Having (too much) free time, I'd like to share my opinion on current WD skills and problems. Please note everything I wrote is only my opinion, it's not absolute truth, and your feelings may differ. I'm writing this from, I think the most populated wall, Inferno Act II experience.
To start, let me say, leveling Witch Doctor is incredibly fun. The amount of diffrent abilities and mix between pets, dots and direct damage made me change my build entirely each few levels. Splinters with Dire Bats, Spiders with Acid Pool, All-out pet build to tank for party, Zombie Bear spam. However, the later difficulty you play, the less options you get. At Hell, getting off any bats other than Dire becomes hard, Dogs uptime lessen, and as damage ramp up, you start understand value of being ranged. When you come in Inferno, you kiss your Gargantuan goodbye for good, and get used to 'kite everything' concept. With that, you shed your melee ability, keep only long range nukes, and load up every cc possible, just so you won't die too often, and later in act II, you pop it just to avoid getting killed from barely meeting a jumping/invisible mob. And for that, we have only one ability:
The prisoner of Spirit Realm.
There are few abilities that are incredibly powerful, but still that you can work w/o. You can make good build with no Splinters, you can kill mobs fine without Soul Siphon buff. However, you can not survive in Inferno without Spirit Walk. We don't have any choice in this regards, as this is only skill that will:
- Give you invulnerability
- Break Jail/Freeze
- Gain sprint at 50% bonus move speed
- Allows to 'safely' drop melee range spell like Mass Confusion or Soul Siphon
and as a bonus, regain huge chunk of your mana if runed this way. This is the only thing that allows us to survive one shotting mobs and escape from movement imparing elites. It also forces to take Spirit Vessel as passive to drop it's cooldown even more.
To fix to this would be to add another ability with similar features. You can find my idea below at Hex Chicken part, although, as said, in Inferno you would end up using both.
The Inferno Culling.
Everyone who gets to the Act II Inferno, sometimes earlier, knows that some abilities just flat out stop being usable due to change in the game pace. We are suffering of this badly, in two ways:
First, our pet part of class is made worthless. It makes me sad that Zombie Dogs, that are still adversited as Witch Doctor prime ability and protectors, are not holding up. Together with them, the Gargantuan, and whole pletheora of skill/passives dedicated for summoner (Devolution, Thorns, Sacrifice) becomes unusable as well. While simply buffing them further would solve it, it won't change...
Second problem, which is that we have great range of spells that require us to be in melee or medium range. Non-Dire bats, Zombie Charger, Toads, Acid Barf, Soul Siphon, Locust Swarm... In short, those abilities (should) work by having greater power than 'safe' long range ones, by inducting risk of standing close to mobs. That worked fine in earlier difficulty, when that 'risk' means 'lose some health'. When that risk becomes 'you're dead' in Inferno, those abilities are not being worth risk anymore, hence Splinter/Dire bats spam.
Now, I know you could load up defensive stats on all your gear, although I'm pesimistic that it will allow you take hits anyway. However, this will gimp your dps badly, making 'boosted' melee abilities point of doing higher dps moot, and having glass blowgun faring better. I'm not saying it's mob damage... but it's mob damage. I honestly can't find other way to make those skills usefull past meaningless difficulties. Please provide me to Inferno clearing (a2 and higher) WD that don't gear as pure nukers.
Remember that most kiting with darts is done with mobs off the actual screen, so that they can't utilize their Vortex, Jail and/or Teleport ability, and any pack that have 2 of those affixes has to be done this way or they will catch you with Spirit Walk cooldown down.
There is also using up Spirit Walk to use that one melee like ability safely, which works in 'deadrush' bear builds and to apply Soul Harvest, but on Act II, you can't really afford to waste cooldown of it in that way.
And now, for the actual skills and runes. I'm giving them rank based on, mostly, how the rune improves/work on skill, not the skill itself, that's in the Problem section.
C - Real crap/Why is this in game at all?/Need serious rework and/or buff
B - Nothing special, but does it job done, or could fit in some niche
A - Very good and/or fun, that is what majority runes should be
S - Overpow.. actually, not much powered, but... Overshadowing other abilities. It's so potent that makes other runes worthless in comparision, in most cases, it actually means it don't need nerf, but that skill itself needs buff/have it as baseline.
Poison Dart:
- Splinters: Turns PD into powerful 180% wd nuke, so good it basicly trumps all other options. Staggers better due to multi hit. I don't know mechanics excactly, but it may have three times more chance for proc effects. S
- Numbing Dart: The slow, while nice, is usually not enough to kite some enemies, especially if they have minons with them. Latest Blizz post is actually suprising, given I haven't really seen them in any build for Inferno, and by myself, the damage drop was too massive. Perhaps with slow 2h, but then the cast itself is slugish, I dunno... A
- Spined Dart: Regain 14 mana on hit isn't half bad, but since Splinters is so powerfull, it's usually better off using that, instead of weaving mana spells and worse filler. B
- Flaming Dart: Less damage that Splinters just for the sake of getting past Plagued mobs resistance, allows to hit moving foes if you are good at predicting movment, loses Bad Medicine synergy. It don't seem worth it, buffing it to Splinters 180% and more people might use it. A
- Snake to the Face: As fun as it might seem (from shooter pov), the chance and duration are not reliable at all against bosses/champs unless you stack ias. Then it's quite good keeping one foe stunlocked. Make it more balanced depending on weapon speed? B
Problems/fixing: Very potent, seen in pretty much every build that don't rely on Vision Quest. I would say (Splinters) to the point of being overused, as it's pretty much only WD spammable spell that does decent SINGLE target damage, so needed on champs and bosses. To make other options more valuable, make the dot effect stackable/rollable, so that every option is 140 wd per cast, otherwise Splinters wins in 99% of cases. By having a refreshing, not rollable dot, you are punishing fast weapons far too much for other options to be viable damage dealers.
Corpse Spiders (assuming all 4 spiders bites twice before death - 128% wd per cast):
- Leaping: First rune kills every further one. The damage for all spiders biting 8 times is 152%, which is inferior to Splinters. S
- Spider Queen: Absoule crap. It's a targetable aoe that does measly 16% wd per sec, it can't be used as primary damaging spell at all. To make worse, you can have only one at time. Should be (untargetable) pet/guardian that periodically spawn Leapings, maybe then it would be worth it (on other slot, you still need a nuke). C
- Widowmakers: 19 mana return in best scenario, suffers same as Spine dart, but worse because of nature of spiders. B
- Medusa: Like Numbing Dart, just much worse. Not only the slow is weakish, it isn't reliable at all for the chance of slow (~32% mob won't be slowed if he gets bitten by all four spiders on spawn) and the way is delivered (mobs run to you before spiders can bite). C
- Blazings: Buffs damage to 168% and changes it to fire, still worse than Splinters. B
Problems/Fixing: The spiders itself are great idea. It trades off ability to target one mob, for ability to throw them over obstacles/lower level/wallers/corners. The problem comes from fact they are inferior in damage to Splinters, and that is still in best case when they can bite all 8 times. Simply put, unless you have someone tanking mobs, the only options that work decentish is Leapings, anything else will just run away from them. When Dogs were tanky enough, they were kinda fun, now they are useless.
To fix, I would say give ALL of spiders ability to Leap, and redo Leaping Spiders completly, this skill is useless in any other form simply by mobs moving away. Furthermore, buff the weapon damage OR duration to allow spiders to bite 3 times each consistently.
Toads (130wd x 3 hits for 390% wd max):
- Explosive - simple buff to 169% wd (507% wd max) and change poison into fire damage. A
- Hugeness: Just as useless as Spider Queen. Can't eat any more powerful mobs. Takes away primary slot. Can't aim it. Make it guardian that will eat next non-elite add that would hit you (and knockback in case of elite) and you have decent defensive cc, otherwise Hex does it way better. C
- Rain: I'm in absolute love in this skill sound and animation. Rune itself changes ability drastically, and it's not half bad at all. B
- Addling: Add confuse to hits, it's incredibly good in any situation where you can use Frogs... problem is that you can't on Inferno. A
- Affinity: Waiting to 54 level to unlock rune that makes your PRIMARY spell (that you are supposed to use when you are low on resources in first place) is just crappy AND boring. The skill itself shouldn't cost that much considering risks you have to put in. C
Problem/fixing: I have to say, this skill generally is fun to use, randomness and clunky frog movement exploding on rocks is countered by awesome damage. That is, until you get to late Hell and Inferno. Since this skill require you to be in melee-medium range, in a world of one shots, it goes from interesting to absolutly worthless (except for Rain of Toads).
Unless the Inferno design changes (that is, that you can take some hits sometimes), it needs further range and faster frogs to be of any use there.
Fire Bomb
- Flash Fire: Assumming 7 enemies
85 + (85 * 0.85) + (85 * (0.85^2)) + (85 * (0.85^3)) + (85 * (0.85^4)) + (85 * (0.85^5)) + (85 * (0.85^6)) = 385% wd
Normal Firebomb would deal 595% wd in this case BUT only if mobs are packed together. The jumping change in mechanic makes it hit more spread targets, making it viable glyph. A
- Roll the Bones - Can hit targets that are behind initial landing place, decent. A
- Fire pit - Add 24% wd as a dot of floor. Pathetic damage that require mobs to be standing in place. Why would you want 24% dot when you can have 20% direct damage instantly over huge area (Ghost Bomb)? Need major buff to be of any use. C
- Pyrogeist - It attacks one target for 140% wd as a 3 sec dot. It already have problems keeping up with unruned Darts (100 direct + 40 as dot), but when you realize you can have only ONE spawned at same time, it renders skill completly useless. Having ability to cast multiples is required for this skill to work. The... thing... attacks aren't aoe anymore as well, so even with multiply copies possible, it would still need buff to the level of Splinters range.C
- Ghost bomb - Buffs standard version and makes it beautiful blue, great (only the 20% extra damage have further range, but it's enough) A
Problems/Fixing: The standard version is fine for aoe clearing (and crap for single target, so you need something extra for that). Needs rework on RtB, Pit and Pyro.
