I started D3 as a WD because I thought that it would definitely be the class for me. After playing all the way to 60 and passed the skeleton king in Inferno, I discovered that the game is simply too hard for me to progress. I rolled a wizard because looking at the forums, they seemed they were the only ones that could progress, albeit by kiting and NEVER getting hit by the monsters. This was not the way I wanted to play.
Ever since 1.04 released, it's like I have a new-found love for my WD. The main reason I picked WD was for his ability to summon pets to aid him. Now, they buffed them up and made them actually reliable in ALL acts of inferno. Plus, I don't have to rely on the VQ/Zombie Bear build anymore, because I hated that.
Anyways, I made it a little bit passed Ghom in Inferno (act 3). I simply die way too much to be making much of a profit (if any) now. So now, I just farm act 1 (act 2 is still too hard for me to farm). I can get 230-250k an hour and probably 30-40 ilvl 60+ rares an hour. Still have yet to find a legendary, though.
So, now that I farmed up 1m (Not much to you guys, but its the most money I've had, ever..) What equip upgrades should I buy? Here is a link to my character so you can check him out.
I am thinking about buying just a blue weapon with LOH on it. I think LOH isn't working with my Acid Cloud and rune combination, because I no longer heal with it. Did they make Acid Cloud no longer trigger LOH?
If there is any OBVIOUS and CHEAP equip upgrades I can buy, please inform me in this thread. Also, I only have 1 million gold, and I don't want to spen 1 million gold on ONE item, unless it will make a huge difference.
My main goal is to be able to farm a3 with as much ease as I do as a1.
I agree with you that the WD is a very fun class right now. I was kinda in your boat as well and searched around for help. I found this on the front of diablofans
With your gear i would suggest you up your all res and change your spec. The pet build is really OP because your pets tank everything and are actually able to hold aggro. So give it a look and let me know what you think my battletag is on the armory link
for a basic starting point.. dont worry about crit or crit dmg or attack speed. Focus on getting your resists and vit up.. let your pets do your prime dmg till you get more gold to afford the upgrades or they drop in run.
Garg with bruise and fire rune Dogs put out a nice bit of dmg even with the 5% crit 50% crit dmg and if you have decent resists (500-600 is not hard to get) with 30k hp you can do the first bit of Act 3 no problem letting your pets be prime.
As i read a while back and was best advice i ahve seen.. do not waste getting that small little upgrade.. doing a tiny upgrade to everything normally is not as good as 1 massive item upgrade.
Priority would be getting a great weapon. And with a pet build Life steal is very handy. And the Fetish from Fetish Sycophants do trigger Life steal as well so frogs and acid clouds get more of those out there.
You dont need any life on hit at all. I do act 3 just fine with out any. Use the soul harvest that gives you life and the leaching dogs rune until your more comfortable and better geared.
get a higher dmg offhand mojo, should be bale to get something in the early to mid 300's with some int on it for only a couple hundred K, that alone will boost your dps huge.
I agree with you that the WD is a very fun class right now. I was kinda in your boat as well and searched around for help. I found this on the front of diablofans
He helped me alot and goes in to detail with this video and the one before this one he did for wds before patch 1.0.4.
Here is my armory to show you my gear and spec to give you a "template". I am not the best wd by anymeans but this works for me.
With your gear i would suggest you up your all res and change your spec. The pet build is really OP because your pets tank everything and are actually able to hold aggro. So give it a look and let me know what you think my battletag is on the armory link
I use that build. When I am farming a1, I always have Garg, and 3 zombie dogs up at all times. That guide is the one that helped me kill Ghom, because I was stuck at his enrage.
for a basic starting point.. dont worry about crit or crit dmg or attack speed. Focus on getting your resists and vit up.. let your pets do your prime dmg till you get more gold to afford the upgrades or they drop in run.
