Im new to this forum but i wanted to stop by and share some info on things ive realized with the WD. My Battle Tag is Deuces#1508 btw if you guys have any questions. I will make this short for now becuase im at work but will be back to go into some real detail and number crunch/ theory craft to explain why i am doing things like im doing but for now here goes.
Im Deuces....i play a WD...im 60 and im currently soloing through Inferno. I dont use vision quest, i dont use bats...I dont use a two handed weapon. I stopped trying to fit the square peg into the round hole late Hell difficulty. Im a WD tank and Im darn near unkillable. i dropped my dps from the 25k glass cannon to the 8k base (boostable with Soul Harvest) Aoe unkillable Freak of Nature that i am now. For those that are interested in something Different, im about to share some information that ive found with some buddys that work for me. Ill update this tonight with much more info (im at work) but for some reason i cant post on the diablo3 forums so i thought i would come here and share some of my findings. Until i can go into more detail ill make it short and sweet.
Ive got 42k Health, 50% reduction from armor and 50% reduction from all resistances atm, still working on making those higher. Take into account another 20% reduction through passive and another 20% reduction from Poison passive. i regen health through 3 abilitys...soul harvest, spirit walk and big bad voodoo totem. I dont kill fast, but i kill consistently. I use a main hand and a shield. It works for me.
More details on this to come, but for those that are interested...think about it and try it out.
Are you actualy soloing something else than act 1? Because I'm one of those vision quest/bat freak and have been farming act 1 solo for 2 days now with barely no effort but act 2 is simply too much of a step up for me to be doing anything.
I'm only at 14.3k dps right now and I feel it's abysmal compared to what you'd want at that point so I can't really imagine living through the damage with only 8k.
Now if you're actualy pulling this off then please share, I'm insterested to know.
Im still playing with the details. At the moment though Im running the final firebomb and locusts swarm with mana regen. Bb voodoo with life regen. Soul harvest and spirit walk with life regen. And haunt with life regen. I promise to go into much more detail tonight when i get home. There have been some other situational builds I've tried that work well also.
I think this might be what I'm going to be working towards, as you can see I am going to be going for a Spirit Walk, Siphon/Mass confuse, run out, slow, Hex, and spam bat kind of thing for very difficult champ packs where I actually can get free and pull off the combo.
I like the +20% damage buffs to the mobs and I like the super-firebats spam build. So I think this might work in some situation.
Though really it's about what you're going up against, if it's Fast/Walling/Immune/Jailer you probably might need something to engage first and get yourself some space. Might go with this instead if they're stunnable: http://eu.battle.net...RdUT!UbV!aaZZZc
the mana regen atm may not be needed as i dont really having anything thats heavy on the mana usage. Haunt with life regen is awesome though. Keep in mind that you can haunt more than one target and as they tick it stacks the life regen. gear you are looking for is + armor, + resists +vit and + int. Get some Life steal and some + to life regen but dont go overboard on it. passives atm that are working best for me are the -20% damage taken. -20% damage delt if posioned and the reduce cool down with +mana and health on kill. this reduction lets you use spirit walk and soul harvest along with voodoo totem alot as long as you are killing at a decent pace and you will almost always have a 5 stack of soul harvest to help compensate for the loss of damage. I am not sold on the firebomb rune quite yet but it does do decent aoe damage (giving more life back with lifesteal) to a wise radius of enemies. Again ill get into a lot of number crunching detail tonight with you guys on this when i get back to my computer.
i would choose my own religion and worship my own spirit, but if he ever preached to me i wouldn't want to hear it. i'd drop him, a forgotten god, languishing in shame; and then if i hit stormy seas, i'd have myself to blame.
Ok sorry i havent gotten to this sooner. Working a long stretch this week and its got me occupied. Heres some more info on the build though and a quick run down of the concept of damage reduction and why i chose what i chose along with a link to the build im playing with at the moment.
