I've seen many twitch streamers with a fire build for their pets. I have recently picked up the starmetal knife (cooldown reduction with fetish attacks) and am wondering what the best build is. Wouldnt a physical build be better since I would concentrate on fetishes with a 4-piece zunimassa? Or would it not make a difference?
The reason for stacking fire is the 4 zuni set effect. With or without starmetal.
With that you free up the fetish passive slot (also because of overwrite as stated by above poster).
Your main damage dealer is big dog and 2 two fire fetish caster from tiki torchers. The two fetish caster cannot be killed, so this work even without starmetal.
Of course with starmetal you have bbv always up and pwn everything, lucky you!
I have often seen fetish passive spawns block my Gargantuan Dog. Keep in mind that Fetish Army can block your dog as well. To that point, Fetish Army damage affixes may be more effective than Zombie Dog damage affixes in certain situations.
Sycophant players can afford to play without RoRG, so they get a SoJ and Uhkapian Serpent // Frog in exchange.
this is the main difference as i see it i go between fire and physical a lot and they both do really good dmg using the serpent he mentioned should make you very close to immortal with tall mans and the frog offhand has got to be what i miss most running zuni's as fire
Since 2.05, the entire Fetish Army (even the dagger-wielding ones) deal elemental damage according to their rune.
Do you have a source for this? Personal testing, or...? I would probably switch to a fire based build if this is true, but I can't find any other information saying this is the case.
Since 2.05, the entire Fetish Army (even the dagger-wielding ones) deal elemental damage according to their rune.
Do you have a source for this? Personal testing, or...? I would probably switch to a fire based build if this is true, but I can't find any other information saying this is the case.
It's certainly true. Like with every other spell in the game, the rune determines the elemental dmg.
Kind of a silly thing to say, considering he says "Since 2.0.5", indicating that prior to 2.0.5, it did not work according to, as you say, "every other spell in the game". It's not stated in the notes, so I don't see an official stance on it, and haven't tested it personally.
The thing I don't like about physical damage is that I don't care for any of the non-pet-related physical skills, and there's too few of them to choose from. Pile-On, for example. Feels like it's far too narrow, and I feel like I'm not taking advantage of that synergy if I go all in on a physical damage build and don't use all physical based skills. I've been considering a build without Sycophants, to avoid the overwrite, as I have the kukuri and can get pretty frequent army casts, though I may just accept the overwrite as having Sycophants to fill in the blanks of the 15 fetish cap still increases the kukuri proc rate leading to earlier BBV/army casts. Or might go with another Zombie dog passive in place to further buff a gargantuan fire dog.
Since 2.05, the entire Fetish Army (even the dagger-wielding ones) deal elemental damage according to their rune.
Do you have a source for this? Personal testing, or...? I would probably switch to a fire based build if this is true, but I can't find any other information saying this is the case.
It's certainly true. Like with every other spell in the game, the rune determines the elemental dmg. Using Fire on your gear - you can use the tiki torchers which turns the whole army to fire dmg. But be aware that every new spawned fetish of the passive (sycophants) replaces one of the army and the passive fetishes ONLY DEAL PHYSICAL DMG EVER. So until they fix the Zuni/Army bug (passive replacing army) theres imo no use for any other elemental than physical.
Theres no clear advantage on going anything other than physical. The advantages in other builds (gloves with elemental, armor [cindercoat] with elemental) are not of value here - since theres much better items in slot than the cindercoat eg. you dont need mana on a pet build. You need tasker and theo gloves. you need jerams (making it no fire elemental on headpiece too).
In the end theres the go-to best in slot dmg output oriented build:Jerams, SoJ, Sunkeeper, T&T gloves, Harrington Waistguard, Strongarm Bracers
Or a more reliable / defensive Hardcorish go-to build: Jerams, SoJ, Sunkeeper, T&T gloves, serpent mojo, some combination of Aughilds, Zuni or /and Blackthornes, cains Sets.
my 2 cents.. running a growing WD on HC T3 absolutely stable. Nothaving T&T and Soj yet, that would take it to T4-5
i'm not sure if that is true for Burning Zombie Dogs (may be an exception though). Burning zombie dogs bite as physical and dont get any benefits from +fire dmg. Only their aura does. am i correct?
Since 2.05, the entire Fetish Army (even the dagger-wielding ones) deal elemental damage according to their rune.
Do you have a source for this? Personal testing, or...? I would probably switch to a fire based build if this is true, but I can't find any other information saying this is the case.
It's certainly true. Like with every other spell in the game, the rune determines the elemental dmg.
Kind of a silly thing to say, considering he says "Since 2.0.5", indicating that prior to 2.0.5, it did not work according to, as you say, "every other spell in the game". It's not stated in the notes, so I don't see an official stance on it, and haven't tested it personally.