Garg with bruise and fire rune Dogs put out a nice bit of dmg even with the 5% crit 50% crit dmg and if you have decent resists (500-600 is not hard to get) with 30k hp you can do the first bit of Act 3 no problem letting your pets be prime.
As i read a while back and was best advice i ahve seen.. do not waste getting that small little upgrade.. doing a tiny upgrade to everything normally is not as good as 1 massive item upgrade.
Priority would be getting a great weapon. And with a pet build Life steal is very handy. And the Fetish from Fetish Sycophants do trigger Life steal as well so frogs and acid clouds get more of those out there.
You dont need any life on hit at all. I do act 3 just fine with out any. Use the soul harvest that gives you life and the leaching dogs rune until your more comfortable and better geared.
You sure LOH isn't good? I used to be able to heal a good amount from 1 acid cloud with my shitty LOH. I'm sure acid cloud with blob rune still triggers LOH, I just never paid much attention to it yet.
get a higher dmg offhand mojo, should be bale to get something in the early to mid 300's with some int on it for only a couple hundred K, that alone will boost your dps huge.
Thanks, I will be looking on the AH for a new mojo.
So I upgraded my off-hand. I only spent a little under a 100k on this. Please tell me if it was a decent upgrade or not. I ended up losing 500 life in the process (damn 6% life on my last mojo..) but gained 3k damage! Now sitting at 28k DPS. ANY other upgrade I look at on the AH is up in the millions for me.. Unless I cut down my DPS for some resistances.
Is that what I should do? I feel if I cut my DPS and go for vit+resists, I won't be able to beat bosses because of the enrage timer.
So I upgraded my off-hand. I only spent a little under a 100k on this. Please tell me if it was a decent upgrade or not. I ended up losing 500 life in the process (damn 6% life on my last mojo..) but gained 3k damage! Now sitting at 28k DPS. ANY other upgrade I look at on the AH is up in the millions for me.. Unless I cut down my DPS for some resistances.
Is that what I should do? I feel if I cut my DPS and go for vit+resists, I won't be able to beat bosses because of the enrage timer.
Anyways, here is the upgrade. (right is new one)
Just keep farming act 1 to get money for gear. You can get a decent set for not much so keep at it. Vit and all res will keep your pets alive. They will do most your damage anyway. I wouldnt go to low to get more but if you can stay around 25k or so that should be fine.
As for LOH it isnt a must but it is nice. However I owuldnt go out of my way to get life on hit. Health globes, soul harvest with the healing rune and leaching zombie dogs are good enough if you play correctly. also pickup radius is nice dont let anyone tell you otherwise. I highly recommend geting the passive that gives you more zombie dogs and more health for garg and dogs. Its really quite nice. They dont die much.
I also upgraded my pants. I will get a picture up tomorrow so you can see the differences.
I'm now sitting at 390+ all resists. I realized I am probably good with resists, so I am focusing on int and vit primarily. I am working on getting 12% movement speed, some crit chance, and crit damage (mainly on my new weapon).
My next piece I upgrade is probably going to be my Jewelry. Since I don't need resists on them, I am going for one ring with int + vit, then crit damage. The other ring int + vit and maybe LOH if I can find one. Ammy I am gonna lower the int on, because I can't find a decent amulet with 190+ int and 83 vit for cheap, maybe I can AH mine also. I am going for mostly vitality, LOH, and crit hit chance.
First things first, I need for farm more gold, because I have 100k left after that 1m I just had.
I am already ripping through a1 better & faster than ever before. With 5 stacks soul harvers I get up to 41k DPS. I have 31k DPS unbuffed, which is a step up from my 30k DPS 5 stack soul harvest and 23k DPS unbuffed.
I feel after I upgrade those rings, and a few more pieces of armor (bracers, chest piece, belt) I will be able to melt through a3 and probably beat a4. What do you guys think?
I also upgraded my pants. I will get a picture up tomorrow so you can see the differences.
