70% wpn dmg. Not a lot of dmg, but not bad considering you get it for buffing yourself.
Sacrifice
Sacrifice: Large dmg, but you lose your tanky dogs.
Black Blood: Huge slow in a large area, and for a long duration.
Next of Kin: Only really useful for a build built around sacrifice.
Pride: Gain Gain 300 mana per dog. Almost certainly restores almost all your mana.
For the Master: 6200 Life per dog. Likely nearly a full heal.
Provoke the Pack: 5% dmg boost per dog for 30 seconds is fair. Doesn't seem worth it to lose your pets for a damage buff.
Mass Confusion
Mass Confusion: Forces your enemy to fight themselves for 12 seconds. 1 min CD
Unstable Realm: -15 Sec from CD. Pretty good.
Devolutiong: Not bad, particularly useful for a sacrifice build.
Mass Hysteria: More CC, good.
Paranoia: +20% dmg
Mass Hallucination: 22% wpn dmg per second spirit rampages, but how big/fast is it.
Zombie Charger
Zombie Charger:
Leprous Zombie: How long does the vapor stay, regardless it seems to kinda suck.
Undeath: Potentially triples the range. Not bad.
Wave of Zombies: 3* 72 = 216% Hardly even a dmg increse & hard to aim.
Explosive Beasts: 236% dmg explosive + AoE + fast + longer range
Zombies Bears: Huge dmg boost, but short range.
Spirit Barrage
Spirit Barrage: Rather expensive, but not much bang for the buck.
The Spirit is Wiling: Reduces mana cost by almost half, but the dmg isn't much better than splinters, so why even bother?
Well of Souls: Not bad, extra 90% wpn dmg to random targets.
Phantasm: Mediocre AoE DoT.
Phlebotomize: Good amount of lifesteal.
Manitou: Not bad, passive dmg is good.
Acid Cloud
Acid Cloud: Huge Cost, large area, mediocre dmg.
Acid Rain: Larger Area.
Lob Blob Bomb: Slightly more DoT dmg
Slow Burn: Slightly more DoT dmg
Kiss of Death: Need to be in close to do basically the same dmg....maybe even in a smaller area.
Corpse Bomb: More dmg, and its instant.
Wall of Zombies
Wall of Zombies: Good defensive skill, with good dmg, but rather long CD now.
Barricade: Double the size, double the protection.
Unrelenting Grip: Great slow component.
Creepers: Does it make holes in the wall? Are they invincible pets for 5 seconds? Sounds good.
Pile On: Lose all the defense, but huge dmg CD.
Dead Rush: So zombie chargers that split up and go in all directions?
Gargantuan
Gargantuan: Awesome tank pet.
Humongoid: Cleave would be a huge dmg increase on average.
Relentless Giant: Huge Increase in his power when you need him the most.
Wrathful Protector: Absolutely terrible. Turn your best Pet into a bad dps CD.
Big Stinker: Decent dmg, would work well with bad medicine.
Bruiser: Periodically stuns, but how often?
Big Bad Voodoo
Big Bad Voodoo: 20% Atk and movement speed boost for whole group. Primarily for group play.
Jungle Drums: +10 second duration
Rain Dance: Huge mana regen.
Slam Dance: 30% dmg increase
Ghost Trance: 5% heal per second
Boogie Man: Good for spawing dogs for sacrifice build or on boss fight.
Fetish Army
Fetish Army: Summon 5 annoying fetishes. 20% wpn dmg each for 20 seconds. 2000% wpn dmg assuming they don't die.
Fetish Ambush: 250% wpn dmg to nearby enemies when they are summoned. Sounds good, but do you want to be surrounded by mobs in your face? Sounds like a bad game plan to me.
Devoted following: -30 second CD. Ok, but it needs to be worth a skill slot for me to care.
Legion of Daggers: Summons 8 feishes. Potential 3200% wpn dmg.
Tiki Torches: Summons 2 fetishes that AoE. Meh, the legion of daggers yields 60% more, this is only 30%. Chances they AoE enough to merit the loss in #s and dmg seems slim.
Head Hunters: Summons 2 ranged fetishs. Meh, the melee ones seem pretty quick.
Epicurus
Hmm... yes. You are clearly more intelligent.
Edit; Whelp, seeing how another one of your threads is quickly turning into a flame war, I bid you good day sir.
Spinned Dart: Let's say I have an attack speed of 2.0, and a mana regen rate of 30 per second. If I use Spinned Dart for 1 second, my mana regeneration rate will shoot up to 58 mps. That's major increase.
Spider Queen: AoE deals 16% damage per second as poison for 15 seconds. It's called REASEARCH. n00b
Grouping Eels: I did a extensive post about this awhile ago that I posted on bnet forums. Sadly, everybody was to preoccupied with sharing their pointless WD names and it didn't get over 15 views. Grouping Eels's damage is multiplied by your attack speed. The reason skill calc show's 26% is because it's not being multiplied by anything. With a 2.0 atk speed, GE does 52% w-dps and it reflects that number in the tool tip.
Spirit Barrage/Willing Spirit: Unlike Poison Dart, Spirit Barrage homes in on targets *reaserch*. Therefore, it's better.
