Let me first premise by saying Witch Doctor was the first class I leveled, so it's near and dear to me! But alas, I've decided to explore other aspects of the game after hitting a wall with him. Now I haven't been back since 1.03 other than an hour or two here and there, I feel it's a bit of an uphill battle when playing him. Currently I have a Monk with a Wizard on the way.
But with 1.04 and developer blogs soon to come out, I'm hopeful that I'll have good reason to come back and visit the WD as I think it is probably the most interesting class to play. Here are some things that I'm looking forward to, and I'm looking to see what other people are hoping to see Blizzard acknowledge about this class overall.
Animations: While the witch doctor has some of the neater animations (raining toads anyone!??) they're all far too long, even with a ceremonial blade or fast 1h. In inferno I feel sometimes that while running from Fast affixes or just faster moving creatures, stopping to cast grasp/wall of zombies runs a risk of taking damage sort of defeats the purpose of casting the abilities in the first place.
Mana: At this point after playing a monk fully through inferno and a wizard into hell (I actually play and not farm Leorics manor for each difficulty). Resource management on those classes just feels so much more natural. Diablo 2 felt like resource spending game, Diablo 3 feels like resource generation game. This point has been argued so heavily that if Blizzard doesn't make some kind of change -- whether it be in skill mana adjustment or a buff elsewhere -- I'd say it's clear that they don't play WD nearly as much as Barbarian (which seems to be the most well thought-out.
Pets and summoning: For a class that has 3 passives dedicated to pets, 1 of which is unlocked at level 45, this is lacking. Where the witch doctor has so much potential in the pet department it certainly falls short. But this has been acknowledged by Blizzard during their AMA (I think, if it wasn't there it was a blue tracker). Especially considering that the promotional video for the WD in the days before release featured "foul beasts" at your disposal, it would only seem right for this to be buffed. As it is, having sacrifice and zombie dogs on your bar is close to pointless at most difficulties.
Overall build variety: The truth is that you can get through this game with pretty much any build no matter how crazy. I'm sure somewhere there's someone angling to prove that pets can work with a toad of hugeness/spider queen build and will be posting within the next few days a youtube of them soloing various champion packs. There's just simply a lack of variety and at the end of the day most people are just increasing the amount of splinters they've shot. WD may be the least played class, but he's got the best lungs -- you don't blow that many darts through 4 acts and 4 difficulties without having nice lung capacity.
These are actually pretty general things that I would imagine Blizzard will be looking at and I hope they do. The class is really fun with some really cool abilities they just seem all over the place. I would really like to start playing him again and seeing more people doing the same.
Scale pets with player's int/vit and all is solved on that part. This goes for the monk summon as well.
I"m hoping for more creative solutions. I will be really disapointed if any glass cannon WD can just throw summons in the build and it works out all pretty and well.
Summon changes i want:
* 50% free damage reduction against ranged attacks.
* Immunity to AoE that pets naturaly do not avoid such as arcane sentry and plagued pools.
* Zombie Handler gives additionally a armor and all resists buffs to pet. Maybe +50%.
* Zombie Dogs cooldown reduced to 30~45 seconds.
* Remake Fiercy Loyalt. Pets scaling HP regen and thorns should be default in first place, not a passive effect. Fiercy Loyalt should be: enemies damaged by zombie dogs and gargantua takes additional 10~20% damage. Lasts 3 seconds.
Maybe not even this would solve all pet's problem but it's a nice start.
I'd say it's clear that they don't play WD nearly as much as Barbarian (which seems to be the most well thought-out.)
I had to facepalm when I read this quote in regards to resource management. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, since you say you have played WD, Wizard and Monk, and have no clue about resource management for barbarians. I will simply point out for you, that nearly all of the viable builds for inferno barbarians (excluding those running around in tens of millions of gold worth of gear) have barbarians using absolutely zero resource spending abilities. I am literally at full rage at all times during combat. Virtually no barbarian uses any resource spending abilities whatsoever. This is why the Berserker's Rage passive, which grants a 25% damage increase while at full rage is so popular; we are always at full rage!!!
I had to facepalm when I read this quote in regards to resource management. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, since you say you have played WD, Wizard and Monk, and have no clue about resource management for barbarians. I will simply point out for you, that nearly all of the viable builds for inferno barbarians (excluding those running around in tens of millions of gold worth of gear) have barbarians using absolutely zero resource spending abilities. I am literally at full rage at all times during combat. Virtually no barbarian uses any resource spending abilities whatsoever. This is why the Berserker's Rage passive, which grants a 25% damage increase while at full rage is so popular; we are always at full rage!!!