I'm now sitting at 390+ all resists. I realized I am probably good with resists, so I am focusing on int and vit primarily. I am working on getting 12% movement speed, some crit chance, and crit damage (mainly on my new weapon).
My next piece I upgrade is probably going to be my Jewelry. Since I don't need resists on them, I am going for one ring with int + vit, then crit damage. The other ring int + vit and maybe LOH if I can find one. Ammy I am gonna lower the int on, because I can't find a decent amulet with 190+ int and 83 vit for cheap, maybe I can AH mine also. I am going for mostly vitality, LOH, and crit hit chance.
First things first, I need for farm more gold, because I have 100k left after that 1m I just had.
I am already ripping through a1 better & faster than ever before. With 5 stacks soul harvers I get up to 41k DPS. I have 31k DPS unbuffed, which is a step up from my 30k DPS 5 stack soul harvest and 23k DPS unbuffed.
I feel after I upgrade those rings, and a few more pieces of armor (bracers, chest piece, belt) I will be able to melt through a3 and probably beat a4. What do you guys think?
Try and get 3 gem slots in your chest and 2 in your pants if you can. In game i have between 6 and 700 resists for act 3 and i still get smoked by arcane beams so watch for those. Other than that like you said replace your jewelry.
I'm in total agreement. I play D3 to relax and a summoner class / build is ideal for that IMO. Prior to 1.04 I mainly played a DH and most stuff in act 3 would 1-shot me if I let it hit me. Thinking back, I'm amazed I ever put up with it.
My $0.02 on a few things that have been said in this thread:
- 'You don't need LoH' - Well, you don't "need" a lot of things, but a little LoH goes a long way. I have ~450 on my amulet and I fill the tanks up pretty quickly with a grasp of the dead or a few zombie bears. There are other ways to self-heal of course, but this is an easy and convenient way.
- 'Get vit / resists and let your pets kill while you build up the gold for more damage' - Your pets' damage is based off your damage, so that's not going to work out well. I agree that vit and resists are very important, but a good balance between survivability and damage seems best, at least for single player.
- 'WDs kill slowly' - the guy who said this linked his profile and had about 25k damage, a bit low. I kill plenty fast. The classes aren't 100% equal but they're close enough that it doesn't bug me if an equally geared barb is 5% faster - I love my WD and am having fun after all.
- '400 all resists is enough' - This one's going to be subjective, we all play a bit differently and have different tolerances. Personally I'm lazy and like to feel like a tank, and after dropping slightly below 700 AR & 50k hp after a few recent upgrades, I actually feel squishy o.O
I still feel squishy with 1k AR (more with SH stacks) and almost 60k hp. The spear/tentacle types in act3 with the right affixes (I think vortex/molten is quite likely the worst) are very very annoying. Enough such that skipping into the succubi and phase beasts of the summit zones are preferable to spending time in the fields rolling the dice.
Well, I don't feel extremely squishy Just a little more than I'd like. I still use zombie bears, which requires you to have decent health resists due to its low range. All I was really saying is in the future I won't be sacrificing survivability for damage. I'd love to use jungle fort but I can't justify it over zombie handler. I know the dogs don't do much damage, and the 4th one is just for show... but I still have trouble dropping the skill.
I know exactly what you mean when you mention the spear guys and tentacle guys in act 3. I have trouble remembering fully but I'm pretty sure I actually dreamed about them back when I played my (ever so easily one-shotted) DH... On my WD when I die, I usually find that it's my playstyle rather than my gear. It's almost always because I get impatient and try to rush in and gib something with bears. When I'm in a more relaxed mindset, I let my pets eat the frontloaded damage + kill any low health trash while I sit back and chill, then I go in after a bit and mop up.
