That is correct Kev. All spells are based on *weapon damage*, which is not the same thing as sheet damage. It's just that some spells can be cast faster than others which will make them do more damage (like blowing poison darts faster). Dot ticks are not sped up by attack speed, nor are things like grasp of the dead ticks afaik. Pets are an exception in that they scale with attack speed, though they still attack x1 a second normally (but they do not get area damage).
Corosu, I appreciate your feedback, my goal is always to figure out what is optimal. I haven't looked at this thread in a while to see your reply. Phantasm does not work the way you mentioned.
You can have x3 phantasms down, averaging 405% weapon damage per second (they can stack on top of each other). They are a 10yard aoe so hit multiple monsters at once. They can be cast at the edge of your screen.
Well of souls is 425% + 65% from what I can tell. Diablo3 loves funny wording, but as far as I can tell the 3 extra spirits do a "total" of 65%, though this is from casual investigation.
What are you saying about crit and phantasm..? afaik it has a chance to crit every tick, tho it still shows white numbers like most dots.
Well of souls does scale with attack speed while phantasm does not. With eg 1.55 attacks per second it makes well of souls do around 85% more damage single target, though with the base of 1.4aps it's just 70% stronger - and this is a dot build that should be avoid attack speed. This means an average of 2 monsters means makes phantasm better, the average monsters in this game are much higher than 2.
Also phantasm is a 10yard aoe - that will slow all monsters in it, bringing much more utility than well of souls.
Lastly the well of souls extra x3 hits (that do total 65%) have shorter range than the main attack and fall short of monsters at the edge of screen. Yes well of souls is instant, which is nice, but I have also tried it out extensively and find it to be slower in play and in theory.
I agree mass confusion is nice, and that the thing to go would be soul harvest.
* other than that the reason I used something like horrify +100% armor (instead of soul harvest-healing) in my guide is because #1 it is a heck of a lot of mitigation at +60% toughness for 8seconds, doesn't require you to run into melee range, and also mitigation is usually more important than healing after the fact of being hit for all your health. EG if you have 500k health and are hit for 600k by molten, you're dead. If you have 500k health and can pop +60% toughness for 8seconds. You survive. And you can have armor up around 80% - 100% of the time in many cases with grave injustice as per some people's feedback about them running Thing of the Deep (20yard pickup radius) + grave injustice, in their T5 or T6 games.
Heya, the comparison was between horrify and soul harvest. It was in response to a much much earlier post from Cor, I didn't make that clear.. so I edited that in now =D (ty).
Aye you are right, dogs are probably a better option than soul harvest also. I mention those items in the ultra tanky cold + dots writeup too.
You can get both - free dogs from circle of life, then swap out of the passive, though it's hard to keep anything but a tall man's finger dog alive on T6. Some people have attested that instead of messing with dogs (or swapping the passive in/out on T6) they prefer using Thing of the Deep with their grave injustice, and find they can nearly always have armor up with how it scales. And the horrify buff is more than the dogs. Dog provide some nice distraction though. T5 and T6 are definitely a different beast than other difficulties though in regards to keeping zombie dogs alive.
Corosu, I appreciate your feedback, my goal is always to figure out what is optimal. I haven't looked at this thread in a while to see your reply. Phantasm does not work the way you mentioned.
You can have x3 phantasms down, averaging 405% weapon damage per second (they can stack on top of each other). They are a 10yard aoe so hit multiple monsters at once. They can be cast at the edge of your screen.
Well of souls is 425% + 65% from what I can tell. Diablo3 loves funny wording, but as far as I can tell the 3 extra spirits do a "total" of 65%, though this is from casual investigation.
What are you saying about crit and phantasm..? afaik it has a chance to crit every tick, tho it still shows white numbers like most dots.
Well of souls does scale with attack speed while phantasm does not. With eg 1.55 attacks per second it makes well of souls do around 85% more damage single target, though with the base of 1.4aps it's just 70% stronger - and this is a dot build that should be avoid attack speed. This means an average of 2 monsters means makes phantasm better, the average monsters in this game are much higher than 2.
Also phantasm is a 10yard aoe - that will slow all monsters in it, bringing much more utility than well of souls.
Lastly the well of souls extra x3 hits (that do total 65%) have shorter range than the main attack and fall short of monsters at the edge of screen. Yes well of souls is instant, which is nice, but I have also tried it out extensively and find it to be slower in play and in theory.
I agree mass confusion is nice, and that the thing to go would be soul harvest.
* other than that the reason I used something like horrify +100% armor (instead of soul harvest-healing) in my guide is because #1 it is a heck of a lot of mitigation at +60% toughness for 8seconds, doesn't require you to run into melee range, and also mitigation is usually more important than healing after the fact of being hit for all your health. EG if you have 500k health and are hit for 600k by molten, you're dead. If you have 500k health and can pop +60% toughness for 8seconds. You survive. And you can have armor up around 80% - 100% of the time in many cases with grave injustice as per some people's feedback about them running Thing of the Deep (20yard pickup radius) + grave injustice, in their T5 or T6 games.
Aye you are right, dogs are probably a better option than soul harvest also. I mention those items in the ultra tanky cold + dots writeup too.
You can get both - free dogs from circle of life, then swap out of the passive, though it's hard to keep anything but a tall man's finger dog alive on T6. Some people have attested that instead of messing with dogs (or swapping the passive in/out on T6) they prefer using Thing of the Deep with their grave injustice, and find they can nearly always have armor up with how it scales. And the horrify buff is more than the dogs. Dog provide some nice distraction though. T5 and T6 are definitely a different beast than other difficulties though in regards to keeping zombie dogs alive.