Grasp of the Dead
- Unbreakable Grasp: If movement speed debuffs works by multiplying, it doubles the slow provided bt skill (40% mv speed vs 20% glyphed). If by substraction, it's still incredibly good, as it buffs the most important part of skill. S
- Eels - buffs damage by 30% (tooltip changes on weapon speed, the faster the more, not sure if intended). It isn't dps ability per se, so don't see point. B
- Death is Life: Decent utility, especially to group, if not for terrible proc chance. At 5% it's just pointless for the small radius of this ability. Worthless until seriously buffed (20% minimum). C
- Desperate Grasp: If you want to gain more distance, get Unbrekable, otherwise casting animation screws you over. Make overlapping Grasps Immobilize targets for few seconds and then it might be usefull. B
- Rain of Corpses: Gives additional 50% damage on top on random nearby enemies, quite fun, but can't really drop better slow. A
Problems/Fixing - On Inferno, you are using this skill for kiting purposes, which leaves only UG as on option. Slow have to be 80% base for other runes to be usefull. Also, the cast recovery renders this skill useless if not preplaced. If a mob is chasing after you (leaperlike), stoping to cast it make mob hit you anyway, allow to cast in on move?
Firebats:
- Dire Bats: Holy Burning Bats, Batman! Buffs damage and allow skill to be used as long range nuke, even fly on other dungeon level, it's absolutly incredible. To the point of making all others useless... S
- Vamp Bats: Barbs got passive that gives them 3% life leach for everything, ask them how well it works in Inferno (answer - it doesn't). I can't even regen my life in Hell in this, healthbar is just not moving. C
- Plague Bats: 220% instant that fly over enemies in long range or 225% in small cone that require standing still and long windup, you do the math. It actualy have damage potential, but you won't have possibilty to stand still. B
- Hungry Bats: On paper looks good, in actual play, it is only slightly better against single targets, but absolutly not worth loosing range (and group clearing possibility) from Dire. B
- Cloud of Bats: Low range, decent damage, but let me know how standing in middle of enemy group works for you in Inferno. C
Problems/Fixing - Range and Mana cost. Nobody is using anything than Dire bats on Inferno, because it is impossible to stand so close and live, even more than some of skills require long casting. Hit and Run with Dires works way better. And because of mana cost, even if you could afford standing so close, channelling them require Vision quest or both Attunment and Blood Ritual. In fact, having both of those passives and a +10 mana per sec weapon didn't allow me to channel bats longer than 4-5 seconds. Either need serious range buffing or Inferno damage intake rebalanced, otherwise you won't see this skill used.
Haunt:
- Consuming Spirit: Don't scale with health, so becomes more and more obsolete the better your gear is. Make it 10-15% over entire duration and it may be worthwile. B
- Resentul: Makes this skill more of a nuke, decent damage, but to afford it mana wise... B
- Lingering: If you get situation where you leave Haunts unused, chance is you didn't need them in first place. Sure, the fact it clings onto you is nice, but it should be baked in basic. C
- Grasping: Weak slow, but still nice help against kiting elites. B
- Draining: Recovers mana cost and slightly more if it can work it's full duration. A
Problems/Fixing - The jumping ability is there to make this skill worthwile in more than elite/boss fights, but it's not working good enough. The animation of jump is too long, if you kill the target it was going to 'posses', the effect disappear completly. Works fine otherwise.
Locust Swarm (360wd/8sec = 45%wd per second):
- Pestilence: Instead of 1-1-1-1 (1-2-3-4 enemies), it spreads as 1-2-4-8 (1-3-7-15 enemies), faantastic. A
- Devouring Swarm: Superb mana regen if used on a big group allowing to cast high-mana nukes while dot does it's own work. A
- Cloud of Insects: Erm.. I don't see point of this at all. It buffs damage to 450% wd per cast, but with same dps, which is inferior (both dps and total damage done) to Searing, needs something better in this place. C
- Diseased Swarm: Extremly meh. If enemies are so low that cloud could finish them off, chances are Searing would just straight killed them. C
- Searing Locus: Buffs damage by 30% (58,5% per sec) and change it to fire, very good. A
Problems/Fixing - A DoT that is usefull for groups since it spread by itself, I absolutly loved this skill when I was leveling. Then comes inferno... and this skill require close range to apply, mhm... In anything past ActI, you must use Spirit Walk to apply it, and risk you will die by not having your only escape tool ready later.
Zombie Dogs:
- Rabid Dogs: Adds quite a bit damage, and gives great synergy with Bad Medicine, great. A
- Final Gift: Nice idea, but the chance is way too low. 60% of not getting health globe when 3 dogs die, on a 1 min cd, it's worthless. At 35-50% might be usefull, and that's only when health regain itself is usefull (one shots...) C
- Life Link: Boring passive, but buffs the 'defense' part of skill I guess. B
- Burning Dogs: The damage is way too small even when dogs run in huge pack of enemies, and have no synergies whatsover. C
- Leeching Beast: I was hyped when I finally unlocked it. And very disappointed after I tried. It could be very good rune, if pets would work. A
Problems/Fixing -
At Normal, I was like
At Nightmare, I was like
At Hell, I was like :|
At Inferno, I'm like (╯ಠ益ಠ)╯︵ ┻━┻
Absolutly horrid scaling, or lack of. This is a DEFENSIVE skill. Their lowish damage is fine, it allows them to finish stragglers and solo some very small mobs. But their survival is absolute crap, they got one shot by whiteys in inferno actI. I shouldn't need super gear to make them tanky. The skill role itself is for them to take hits, so that I can stay back and focus on doing more dps. If they fail at doing so, I'm much better taking another snare or other defensive cd (that does not care about my gear) instead. I'm very sad that iconic ability of Witch Doctor is not usable in endgame.
Horrify:
- Phobia: Longer duration, decent. A
- Stalker: Good idea, but way too weak run speed boost to be of any use except speedruns. You get more breathing room for getting that sligh longer Fear like above. B
- Face of Death: Larger Radius means you will fear that mob that is trying to hit you AND anything that follows it, and give enough time to drop snare. A
- Frightening Aspect: What? Even with bonus armor, I can't take single hit. You'd better be off taking bigger radius rather than trying to tank. Might be usefull if it helped survive something like Mortar fire or end boss abilites. C
- Ruthless Terror: It's boring, but I guess it works quite nice with something like Grave Injustice as mana regen skill. B
Problems/Fixing: While the skill itself is good, the fact you can't take single hit in Inferno, and this is cc that require melee range, make it questionable. It's still great against vortex/teleport enemies, but Face rune seem kinda mandatory to get it usable otherwise for anything more than one chasing you enemy.
Spirit Walk:
- Jaunt: 50% more duration of godly skill, nuff said. A
- Honored Guest: 30% mana regen on short cd makes it absolute incredible regen tool even in no-mana Splinter builds (for casting other cc's). S
- Umbral Shock: Mobs loose interest in your body when you cast it, and the damage+radius is very weak. C
- Severance: Why would you want to run INTO enemies? I can't take hits, remember? C
- Healing Journey: Even if healing was worthwile, 15% is just laughtable. 30% base and content that don't one shot, perhaps it could work. B
Problems/Fixing: Look at 'Prisoners of Spirit Realm' section.
Hex:
- Hedge Magic: Starts out amazing, don't scale at all. Just make it 10% heal baseline and it's golden, at least when you don't get one shot etc. A
- Jinx: 10% more damage, and changes Chicken into Pig. Works fine, but I'd rather have chickens :< B
- Angry Chicken: Joke rune. I have to say, it's incredibly funny turning into explosive chicken and headrush in mobs, especially in coop with friends. But it have zero practical value. Why does it loose defensive capability, all you gain is 15% movement speed? Make it break jail/freeze, blind nearby enemies for a while next to you, allow you to jump over walls and buff movement speed to 25% and you have something that can be used instead of Spirit Walk... j/k, you will end up using both. C
- Painful Transformation: Hex on elites works for about 2 seconds, so 72% wd over 12 seconds of skill is meh. B
- Unstable Form: A nice try to make skill viable on big groups rather than just champs. Its hard to pull off though. Need buff to radius to be useful. B
Problems/Fixing: Very nice ability, especially that it works on elites and it's castable on move, saved my flank many times from chasing elite. Chicken rune needs rework though.
Soul Harvest:
- Swallow your Soul: Very potent mana regain utility. A
- Siphon: Nice heal, if heals were usefull, should scale (10% per target). On lower diff it actually works as a decent defensive cd when cornered. A
- Languish: Don't see point, make them immobilize or at least 80% snare, otherwise most can catch up anyway. C
- Soul to Waste: Less tedious and makes it slighty safer to use. A
- Vengeful Spirit: Terrible damage requiring melee range, no thanks... C
Problems/Fixing: Even not scaling, this ability is incredibly powerful self-buff at max level. It goes from amazing to over-risky when you can't get into melee range at all though. Worhtless on boss fights with no adds, but for shear power on trash, I think it's fine.
Sacrifice:
- Black Blood: Slow last decent time, but is it worth runing... if explosion don't one shot group of mobs, skill itself isn't worth using. B
- Next of Kin: Gives you fuel for next cast instantly, pretty much only option since getting Dogs is hard already, especialy for bosses. It also gives that 'gambling' feel, like pulling machine slot lever when you explode them... might be only me though S
- Pride: Nice mana gain, but good luck making build with Sacrifice AND high mana nukes. B
- For the Master: Need scaling, guessing by amount healed, to 25% per dog. Not that heals are usefull atm. B
- Provoke the Pack: Damage buff is nice, but I'd rather have more exploding dogs or use Soul Siphon to buff Primary (Splinters that is) spam. Make it 10% per dog and it could see use... in Hell at best. B
Problems/fixing: It shares similar fate to dogs, if they get one shotted before you can position them, you can't get decent explosions. You need full build resolving around this , which could be fine, if it worked in Inferno. At this moment, it won't, so it's dead skill. Also since dogs are so hard to come, NoK is only viable rune for it.