I just noticed this post and thought id put in my current build. With my build i am pretty much all into pets with no mana spender. The main reason i went with this build was due to i leveled with it and once i hit 60 i just kinda stuck with it. I currently farm act 3 and nothin comes even close to killing me so it not to bad. I do go with a 2 hander over 1hander/mojo for weapon damage ( pets scale better ) and i just get more stats. Ive lately been putting alot more gold into him ( about 1-6mill ) last 3 or so peices ive upgraded.
but like i said in act 3 there really is no danger over anything and i can just cruse over it all. My first set i used witht his build only cost me around 600k total had 85kish hp 1800ish life regan and 22k ish dps with 500 resist total. Then ive slowly upgraded here and there when i can get on and grind, i think the peice that cost the most was my weapon which was a decent buy at 6mill.
Vovek#1251 that my tag so you can look me up
srry can post links atm so thats the best i could post lol
These forums help me out so much. So much info on classes out there with nothing to back the info up. I'm glad the people over here give stats and info to back up what they say. I just started rolling a WD after lvl a wizard and barb. I enjoy the Barb a lot but the wizard is giving my problem at the moment. But I do enjoy the WD also. Love them dogs. Forums like this help me out when starting a new class and helps me firgure out what stats are good for me. Keep up the work guys.
I leveled up my WD when 1.0.4 came, and started looking for gear pieces in the EU gold auction house as I was leveling. I had only a few hundred thousand gold at the time, and wasn't making any since I was leveling a low level.
I started to look for pieces with intelligence 50+, vitality 50+, all resistance 50+, and life regeneration 200+. I was able to find these kinds of pieces to each slot with less than 100K per slot. I ended up with around 2500 life regeneration, 750-850 resistances, 45000 health, and around 15000 or so DPS. I was using a 1100 DPS 1H that I had found, with a decent mojo.
I cleared the entire game with no deaths to elites with those stats. My dogs died only to certain situations, and very rarely. My gargantuan almost never died.
Later I started to upgrade my DPS a bit, sacrificing only a bit of the resistances, and managed to climb to 29K unbuffed. Since then I sold the legendary 1H I was using and had to downgrade a bit. I'm at 25K unbuffed now, with otherwise similar stats (although I have about 4500 thorns), 36K I think with a five stack buff on, and I'm farming act three relatively fast, with no deaths.
My enchantress does have something like 9200 DPS now though, so she's a big help. She had around 8000 DPS when I cleared the game.
As far as being squishy, I can take a couple hits from elites with no worries; my resistances and regen keep me alive, and I can tank most normal monsters.
I've switched to a thematic build since, using Searing Locusts, Blazing Spiders and Burning Dogs (I have 0% extra fire damage), and it seems to work extremely well. Things go down fast, the Locusts keep jumping from monster to monster crazy long, and it's a fun build to play. Hoping to get my hands on an +intelligence 900DPS+ socketed Sankis at some point, 20-25% would be nice.
Anyways, hope any of this anecdotal evidence helps you in any way.
Wow man nice post! Was interesting and fun to read.
Okay so I just wanted to update this post. Now, my WD is able to farm act 3 rather efficiently. I changed my build up a little bit to something that fits my playstyle better. I created the build by just selecting what I thought worked together. This is the build I used to do most all of act 3.
My WD has 600+ all resists, 20% block rate, 34k HP, and 23.6k DPS unbuffed. My DPS can get to about 32k DPS with 5 stack soul harvest. My character uses a shield now too, not a very good one though, I bought it for 50k off the AH. Tell me what you think of the improvements.
Also, what is a good route to farm act 3 with a WD? Right now I am just starting the game at the "Kill Azomdan" quest, then re-running through the waypoints. Then finally, ending with killing azmodan.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
I started D3 as a WD because I thought that it would definitely be the class for me. After playing all the way to 60 and passed the skeleton king in Inferno, I discovered that the game is simply too hard for me to progress. I rolled a wizard because looking at the forums, they seemed they were the only ones that could progress, albeit by kiting and NEVER getting hit by the monsters. This was not the way I wanted to play.