Sorry, that point I made got a little off target in that section. It's true what I know of Barbs is only what friends tell me, and they all play HC barbarians in Inferno, so I'm going off conjecture. My point was that just barbarians seem to be able to do a lot with a lot less gear than WDs do. Just based on my own philosophy of the game, a class that has more options with less gear is a class that has well-thought out abilities.
I would like pets to scale with a portion of Vitality, Resist, and Armor. Doesn't have to be much, but I'd like to see a 1-minute cooldown last for at least 15 seconds in normal combat conditions. I HATED when I had to stop using my Garg, and the Dogs were useless from A4 of Nightmare.
Some interesting ideas, but there is something I disagree with - pets scaling with defensive stats.
I get the idea that you don't want to give glass cannons super awesome defensive pets. But, when they heavily scale with defensive stats (vit, armor, hp, etc), then they become somewhat redundant - if I'm building a tank, why would I need the tankiest pets? Wouldn't I want damage pets? Or, if the only way to make them viable is to be a tank already, then again, what's the point?
Pets should, IMO, scale nominally based on player advancement - no matter what your gear is, with no skill buffs, they should be okay (not great), on the act you are trying to progress on. I'm thinking 50-75% of the cool down. Basically, they should be balanced so that if you don't spend at least a portion of your build on them, they so-so. However, if you want to use pets, you can choose passives and skills that would benefit them. That way, you're making a trade off - less damage/survivability through passives and CC, but more survivability through pets. I feel this would have worked with the original idea of having active skills interact with pets, like being able to set fire to, or add locust to, pets. If you want to use pets, you build your build around them.
I only have three other major wishes.
The smallest, but maybe the largest impact, is faster animations. It makes it incredibly difficult to kite well when you have stop for so long to cast something.
Second, I think they need to revamp the spirit based attack spells - haunt and SB. Haunt would be decent if we had unlimited spell slots, as it's very situational (45% dps is too low for a main attack spell, especially one that is as mana happy as haunt). Maybe halve the damage but make it a debuff (extra damage from spirit attacks, slow, reduce damage, a small improvement to all spirit skills for every enemy with haunt on them, something). For Spirit Barrage, well, it's just got a terrible damage/mana ratio. Sure, you can use up a passive and a rune and reduce it to 40ish mana, but it still only does 10% more than splinters (does less if you happen to be rocking PtV instead of the Rush of Essence to get the reduced mana). Also, even if it only "costs" 40 mana, it still takes the full 108 to cast as you only get the rest back over time (as opposed to nearly every other classes cost reduction runes which are a straight up reduction in cost, frequently for a better reduction as well).
Finally, mana. Now, my personal wish is that it gets completely replaced, like with some form of Blood Ritual (that'd make a truly unique class if we cast out of hp). However, that's a bit much for a patch. I think the best they could do is rework the costs and cooldowns. I'm not sure how they could make the class more unique, but I think the first thing is reduce or eliminate the cost for the primary skills. We're the only class that has no way of attacking when we oom. Maybe reduce APS when using primaries below a certain mana %, or cast primaries out of HP, or just do what the Wizard does and make them free. Also, splinters needs a reduction in damage. It's just too good right now. That, or make the other primaries better. For all the limits on firebombs AoE vs other classes primary AoE's, it doesn't do much damage (can't hit anything more than once, it's slow so it misses a lot...I guess only two limits. But they're big!).
if I'm building a tank, why would I need the tankiest pets? Wouldn't I want damage pets? Or, if the only way to make them viable is to be a tank already, then again, what's the point?
I agree with everything you said except this.
Zombie Dogs, especially, is categorized as a "defensive" ability. And it's plenty clear that both Zombie Dogs and Gargantuan are supposed to give the DK a measure of control. They absolutely must scale with defensive stats (and I believe they already do). If you want to build a tank witch doctor then you'll probably not want to take pets. It's really not going to change much.
I just don't see a logical way to make pets scale on the opposite role you take. That's a ton of work for very little reward.
I'd not say complete immunity to aoe effects like plagued, molten or arcane sentry, but a 90% reduction. This way you may still want to have a little control on pets without punishing you too much for not having a pet control feature.
I also would like to see (but the priority is much lower than pet's) reworked some stuff, like chicken hex.
