I have a WD alt I play fairly often. I'm pretty well grounded in the basics, but I'm no expert by any means, and I'd like to ask for opinions on the options we have for mana regen. Which ones do you like using, which ones don't you like, and why?
I didn't include Gruesome Feast or Grave Injustice in this discussion because they directly replenish mana without affecting the mana regen mechanic. Also, they're more well known for being dps/cooldown improvements, and in general using one of these passive essentially negates your mana needs (also because of the fact that you will usually carry these in low mp, fast kill runs, where mana regen is much less of an issue).
Spiritual Attunement: This is one of the most iffy options for me. My WD sits at 983 mana at the moment (mojo and spirit mask), which works out to about 1179 mana if I use this passive. At a base mana regen of 76 (4 piece Zuni included), a mana regen bonus of 11.7 mana a second doesn't sound terribly impressive at all. I imagine the mana pool boost is great for burst damage at the beginning of a fight, but from what I understand Witch Doctors do well standing and slogging, anyway.
Blood Ritual: This is one of my personal favorites, as it's dual purpose; it decreases your mana costs (indirectly increasing your dps over an extended fight) while increasing your survivability with stronger hp regen. If I understand it correctly, casting Acid Bomb (172 mana) with an AS of 1.00 works out to the equivalent of having 25.8 mana regen per second. Of course, most WD's will have an AS higher than this, but it still seems much stronger than Spiritual Attunement.
Rush of Essence: I'm not sure how exactly this works. If this basically increases your Mana regen by 4.9 per second for 10 seconds, everytime you cast a spirit spell, then this is just garbage. However, if this actually means you regen that mana EACH time you cast a spirit spell, and it stacks, it might be a strong pick. However, you'll notice that most of the spells classified as eligible are defensive/utility options, with Spirit Barrage being the only DPS mana spender.
Vision Quest: What appears to be the most popular option, and you can see why. Using my own stats as an example, I would get a bonus mana regen of 22.8 per second each time I cast a primary spell. Combined with runes like Spined Dart or Widowmakers, this becomes a rapid, effective way to replenish your mana pool. My only beef with this skill is the need to interrupt spamming whatever mana spender you're using to cast a primary.
Rush of Essence: I'm not sure how exactly this works. If this basically increases your Mana regen by 4.9 per second for 10 seconds, everytime you cast a spirit spell, then this is just garbage. However, if this actually means you regen that mana EACH time you cast a spirit spell, and it stacks, it might be a strong pick. However, you'll notice that most of the spells classified as eligible are defensive/utility options, with Spirit Barrage being the only DPS mana spender.
It does indeed stack, I really like it.
I use Well of Souls as a primary, cast a few of them and a Soul Harvest then spam Bears, when mana depleted back to souls, mana back to full in seconds in time for next encounter.
The trick is playing on a MP-level where you can kill a pack with 1 manabar (or 1½-2 if you are using Gruesome). If you can do that, well then you don't need any other sources of manaregen.
Yes, I know... I already said that.
I didn't include Gruesome Feast or Grave Injustice in this discussion because they directly replenish mana without affecting the mana regen mechanic. Also, they're more well known for being dps/cooldown improvements, and in general using one of these passive essentially negates your mana needs (also because of the fact that you will usually carry these in low mp, fast kill runs, where mana regen is much less of an issue).
What I'm asking is in what situations would you prefer to use the other passives. If you don't like them at all, that's fine, but I generally yank out my WD to tank MP6 and up Ubers. I have a 73p Wizard if I just wanted to speed farm. Also, regardless of what's the most effective passive or not, I wanted to ask other players what their experiences are with the above-mentioned passives just to get a better idea of the Witch Doctor's capabilities in general. I play my alts to get the taste of endless speed runs out of my mouth, and I'd rather go for something fun, interesting, and reasonably viable than yet another iteration of whatever the best spec is at the moment.
I have a WD alt I play fairly often. I'm pretty well grounded in the basics, but I'm no expert by any means, and I'd like to ask for opinions on the options we have for mana regen. Which ones do you like using, which ones don't you like, and why?
I didn't include Gruesome Feast or Grave Injustice in this discussion because they directly replenish mana without affecting the mana regen mechanic. Also, they're more well known for being dps/cooldown improvements, and in general using one of these passive essentially negates your mana needs (also because of the fact that you will usually carry these in low mp, fast kill runs, where mana regen is much less of an issue).