Ever since 1.04 released, it's like I have a new-found love for my WD. The main reason I picked WD was for his ability to summon pets to aid him. Now, they buffed them up and made them actually reliable in ALL acts of inferno. Plus, I don't have to rely on the VQ/Zombie Bear build anymore, because I hated that.
Anyways, I made it a little bit passed Ghom in Inferno (act 3). I simply die way too much to be making much of a profit (if any) now. So now, I just farm act 1 (act 2 is still too hard for me to farm). I can get 230-250k an hour and probably 30-40 ilvl 60+ rares an hour. Still have yet to find a legendary, though.
So, now that I farmed up 1m (Not much to you guys, but its the most money I've had, ever..) What equip upgrades should I buy? Here is a link to my character so you can check him out.
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Austin-1551/hero/1278810
I am thinking about buying just a blue weapon with LOH on it. I think LOH isn't working with my Acid Cloud and rune combination, because I no longer heal with it. Did they make Acid Cloud no longer trigger LOH?
If there is any OBVIOUS and CHEAP equip upgrades I can buy, please inform me in this thread. Also, I only have 1 million gold, and I don't want to spen 1 million gold on ONE item, unless it will make a huge difference.
My main goal is to be able to farm a3 with as much ease as I do as a1.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_Z51lDthY0
He helped me alot and goes in to detail with this video and the one before this one he did for wds before patch 1.0.4.
Here is my armory to show you my gear and spec to give you a "template". I am not the best wd by anymeans but this works for me.
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Casey-1672/
With your gear i would suggest you up your all res and change your spec. The pet build is really OP because your pets tank everything and are actually able to hold aggro. So give it a look and let me know what you think my battletag is on the armory link
Garg with bruise and fire rune Dogs put out a nice bit of dmg even with the 5% crit 50% crit dmg and if you have decent resists (500-600 is not hard to get) with 30k hp you can do the first bit of Act 3 no problem letting your pets be prime.
As i read a while back and was best advice i ahve seen.. do not waste getting that small little upgrade.. doing a tiny upgrade to everything normally is not as good as 1 massive item upgrade.
Priority would be getting a great weapon. And with a pet build Life steal is very handy. And the Fetish from Fetish Sycophants do trigger Life steal as well so frogs and acid clouds get more of those out there.
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Mentiel-1709/hero/1009027
I do a very pet heavy build, and have built up my gear gradually. Still a ways to go but i can farming Azmodan easily.
Thanks, I will be checking your profile
Thanks for the tips man. Will put some into practice if they fit my play style !
You sure LOH isn't good? I used to be able to heal a good amount from 1 acid cloud with my shitty LOH. I'm sure acid cloud with blob rune still triggers LOH, I just never paid much attention to it yet.
Thanks, I will be looking on the AH for a new mojo.
Is that what I should do? I feel if I cut my DPS and go for vit+resists, I won't be able to beat bosses because of the enrage timer.
Anyways, here is the upgrade. (right is new one)
Just keep farming act 1 to get money for gear. You can get a decent set for not much so keep at it. Vit and all res will keep your pets alive. They will do most your damage anyway. I wouldnt go to low to get more but if you can stay around 25k or so that should be fine.
As for LOH it isnt a must but it is nice. However I owuldnt go out of my way to get life on hit. Health globes, soul harvest with the healing rune and leaching zombie dogs are good enough if you play correctly. also pickup radius is nice dont let anyone tell you otherwise. I highly recommend geting the passive that gives you more zombie dogs and more health for garg and dogs. Its really quite nice. They dont die much.
(I equiped the new hat)
Oh and I also upgraded all my gems to perfect square.
Looks good, keep it up!!!!!
I also upgraded my pants. I will get a picture up tomorrow so you can see the differences.
I'm now sitting at 390+ all resists. I realized I am probably good with resists, so I am focusing on int and vit primarily. I am working on getting 12% movement speed, some crit chance, and crit damage (mainly on my new weapon).