The thing I don't like about physical damage is that I don't care for any of the non-pet-related physical skills, and there's too few of them to choose from. Pile-On, for example. Feels like it's far too narrow, and I feel like I'm not taking advantage of that synergy if I go all in on a physical damage build and don't use all physical based skills. I've been considering a build without Sycophants, to avoid the overwrite, as I have the kukuri and can get pretty frequent army casts, though I may just accept the overwrite as having Sycophants to fill in the blanks of the 15 fetish cap still increases the kukuri proc rate leading to earlier BBV/army casts. Or might go with another Zombie dog passive in place to further buff a gargantuan fire dog.
Well the thing with the Physical build is that you don't really use active skills with the build. You just move around a lot and let your pets carry you. Example is that you take Mass Confusion: Paranoia, Pirhanado, and Rain of Toads as your three "active" skills. The rest are pets. Gargantuan(Wrathful Protector/Restless Giant), Zombie Dogs with Life Leech, and BBV with Slam Dance. Get some Hexing Pants of Mr. Yan, and just stay nimble, drop toads to refresh fetishes and keep them up, then keep moving. Two dog passives (Midnight Feast/Zombie Handler) help and you use a Uhkapian Serpent as your mojo. The SMK thing works great in a Fire Build, and with 4 piece zuni. You then can indeed drop your sycophants, and roll with a big fire dog, and Wrathful, and Fire Toads (maybe) even. I'd say Rhen'ho favors Fire build too.
I use the hex-chicken bomb for mobility in my physical build- also packs a nice punch
I said it was a silly thing to say in the context of your justification being "all spells work this way" when it was preceded by someone saying "this didn't work this way prior to patch 2.0.5". Exceptions to the end all rule create uncertainty... this is why I checked the notes, which didn't mention it, and this is why I asked for a source. Which Leil provided, from someone who has clearly personally tested it - thanks for that.
You say "go Jade Set and Dot Build" like everyone has a Jade Set lying around. I have yet to complete / get the final set bonus for a single set that wasn't crafted. I have one piece of Zuni, one piece of Jade, 2-3 helltooth pieces. Not using any active skills sounds boring as hell to me and would drive me to play something else. Not everything is viable only if it allows you to do T6 HC.
Could anyone please clarify how exactly Fire Damage is connected to Gargantuan Dog? The rune description suggests that the dog(s) hit(s) with Physical Damage but is engulfed with flames dealing Fire Damage. With TMF you get one dog that is stronger than all of the dogs combined (one more question - does it become stronger with the passives that produce additional dogs in the pack?), but I thought it was supposed to still hit with Physical while having Fire immolation effect. So why does everyone say that it HITS hard when specced Fire if the hits are physical? Or does TMF/rune change the dog's attack to Fire as well (although the rune doesn't say so)?
I also don't really like Wrathful because he's pretty slow and only manages to land a couple of attack before disappearing.And freaking fetishes block him almost every time. So I'm mostly running with Bruiser. Although my gear is far from perfect and I've started WD only recently (yet managed to get a lot of decent pieces of equipment).
And the last question - is losing around 100k sheet damage worth switching to Rhen'ho and explosive toads? I like the ET, I have Fire bonus on bracers and it spawns fetishes quickly. But my Rhen'ho is only 2100 DPS (although with INT and socket) compared to some first-try-crafted 2500 DPS ceremonial knife. When running Ghom on time I killed him faster with 2500 DPS knife and rain of toads, but the difference was only 4 seconds. The packs of creeps are blown away like motherfuckers with the rhen'ho-ET setup though.
The dogs melee damage is supposed to be fire now too, with the fire rune. The general rule is supposed to be that a rune that has an element associated with it is supposed to make everything about that ability use that elements damage (though you'll notice that hasn't always been the case for some things).
The passives that add an additional dog do buff the gargantuan dog.
IMO in most cases, good legendary effects totally outweigh most damage increases. I've never used Rhen'ho but I've heard good things - I would stick with it.
Agree with you on the Wrathful garg - he's fun to use and see the massive damage he puts out, but his AI needs some work. It's much too frustrating to drop him on an elite pack, and completely ignore it because he sees an imp run in and catch his attention then dart away while he lumbers away and burns 50%+ of his duration on chasing something he can kill 30 times over in one swing. And that's not even the only issue as you mentioned. I might still use him from time to time to switch things up but don't care for it for general use.
when I messed with it, rhen'ho didn't really increase single target damage, which explains what you saw on ghom. The toads just hit and "pierce" for x1 damage on single. but trash packs get hit multiple times by multiple explosions.
TL;DR all 3 work for me, usually playing on softcore t4/5 with aggresive playstyle, public game. YMMV t6 or hardcore or building for a specific regular group!
Personally, i cycle between all 3 depending on mood (fire, physical, poison), but have ditched sycophants since 2.05, not for the overwrites as much, but as they block the 'real' fetishes and big dog. Important note, this is softcore, generally casual T4/5 Runs, I can see the clear advantages for physical and sycophants in hardcore and at t6 (leeching beast, more blockers, work in an uhkapian serpent etc).