Spiritual Attunement: This is one of the most iffy options for me. My WD sits at 983 mana at the moment (mojo and spirit mask), which works out to about 1179 mana if I use this passive. At a base mana regen of 76 (4 piece Zuni included), a mana regen bonus of 11.7 mana a second doesn't sound terribly impressive at all. I imagine the mana pool boost is great for burst damage at the beginning of a fight, but from what I understand Witch Doctors do well standing and slogging, anyway.
Blood Ritual: This is one of my personal favorites, as it's dual purpose; it decreases your mana costs (indirectly increasing your dps over an extended fight) while increasing your survivability with stronger hp regen. If I understand it correctly, casting Acid Bomb (172 mana) with an AS of 1.00 works out to the equivalent of having 25.8 mana regen per second. Of course, most WD's will have an AS higher than this, but it still seems much stronger than Spiritual Attunement.
Rush of Essence: I'm not sure how exactly this works. If this basically increases your Mana regen by 4.9 per second for 10 seconds, everytime you cast a spirit spell, then this is just garbage. However, if this actually means you regen that mana EACH time you cast a spirit spell, and it stacks, it might be a strong pick. However, you'll notice that most of the spells classified as eligible are defensive/utility options, with Spirit Barrage being the only DPS mana spender.
Vision Quest: What appears to be the most popular option, and you can see why. Using my own stats as an example, I would get a bonus mana regen of 22.8 per second each time I cast a primary spell. Combined with runes like Spined Dart or Widowmakers, this becomes a rapid, effective way to replenish your mana pool. My only beef with this skill is the need to interrupt spamming whatever mana spender you're using to cast a primary.
Generally speaking, most witch doctors avoid using spiritual attunement. As you summarized through your other commentary on skills, overall it's probably weakest.
Blood ritual is a solid mana passive for either acid rain or zombie bear variants. What I personally like about the skill is that with a high enough health pool you regen your health as fast as you spend it. Else I find it to be a somewhat weaker skill, since paying out of my health pool is, in my opinion, a last resort.
I'm not terribly familiar with rush of essence to be honest. I've read a few things and tinkered with well of souls (which appears to have the best synergy). The mana return is good, but as you said with VQ, it requires stopping spamming, for a less efficient mana return.
Vision quest + widowmakers is my personal favorite. You can pre- spam 3-4 casts of widowmakers and then go into mana dumping with bears, and get the longevity needed to wreck a pack. Widowmakers also tend to be a quicker cast than say well of souls, allowing for more mana now. Also, since vision quest increases your mana regen, it scales as you get more, where none of the other regen passives do.
Finally, though you didn't specifically address it: my favorite mana return for an acid cloud build is Sacrifice (pride rune). If you are running acid rain on low mp, you clear entire rooms with one cast, so mana consumption is somewhat low, and what you need is a burst regen for when you need to dump a lot of clouds quickly. Also, running with sacrifice allows for a nuke for elite/champ packs, saving you mana from not clouding them.
Generally speaking, most witch doctors avoid using spiritual attunement. As you summarized through your other commentary on skills, overall it's probably weakest.
Exactly. For the most part, WD gameplay feels like regen trumps pool size on any given Sunday. As a wizard main player, I can tell you that, at least for Meteor users, we do care about how much resources we have in our pool at the beginning of a fight. The difference between a two Meteor and a three Meteor opening is huge, especially if you rely on APoC to replenish your pool.
On the other hand, Witch Doctors have no spells that empty out their mana pool in 2 or 3 casts. For the most part, the issue is keeping regen high enough to sustain spam, be it bears, acid cloud, spirit barrage, whatever have you. Attunement would have been heaps better if it had some kind of interesting mechanic, like say, 1% mana on hit. That would actually provide incentive for WD builds that don't shy away from IAS like the plague.
Finally, though you didn't specifically address it: my favorite mana return for an acid cloud build is Sacrifice (pride rune). If you are running acid rain on low mp, you clear entire rooms with one cast, so mana consumption is somewhat low, and what you need is a burst regen for when you need to dump a lot of clouds quickly. Also, running with sacrifice allows for a nuke for elite/champ packs, saving you mana from not clouding them.