Mass Confusion:
- Unstable Realm: 25% off CD, good. A
- Devolution: More Zombie Dogs! If they were good, this rune would be great. They aren't, so you are hurting yourself using it. B
- Mass Hysteria: Decreases chance of being one shotted by elite that didn't get charmed, required if you decide to use it in Inferno. A
- Paranoia: The additional damage is very, very nice. Too risky in Inferno though. A
- Mass Hallucination: Interesting effect, that's for sure. Damage is a bit low compared what you could do with Paranoia though (especially in multi). B
Problems/fixing: Overall good ability, but the melee range makes it very risky to get full potential.
Zombie Charger:
- Leperous Zombie: Laughtable dot, small mobs should be dead by this skills, elites you have to kite out of it. C
- Undeath: Only good on enemies that you can one shot. Just use Direbats. C
- Wave of Zombies: The hay is that? Why would you create rune that nerfs damage by 2/3, just so it changes to narrow cone? Even channeled bats are better. Also look to Zombie Bears. C
- Explosive Beast: The closest ability in game to Fireball. Except it explode on pebbles. But it's still better than previous runes. B
- Zombie Bears: Buff damages and add 2 more zombies to the sides. Can get 3 hits off if target is big enough.... read below S
Problems/Fixing: Whole tree needs serious rework. When you unlock this skill, you already have Dire Bats. And those Bats are way, way better than each of runes by both damage, range and not being limited by terrain. Zombies are so slow and range is pathetic. Why should I endanger myself if skill itself don't do more damage? Then you unlock final rune, and... it's just stupid. Runes are supposed to be about choice, yet Bears are three times better than any other mod. Sad part is, it's the only rune that makes this skill useful, for farming overgeared content that is (and bosses), since you will chain-die trying to use it in Inferno A2+. Leave Bears as is, buff rest tree to 300% wd, and it's still unusuable in higher diff due to design.
Spirit Barrage:
- The Spirit is Willing: Much cheaper mana cost, good I guess. A
- Well of Souls: Good on paper, but in game, those additional spirits won't hit if you have only one target, and for groups this skill is still useless. B
- Phantasm: Locust does same damage, but spreads way easier. This one is safer to use though. Buff duration a bit and it could work. B
- Phlebotomize: See: Vampiric Bats C
- Manitou: It shoots about 30 projectiles for a total of 840% wd. Seems good, but it's actually only 42% wd per second, it's single target, require medium to close range to hit (too close to kite safely), and some of his attacks miss anyway. Locust Swarm would outdps it on single target (and spread to rest), so does Haunt (48% per sec) and it can be put on many enemies. Needs major buff to be worth the slot C
Problems/Fixing: So, I can either pick mana-free Splinters, that I can spam all day, for 180% wd, or Spirit Barrage, that even runed for mana efficiecy will get me oom in seconds, for 190% wd, jeez, I wonder which to choose. Needs serious buff to damage to be worthwile, also look to Rush for Essence in passive section. In fact, if the damage was brough a bit lower (160% base) and mana cost nearly eliminated, it could as well work as primary.
Acid Cloud:
- Acid Rain: Huge range, sweet. A
- Lob Blob Bomb: Buff the 'dot' part so it's more effective vs bosses, and have fun animation too. Require mobs to stand in place, worked fine when pets could tank, don't work in Inferno with no tank. A
- Slow Burn: Only very slow mobs won't move from pool for so long. It's actually very similar role to LBB rune, with same problems, but not as fun. B
- Kiss of Death: Ok, apparantly, having skill go from targetable long range to melee is a POSITIVE in terms of runes, since for forcing you in melee range, you gain 10% damage on it, versus 30% of other runes that work similar. The animation of WD barfing Acid is great, but it needs serious buff. 30% as minimum, and perhaps more for having it harder to apply. C
- Corpse Bomb: It... works... well... Damage is fine, but... It's boring. It kills all the fun of ability. You click, it explodes, end. No dot, no glowing slime, no barfing, no huge area covered in acid. In fact, unless you can make LBB slime on boss for whole 5 seconds, this ability will do more damage. Nerf damage slightly to 150% wd, make enemies killed by it explode for 50% wd and chain explode if that kill another enemy and it would be sweet group killing skill, much closer to Corpse Explosion than this. B
Problems/fixing: Apart from some work with runes, skill is fine.
Wall of Zombies:
- Barricade: More Width means more places where you can use it to block mobs. A
- Unrelenting Grip: Mobs do walk next to wall, which could be useful... but if you can't block them entirely, or trap them inside wall, you are doing it wrong. C
- Creepers: I guess it works like it reads. B
- Pile On: Huge damage, but you loose cc and it's damn hard to aim. I can see it working though, if Grave Injustice is fixed (it's not working on it atm). B
- Dead Rush: Changes Wall more to... explosion, centered on yourself. Go run in group of mobs in Inferno, see how it works for you. Damage is fine, but at least knockback must be added so it still can act as backup cc. C
Problems/fixing: Working fine, even more if you immobilize bigger enemies by casting it ON them (I take it's intented, since wallers can do same to you).
Gargantuan:
- Humongoid: Nice damaging cleave for group clearing. B
- Restless Giant: Real monster when it activates, and internal cd is reset when you resummon Giant. A
- Wrathful Protector: 15 seconds, what? And apart from knockback, Restess will do way better when enraged. Make it 30 seconds so that Grave Injustice build can utilise it at least. C
- Big Stinker: Nice damage and synergy with Bad Medicine. A
- Bruiser: Stun is quite short against elites, but it does work. B
Problems/fixing: Similar to dogs, but less severe UNTIL Inferno. He works as fine tank up to Hell, then gets killed by 3 hits. I'm not joking, in actII, I took all hp increase/bad medicine/jungle forti, he lost a 'duel' to single female catman. I don't even have to test him against champions, worthless.
Big Bad Voodoo:
- Jungle Drums: 50% increase of duration, decent if you can sit that long in one place. B
- Rain Dance: Allows you to spam mana-intensive skills but, why it doesn't increase other classes resources as well? Completly worthless due to: B
- Slam Dance: 30% damage to you AND group, sick. S
- Ghost Trance: Good part, it scales. Bad part, healing in Inferno is useless for most part, especially that it's spike damage that kills you. Make it Cheat Death ability (ends when it's succesful before full duration) or healing could be slightly (7,5% per sec) buffed. B
- Boogie Man: Good idea to get more pet resummon, bad implementation. Think about it, when would you need your dogs (especially in Sac build)? On champion packs of course. What this skill help in that regards? Nothing, and even less. You don't want to blow your 120 sec CD on trash mobs, just so you can be even more vulnerable to elites. Fix? Make it SPAWN dogs with ratio 1 per 3 seconds (6 dogs total). That way, you have beautiful synergy for Sac, where you can use it just when you need the dogs the most. C
Problems/Fixing: It's not moving. That's huge problem for any pack you have to kite, and you have to kite everything in this game, that includes tank when their defensive CD runs out. That makes the 30 sec rune worthless, as you want to get as much as you can from short window you can stand inside (Slam). Make the Fetish dance on your head perhaps?
Fetish Army:
- Fetish Ambush: Damage is nice, standing in middle of mobs not so nice, and you want them for champions, which standing around is even less healthy. C
- Devoted Following: Shorter CD for longer uptime, not bad. A
- Legion of Daggers: Most used rune since it gives you more 'tanks'. A
- Tiki Torchers: Mobs keep moving away from them. The damage should be brough up drasticly, remember how those destroyed you in D2 when you didn't get maxed Fire resistance? B
- Head Hunters: I guess two ranged deal similar damage to three running like headless chicken melees. It's meh but it works. B
Problems/fixing: None really, apart from first rune. Those little bastards seem to tank better, or on par, as my Gargantuan, which is sad.
Passives:
Circle of Life: Way, way, way too low chance to spawn dogs. Radius is fine with few items that boost it. But there are better passives that help replenish dogs than having to kill 3 groups of small mobs for one dog. 15-20% needed to make Sac build not feel sluggish. Even with that high spawn rate, it won't render summon skill useless since you must have it to get dogs extra abilities and summon them for champ/boss fights. That is all if scaling is fixed. C
Junge Fortitude: Nice reduction, too bad everything one shots you and your pets anyway, if not that, it would give more room for error and better pet tanks, works great when leveling. B
Spiritual Attunment: Not bad, but mainly for getting more casts off your mana pool, the regen is too low. B
Gruesome Feast: Helps refuel mana and buffs your damage by huge amount, perfect! A
Bad Medicine: Like Jungle Forti, just for group, shares same problems. Great with Stinker/Plague dogs if they would work though. B
Blood Ritual: The health cost is nothing at 60 health pools (good) so it's like free life regen and 15% cheaper spells, quite nice, but usually have to be paired with Spirit Attu. A
Zombie Handler: Would be quite nice if it helped with pet durability, the bonus dog is great boost for Sac though. B
Pierce the Veil: Makes your damage more spiky between regen, I think that was the intent. Instead, it's used in Splinter-spam builds exclusivly. A
Fetish Scophants: Quite a fun one, you can get pretty nice army if you stack attack speed. Could get a boost to proc rate for slow weapons though. A
Spirit Vessel: Since Spirit Walk is must, so is this, allows you to eat one hit per 90 seconds as well. S
Rush of Essence: Now, looking at this, you might be thinking "A great passive to make a spirit based build", right? Well... you can't. First, the mana regen is really anwkard, and simple reduction would be much better. Second, until the mana cost of (unruned) Spirit Barrage is greter than primaries (that it should replace, remember it's barely stronger), the build is useless. Sure, you could take both Attunmen and Blood Ritual, but then you'd be off just sterring clear from spirit line (*cough* Dire Bats *cough*).