My next piece I upgrade is probably going to be my Jewelry. Since I don't need resists on them, I am going for one ring with int + vit, then crit damage. The other ring int + vit and maybe LOH if I can find one. Ammy I am gonna lower the int on, because I can't find a decent amulet with 190+ int and 83 vit for cheap, maybe I can AH mine also. I am going for mostly vitality, LOH, and crit hit chance.
First things first, I need for farm more gold, because I have 100k left after that 1m I just had.
I am already ripping through a1 better & faster than ever before. With 5 stacks soul harvers I get up to 41k DPS. I have 31k DPS unbuffed, which is a step up from my 30k DPS 5 stack soul harvest and 23k DPS unbuffed.
I feel after I upgrade those rings, and a few more pieces of armor (bracers, chest piece, belt) I will be able to melt through a3 and probably beat a4. What do you guys think?
Try and get 3 gem slots in your chest and 2 in your pants if you can. In game i have between 6 and 700 resists for act 3 and i still get smoked by arcane beams so watch for those. Other than that like you said replace your jewelry.
My $0.02 on a few things that have been said in this thread:
- 'You don't need LoH' - Well, you don't "need" a lot of things, but a little LoH goes a long way. I have ~450 on my amulet and I fill the tanks up pretty quickly with a grasp of the dead or a few zombie bears. There are other ways to self-heal of course, but this is an easy and convenient way.
- 'Get vit / resists and let your pets kill while you build up the gold for more damage' - Your pets' damage is based off your damage, so that's not going to work out well. I agree that vit and resists are very important, but a good balance between survivability and damage seems best, at least for single player.
- 'WDs kill slowly' - the guy who said this linked his profile and had about 25k damage, a bit low. I kill plenty fast. The classes aren't 100% equal but they're close enough that it doesn't bug me if an equally geared barb is 5% faster - I love my WD and am having fun after all.
- '400 all resists is enough' - This one's going to be subjective, we all play a bit differently and have different tolerances. Personally I'm lazy and like to feel like a tank, and after dropping slightly below 700 AR & 50k hp after a few recent upgrades, I actually feel squishy o.O
My WD: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Trotheus-1793/hero/22902931
I know exactly what you mean when you mention the spear guys and tentacle guys in act 3. I have trouble remembering fully but I'm pretty sure I actually dreamed about them back when I played my (ever so easily one-shotted) DH... On my WD when I die, I usually find that it's my playstyle rather than my gear. It's almost always because I get impatient and try to rush in and gib something with bears. When I'm in a more relaxed mindset, I let my pets eat the frontloaded damage + kill any low health trash while I sit back and chill, then I go in after a bit and mop up.
but like i said in act 3 there really is no danger over anything and i can just cruse over it all. My first set i used witht his build only cost me around 600k total had 85kish hp 1800ish life regan and 22k ish dps with 500 resist total. Then ive slowly upgraded here and there when i can get on and grind, i think the peice that cost the most was my weapon which was a decent buy at 6mill.
Vovek#1251 that my tag so you can look me up
srry can post links atm so thats the best i could post lol
Wow man nice post! Was interesting and fun to read.
Okay so I just wanted to update this post. Now, my WD is able to farm act 3 rather efficiently. I changed my build up a little bit to something that fits my playstyle better. I created the build by just selecting what I thought worked together. This is the build I used to do most all of act 3.
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#aWfdYT!Wad!abcYca
My WD has 600+ all resists, 20% block rate, 34k HP, and 23.6k DPS unbuffed. My DPS can get to about 32k DPS with 5 stack soul harvest. My character uses a shield now too, not a very good one though, I bought it for 50k off the AH. Tell me what you think of the improvements.
Also, what is a good route to farm act 3 with a WD? Right now I am just starting the game at the "Kill Azomdan" quest, then re-running through the waypoints. Then finally, ending with killing azmodan.