I was mostly talking about passives, which is why I neglected talking about active skills, but yeah. I have heard of variations on the suicide dogs theme but I think this is the first time I've seen one that uses the Pride rune - mostly it's some kind of Final Gift/Gruesome Feast/Provoke The Pack combo. Do you actually run with the Zombie Dog spell with Pride or do you spawn them with other skills?
Finally, though you didn't specifically address it: my favorite mana return for an acid cloud build is Sacrifice (pride rune). If you are running acid rain on low mp, you clear entire rooms with one cast, so mana consumption is somewhat low, and what you need is a burst regen for when you need to dump a lot of clouds quickly. Also, running with sacrifice allows for a nuke for elite/champ packs, saving you mana from not clouding them.
I was mostly talking about passives, which is why I neglected talking about active skills, but yeah. I have heard of variations on the suicide dogs theme but I think this is the first time I've seen one that uses the Pride rune - mostly it's some kind of Final Gift/Gruesome Feast/Provoke The Pack combo. Do you actually run with the Zombie Dog spell with Pride or do you spawn them with other skills?
Build would be the same as my profile is currently using... Changing the rune on spirit walk to jaunt, and the rune on sacrifice to pride. It's essentially a suicide dog variant, since you'd still be using gruesome feast, and circle of life. You can use 2 different dog runes... Final gift or life link. Generally I like to mindlessly clear, so I use final gift It makes it just rain health globes. I don't see a ton of people running the build configured this way, but I like the mana on demand feature of pride, it feels like my casting is more under my control as compared with having to wait on regen.
You can always opt out of picking up zombie dogs at all, and let circle of life give you all your dogs, but I've passed the point with my DPS where I want another active skill.... Maybe chicken bomb for more movement bursts.... But meh, I'm not a fan.
--in before someone says something---
I do run a life steal weapon with an acid rain build. My DPS with everything stacked is a consistent 500k. Without life steal, I one shot myself on r/d packs with the initial acid rain hit. I get a lot of whispers in game about it and wanted to clarify
I had a bit of an issue with mana... I'm doing mostly MP7-10 and mana regen is key... passives I changed to jungle fort, grave injustice for cooldown reduction, and blood ritual... I figure, I'm stealing health anyway, so spending it doesn't matter... however, this isn't enough, having GI allows for my SH and SW to cooldown quick, and I have 5 stacks.... I'm putting out decent damage longer... I placed haunt in my build and the last rune that returns mana seems to help a bunch.... 20 mana per second for 6 seconds, per haunt.... can't really beat that... especially against elites, they always come in at least 3 ;D
I didn't include Gruesome Feast or Grave Injustice in this discussion because they directly replenish mana without affecting the mana regen mechanic. Also, they're more well known for being dps/cooldown improvements, and in general using one of these passive essentially negates your mana needs (also because of the fact that you will usually carry these in low mp, fast kill runs, where mana regen is much less of an issue).
Spiritual Attunement: This is one of the most iffy options for me. My WD sits at 983 mana at the moment (mojo and spirit mask), which works out to about 1179 mana if I use this passive. At a base mana regen of 76 (4 piece Zuni included), a mana regen bonus of 11.7 mana a second doesn't sound terribly impressive at all. I imagine the mana pool boost is great for burst damage at the beginning of a fight, but from what I understand Witch Doctors do well standing and slogging, anyway.
Blood Ritual: This is one of my personal favorites, as it's dual purpose; it decreases your mana costs (indirectly increasing your dps over an extended fight) while increasing your survivability with stronger hp regen. If I understand it correctly, casting Acid Bomb (172 mana) with an AS of 1.00 works out to the equivalent of having 25.8 mana regen per second. Of course, most WD's will have an AS higher than this, but it still seems much stronger than Spiritual Attunement.
Rush of Essence: I'm not sure how exactly this works. If this basically increases your Mana regen by 4.9 per second for 10 seconds, everytime you cast a spirit spell, then this is just garbage. However, if this actually means you regen that mana EACH time you cast a spirit spell, and it stacks, it might be a strong pick. However, you'll notice that most of the spells classified as eligible are defensive/utility options, with Spirit Barrage being the only DPS mana spender.