On a side note, there is only two options for nuke for a spirit build. TSiW Spirit Barrage with Haunt as secondary (leaves you with no aoe), or Resentful Spirit Haunt with Phantasm Spirit Barrage (but high mana cost of Haunt might now allow to use it as primary unless paired with more mana passives). C
Vision Quest: When you can keep 4 skills on CD, it allows you to spam anything as you wish. Like Zombie Bears. Or Dire Bats. I don't think we have any more spells, do we? While the passive work great, I greatly dislike the idea behind it. You have 4 spells that you don't really want to use, just keep on cooldown, and your whole focus is on spamming that one mana-heavy spell. A
Fierce Loyalty: Oh hey, a great passive for pet build. That don't scale. And get one shot. And no amount of life regen will keep your Gargantuan alive. So the only current use of it, is when you can stack so much thorns that mobs themselves will suicide on first touch on your dogs. Then you can kill 3-4 mobs each 60 second between dog summon reset. *yay* C
Grave Injustice: Interesting one, don't really help that much against champs though, and you need items with radius to make it usable. Increase base to at least 12y would make it more workable w/o supporting gear. It also don't work with some skills (Zombie Wall - Pile On), buggy. A
Tribal Rites: If you can manage to do build base on those skills and not using Vision Quest, then it's not half bad. It bugs with Devoted rune on Army and the cooldown goes from 90 (Army with rune) to 98 (Army with Rune and Tribal Rites). And it's actual cooldown, not only tooltip error (tested with stopwatch). B
Any thought/comments/disagreements? Combos or skill usage I'm missing that makes them good otherwise?
My reasoning for slow is that if you can slow elite down for longer than actual cast time of Grasp, it's already payed for itself.
Pestilence rune isn't necessary, but it does get the job it's supposed to do, that is to spread near instantly. It's still very nice for big packs where it will take it's sweet time to apply to every mob, and even get lost if it jumps to far away one.
Blood Ritual and Spirit Attunment by itself never allowed me to comfortably cast Dire Bats as primary, they work nice in tandem. It's still not enough for the non-Dire bats though. I guess I could stack more mana regen and see how it work. They do work well by itself for 'occassional' batty though.
- Flash Fire rune is excellent for targeting around corners as they will bounce to targets. I prefer Splinter darts but I've heard of people using it in Inferno to keep out of line of sight.
- Why does Blood Ritual have to go with Spiritual Attunement?
Reply to Wasikiaboom:
- Unbreakable Grasp _is_ phenomenal. It's twice the slow of standard! That means I can shoot twice as many darts, and have twice as much time for my Hex, Wall of Zombies, Horrify, and Spirit Walk to come back. It turns it from "please slow down" to "stop the **** right there". Against fast elites it's not as effective as I'd like but without 80% slow it's not even worth turning around to cast the bloody thing.
Too be honest only abilties you should be ever considering in Inferno are:
Strict Core:
Poison Dart - Splinters
Grasp of the Dead - best is 80% slow (other work well but overshadowed)
Spirit Walk - Jaunt or Honored (Honored if you run Acid Cloud / Locust Swarm)
Soul Harvest - 60sec duration
Other 2 abilities to choose from:
Hex - Healing or Jinx
Acid Cloud - 24y range
Wall of Zombies - Barricade
Other viable for 2 last spots:
Horrify - Movement Speed or Range
Mass Confusion - Mass Hysteria
Locust Swarm - Fire Damage
Big Bad Voodoo - 30% dmg
Fetish - Cooldown reduced, Legion of Daggers, Head Hunters
Haunt - Resentful Spirit / Draining Spirit
Garganduan - Bruiser / Restless
2 must have passives:
Spirit Vessel
Pierce of Veil
Last one to choose from:
Fetish Sychos (solo)
Jungle Fortitude (solo)
Bad Medicine (group)
Exeption is Dire Bat / Zombie Bears build, which requires abusement of ManaRegen Big Bad Voodoo and Vision Quest, which gives huge dps, but high risk to deaths in Inferno act2+.
Didn't use grasp of death or 60 sec soul harvest in act 2, worked out fine.
I also used the 20 percent mana passive.
Poison dart splinters
dire bats
Spirit walk honored
Soul harvest siphon
Locust Swarm Mana/fire
Any non damage skill
Nice break down, I agree with you. when you get to inferno very few skills hold any candle to certain others. I am personally running up against the brick wall that is actii, but I think anyone reading these thoughts, although the sole opinion of the author should realise this is a very real down to earth breakdown of our beloved class.
Damage reduction works by multiplying, Bad Medicine + Jungle Forti is (0.8 * 0.8 =) 64% damage taken (36% reduction). With Life Link it's (0.8 * 0.8 * 0.9 =) 57,6% damage taken (42.4% reduction). If BM and JF couldn't do enough, chances are LL won't help that much either. If you could take hits with those, I say Leaching Beast would help more by replenishing health and getting their own survival boost. Alas, pets die instantly in Inferno, so using other defensive CD is better.
On Healing Journey, see, it don't work like that from my glass cannon from Hell experience. While I did read about WD doing it for Inferno Azmodan to survive those bucking black pools first tick, pretty much any Inferno boss pass Act 1 will one shot you with their skills, so you have to dodge it, Spirit Walk through it, or proc Spirit Vessel. Butcher have 2 health wells to counter his aoe-chain. Using SW to heal it up leaves you dead meat if fire spawns badly or you don't dodge his 'get over here', on Diablo instead of healing up you can just use it to avoid fire nova or lightning cone after he teleports to you. But I didn't know it proc 3 times... does it mean the mana regen one regain 45% of mana?
Hex itself is incredible (Belial being susceptible is a surprise to me), the rank itself is to the rune working on skill. It boost bonus damage from 10% to 20%, which is nice, but nothing amazing.
Stinker poison damage depends on my damage, it's my pet, on my skillbar. I say, if it doesn't work, then it's a bug (will have to test it for sure though). Gargy actually is doing decent damage on his own, especially when enraged. I never really needed his stun but... having played monk and seen how much attacks from Diablo you can stop mid-way by good stun/blind, I might undervalued it.
Nice long wall of text, but with a well thought out critique. I think some of the issues will go away as Blizzard balances out Inferno so it's not the spiky damage (they've stated that they want it to be a hp drain, not one shots, so healing should be better).
Dropson - you're not the only person who doesn't like PD. I admit that Splinters is just too awesome. I me, wow. It does nearly as much damage as any of the other "nuke" skills, it costs practically no mana, it hits three times to increase chances of things procing on hits. About the only downside of it, mechanically, is that the slow speed of the projectile (hard to hit any of the mobs that like to run from you).
What I don't like about it, is that it is booooring. I would so much prefer one of the firebomb runes, but the WD has no problem with AoE skills, he needs single target skills. Also, I think each and every primary skill, for every class, have it's on target hit for at LEAST 100% wd. 80% is just a joke in my opinion. I think the base skill should be buffed so that, in addition to the aoe, it does DoT damage, I'd say 100% single, and two ticks at 15-20%, for a total of 130 or 140% single target. I think a similiar idea should be added to Acid Cloud. Basically, they both use jells either acidic or burning. I also want them to bring back the noise the WD made when he through from his reveal trailer.
I agree mostly, I think the "melee" skills should either get a damage or range buff.
And for Spirit Barrage, I think they should either up the base damage to like 250%, or make it act like bone spear from D2. What I'd love to see for that animation is the same as what they have no, except it is basically a hit scan across whereever it is aimed. That, or give it knockback/rapid fire/AoE addition (trying to work in the "barrage" part of the name).
Spirit Barrage is the lamest skill ever. All non-bear zombie chargers too. Their animation is so slow, how are you suppose to avoid those deadly fire balls/acid pools/mortars/etc... ?
Hex is good but i think it's annoying to use. Soul Harvest too. If it wasn't for summon i would not touch the WD. Gladly dogs will get the buff their deserve !
Spirit Barrage is the lamest skill ever. All non-bear zombie chargers too. Their animation is so slow, how are you suppose to avoid those deadly fire balls/acid pools/mortars/etc... ?
Hex is good but i think it's annoying to use. Soul Harvest too. If it wasn't for summon i would not touch the WD. Gladly dogs will get the buff their deserve !
Actually, exploding beast isn't bad, it's just overshadowed by dire bats and zombie bears.
very insightful and accurate, i would prefer to see a buff on range over increased damage for the melee range skills. Knowing blizzard they will just nerf everything down to make it all balanced instead of buffing.
I agree with most of it, or atleast that there is indeed a problem with most of this skills you pointed out. I am not sure however that all of the suggestions are fisable when looking at the other classes and what not.
My personal biggest gripe is that i went for a pet class, and i got a blow gun wielding freak with a bad case of tremers.
Blizz has thankfully stated that they want Pet survivability to be more along the lines of "Cast on cooldown" instead of "Watch them vanish." Here's hoping this comes true, since if they can last for at least 10-15 seconds against Inferno Elites (30 for the Gargantuan), we'll be very well-set to have a large variety of builds (this assumes a build that is about 50% dedicated to pets and average RNG). Several of our skills and runes start looking MUCH better under that assumption set.
Either that, or change one of the Zombie Dog runes to make them into "Spitters" of some kind. THAT would work
Blizz has thankfully stated that they want Pet survivability to be more along the lines of "Cast on cooldown" instead of "Watch them vanish." Here's hoping this comes true, since if they can last for at least 10-15 seconds against Inferno Elites (30 for the Gargantuan), we'll be very well-set to have a large variety of builds (this assumes a build that is about 50% dedicated to pets and average RNG). Several of our skills and runes start looking MUCH better under that assumption set.
Either that, or change one of the Zombie Dog runes to make them into "Spitters" of some kind. THAT would work
Well, Barb and Monks needs serious defensive gear to stand chance in Inferno. Wizzards also needs some so their Force Armor work after the nerf fix. If they made WD pets tankish enough when you load some hp and resist yourself, it could, in theory, allow to more bearable Inferno play for them. That would leave DH as only class that stacking vit/res is 100% pointless.
Although myself, I don't really see dogs working even after vit scaling. Sure, you can kill trash packs in less tedious way, but they will still get one shotted by elites that you have to kite for next 5 minutes, just this time with one less skill on your bar.