First though i wanna say a little about damage reduction in conjunction with passives and armor for the WD, and why i use a shield in conjunction with some life steal. A shield is simple, more armor means more damage reduction at the cost of some damage. realistically though we can make up for some of the damage loss through soul harvest being that you will be able to get a 5 stack and keep it at all times. Get a goos shield with a good chance to block and you are looking at taking upwards of 2-3k damage off with you block. Doesn't sound like much but after you calculate damage its a good bit.
example#1:
Lets say a mob in hell hits for 40k damage = 40,000
with 20% less damage passive that turns into = 32,000
take another 20% off from having it poisoned = 25,600
Now armor comes into calculation. As of now i have roughtly 55% reduction from armor. but for ease lets just say 50%
now we take the damage above and we get 25600 x .45 = 11520
After thats calculated we take into account our resistances. Right now im easily sitting at 50% reduction to all types of damage. more for fire and poison but lets just go with the average of 50%
we get 11520 x .5 = 5760
we have now reduced 40k of damage to a reasonable 5760 damage but thats still alot of damage.
block is then calculated to cut that damage so 20% of the time you are taking 2-3k less leaving a measly 2-3k damage taken per hit
Haunt with life steal is ticking for 173 life regen per sec PER MOB. if you arent casting this on multiple mobs you arent doing something right. but for now lets just consider 1 mob. 2% life steal is reasonably easy to get on your gear and with a good weapon you will be seeing some good returns with the spells chosen. life steal affects every tick of every mob hit with locust swarm, it also gives life back on every tic of haunt on top of the life gained back from the rune itself. Ghost bomb does good damage at the initial 8 yards of impact and decent damage further out (giving back 2% life from all the damage done. these three spells can all be active at the same time.
My life regen from this alone is boosted to roughly 1k per second while im fighting packs. so we go back to the
5.6k damage and soak some more. im running 200life regen per sec on my gear at the moment to help soak up a little more.
now kick in spirit walk and you regen more when needed and soul harvest to boost more. Voodoo totem for the Oh ^&*t situations when you need lots of life regen for large packs and bosses. and being that you are in the mix with all of these mobs your last passive will reduce your cooldowns as you kill mobs giving you even more usage of spirit walk, soul harvest and voodoo totem.
at the moment i usually go into a pack of mobs by pulling with haunt on 3-4 targets then follow with locust swarm when they hit melee range to get mana back and reduce damage. soul harvest haunt 3-4 more reapply locust and then start ghost bombing. So far this is working quite well and farming has been pretty safe.
some notes. You need a good damage one hander to make up for the loss of damage. You need good resists, and life pool. I look for int, vit, +armor + resist gear on just about everything. Look for a shield with at least 20% block and high block damage reduction.
I personally feel that confuse with either the stun or the CDR is one of the best ways to deal with non bossses. And since bosses are easier anything at all can work for them. I don't have quite the tankyness that you do, however It looks like something I'd like to try.
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If that made sense to you, Bravo! I think I even confused myself...
At the moment regular mobs are a joke. I dont even lose life to them. Im taking less than 1k damage a hit from them and my life steal more than keeps me topped off. The only time you really even have to use any of your defensive cooldowns are on champion mob packs. Then back to the regulars to get your cooldown back up on Voodoo Totem. Of course im sitting at 42k health atm
Right now Im still getting through act one. Haven't had much time due to work progress Im still in the phase of collecting heto play. Next real grind fest will be Wednesday. Played for a couple of hours last night before nodding off and Im nearing the end of act 1. Ill keep this updated as i progress. Im still gearing into inferno gear also so Im only expecting this to get better.
Well let me know how it works in Act 2. As my gear has gotten better, Act 1 is starting to become pretty easy and even my glass cannon build can take quite a few hits before I die.
However, there is a HUGE jump in damage output in Act 2 and I pretty much get 1 shot. That might be an issue for your tank build if it can't keep up.
It's kind of ironic... Inferno Act 1 is hard until you get Inferno Act 1 gear. Maybe Act 2 will be hard until you get act 2 gear? The problem is... how do you get gear if you get 1 shot?? Funny.
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Im Deuces....i play a WD...im 60 and im currently soloing through Inferno. I dont use vision quest, i dont use bats...I dont use a two handed weapon. I stopped trying to fit the square peg into the round hole late Hell difficulty. Im a WD tank and Im darn near unkillable. i dropped my dps from the 25k glass cannon to the 8k base (boostable with Soul Harvest) Aoe unkillable Freak of Nature that i am now. For those that are interested in something Different, im about to share some information that ive found with some buddys that work for me. Ill update this tonight with much more info (im at work) but for some reason i cant post on the diablo3 forums so i thought i would come here and share some of my findings. Until i can go into more detail ill make it short and sweet.