Exactly how would you control your pets without having a pet control feature in your scenario, then? Running far away to get them to pull back out of aoes? That seems like really fun design >_>
if I'm building a tank, why would I need the tankiest pets? Wouldn't I want damage pets? Or, if the only way to make them viable is to be a tank already, then again, what's the point?
I agree with everything you said except this.
Zombie Dogs, especially, is categorized as a "defensive" ability. And it's plenty clear that both Zombie Dogs and Gargantuan are supposed to give the DK a measure of control. They absolutely must scale with defensive stats (and I believe they already do). If you want to build a tank witch doctor then you'll probably not want to take pets. It's really not going to change much.
I just don't see a logical way to make pets scale on the opposite role you take. That's a ton of work for very little reward.
Think you meant WD instead of DK. WoW much? =P
I'm sure there's a way to make pets scale defensively using your offensive stats. For example just off the top of my head, a dodge chance that increases with your crit. Their resists, hp and damage reduction could scale at a scaled rate according to your int, crit damage, attack speed or something along those lines. There are ways to do it and we can only come up with so much before we're doing the devs jobs for them.
I don't think defensive stats = offensive pets is very intuitive at all. I think that's insanely convoluted for the average player. It would require fairly detailed tooltips showing exactly what player stat gives exactly what dog/garg stat just to keep everything straight. It's a whole lot of crap for the average player to really wrap their head around just because someone might want to build a tanky-WD who uses pets.
It's also a ton of work to make sure all that is balanced for what has to amount to a niche of WD players.
WD pets are never going to be good offensively. It's clear that Blizzard doesn't want people playing D3 like they did with the necro in D2 where you just hang out and let your summons kill stuff.
They'll likely just allow their health to scale with vitality, which is the major issue at this point and maybe buff the benefits they get from defensive stats, similar to how the followers work. There's no way to increase dogs base HP atm which is really ridiculous... the dogs probably have like 6k HP or something.
The biggest things they need to fix with the WD is resource management and passives, which kind of go hand in hand. There are a lot of other problems, but mana is the main one. Can't say for sure how they would do it though.
Buffing primarys might be a start. Maybe it would be better if we had bigger mana pools with less regen so that spending mana wouldn't be a problem, and the primarys became generators...
It seems kind of dumb that our primarys don't generate mana because it really encourages you to just stack mana regen rather than use a primary. And of course VQ is ridiculous.
Diablo 3 feels like resource generation game. This point has been argued so heavily that if Blizzard doesn't make some kind of change -- whether it be in skill mana adjustment or a buff elsewhere -- I'd say it's clear that they don't play WD nearly as much as Barbarian (which seems to be the most well thought-out.
Even if pets became viable, I'd never put them on the bar. Why have a pet tank 4 mobs, when I can use wall of zombies and GoD and CC them all? Why have a pet do 15% weapon damage to elites, when I can have fetish army do 8 x 20% weapon damage. Pets are cool at the lower levels when you are just messing around; but in inferno, you need to spike your damage in the fights that matter. Pets will always fail this test.
They'd have to make a run for ZD/Gargantuan that lets the Garg ride a big ZD before I'd use it. And even then, it'd either have to look super funny or super cool.
I have to disagree, though. I found the WD to be a ton easier all the way thru inferno. I stopped my Barbarian in Hell, cuz it just got to be too much kiting for a melee class.
i fully support buffing pets and pet passives. they need to scale with 5-10% of our hp at the very least. they need reduced damage against things players are meant to avoid like plague pools.
they shouldn't be invincible, but they shouldn't explode in 0.7 seconds to wasp missiles either
in a way i think blizzard tipped their hand with item skill buffs. you'll find zombie dog skills on items as, "reduces the cooldown". that kind of tells us they meant for dogs to be trash throwaway pets that we constantly have to resummon. i'm hoping they'll reverse course on that.
Agreed. There's a reason pet avoidance in WoW is 90%. Pets need the ability to stand in stuff because they invariably become useless if they're not on a mob all the time.
It's not all that uncommon to get a double "damage-at-your-feet" mob.
Any combination of two of the following makes pets life disappear and disappear fast:
Desecrator
Arcane Enchanted
Molten
Plagued
Fire Chains
Mortar gets added to that list if you're fighting an opponent whose AI makes them spread out like archers, spearmen, wasps, many teleporting mobs, many fast mobs, morlu incinerators (ok technically meteor, but whatever), heralds of pestilence, those annoying winged morlok things in act 3, etc.