Damage reduction works by multiplying, Bad Medicine + Jungle Forti is (0.8 * 0.8 =) 64% damage taken (36% reduction). With Life Link it's (0.8 * 0.8 * 0.9 =) 57,6% damage taken (42.4% reduction). If BM and JF couldn't do enough, chances are LL won't help that much either.
From monk PoV with 92% phys dmg reduction - even listed above combination won't save WD from oneshots. Agree with OP completly, when my gf started wd she fell for summoning tribal feel and ended runing without core summons in mid hell. Half class skillset is useless becouse of pets scaling (seriously Blizzard didn't learn from WoW example at all - scalling is essential for pet skills and if you can't code pets to move out of fire then reduce dmg they take from it). Honestly feels like no internal testing have been done whatsoever.
Atm WD endgame play doesn't provide much tribal feel and limit WDs to kiting no different from other ranged classes. Imo at least one ranged class should be able to take some punishment from mobs, and looking on WD passives/short range actives he was intended to be such caster. Too bad design flaws made WD same glass cannons as Wizards/DHs, rendered wholle pet system unusable and turned Thorns affix into waste of space on items.
I really like the way you thought out all the tweaks that would help most skills be way more useful.
I have to insist that you really should post this thread on the Official Blizzard Diablo forums in the Witch Doctor section.
This is the kind of criticism that I think some employee might read and reply to, since it's so well laid out and you have a lot of great ideas.
It might eventually help the class being tweaked for the benefit of all of us playing it.
Would you do it?
Although myself, I don't really see dogs working even after vit scaling. Sure, you can kill trash packs in less tedious way, but they will still get one shotted by elites that you have to kite for next 5 minutes, just this time with one less skill on your bar.
I don't think Dogs should scale with any of the players stats - only with his level and the level of the mobs. They should figure out how long they want dogs/garg to last in any given fight in Inferno, and give the dogs enough vit/resist to last that long. If they balance it on armor/vit then either it's only useful for characters already stacking those (who, in theory, shouldn't need a lot more tanking), or they multiply the players armor/vit enough that high damage, low hp builds (who need it) can actually use the tanks, and then a tanking WD can get unstoppable pets.
Pets should be a known quantity, so that if you chose to waste a skill/passives on them, you can support the lack of damage by focusing on damage items, not survivability.
To start, let me say, leveling Witch Doctor is incredibly fun. The amount of diffrent abilities and mix between pets, dots and direct damage made me change my build entirely each few levels. Splinters with Dire Bats, Spiders with Acid Pool, All-out pet build to tank for party, Zombie Bear spam. However, the later difficulty you play, the less options you get. At Hell, getting off any bats other than Dire becomes hard, Dogs uptime lessen, and as damage ramp up, you start understand value of being ranged. When you come in Inferno, you kiss your Gargantuan goodbye for good, and get used to 'kite everything' concept. With that, you shed your melee ability, keep only long range nukes, and load up every cc possible, just so you won't die too often, and later in act II, you pop it just to avoid getting killed from barely meeting a jumping/invisible mob. And for that, we have only one ability:
The prisoner of Spirit Realm.
There are few abilities that are incredibly powerful, but still that you can work w/o. You can make good build with no Splinters, you can kill mobs fine without Soul Siphon buff. However, you can not survive in Inferno without Spirit Walk. We don't have any choice in this regards, as this is only skill that will:
- Give you invulnerability
- Break Jail/Freeze
- Gain sprint at 50% bonus move speed
- Allows to 'safely' drop melee range spell like Mass Confusion or Soul Siphon
and as a bonus, regain huge chunk of your mana if runed this way. This is the only thing that allows us to survive one shotting mobs and escape from movement imparing elites. It also forces to take Spirit Vessel as passive to drop it's cooldown even more.
To fix to this would be to add another ability with similar features. You can find my idea below at Hex Chicken part, although, as said, in Inferno you would end up using both.
The Inferno Culling.
Everyone who gets to the Act II Inferno, sometimes earlier, knows that some abilities just flat out stop being usable due to change in the game pace. We are suffering of this badly, in two ways:
First, our pet part of class is made worthless. It makes me sad that Zombie Dogs, that are still adversited as Witch Doctor prime ability and protectors, are not holding up. Together with them, the Gargantuan, and whole pletheora of skill/passives dedicated for summoner (Devolution, Thorns, Sacrifice) becomes unusable as well. While simply buffing them further would solve it, it won't change...
Second problem, which is that we have great range of spells that require us to be in melee or medium range. Non-Dire bats, Zombie Charger, Toads, Acid Barf, Soul Siphon, Locust Swarm... In short, those abilities (should) work by having greater power than 'safe' long range ones, by inducting risk of standing close to mobs. That worked fine in earlier difficulty, when that 'risk' means 'lose some health'. When that risk becomes 'you're dead' in Inferno, those abilities are not being worth risk anymore, hence Splinter/Dire bats spam.
Now, I know you could load up defensive stats on all your gear, although I'm pesimistic that it will allow you take hits anyway. However, this will gimp your dps badly, making 'boosted' melee abilities point of doing higher dps moot, and having glass blowgun faring better. I'm not saying it's mob damage... but it's mob damage. I honestly can't find other way to make those skills usefull past meaningless difficulties. Please provide me to Inferno clearing (a2 and higher) WD that don't gear as pure nukers.
Remember that most kiting with darts is done with mobs off the actual screen, so that they can't utilize their Vortex, Jail and/or Teleport ability, and any pack that have 2 of those affixes has to be done this way or they will catch you with Spirit Walk cooldown down.
There is also using up Spirit Walk to use that one melee like ability safely, which works in 'deadrush' bear builds and to apply Soul Harvest, but on Act II, you can't really afford to waste cooldown of it in that way.
And now, for the actual skills and runes. I'm giving them rank based on, mostly, how the rune improves/work on skill, not the skill itself, that's in the Problem section.
C - Real crap/Why is this in game at all?/Need serious rework and/or buff
B - Nothing special, but does it job done, or could fit in some niche
A - Very good and/or fun, that is what majority runes should be
S - Overpow.. actually, not much powered, but... Overshadowing other abilities. It's so potent that makes other runes worthless in comparision, in most cases, it actually means it don't need nerf, but that skill itself needs buff/have it as baseline.
Poison Dart:
- Splinters: Turns PD into powerful 180% wd nuke, so good it basicly trumps all other options. Staggers better due to multi hit. I don't know mechanics excactly, but it may have three times more chance for proc effects. S
- Numbing Dart: The slow, while nice, is usually not enough to kite some enemies, especially if they have minons with them. Latest Blizz post is actually suprising, given I haven't really seen them in any build for Inferno, and by myself, the damage drop was too massive. Perhaps with slow 2h, but then the cast itself is slugish, I dunno... A
- Spined Dart: Regain 14 mana on hit isn't half bad, but since Splinters is so powerfull, it's usually better off using that, instead of weaving mana spells and worse filler. B
- Flaming Dart: Less damage that Splinters just for the sake of getting past Plagued mobs resistance, allows to hit moving foes if you are good at predicting movment, loses Bad Medicine synergy. It don't seem worth it, buffing it to Splinters 180% and more people might use it. A
- Snake to the Face: As fun as it might seem (from shooter pov), the chance and duration are not reliable at all against bosses/champs unless you stack ias. Then it's quite good keeping one foe stunlocked. Make it more balanced depending on weapon speed? B
Problems/fixing: Very potent, seen in pretty much every build that don't rely on Vision Quest. I would say (Splinters) to the point of being overused, as it's pretty much only WD spammable spell that does decent SINGLE target damage, so needed on champs and bosses. To make other options more valuable, make the dot effect stackable/rollable, so that every option is 140 wd per cast, otherwise Splinters wins in 99% of cases. By having a refreshing, not rollable dot, you are punishing fast weapons far too much for other options to be viable damage dealers.
Corpse Spiders (assuming all 4 spiders bites twice before death - 128% wd per cast):
- Leaping: First rune kills every further one. The damage for all spiders biting 8 times is 152%, which is inferior to Splinters. S
- Spider Queen: Absoule crap. It's a targetable aoe that does measly 16% wd per sec, it can't be used as primary damaging spell at all. To make worse, you can have only one at time. Should be (untargetable) pet/guardian that periodically spawn Leapings, maybe then it would be worth it (on other slot, you still need a nuke). C
- Widowmakers: 19 mana return in best scenario, suffers same as Spine dart, but worse because of nature of spiders. B
- Medusa: Like Numbing Dart, just much worse. Not only the slow is weakish, it isn't reliable at all for the chance of slow (~32% mob won't be slowed if he gets bitten by all four spiders on spawn) and the way is delivered (mobs run to you before spiders can bite). C
- Blazings: Buffs damage to 168% and changes it to fire, still worse than Splinters. B
Problems/Fixing: The spiders itself are great idea. It trades off ability to target one mob, for ability to throw them over obstacles/lower level/wallers/corners. The problem comes from fact they are inferior in damage to Splinters, and that is still in best case when they can bite all 8 times. Simply put, unless you have someone tanking mobs, the only options that work decentish is Leapings, anything else will just run away from them. When Dogs were tanky enough, they were kinda fun, now they are useless.
To fix, I would say give ALL of spiders ability to Leap, and redo Leaping Spiders completly, this skill is useless in any other form simply by mobs moving away. Furthermore, buff the weapon damage OR duration to allow spiders to bite 3 times each consistently.