As a result it costs 11x more than Poison Dart. Do you see why Willing Spirit might be a good choice? Combo it with Blood Ritual and SB will have a net cost of 48 mana per cast. Willing Spirit is the perfect un-kiteable skill (PvP).
Draining Spirit: *sigh* Ok...let's say you have a mana regen of 30 per second (again), and you cast Draining Spirit on 1 enemies.
Do you know what that adds up to? You're mana regen will shoot up to 40mps for 12 seconds. It will only take 2.25 seconds to recover the mana lost.
Rabid Dogs: Poison damage to proc Bad Med *derp*
Frightening Aspect: "100% armor after casting for 8 seconds. Seens lackluster compared to the other defensive options" .......No
The generation skills mostly suck...some can yield huge chunks of your mana on use. Why would you even bother with these shitty skills that give single digits back?
A QUADRILLION MAGIC FIND is worthless if you can't kill shit!
If you are turning into an exploding chicken; it's the most awesome skill ever developed. For any game. Ever. I doubt this is the case though. I'm sure it means the fetish.
Cuz that skill kinda sucks, really. The fetish doesn't turn foes into chickens often enough. A spell that does damage is far more effective. This -might- be okay in like inferno. But there, I'd much rather choose mass confusion over this any day.
Of all the classes, WD has by far the most difficult choices. Most of them are predicated on how far you want to be away from the action.
If you like being up close, I'm not sure anything will beat explosive toads. That's a single target -or- aoe destroyer. But you have to be really close or their effectiveness is severely reduced.
Yeah, this really depends on your build. Like most of your "red" skills you are assuming things. If you want to be a close range WD. Then you would want cloud of bats. And you'd want explosive toads. There are viable options for having this class close to the action - spirit walk with severance for example (although this was severely nerfed a few betas ago - used to be 375% weapon damage per second). Spirit walk with cloud of bats sounds pretty decent to me as a run thru the crowd combo. Start it off with a soul harvest and good times. Good times.
Epicurus
Read my post n00b
Pulling #s out of your ass doesn't change the fact you only get 14 mana from poison dart, and its hard to spam. Its crap. There are far better options for getting mana.
I was going to just red tag spider queen as I recalled it sucked, so I couldn't motivate myself to scour the internet to find the outdated details fo the skill.
I already said grouping eels were good....
Spirit barrage spirit of the willing - Its easy not to miss....unless you suck.
Haunt- Draining spirit - Why are you considering regen? That makes no sense. If its a spell that's supposed to restore mana, then it should be able to do that. This one, not so much. At best you might break even, making this rune ok.
Bad medicine pretty much sucks outside of group play, and there are far better ways to apply it beside pets.
Frightening Aspect:- Mobs are supposed to be feared, you shouldnt need an armor bonus. There are better options that this rune. Though horrify is mediocre compared to mass confusion anyways.
Epicurus
I can't even believe you put expert in the title, it just blows my mind.
If I wasn't challenging your views, you wouldn't even bother post.
Except maybe to say +1. But that's just boring, who wants to just take turns circle jerking?
The problem is that some people have trouble forming rebuttals in a constructive manner. They are products of the internet, so they only know how to flame, troll, insult, and act like an internet tough guy.
I kinda thought that too. I was hesitant on it, but I generally dislike acid rain in general, so I might have been a bit bias on that one.
Epicurus
And in all reality calling yourself an expert isn't probably the smartest thing to do, maybe saying you've studied the class thoroughly would be more accurate
While I don't really like ur attitude, I have to disagree with ppl blaming this thread. Actually these ideas, reasonings do make sense. I think most ppl don't hit this level when it comes to understand spells, so gj.
Btw, you shouldn't jump into heated debates and flaming when someone dislikes your thread. Read there flame and move along. You have a reasoning, they just throw nonsense flame here. Well done anyway
EDIT: I think the reason why ppl start flaming is because u r a bit cocky and they r all right about that, tho because of that ppl shouldn't blame what u said for the spells.
That is a very distinct possibility. I tried to look at it from a buildless perspective, but I am sure bias leaked in based on my preferred ideal of how a WD should be played.
I will be honest, I put the "expert" thing in just to piss off the kiddies.
I find it makes for a better conversation when I can easily identify where everyone is coming from.
Then again, without playing the game, I am probably as close to an expert as you can get I think.
Epicurus
Maybe PvP? *derp*
Z-Oh my fucking god. *facepalm*
Lets say have 500 max mana and a regeneration rate of 30 mana per second. Then I cast Draining Spirit that costs 100 mana, and generates 10 mana per second. Do you see the correlation between the two bolded passages?
(500 - 100 = 400) <--- That's my total mana
... (30 + 10 = 40) <--- That's how much I'm regenerating per second
How long will it take me to regenerate the 100 mana lost from casting Draining Spirit?
2.5 fucking seconds
Basic math buddy...
Would it be so far fetched as combine something like this?
http://us.battle.net...S...Y!Zc!.a...a
It's called "options"
This.
sorry bro. and your definitely no expert. your knowledge is mediocre at best
your post is nice and pretty though
say that for the skill/runes/passive in the beta at the latest patch and that could be good, although again mostly your opinion, we could accept it, but anything you said about things gained higher than lvl 13, are invalid
Everything I said was based on Facts, Elementry Math, and simple Logic