There is so much damage that we have to dodge that our pets are total victims to... 33% simply isn't enough. A bad arcane sentry setup, without any other avoidable damage, would probably tear through dogs, even with vit scaling.
if I'm building a tank, why would I need the tankiest pets? Wouldn't I want damage pets? Or, if the only way to make them viable is to be a tank already, then again, what's the point?
I agree with everything you said except this.
Zombie Dogs, especially, is categorized as a "defensive" ability. And it's plenty clear that both Zombie Dogs and Gargantuan are supposed to give the DK a measure of control. They absolutely must scale with defensive stats (and I believe they already do). If you want to build a tank witch doctor then you'll probably not want to take pets. It's really not going to change much.
I just don't see a logical way to make pets scale on the opposite role you take. That's a ton of work for very little reward.
The issue with WD pets scaling with defensive stats, is that it's counter-productive for a defensive ability meant to keep enemies from attacking you in a build where you would be gearing for defensive stats. They either need to be able to effectively do damage in tank build, or effectively tank for a decent amount of time in an offensive build. Therefore they need to scale defensively with offensive stats, or offensively with defensive stats. Otherwise they'll only be effective in higher gear levels where you already have high amounts of both offensive and defensive stats.
IMO the Garg should be effectively as hard to kill as a decently geared Templar, even with low levels of defensive stats, and ZDs should be able to survive a decent amount of hits, longer with leeching beasts. Obviously this would be with pet/defensive-based passives. Also, pets should have the ability to taunt, or at least cause high amounts of threat so that enemies won't just run past them and attack the WD.
Easy way to do that imo is scaling their life with the WDs Int, and increase the amount of resists they get from the WDs resists, etc.
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Nerd: When you say it, you best say it with awe,
'Cause I'm the type of nerd that will bust your jaw.
I used to be a WD until i realized barb was so much better... so i agree that WD needs some buffing. However, EVERYTHING you listed was a buff... You are basically asking blizzard to do nothing but enhance the WD...
Diablo 3 feels like resource generation game. This point has been argued so heavily that if Blizzard doesn't make some kind of change -- whether it be in skill mana adjustment or a buff elsewhere -- I'd say it's clear that they don't play WD nearly as much as Barbarian (which seems to be the most well thought-out.
Just a problem, rage-spenders are useless.
Are you trying to say that Sprint and Whirlwind are worthless? Oh, I beg to differ!
Sprint kinda is worthless for almost all builds... except for the now popular tornado.
My build is one many would call worthless:
Mouse:Bash (punish), Whirlwind (heal)
Keyboard: Ground Stomp(pull), Furious Charge(dreadnaught), Revenge (increased heal + fury), Warcry (resists)
Passive:Ruthless, Juggernaut, Tough as Nails
However... as i finally build gear... its become more and more powerful. 3 of my Actives heal based on max life, and one of my passives as well. As i build my vit/ +Life% pool... i become exponentially more powerful.
imo Fierce Loyalty should be the passive that makes pets TANK... by making something like "pets get 200% of your resistances, 200% of your thorns and 100% of your life regen", and maybe reduced cooldowns for zombie dogs and garg.
Players will have to choose from making their pet tanks by using 2 or 3 passives that enhace pets (like Jungle fortitude, bad medicine, Zombie handler, fierce loyalty) or go the DPS way and make their pets die more frequently.
Why i sugest the change to fierce loyalty, because as it is now, its useless... a not so expensive gear for int, vit and resistances should take you to 50k dps, 35-40k hp and 500+ resist. if pets got 500x2=1000 resists to all (and some vit scaling), they could survive like some barbs do, considering they dont heal with revenge and stuff. This change would add some valor to the passive and to ressistance stacking instead of glass cannon, you can cast more times without kitting because a pet is stopping elites from reaching you.
Even if pets became viable, I'd never put them on the bar. Why have a pet tank 4 mobs, when I can use wall of zombies and GoD and CC them all? Why have a pet do 15% weapon damage to elites, when I can have fetish army do 8 x 20% weapon damage. Pets are cool at the lower levels when you are just messing around; but in inferno, you need to spike your damage in the fights that matter. Pets will always fail this test.
They'd have to make a run for ZD/Gargantuan that lets the Garg ride a big ZD before I'd use it. And even then, it'd either have to look super funny or super cool.