Toads (130wd x 3 hits for 390% wd max):
- Explosive - simple buff to 169% wd (507% wd max) and change poison into fire damage. A
- Hugeness: Just as useless as Spider Queen. Can't eat any more powerful mobs. Takes away primary slot. Can't aim it. Make it guardian that will eat next non-elite add that would hit you (and knockback in case of elite) and you have decent defensive cc, otherwise Hex does it way better. C
- Rain: I'm in absolute love in this skill sound and animation. Rune itself changes ability drastically, and it's not half bad at all. B
- Addling: Add confuse to hits, it's incredibly good in any situation where you can use Frogs... problem is that you can't on Inferno. A
- Affinity: Waiting to 54 level to unlock rune that makes your PRIMARY spell (that you are supposed to use when you are low on resources in first place) is just crappy AND boring. The skill itself shouldn't cost that much considering risks you have to put in. C
Problem/fixing: I have to say, this skill generally is fun to use, randomness and clunky frog movement exploding on rocks is countered by awesome damage. That is, until you get to late Hell and Inferno. Since this skill require you to be in melee-medium range, in a world of one shots, it goes from interesting to absolutly worthless (except for Rain of Toads).
Unless the Inferno design changes (that is, that you can take some hits sometimes), it needs further range and faster frogs to be of any use there.
Fire Bomb
- Flash Fire: Assumming 7 enemies
85 + (85 * 0.85) + (85 * (0.85^2)) + (85 * (0.85^3)) + (85 * (0.85^4)) + (85 * (0.85^5)) + (85 * (0.85^6)) = 385% wd
Normal Firebomb would deal 595% wd in this case BUT only if mobs are packed together. The jumping change in mechanic makes it hit more spread targets, making it viable glyph. A
- Roll the Bones - Can hit targets that are behind initial landing place, decent. A
- Fire pit - Add 24% wd as a dot of floor. Pathetic damage that require mobs to be standing in place. Why would you want 24% dot when you can have 20% direct damage instantly over huge area (Ghost Bomb)? Need major buff to be of any use. C
- Pyrogeist - It attacks one target for 140% wd as a 3 sec dot. It already have problems keeping up with unruned Darts (100 direct + 40 as dot), but when you realize you can have only ONE spawned at same time, it renders skill completly useless. Having ability to cast multiples is required for this skill to work. The... thing... attacks aren't aoe anymore as well, so even with multiply copies possible, it would still need buff to the level of Splinters range.C
- Ghost bomb - Buffs standard version and makes it beautiful blue, great (only the 20% extra damage have further range, but it's enough) A
Problems/Fixing: The standard version is fine for aoe clearing (and crap for single target, so you need something extra for that). Needs rework on RtB, Pit and Pyro.
Grasp of the Dead
- Unbreakable Grasp: If movement speed debuffs works by multiplying, it doubles the slow provided bt skill (40% mv speed vs 20% glyphed). If by substraction, it's still incredibly good, as it buffs the most important part of skill. S
- Eels - buffs damage by 30% (tooltip changes on weapon speed, the faster the more, not sure if intended). It isn't dps ability per se, so don't see point. B
- Death is Life: Decent utility, especially to group, if not for terrible proc chance. At 5% it's just pointless for the small radius of this ability. Worthless until seriously buffed (20% minimum). C
- Desperate Grasp: If you want to gain more distance, get Unbrekable, otherwise casting animation screws you over. Make overlapping Grasps Immobilize targets for few seconds and then it might be usefull. B
- Rain of Corpses: Gives additional 50% damage on top on random nearby enemies, quite fun, but can't really drop better slow. A
Problems/Fixing - On Inferno, you are using this skill for kiting purposes, which leaves only UG as on option. Slow have to be 80% base for other runes to be usefull. Also, the cast recovery renders this skill useless if not preplaced. If a mob is chasing after you (leaperlike), stoping to cast it make mob hit you anyway, allow to cast in on move?
Firebats:
- Dire Bats: Holy Burning Bats, Batman! Buffs damage and allow skill to be used as long range nuke, even fly on other dungeon level, it's absolutly incredible. To the point of making all others useless... S
- Vamp Bats: Barbs got passive that gives them 3% life leach for everything, ask them how well it works in Inferno (answer - it doesn't). I can't even regen my life in Hell in this, healthbar is just not moving. C
- Plague Bats: 220% instant that fly over enemies in long range or 225% in small cone that require standing still and long windup, you do the math. It actualy have damage potential, but you won't have possibilty to stand still. B
- Hungry Bats: On paper looks good, in actual play, it is only slightly better against single targets, but absolutly not worth loosing range (and group clearing possibility) from Dire. B
- Cloud of Bats: Low range, decent damage, but let me know how standing in middle of enemy group works for you in Inferno. C
Problems/Fixing - Range and Mana cost. Nobody is using anything than Dire bats on Inferno, because it is impossible to stand so close and live, even more than some of skills require long casting. Hit and Run with Dires works way better. And because of mana cost, even if you could afford standing so close, channelling them require Vision quest or both Attunment and Blood Ritual. In fact, having both of those passives and a +10 mana per sec weapon didn't allow me to channel bats longer than 4-5 seconds. Either need serious range buffing or Inferno damage intake rebalanced, otherwise you won't see this skill used.
Haunt:
- Consuming Spirit: Don't scale with health, so becomes more and more obsolete the better your gear is. Make it 10-15% over entire duration and it may be worthwile. B
- Resentul: Makes this skill more of a nuke, decent damage, but to afford it mana wise... B
- Lingering: If you get situation where you leave Haunts unused, chance is you didn't need them in first place. Sure, the fact it clings onto you is nice, but it should be baked in basic. C
- Grasping: Weak slow, but still nice help against kiting elites. B
- Draining: Recovers mana cost and slightly more if it can work it's full duration. A
Problems/Fixing - The jumping ability is there to make this skill worthwile in more than elite/boss fights, but it's not working good enough. The animation of jump is too long, if you kill the target it was going to 'posses', the effect disappear completly. Works fine otherwise.
Locust Swarm (360wd/8sec = 45%wd per second):
- Pestilence: Instead of 1-1-1-1 (1-2-3-4 enemies), it spreads as 1-2-4-8 (1-3-7-15 enemies), faantastic. A
- Devouring Swarm: Superb mana regen if used on a big group allowing to cast high-mana nukes while dot does it's own work. A
- Cloud of Insects: Erm.. I don't see point of this at all. It buffs damage to 450% wd per cast, but with same dps, which is inferior (both dps and total damage done) to Searing, needs something better in this place. C
- Diseased Swarm: Extremly meh. If enemies are so low that cloud could finish them off, chances are Searing would just straight killed them. C
- Searing Locus: Buffs damage by 30% (58,5% per sec) and change it to fire, very good. A
Problems/Fixing - A DoT that is usefull for groups since it spread by itself, I absolutly loved this skill when I was leveling. Then comes inferno... and this skill require close range to apply, mhm... In anything past ActI, you must use Spirit Walk to apply it, and risk you will die by not having your only escape tool ready later.
Zombie Dogs:
- Rabid Dogs: Adds quite a bit damage, and gives great synergy with Bad Medicine, great. A
- Final Gift: Nice idea, but the chance is way too low. 60% of not getting health globe when 3 dogs die, on a 1 min cd, it's worthless. At 35-50% might be usefull, and that's only when health regain itself is usefull (one shots...) C
- Life Link: Boring passive, but buffs the 'defense' part of skill I guess. B
- Burning Dogs: The damage is way too small even when dogs run in huge pack of enemies, and have no synergies whatsover. C
- Leeching Beast: I was hyped when I finally unlocked it. And very disappointed after I tried. It could be very good rune, if pets would work. A
Problems/Fixing -
At Normal, I was like
At Nightmare, I was like
At Hell, I was like :|
At Inferno, I'm like (╯ಠ益ಠ)╯︵ ┻━┻
Absolutly horrid scaling, or lack of. This is a DEFENSIVE skill. Their lowish damage is fine, it allows them to finish stragglers and solo some very small mobs. But their survival is absolute crap, they got one shot by whiteys in inferno actI. I shouldn't need super gear to make them tanky. The skill role itself is for them to take hits, so that I can stay back and focus on doing more dps. If they fail at doing so, I'm much better taking another snare or other defensive cd (that does not care about my gear) instead. I'm very sad that iconic ability of Witch Doctor is not usable in endgame.
Horrify:
- Phobia: Longer duration, decent. A
- Stalker: Good idea, but way too weak run speed boost to be of any use except speedruns. You get more breathing room for getting that sligh longer Fear like above. B
- Face of Death: Larger Radius means you will fear that mob that is trying to hit you AND anything that follows it, and give enough time to drop snare. A
- Frightening Aspect: What? Even with bonus armor, I can't take single hit. You'd better be off taking bigger radius rather than trying to tank. Might be usefull if it helped survive something like Mortar fire or end boss abilites. C
- Ruthless Terror: It's boring, but I guess it works quite nice with something like Grave Injustice as mana regen skill. B
Problems/Fixing: While the skill itself is good, the fact you can't take single hit in Inferno, and this is cc that require melee range, make it questionable. It's still great against vortex/teleport enemies, but Face rune seem kinda mandatory to get it usable otherwise for anything more than one chasing you enemy.
Spirit Walk:
- Jaunt: 50% more duration of godly skill, nuff said. A
- Honored Guest: 30% mana regen on short cd makes it absolute incredible regen tool even in no-mana Splinter builds (for casting other cc's). S
- Umbral Shock: Mobs loose interest in your body when you cast it, and the damage+radius is very weak. C
- Severance: Why would you want to run INTO enemies? I can't take hits, remember? C
- Healing Journey: Even if healing was worthwile, 15% is just laughtable. 30% base and content that don't one shot, perhaps it could work. B
Problems/Fixing: Look at 'Prisoners of Spirit Realm' section.
Hex:
- Hedge Magic: Starts out amazing, don't scale at all. Just make it 10% heal baseline and it's golden, at least when you don't get one shot etc. A
- Jinx: 10% more damage, and changes Chicken into Pig. Works fine, but I'd rather have chickens :< B
- Angry Chicken: Joke rune. I have to say, it's incredibly funny turning into explosive chicken and headrush in mobs, especially in coop with friends. But it have zero practical value. Why does it loose defensive capability, all you gain is 15% movement speed? Make it break jail/freeze, blind nearby enemies for a while next to you, allow you to jump over walls and buff movement speed to 25% and you have something that can be used instead of Spirit Walk... j/k, you will end up using both. C
- Painful Transformation: Hex on elites works for about 2 seconds, so 72% wd over 12 seconds of skill is meh. B
- Unstable Form: A nice try to make skill viable on big groups rather than just champs. Its hard to pull off though. Need buff to radius to be useful. B
Problems/Fixing: Very nice ability, especially that it works on elites and it's castable on move, saved my flank many times from chasing elite. Chicken rune needs rework though.