Ive got 42k Health, 50% reduction from armor and 50% reduction from all resistances atm, still working on making those higher. Take into account another 20% reduction through passive and another 20% reduction from Poison passive. i regen health through 3 abilitys...soul harvest, spirit walk and big bad voodoo totem. I dont kill fast, but i kill consistently. I use a main hand and a shield. It works for me.
More details on this to come, but for those that are interested...think about it and try it out.
I'm only at 14.3k dps right now and I feel it's abysmal compared to what you'd want at that point so I can't really imagine living through the damage with only 8k.
Now if you're actualy pulling this off then please share, I'm insterested to know.
I think this might be what I'm going to be working towards, as you can see I am going to be going for a Spirit Walk, Siphon/Mass confuse, run out, slow, Hex, and spam bat kind of thing for very difficult champ packs where I actually can get free and pull off the combo.
I like the +20% damage buffs to the mobs and I like the super-firebats spam build. So I think this might work in some situation.
Though really it's about what you're going up against, if it's Fast/Walling/Immune/Jailer you probably might need something to engage first and get yourself some space. Might go with this instead if they're stunnable:
http://eu.battle.net...RdUT!UbV!aaZZZc
So far up to NM act 2 I've yet to really have to change out of my current spec which is:
http://eu.battle.net...RdUT!XbV!aaZZZZ
Build currently looks like this http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#heUdSQ!ZcT!cacZZY
First though i wanna say a little about damage reduction in conjunction with passives and armor for the WD, and why i use a shield in conjunction with some life steal. A shield is simple, more armor means more damage reduction at the cost of some damage. realistically though we can make up for some of the damage loss through soul harvest being that you will be able to get a 5 stack and keep it at all times. Get a goos shield with a good chance to block and you are looking at taking upwards of 2-3k damage off with you block. Doesn't sound like much but after you calculate damage its a good bit.
example#1:
Lets say a mob in hell hits for 40k damage = 40,000
with 20% less damage passive that turns into = 32,000
take another 20% off from having it poisoned = 25,600
Now armor comes into calculation. As of now i have roughtly 55% reduction from armor. but for ease lets just say 50%
now we take the damage above and we get 25600 x .45 = 11520
After thats calculated we take into account our resistances. Right now im easily sitting at 50% reduction to all types of damage. more for fire and poison but lets just go with the average of 50%
we get 11520 x .5 = 5760
we have now reduced 40k of damage to a reasonable 5760 damage but thats still alot of damage.
block is then calculated to cut that damage so 20% of the time you are taking 2-3k less leaving a measly 2-3k damage taken per hit
Haunt with life steal is ticking for 173 life regen per sec PER MOB. if you arent casting this on multiple mobs you arent doing something right. but for now lets just consider 1 mob. 2% life steal is reasonably easy to get on your gear and with a good weapon you will be seeing some good returns with the spells chosen. life steal affects every tick of every mob hit with locust swarm, it also gives life back on every tic of haunt on top of the life gained back from the rune itself. Ghost bomb does good damage at the initial 8 yards of impact and decent damage further out (giving back 2% life from all the damage done. these three spells can all be active at the same time.
My life regen from this alone is boosted to roughly 1k per second while im fighting packs. so we go back to the
5.6k damage and soak some more. im running 200life regen per sec on my gear at the moment to help soak up a little more.
now kick in spirit walk and you regen more when needed and soul harvest to boost more. Voodoo totem for the Oh ^&*t situations when you need lots of life regen for large packs and bosses. and being that you are in the mix with all of these mobs your last passive will reduce your cooldowns as you kill mobs giving you even more usage of spirit walk, soul harvest and voodoo totem.
at the moment i usually go into a pack of mobs by pulling with haunt on 3-4 targets then follow with locust swarm when they hit melee range to get mana back and reduce damage. soul harvest haunt 3-4 more reapply locust and then start ghost bombing. So far this is working quite well and farming has been pretty safe.
some notes. You need a good damage one hander to make up for the loss of damage. You need good resists, and life pool. I look for int, vit, +armor + resist gear on just about everything. Look for a shield with at least 20% block and high block damage reduction.
I currently run a squishy build but it does just fine in Act 1. Act 1 doesn't hit that hard. Act 2 however...
However, there is a HUGE jump in damage output in Act 2 and I pretty much get 1 shot. That might be an issue for your tank build if it can't keep up.
It's kind of ironic... Inferno Act 1 is hard until you get Inferno Act 1 gear. Maybe Act 2 will be hard until you get act 2 gear? The problem is... how do you get gear if you get 1 shot?? Funny.