This is the first post on pets I agree with. What are we really holding out for? I think everyone has these memories of using pets back in normal, when you didn't realize that you ended up tanking half the mobs anyway. I'm not going to slot a pet that might, at best, be like hex and tank a mob or two for me, instead of slotting a CC that will give me complete and independent breathing room while I kite.
Pet aggro, as far as I remember, is not that great. They could be indestructible. The problem is we have all learned how to play without them. We have geared for the scenario where we can handle ourselves on our own. Having pets is not going to let you drop survivability for damage, so do you really want to slot a defensive ability that leaves you at the mercy of inconsistent AI?
if I'm building a tank, why would I need the tankiest pets? Wouldn't I want damage pets? Or, if the only way to make them viable is to be a tank already, then again, what's the point?
I agree with everything you said except this.
Zombie Dogs, especially, is categorized as a "defensive" ability. And it's plenty clear that both Zombie Dogs and Gargantuan are supposed to give the DK a measure of control. They absolutely must scale with defensive stats (and I believe they already do). If you want to build a tank witch doctor then you'll probably not want to take pets. It's really not going to change much.
I just don't see a logical way to make pets scale on the opposite role you take. That's a ton of work for very little reward.
The issue with WD pets scaling with defensive stats, is that it's counter-productive for a defensive ability meant to keep enemies from attacking you in a build where you would be gearing for defensive stats. They either need to be able to effectively do damage in tank build, or effectively tank for a decent amount of time in an offensive build. Therefore they need to scale defensively with offensive stats, or offensively with defensive stats. Otherwise they'll only be effective in higher gear levels where you already have high amounts of both offensive and defensive stats.
IMO the Garg should be effectively as hard to kill as a decently geared Templar, even with low levels of defensive stats, and ZDs should be able to survive a decent amount of hits, longer with leeching beasts. Obviously this would be with pet/defensive-based passives. Also, pets should have the ability to taunt, or at least cause high amounts of threat so that enemies won't just run past them and attack the WD.
Easy way to do that imo is scaling their life with the WDs Int, and increase the amount of resists they get from the WDs resists, etc.
I'm not even going to bother to point out the 10+ reasons that your proposition is ineffective and accomplishes nothing aside from your insistance on forcing Zombie Dogs and Gargantuan to work with a niche spec like a tankdoctor. I assure you that you have not thought this through to see the absolutely glaring holes in what you're saying, though.
What you are doing is taking abilities which were clearly designed for defense/control and tailoring them to a very niche playstyle, and that's akin to me complaining that Horrify doesn't have enough of a direct offensive use (like 50% weapon damage) which makes it useless for my spec. Abilities do NOT need to by hybridized like that. We take abilities like Horrify and Mass Confusion and Hex because they primarily provide control. The idea that every ability should be both offensive and defensive absolutely negates the choices we're supposed to be making. The point of the matter is that if you don't need control then you don't need Horrify.
Abilities are supposed to have roles they fill. The goal of making a good spec is (in theory) supposed to be finding the proper synergy between your abilities and your playstyle. What you are doing is saying that you want Zombie Dogs to be viable in every single spec out there which is no more logical than me saying that Poison Darts has to be viable in every single spec out there. The bottom line is that they aren't and that they shouldn't be. If you need more offense in your tank build you probably should pick an offensive ability.
I don't see what's so damned complicated about that. All you have is a solution looking for a problem.
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But with 1.04 and developer blogs soon to come out, I'm hopeful that I'll have good reason to come back and visit the WD as I think it is probably the most interesting class to play. Here are some things that I'm looking forward to, and I'm looking to see what other people are hoping to see Blizzard acknowledge about this class overall.
Animations: While the witch doctor has some of the neater animations (raining toads anyone!??) they're all far too long, even with a ceremonial blade or fast 1h. In inferno I feel sometimes that while running from Fast affixes or just faster moving creatures, stopping to cast grasp/wall of zombies runs a risk of taking damage sort of defeats the purpose of casting the abilities in the first place.
Mana: At this point after playing a monk fully through inferno and a wizard into hell (I actually play and not farm Leorics manor for each difficulty). Resource management on those classes just feels so much more natural. Diablo 2 felt like resource spending game, Diablo 3 feels like resource generation game. This point has been argued so heavily that if Blizzard doesn't make some kind of change -- whether it be in skill mana adjustment or a buff elsewhere -- I'd say it's clear that they don't play WD nearly as much as Barbarian (which seems to be the most well thought-out.