Soul Harvest:
- Swallow your Soul: Very potent mana regain utility. A
- Siphon: Nice heal, if heals were usefull, should scale (10% per target). On lower diff it actually works as a decent defensive cd when cornered. A
- Languish: Don't see point, make them immobilize or at least 80% snare, otherwise most can catch up anyway. C
- Soul to Waste: Less tedious and makes it slighty safer to use. A
- Vengeful Spirit: Terrible damage requiring melee range, no thanks... C
Problems/Fixing: Even not scaling, this ability is incredibly powerful self-buff at max level. It goes from amazing to over-risky when you can't get into melee range at all though. Worhtless on boss fights with no adds, but for shear power on trash, I think it's fine.
Sacrifice:
- Black Blood: Slow last decent time, but is it worth runing... if explosion don't one shot group of mobs, skill itself isn't worth using. B
- Next of Kin: Gives you fuel for next cast instantly, pretty much only option since getting Dogs is hard already, especialy for bosses. It also gives that 'gambling' feel, like pulling machine slot lever when you explode them... might be only me though S
- Pride: Nice mana gain, but good luck making build with Sacrifice AND high mana nukes. B
- For the Master: Need scaling, guessing by amount healed, to 25% per dog. Not that heals are usefull atm. B
- Provoke the Pack: Damage buff is nice, but I'd rather have more exploding dogs or use Soul Siphon to buff Primary (Splinters that is) spam. Make it 10% per dog and it could see use... in Hell at best. B
Problems/fixing: It shares similar fate to dogs, if they get one shotted before you can position them, you can't get decent explosions. You need full build resolving around this , which could be fine, if it worked in Inferno. At this moment, it won't, so it's dead skill. Also since dogs are so hard to come, NoK is only viable rune for it.
Mass Confusion:
- Unstable Realm: 25% off CD, good. A
- Devolution: More Zombie Dogs! If they were good, this rune would be great. They aren't, so you are hurting yourself using it. B
- Mass Hysteria: Decreases chance of being one shotted by elite that didn't get charmed, required if you decide to use it in Inferno. A
- Paranoia: The additional damage is very, very nice. Too risky in Inferno though. A
- Mass Hallucination: Interesting effect, that's for sure. Damage is a bit low compared what you could do with Paranoia though (especially in multi). B
Problems/fixing: Overall good ability, but the melee range makes it very risky to get full potential.
Zombie Charger:
- Leperous Zombie: Laughtable dot, small mobs should be dead by this skills, elites you have to kite out of it. C
- Undeath: Only good on enemies that you can one shot. Just use Direbats. C
- Wave of Zombies: The hay is that? Why would you create rune that nerfs damage by 2/3, just so it changes to narrow cone? Even channeled bats are better. Also look to Zombie Bears. C
- Explosive Beast: The closest ability in game to Fireball. Except it explode on pebbles. But it's still better than previous runes. B
- Zombie Bears: Buff damages and add 2 more zombies to the sides. Can get 3 hits off if target is big enough.... read below S
Problems/Fixing: Whole tree needs serious rework. When you unlock this skill, you already have Dire Bats. And those Bats are way, way better than each of runes by both damage, range and not being limited by terrain. Zombies are so slow and range is pathetic. Why should I endanger myself if skill itself don't do more damage? Then you unlock final rune, and... it's just stupid. Runes are supposed to be about choice, yet Bears are three times better than any other mod. Sad part is, it's the only rune that makes this skill useful, for farming overgeared content that is (and bosses), since you will chain-die trying to use it in Inferno A2+. Leave Bears as is, buff rest tree to 300% wd, and it's still unusuable in higher diff due to design.
Spirit Barrage:
- The Spirit is Willing: Much cheaper mana cost, good I guess. A
- Well of Souls: Good on paper, but in game, those additional spirits won't hit if you have only one target, and for groups this skill is still useless. B
- Phantasm: Locust does same damage, but spreads way easier. This one is safer to use though. Buff duration a bit and it could work. B
- Phlebotomize: See: Vampiric Bats C
- Manitou: It shoots about 30 projectiles for a total of 840% wd. Seems good, but it's actually only 42% wd per second, it's single target, require medium to close range to hit (too close to kite safely), and some of his attacks miss anyway. Locust Swarm would outdps it on single target (and spread to rest), so does Haunt (48% per sec) and it can be put on many enemies. Needs major buff to be worth the slot C
Problems/Fixing: So, I can either pick mana-free Splinters, that I can spam all day, for 180% wd, or Spirit Barrage, that even runed for mana efficiecy will get me oom in seconds, for 190% wd, jeez, I wonder which to choose. Needs serious buff to damage to be worthwile, also look to Rush for Essence in passive section. In fact, if the damage was brough a bit lower (160% base) and mana cost nearly eliminated, it could as well work as primary.
Acid Cloud:
- Acid Rain: Huge range, sweet. A
- Lob Blob Bomb: Buff the 'dot' part so it's more effective vs bosses, and have fun animation too. Require mobs to stand in place, worked fine when pets could tank, don't work in Inferno with no tank. A
- Slow Burn: Only very slow mobs won't move from pool for so long. It's actually very similar role to LBB rune, with same problems, but not as fun. B
- Kiss of Death: Ok, apparantly, having skill go from targetable long range to melee is a POSITIVE in terms of runes, since for forcing you in melee range, you gain 10% damage on it, versus 30% of other runes that work similar. The animation of WD barfing Acid is great, but it needs serious buff. 30% as minimum, and perhaps more for having it harder to apply. C
- Corpse Bomb: It... works... well... Damage is fine, but... It's boring. It kills all the fun of ability. You click, it explodes, end. No dot, no glowing slime, no barfing, no huge area covered in acid. In fact, unless you can make LBB slime on boss for whole 5 seconds, this ability will do more damage. Nerf damage slightly to 150% wd, make enemies killed by it explode for 50% wd and chain explode if that kill another enemy and it would be sweet group killing skill, much closer to Corpse Explosion than this. B
Problems/fixing: Apart from some work with runes, skill is fine.
Wall of Zombies:
- Barricade: More Width means more places where you can use it to block mobs. A
- Unrelenting Grip: Mobs do walk next to wall, which could be useful... but if you can't block them entirely, or trap them inside wall, you are doing it wrong. C
- Creepers: I guess it works like it reads. B
- Pile On: Huge damage, but you loose cc and it's damn hard to aim. I can see it working though, if Grave Injustice is fixed (it's not working on it atm). B
- Dead Rush: Changes Wall more to... explosion, centered on yourself. Go run in group of mobs in Inferno, see how it works for you. Damage is fine, but at least knockback must be added so it still can act as backup cc. C
Problems/fixing: Working fine, even more if you immobilize bigger enemies by casting it ON them (I take it's intented, since wallers can do same to you).
Gargantuan:
- Humongoid: Nice damaging cleave for group clearing. B
- Restless Giant: Real monster when it activates, and internal cd is reset when you resummon Giant. A
- Wrathful Protector: 15 seconds, what? And apart from knockback, Restess will do way better when enraged. Make it 30 seconds so that Grave Injustice build can utilise it at least. C
- Big Stinker: Nice damage and synergy with Bad Medicine. A
- Bruiser: Stun is quite short against elites, but it does work. B
Problems/fixing: Similar to dogs, but less severe UNTIL Inferno. He works as fine tank up to Hell, then gets killed by 3 hits. I'm not joking, in actII, I took all hp increase/bad medicine/jungle forti, he lost a 'duel' to single female catman. I don't even have to test him against champions, worthless.
Big Bad Voodoo:
- Jungle Drums: 50% increase of duration, decent if you can sit that long in one place. B
- Rain Dance: Allows you to spam mana-intensive skills but, why it doesn't increase other classes resources as well? Completly worthless due to: B
- Slam Dance: 30% damage to you AND group, sick. S
- Ghost Trance: Good part, it scales. Bad part, healing in Inferno is useless for most part, especially that it's spike damage that kills you. Make it Cheat Death ability (ends when it's succesful before full duration) or healing could be slightly (7,5% per sec) buffed. B
- Boogie Man: Good idea to get more pet resummon, bad implementation. Think about it, when would you need your dogs (especially in Sac build)? On champion packs of course. What this skill help in that regards? Nothing, and even less. You don't want to blow your 120 sec CD on trash mobs, just so you can be even more vulnerable to elites. Fix? Make it SPAWN dogs with ratio 1 per 3 seconds (6 dogs total). That way, you have beautiful synergy for Sac, where you can use it just when you need the dogs the most. C
Problems/Fixing: It's not moving. That's huge problem for any pack you have to kite, and you have to kite everything in this game, that includes tank when their defensive CD runs out. That makes the 30 sec rune worthless, as you want to get as much as you can from short window you can stand inside (Slam). Make the Fetish dance on your head perhaps?
Fetish Army:
- Fetish Ambush: Damage is nice, standing in middle of mobs not so nice, and you want them for champions, which standing around is even less healthy. C
- Devoted Following: Shorter CD for longer uptime, not bad. A
- Legion of Daggers: Most used rune since it gives you more 'tanks'. A
- Tiki Torchers: Mobs keep moving away from them. The damage should be brough up drasticly, remember how those destroyed you in D2 when you didn't get maxed Fire resistance? B
- Head Hunters: I guess two ranged deal similar damage to three running like headless chicken melees. It's meh but it works. B
Problems/fixing: None really, apart from first rune. Those little bastards seem to tank better, or on par, as my Gargantuan, which is sad.