Vision Quest: What appears to be the most popular option, and you can see why. Using my own stats as an example, I would get a bonus mana regen of 22.8 per second each time I cast a primary spell. Combined with runes like Spined Dart or Widowmakers, this becomes a rapid, effective way to replenish your mana pool. My only beef with this skill is the need to interrupt spamming whatever mana spender you're using to cast a primary.
It does indeed stack, I really like it.
I use Well of Souls as a primary, cast a few of them and a Soul Harvest then spam Bears, when mana depleted back to souls, mana back to full in seconds in time for next encounter.
Yes, I know... I already said that.
What I'm asking is in what situations would you prefer to use the other passives. If you don't like them at all, that's fine, but I generally yank out my WD to tank MP6 and up Ubers. I have a 73p Wizard if I just wanted to speed farm. Also, regardless of what's the most effective passive or not, I wanted to ask other players what their experiences are with the above-mentioned passives just to get a better idea of the Witch Doctor's capabilities in general. I play my alts to get the taste of endless speed runs out of my mouth, and I'd rather go for something fun, interesting, and reasonably viable than yet another iteration of whatever the best spec is at the moment.
Interesting - does it get that high with Well of Souls because the secondary spirits also proc RoE?
I'm just using WoS for the extra damage.
Generally speaking, most witch doctors avoid using spiritual attunement. As you summarized through your other commentary on skills, overall it's probably weakest.
Blood ritual is a solid mana passive for either acid rain or zombie bear variants. What I personally like about the skill is that with a high enough health pool you regen your health as fast as you spend it. Else I find it to be a somewhat weaker skill, since paying out of my health pool is, in my opinion, a last resort.
I'm not terribly familiar with rush of essence to be honest. I've read a few things and tinkered with well of souls (which appears to have the best synergy). The mana return is good, but as you said with VQ, it requires stopping spamming, for a less efficient mana return.
Vision quest + widowmakers is my personal favorite. You can pre- spam 3-4 casts of widowmakers and then go into mana dumping with bears, and get the longevity needed to wreck a pack. Widowmakers also tend to be a quicker cast than say well of souls, allowing for more mana now. Also, since vision quest increases your mana regen, it scales as you get more, where none of the other regen passives do.
Finally, though you didn't specifically address it: my favorite mana return for an acid cloud build is Sacrifice (pride rune). If you are running acid rain on low mp, you clear entire rooms with one cast, so mana consumption is somewhat low, and what you need is a burst regen for when you need to dump a lot of clouds quickly. Also, running with sacrifice allows for a nuke for elite/champ packs, saving you mana from not clouding them.
DiabloProgress: http://www.diabloprogress.com/hero/mannequin-1116/Stitches/14628018
Exactly. For the most part, WD gameplay feels like regen trumps pool size on any given Sunday. As a wizard main player, I can tell you that, at least for Meteor users, we do care about how much resources we have in our pool at the beginning of a fight. The difference between a two Meteor and a three Meteor opening is huge, especially if you rely on APoC to replenish your pool.
On the other hand, Witch Doctors have no spells that empty out their mana pool in 2 or 3 casts. For the most part, the issue is keeping regen high enough to sustain spam, be it bears, acid cloud, spirit barrage, whatever have you. Attunement would have been heaps better if it had some kind of interesting mechanic, like say, 1% mana on hit. That would actually provide incentive for WD builds that don't shy away from IAS like the plague.
Build would be the same as my profile is currently using... Changing the rune on spirit walk to jaunt, and the rune on sacrifice to pride. It's essentially a suicide dog variant, since you'd still be using gruesome feast, and circle of life. You can use 2 different dog runes... Final gift or life link. Generally I like to mindlessly clear, so I use final gift It makes it just rain health globes. I don't see a ton of people running the build configured this way, but I like the mana on demand feature of pride, it feels like my casting is more under my control as compared with having to wait on regen.
You can always opt out of picking up zombie dogs at all, and let circle of life give you all your dogs, but I've passed the point with my DPS where I want another active skill.... Maybe chicken bomb for more movement bursts.... But meh, I'm not a fan.
--in before someone says something---
I do run a life steal weapon with an acid rain build. My DPS with everything stacked is a consistent 500k. Without life steal, I one shot myself on r/d packs with the initial acid rain hit. I get a lot of whispers in game about it and wanted to clarify
DiabloProgress: http://www.diabloprogress.com/hero/mannequin-1116/Stitches/14628018