Pets and summoning: For a class that has 3 passives dedicated to pets, 1 of which is unlocked at level 45, this is lacking. Where the witch doctor has so much potential in the pet department it certainly falls short. But this has been acknowledged by Blizzard during their AMA (I think, if it wasn't there it was a blue tracker). Especially considering that the promotional video for the WD in the days before release featured "foul beasts" at your disposal, it would only seem right for this to be buffed. As it is, having sacrifice and zombie dogs on your bar is close to pointless at most difficulties.
Overall build variety: The truth is that you can get through this game with pretty much any build no matter how crazy. I'm sure somewhere there's someone angling to prove that pets can work with a toad of hugeness/spider queen build and will be posting within the next few days a youtube of them soloing various champion packs. There's just simply a lack of variety and at the end of the day most people are just increasing the amount of splinters they've shot. WD may be the least played class, but he's got the best lungs -- you don't blow that many darts through 4 acts and 4 difficulties without having nice lung capacity.
These are actually pretty general things that I would imagine Blizzard will be looking at and I hope they do. The class is really fun with some really cool abilities they just seem all over the place. I would really like to start playing him again and seeing more people doing the same.
I"m hoping for more creative solutions. I will be really disapointed if any glass cannon WD can just throw summons in the build and it works out all pretty and well.
Summon changes i want:
* 50% free damage reduction against ranged attacks.
* Immunity to AoE that pets naturaly do not avoid such as arcane sentry and plagued pools.
* Zombie Handler gives additionally a armor and all resists buffs to pet. Maybe +50%.
* Zombie Dogs cooldown reduced to 30~45 seconds.
* Remake Fiercy Loyalt. Pets scaling HP regen and thorns should be default in first place, not a passive effect. Fiercy Loyalt should be: enemies damaged by zombie dogs and gargantua takes additional 10~20% damage. Lasts 3 seconds.
Maybe not even this would solve all pet's problem but it's a nice start.
I had to facepalm when I read this quote in regards to resource management. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, since you say you have played WD, Wizard and Monk, and have no clue about resource management for barbarians. I will simply point out for you, that nearly all of the viable builds for inferno barbarians (excluding those running around in tens of millions of gold worth of gear) have barbarians using absolutely zero resource spending abilities. I am literally at full rage at all times during combat. Virtually no barbarian uses any resource spending abilities whatsoever. This is why the Berserker's Rage passive, which grants a 25% damage increase while at full rage is so popular; we are always at full rage!!!
Sorry, that point I made got a little off target in that section. It's true what I know of Barbs is only what friends tell me, and they all play HC barbarians in Inferno, so I'm going off conjecture. My point was that just barbarians seem to be able to do a lot with a lot less gear than WDs do. Just based on my own philosophy of the game, a class that has more options with less gear is a class that has well-thought out abilities.
I get the idea that you don't want to give glass cannons super awesome defensive pets. But, when they heavily scale with defensive stats (vit, armor, hp, etc), then they become somewhat redundant - if I'm building a tank, why would I need the tankiest pets? Wouldn't I want damage pets? Or, if the only way to make them viable is to be a tank already, then again, what's the point?
Pets should, IMO, scale nominally based on player advancement - no matter what your gear is, with no skill buffs, they should be okay (not great), on the act you are trying to progress on. I'm thinking 50-75% of the cool down. Basically, they should be balanced so that if you don't spend at least a portion of your build on them, they so-so. However, if you want to use pets, you can choose passives and skills that would benefit them. That way, you're making a trade off - less damage/survivability through passives and CC, but more survivability through pets. I feel this would have worked with the original idea of having active skills interact with pets, like being able to set fire to, or add locust to, pets. If you want to use pets, you build your build around them.
I only have three other major wishes.
The smallest, but maybe the largest impact, is faster animations. It makes it incredibly difficult to kite well when you have stop for so long to cast something.
Second, I think they need to revamp the spirit based attack spells - haunt and SB. Haunt would be decent if we had unlimited spell slots, as it's very situational (45% dps is too low for a main attack spell, especially one that is as mana happy as haunt). Maybe halve the damage but make it a debuff (extra damage from spirit attacks, slow, reduce damage, a small improvement to all spirit skills for every enemy with haunt on them, something). For Spirit Barrage, well, it's just got a terrible damage/mana ratio. Sure, you can use up a passive and a rune and reduce it to 40ish mana, but it still only does 10% more than splinters (does less if you happen to be rocking PtV instead of the Rush of Essence to get the reduced mana). Also, even if it only "costs" 40 mana, it still takes the full 108 to cast as you only get the rest back over time (as opposed to nearly every other classes cost reduction runes which are a straight up reduction in cost, frequently for a better reduction as well).
