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i loved summon necro in d2, so i can finally play something along those lines in d3

Gargantuan is a good example of things that MIGHT be strange

they did buff the damage to 100% normal hits, and that 130% for cleave attacks. but they didnt touch the 15% poison damage thingy around him, that rune is unchanged. and following all the buffs they made it suprises me that 15% is still there.

and the burning dogs (2%) is just strange

the patch notes we see at the frontpage is nowhere complete and they are probably still weaking the numbers a fair bit.
locus swarm and haunt is not even on the list. (tho they have mentioned they have changed the way dots are calculated (everything normalized to 2 APS or 1 aps per tick (2 tics a second)) and that might have been enought,

but they are still very weak compared to the new exploding palm (745% over 9 seconds) and new rend 700%(903%) over 5 seconds AoE, one could argue that locus swarm can damage more mobs but 360%(468%) over 8 seconds is just LOW compared to rend and palm. not to mention Haunt 575% over 12! seconds single target. thats just retarded

Huant: 48% a sec
locus swarm: 45%(58,5%) a sec
Rend: 140%(180%) a sec
exploding palm: 82% a sec + an explotion of 30% of targets life to everything around it (probably caped)

and i tought WD was the DoT class so if they dont tweak teh numbers of haunt and locus swarm im out of build options other then channeling bears for 7 seconds and wait 12 seconds to get my mana back i guess.

gargantuans Base skill is increased to 100% for 25% witch means that big stinker also will recieve it as it hits for 25% now in addition to the AoE.

i can agree, that locus swarm is fine considering how many targets it can affect. but haunts damage even if its more spam able is just low.

if we take a look at the new damage of zombie wall and grasp of the dead.

WoZ 800% over 5 sec = 160% a sec and if we include the CD its 32% a sec

and grasp 320% (426%) over 8 sec = 40% (53%) a seconds.

and the fact that they will have the same damage out put as locus swarm and haunt with additional monster slow and blocking, they are vastly supperior.

sure haunt can fly trought walls so you can pre DoT em and locus swarm can spread to a great degree.

Quote from Derwiv33

Quote from Kinch

No change to Pierce the Veil? I'm pretty shocked. Do we need to talk about the terrible design of this skill?

Horrify cooldown reduction but no reduction on Mass Confusion?

Also the number adjustments seem to fit in with everything else in the patch, and by that I mean Blizzard balances the math and completely overlooks the functionality of the skills. A good example of this is sacrifice. Even if you have no cooldown on summoning your dogs, you are basically casting two spells to deal 275% damage, or 137% per cast. I realize there is little to no mana cost involved, but I'd rather pay mana for a spell that does 200% damage every time I cast it.

Spirit barrage increase damage by 40%? Rush of Essence / mana returns is really the only reason to use this spell, and it might be enough, but come on - Dire bats for 220% damage AOE? Do they not realize that AOE is a big deal?

Huge increase to Acid Cloud DoT damage (not the problem) with a minor increase to the immediate damage (the problem).

Plague of Toads mana reduction (not the problem) and no damage increase / AI fix (the problem).

No changes to pierce the veil? Well, not directly, but your mana regeneration is getting boosted by 2.25x. This indirectly boosts Pierce the Veil.

Say what? PtV is only a worthwhile passive if you can have infinite (or near infinite) mana. In 1.0.3, this was done via Vision Quest (which will be removed). In both 1.0.3 and 1.0.4, it will be done by using low mana cost spells (splinters most likely). The only other possible worthwhile use of the skill is if you can kill things before you deplete your mana pool (possibly pvp or if you completely outgear the content).

It won't be worth using outside of splinter builds since you gain 20% damage but lose 30% damage in the form of mana.

@derwiv

Pierce the Veil is a damage passive that decreases your damage output while increasing it. It's just poor design. The fact that mana regen increases helps it, but it doesn't change the fact that the skill is poorly designed and deserves a rework.

On sacrifice: I said it in another thread so I was trying not to repeat myself, but you can't target sacrifice. Calling it an 875% AOE skill is a little ambitious. On a boss I suppose it will be that, but everything else your chances of hitting everything are not that great. I'm excited to try the skill - I do think it has potential, but I think in people's excitement they are forgetting some of the more restrictive elements of the ability and just thinking about how it's going to shred white monsters.

While we're both on the same page about spirit barrage being great on mana, one issue is you are still paying mana for a single target spell. Barrage vs. Splinters is a difference of 50% but you're paying 6 times the mana cost (even for the runed version) for that difference. Often times in my builds, my single target skills are filler while I wait for my mana to regen so I can use my AOE abilities. For this reason I'm a little disappointed. I guess I envisioned Spirit Barrage becoming an extremely hard hitting single target nuke for players that wanted big numbers but on only single target. So far it looks like a clever way to replace a primary with some help from passives. Also, I haven't used the skill as much as you so I'm sure I'm missing some things, but how do you shoot it through walls? You run into the room to see where monsters are, run out and fire at that spot hoping the monster doesn't move?

Toads (excluding Rain of Toads): The damage of toads IS a problem in that more than one toad almost never hits, and quite often even hitting with one toad is difficult. As soon as you miss with a spell it becomes a huge problem. I realized this switching between dire bats on my WD and incinerate on my Wizard. It doesn't matter that the percentage is lower, the fact that I click in the direction of a monster and it always hits and starts damaging immediately made the skill vastly superior from a damage perspective. If toads isn't getting a buff to AI / range it needs a damage buff to be competitive with other primaries.

Overall this patch Blizzard has shown a perfect awareness of what WD was good at (VQ, Spirit Vessel, Procs), and a lack of understanding in the areas we are weak (mana cost on primaries, long cooldowns, spells that are difficult to use / hit with).

Quote from FleckerMan

Vision Quest isn't being removed, most of the benefit is becoming baseline. Not quite as much mana as before, but close.

I meant the infinite mana benefit of VQ is being removed.

with spirit barrage and haunt you dont even have to see the mobs you can just spam it blindly into the next room and they will pretty much auto target its way to mobs :P.

one big problem with haunt and trying to dot things up is that its hard to aim on the right one and you loose allot by applying haunt to the same target twice as it does not stack (this can easyly happen with the way hit boxes are and the auto target). also its hard to see what mobs are debuffed or not.
i think it should with like a 50% reduction per application.(1st:575% 2nd: 287% 3rd: 144% 4th 72%) this would increase its effictiveness alot while still not getting to OP, and attacking the same target twice is no longer a problem.