Passives:
Circle of Life: Way, way, way too low chance to spawn dogs. Radius is fine with few items that boost it. But there are better passives that help replenish dogs than having to kill 3 groups of small mobs for one dog. 15-20% needed to make Sac build not feel sluggish. Even with that high spawn rate, it won't render summon skill useless since you must have it to get dogs extra abilities and summon them for champ/boss fights. That is all if scaling is fixed. C
Junge Fortitude: Nice reduction, too bad everything one shots you and your pets anyway, if not that, it would give more room for error and better pet tanks, works great when leveling. B
Spiritual Attunment: Not bad, but mainly for getting more casts off your mana pool, the regen is too low. B
Gruesome Feast: Helps refuel mana and buffs your damage by huge amount, perfect! A
Bad Medicine: Like Jungle Forti, just for group, shares same problems. Great with Stinker/Plague dogs if they would work though. B
Blood Ritual: The health cost is nothing at 60 health pools (good) so it's like free life regen and 15% cheaper spells, quite nice, but usually have to be paired with Spirit Attu. A
Zombie Handler: Would be quite nice if it helped with pet durability, the bonus dog is great boost for Sac though. B
Pierce the Veil: Makes your damage more spiky between regen, I think that was the intent. Instead, it's used in Splinter-spam builds exclusivly. A
Fetish Scophants: Quite a fun one, you can get pretty nice army if you stack attack speed. Could get a boost to proc rate for slow weapons though. A
Spirit Vessel: Since Spirit Walk is must, so is this, allows you to eat one hit per 90 seconds as well. S
Rush of Essence: Now, looking at this, you might be thinking "A great passive to make a spirit based build", right? Well... you can't. First, the mana regen is really anwkard, and simple reduction would be much better. Second, until the mana cost of (unruned) Spirit Barrage is greter than primaries (that it should replace, remember it's barely stronger), the build is useless. Sure, you could take both Attunmen and Blood Ritual, but then you'd be off just sterring clear from spirit line (*cough* Dire Bats *cough*).
On a side note, there is only two options for nuke for a spirit build. TSiW Spirit Barrage with Haunt as secondary (leaves you with no aoe), or Resentful Spirit Haunt with Phantasm Spirit Barrage (but high mana cost of Haunt might now allow to use it as primary unless paired with more mana passives). C
Vision Quest: When you can keep 4 skills on CD, it allows you to spam anything as you wish. Like Zombie Bears. Or Dire Bats. I don't think we have any more spells, do we? While the passive work great, I greatly dislike the idea behind it. You have 4 spells that you don't really want to use, just keep on cooldown, and your whole focus is on spamming that one mana-heavy spell. A
Fierce Loyalty: Oh hey, a great passive for pet build. That don't scale. And get one shot. And no amount of life regen will keep your Gargantuan alive. So the only current use of it, is when you can stack so much thorns that mobs themselves will suicide on first touch on your dogs. Then you can kill 3-4 mobs each 60 second between dog summon reset. *yay* C
Grave Injustice: Interesting one, don't really help that much against champs though, and you need items with radius to make it usable. Increase base to at least 12y would make it more workable w/o supporting gear. It also don't work with some skills (Zombie Wall - Pile On), buggy. A
Tribal Rites: If you can manage to do build base on those skills and not using Vision Quest, then it's not half bad. It bugs with Devoted rune on Army and the cooldown goes from 90 (Army with rune) to 98 (Army with Rune and Tribal Rites). And it's actual cooldown, not only tooltip error (tested with stopwatch). B
Any thought/comments/disagreements? Combos or skill usage I'm missing that makes them good otherwise?
INB4 TL;DR - I expect that, but thanks for bump.
Pestilence rune isn't necessary, but it does get the job it's supposed to do, that is to spread near instantly. It's still very nice for big packs where it will take it's sweet time to apply to every mob, and even get lost if it jumps to far away one.
Blood Ritual and Spirit Attunment by itself never allowed me to comfortably cast Dire Bats as primary, they work nice in tandem. It's still not enough for the non-Dire bats though. I guess I could stack more mana regen and see how it work. They do work well by itself for 'occassional' batty though.
- Flash Fire rune is excellent for targeting around corners as they will bounce to targets. I prefer Splinter darts but I've heard of people using it in Inferno to keep out of line of sight.
- Why does Blood Ritual have to go with Spiritual Attunement?
Reply to Wasikiaboom:
- Unbreakable Grasp _is_ phenomenal. It's twice the slow of standard! That means I can shoot twice as many darts, and have twice as much time for my Hex, Wall of Zombies, Horrify, and Spirit Walk to come back. It turns it from "please slow down" to "stop the **** right there". Against fast elites it's not as effective as I'd like but without 80% slow it's not even worth turning around to cast the bloody thing.
Didn't use grasp of death or 60 sec soul harvest in act 2, worked out fine.
I also used the 20 percent mana passive.
Poison dart splinters
dire bats
Spirit walk honored
Soul harvest siphon
Locust Swarm Mana/fire
Any non damage skill
On Healing Journey, see, it don't work like that from my glass cannon from Hell experience. While I did read about WD doing it for Inferno Azmodan to survive those bucking black pools first tick, pretty much any Inferno boss pass Act 1 will one shot you with their skills, so you have to dodge it, Spirit Walk through it, or proc Spirit Vessel. Butcher have 2 health wells to counter his aoe-chain. Using SW to heal it up leaves you dead meat if fire spawns badly or you don't dodge his 'get over here', on Diablo instead of healing up you can just use it to avoid fire nova or lightning cone after he teleports to you. But I didn't know it proc 3 times... does it mean the mana regen one regain 45% of mana?
Hex itself is incredible (Belial being susceptible is a surprise to me), the rank itself is to the rune working on skill. It boost bonus damage from 10% to 20%, which is nice, but nothing amazing.
Stinker poison damage depends on my damage, it's my pet, on my skillbar. I say, if it doesn't work, then it's a bug (will have to test it for sure though). Gargy actually is doing decent damage on his own, especially when enraged. I never really needed his stun but... having played monk and seen how much attacks from Diablo you can stop mid-way by good stun/blind, I might undervalued it.
Dropson - you're not the only person who doesn't like PD. I admit that Splinters is just too awesome. I me, wow. It does nearly as much damage as any of the other "nuke" skills, it costs practically no mana, it hits three times to increase chances of things procing on hits. About the only downside of it, mechanically, is that the slow speed of the projectile (hard to hit any of the mobs that like to run from you).
What I don't like about it, is that it is booooring. I would so much prefer one of the firebomb runes, but the WD has no problem with AoE skills, he needs single target skills. Also, I think each and every primary skill, for every class, have it's on target hit for at LEAST 100% wd. 80% is just a joke in my opinion. I think the base skill should be buffed so that, in addition to the aoe, it does DoT damage, I'd say 100% single, and two ticks at 15-20%, for a total of 130 or 140% single target. I think a similiar idea should be added to Acid Cloud. Basically, they both use jells either acidic or burning. I also want them to bring back the noise the WD made when he through from his reveal trailer.
I agree mostly, I think the "melee" skills should either get a damage or range buff.
And for Spirit Barrage, I think they should either up the base damage to like 250%, or make it act like bone spear from D2. What I'd love to see for that animation is the same as what they have no, except it is basically a hit scan across whereever it is aimed. That, or give it knockback/rapid fire/AoE addition (trying to work in the "barrage" part of the name).
Hex is good but i think it's annoying to use. Soul Harvest too. If it wasn't for summon i would not touch the WD. Gladly dogs will get the buff their deserve !
Actually, exploding beast isn't bad, it's just overshadowed by dire bats and zombie bears.
I agree with most of it, or atleast that there is indeed a problem with most of this skills you pointed out. I am not sure however that all of the suggestions are fisable when looking at the other classes and what not.
My personal biggest gripe is that i went for a pet class, and i got a blow gun wielding freak with a bad case of tremers.
Either that, or change one of the Zombie Dog runes to make them into "Spitters" of some kind. THAT would work
pets don't last one hit past act I.
nerffix. If they made WD pets tankish enough when you load some hp and resist yourself, it could, in theory, allow to more bearable Inferno play for them. That would leave DH as only class that stacking vit/res is 100% pointless.Although myself, I don't really see dogs working even after vit scaling. Sure, you can kill trash packs in less tedious way, but they will still get one shotted by elites that you have to kite for next 5 minutes, just this time with one less skill on your bar.
From monk PoV with 92% phys dmg reduction - even listed above combination won't save WD from oneshots. Agree with OP completly, when my gf started wd she fell for summoning tribal feel and ended runing without core summons in mid hell. Half class skillset is useless becouse of pets scaling (seriously Blizzard didn't learn from WoW example at all - scalling is essential for pet skills and if you can't code pets to move out of fire then reduce dmg they take from it). Honestly feels like no internal testing have been done whatsoever.
Atm WD endgame play doesn't provide much tribal feel and limit WDs to kiting no different from other ranged classes. Imo at least one ranged class should be able to take some punishment from mobs, and looking on WD passives/short range actives he was intended to be such caster. Too bad design flaws made WD same glass cannons as Wizards/DHs, rendered wholle pet system unusable and turned Thorns affix into waste of space on items.
I have to insist that you really should post this thread on the Official Blizzard Diablo forums in the Witch Doctor section.
This is the kind of criticism that I think some employee might read and reply to, since it's so well laid out and you have a lot of great ideas.
It might eventually help the class being tweaked for the benefit of all of us playing it.
Would you do it?
I don't think Dogs should scale with any of the players stats - only with his level and the level of the mobs. They should figure out how long they want dogs/garg to last in any given fight in Inferno, and give the dogs enough vit/resist to last that long. If they balance it on armor/vit then either it's only useful for characters already stacking those (who, in theory, shouldn't need a lot more tanking), or they multiply the players armor/vit enough that high damage, low hp builds (who need it) can actually use the tanks, and then a tanking WD can get unstoppable pets.
Pets should be a known quantity, so that if you chose to waste a skill/passives on them, you can support the lack of damage by focusing on damage items, not survivability.