Finally, mana. Now, my personal wish is that it gets completely replaced, like with some form of Blood Ritual (that'd make a truly unique class if we cast out of hp). However, that's a bit much for a patch. I think the best they could do is rework the costs and cooldowns. I'm not sure how they could make the class more unique, but I think the first thing is reduce or eliminate the cost for the primary skills. We're the only class that has no way of attacking when we oom. Maybe reduce APS when using primaries below a certain mana %, or cast primaries out of HP, or just do what the Wizard does and make them free. Also, splinters needs a reduction in damage. It's just too good right now. That, or make the other primaries better. For all the limits on firebombs AoE vs other classes primary AoE's, it doesn't do much damage (can't hit anything more than once, it's slow so it misses a lot...I guess only two limits. But they're big!).
I agree with everything you said except this.
Zombie Dogs, especially, is categorized as a "defensive" ability. And it's plenty clear that both Zombie Dogs and Gargantuan are supposed to give the DK a measure of control. They absolutely must scale with defensive stats (and I believe they already do). If you want to build a tank witch doctor then you'll probably not want to take pets. It's really not going to change much.
I just don't see a logical way to make pets scale on the opposite role you take. That's a ton of work for very little reward.
Exactly how would you control your pets without having a pet control feature in your scenario, then? Running far away to get them to pull back out of aoes? That seems like really fun design >_>
Think you meant WD instead of DK. WoW much? =P
I'm sure there's a way to make pets scale defensively using your offensive stats. For example just off the top of my head, a dodge chance that increases with your crit. Their resists, hp and damage reduction could scale at a scaled rate according to your int, crit damage, attack speed or something along those lines. There are ways to do it and we can only come up with so much before we're doing the devs jobs for them.
I don't think defensive stats = offensive pets is very intuitive at all. I think that's insanely convoluted for the average player. It would require fairly detailed tooltips showing exactly what player stat gives exactly what dog/garg stat just to keep everything straight. It's a whole lot of crap for the average player to really wrap their head around just because someone might want to build a tanky-WD who uses pets.
It's also a ton of work to make sure all that is balanced for what has to amount to a niche of WD players.
They'll likely just allow their health to scale with vitality, which is the major issue at this point and maybe buff the benefits they get from defensive stats, similar to how the followers work. There's no way to increase dogs base HP atm which is really ridiculous... the dogs probably have like 6k HP or something.
The biggest things they need to fix with the WD is resource management and passives, which kind of go hand in hand. There are a lot of other problems, but mana is the main one. Can't say for sure how they would do it though.
Buffing primarys might be a start. Maybe it would be better if we had bigger mana pools with less regen so that spending mana wouldn't be a problem, and the primarys became generators...
It seems kind of dumb that our primarys don't generate mana because it really encourages you to just stack mana regen rather than use a primary. And of course VQ is ridiculous.
Just a problem, rage-spenders are useless.
They'd have to make a run for ZD/Gargantuan that lets the Garg ride a big ZD before I'd use it. And even then, it'd either have to look super funny or super cool.
I have to disagree, though. I found the WD to be a ton easier all the way thru inferno. I stopped my Barbarian in Hell, cuz it just got to be too much kiting for a melee class.
they shouldn't be invincible, but they shouldn't explode in 0.7 seconds to wasp missiles either
in a way i think blizzard tipped their hand with item skill buffs. you'll find zombie dog skills on items as, "reduces the cooldown". that kind of tells us they meant for dogs to be trash throwaway pets that we constantly have to resummon. i'm hoping they'll reverse course on that.
It's not all that uncommon to get a double "damage-at-your-feet" mob.
Any combination of two of the following makes pets life disappear and disappear fast:
Desecrator
Arcane Enchanted
Molten
Plagued
Fire Chains
Mortar gets added to that list if you're fighting an opponent whose AI makes them spread out like archers, spearmen, wasps, many teleporting mobs, many fast mobs, morlu incinerators (ok technically meteor, but whatever), heralds of pestilence, those annoying winged morlok things in act 3, etc.
There is so much damage that we have to dodge that our pets are total victims to... 33% simply isn't enough. A bad arcane sentry setup, without any other avoidable damage, would probably tear through dogs, even with vit scaling.
The issue with WD pets scaling with defensive stats, is that it's counter-productive for a defensive ability meant to keep enemies from attacking you in a build where you would be gearing for defensive stats. They either need to be able to effectively do damage in tank build, or effectively tank for a decent amount of time in an offensive build. Therefore they need to scale defensively with offensive stats, or offensively with defensive stats. Otherwise they'll only be effective in higher gear levels where you already have high amounts of both offensive and defensive stats.
IMO the Garg should be effectively as hard to kill as a decently geared Templar, even with low levels of defensive stats, and ZDs should be able to survive a decent amount of hits, longer with leeching beasts. Obviously this would be with pet/defensive-based passives. Also, pets should have the ability to taunt, or at least cause high amounts of threat so that enemies won't just run past them and attack the WD.
Easy way to do that imo is scaling their life with the WDs Int, and increase the amount of resists they get from the WDs resists, etc.
'Cause I'm the type of nerd that will bust your jaw.
I used to be a WD until i realized barb was so much better... so i agree that WD needs some buffing. However, EVERYTHING you listed was a buff... You are basically asking blizzard to do nothing but enhance the WD...
Sprint kinda is worthless for almost all builds... except for the now popular tornado.
My build is one many would call worthless:
Mouse:Bash (punish), Whirlwind (heal)
Keyboard: Ground Stomp(pull), Furious Charge(dreadnaught), Revenge (increased heal + fury), Warcry (resists)
Passive:Ruthless, Juggernaut, Tough as Nails
However... as i finally build gear... its become more and more powerful. 3 of my Actives heal based on max life, and one of my passives as well. As i build my vit/ +Life% pool... i become exponentially more powerful.
Players will have to choose from making their pet tanks by using 2 or 3 passives that enhace pets (like Jungle fortitude, bad medicine, Zombie handler, fierce loyalty) or go the DPS way and make their pets die more frequently.
Why i sugest the change to fierce loyalty, because as it is now, its useless... a not so expensive gear for int, vit and resistances should take you to 50k dps, 35-40k hp and 500+ resist. if pets got 500x2=1000 resists to all (and some vit scaling), they could survive like some barbs do, considering they dont heal with revenge and stuff. This change would add some valor to the passive and to ressistance stacking instead of glass cannon, you can cast more times without kitting because a pet is stopping elites from reaching you.
This is the first post on pets I agree with. What are we really holding out for? I think everyone has these memories of using pets back in normal, when you didn't realize that you ended up tanking half the mobs anyway. I'm not going to slot a pet that might, at best, be like hex and tank a mob or two for me, instead of slotting a CC that will give me complete and independent breathing room while I kite.
Pet aggro, as far as I remember, is not that great. They could be indestructible. The problem is we have all learned how to play without them. We have geared for the scenario where we can handle ourselves on our own. Having pets is not going to let you drop survivability for damage, so do you really want to slot a defensive ability that leaves you at the mercy of inconsistent AI?
I'm not even going to bother to point out the 10+ reasons that your proposition is ineffective and accomplishes nothing aside from your insistance on forcing Zombie Dogs and Gargantuan to work with a niche spec like a tankdoctor. I assure you that you have not thought this through to see the absolutely glaring holes in what you're saying, though.
What you are doing is taking abilities which were clearly designed for defense/control and tailoring them to a very niche playstyle, and that's akin to me complaining that Horrify doesn't have enough of a direct offensive use (like 50% weapon damage) which makes it useless for my spec. Abilities do NOT need to by hybridized like that. We take abilities like Horrify and Mass Confusion and Hex because they primarily provide control. The idea that every ability should be both offensive and defensive absolutely negates the choices we're supposed to be making. The point of the matter is that if you don't need control then you don't need Horrify.
Abilities are supposed to have roles they fill. The goal of making a good spec is (in theory) supposed to be finding the proper synergy between your abilities and your playstyle. What you are doing is saying that you want Zombie Dogs to be viable in every single spec out there which is no more logical than me saying that Poison Darts has to be viable in every single spec out there. The bottom line is that they aren't and that they shouldn't be. If you need more offense in your tank build you probably should pick an offensive ability.
I don't see what's so damned complicated about that. All you have is a solution looking for a problem.