All 3 seem to work well, butthe reason poison is my favourite currently is generally pet overcrowding In public games, so i switch around depending on the group. As always, build on what the RNG has delivered you with good rolls, and the +skill rolls you find (dog, garg, fetsh army), as these make a huge difference.
Have: tot, moj, zuni set (2 of 3 with fa damage), RoRG, all Soj flavours, tall man's finger, sunkeeper/skanky/doombringer, 2/3 ele amulets. (some items fairly terribad rolls)
Don't have: renho flayer, starmetal kukri and a few other things for sure!
My recent favourite is poison fa (dogless with tanks in the group, such as monk or crusader). Why?
- swampland waders, can hit 4 elemental slots with poison & still use sunkeeper/soj/auguild's, without creating pet jams.
- in open areas at least, the dart fetishes target fast and often outside the elite cc range for affixes (but they are terribad indoors!)
- good poison choices to fill out skills for cc and damage, (pick from: bbv, addling, wave of mutilation/pirhanado, pestilence with hwoj, bears, acid stuff, etc...)
However! big dog is so good and the AI effective... But you can't have moj, zuni set, tmf and soj all at once, got to drop one. Choices choices! (hence: smk BiS and rarest item). This is balance and variety
N.b. actually, having posted this... i'm off to try a physical big dog + passive sycophants build... :). Not let go of the full zuni set bonus for too long!
The dogs melee damage is supposed to be fire now too, with the fire rune. The general rule is supposed to be that a rune that has an element associated with it is supposed to make everything about that ability use that elements damage (though you'll notice that hasn't always been the case for some things).
The passives that add an additional dog do buff the gargantuan dog.
IMO in most cases, good legendary effects totally outweigh most damage increases. I've never used Rhen'ho but I've heard good things - I would stick with it.
Agree with you on the Wrathful garg - he's fun to use and see the massive damage he puts out, but his AI needs some work. It's much too frustrating to drop him on an elite pack, and completely ignore it because he sees an imp run in and catch his attention then dart away while he lumbers away and burns 50%+ of his duration on chasing something he can kill 30 times over in one swing. And that's not even the only issue as you mentioned. I might still use him from time to time to switch things up but don't care for it for general use.
I'm initially a long-term Monk player and I can confirm that Rune doesn't always turn skill into stated damage type entirely - at least in vast range of Monk skills. This has been changed in 2.0.5. mostly (but not completely), yet there are still skills which descriptions clearly suggest that they are part Physical and part Elemental. And so are WD skill descriptions with Zombie Dogs not being an exception. We can only guess (if somebody hasn't prooftested this yet) if the skill does become fully Elemental after all and the tooltip is just bugged or not altered properly. If it is not, it's certainly a room for improvement for all the classes.
I'm currently running in full Poison build (Rhen'ho + Addling Toads; Poison Gargantuan Dog; Poison Gargantuan; Piranhas Mutilating Wave + BBV & Jaunt) with Poison damage only on bracers and enjoying it a lot. I was playing in Fire (although I personally cannot call Rain of Toads / Piranhas + Fire Dog & Fire Gargantuan a Fire build because it's mixed) before with a higher DPS simple knife and it was boring because I only had to spam low-damaging ROT and wait until fetishes and gargs finish off elites and whiteys (whiteys were the most boring ones to wait for). Now I massacre everything with those crazy confusing toads. They even confuse bosses, which is pretty awesome! I even went up to T5, although I've only started WD about a week ago days ago and was doing T4 for the last days.
And I've come to a strong conviction that Toads is probably the only worthy attack of WD at the moment, Spiders being completely useless (enjoyed Spider Queen when levelling), Bomb and Dart being too weak.
Well, when it comes to making the choice between the elements, I have one simple thought:
Pet WD never lack single target dps (ie elites and rift bosses). Never. They die in seconds no matter what withGargantuan and BBV.
What we lack is AOE, and this is really annoying in open space with tonloads of little mobs. Our fetishes and dogs start to kill them one by one, running around and it takes so freaking long.
I've tried Zuni w and w/o Kukri, phys, poison, dart mask, you name it. The most effective choice (xp and items per hour, clearing speed) is:
Ren'ho with explosive toads + fire + big dog on T5. Unity is useless (get serpent). Even Sodj is useless. Just get shitloads of plain good dps, put some +fire on amulet and bracers and you are done, everything in sight just dies. You don't need control, you don't need life leech, you just smash with fire.
Why T5? T6 is just not effective: takes too long, there is risk of death, you need to adjust gear for more hp-armor-mitigation. Not worth it, just clear T5 as fast as you can and you are fine.
Well, when it comes to making the choice between the elements, I have one simple thought:
Pet WD never lack single target dps (ie elites and rift bosses). Never. They die in seconds no matter what withGargantuan and BBV.
What we lack is AOE, and this is really annoying in open space with tonloads of little mobs. Our fetishes and dogs start to kill them one by one, running around and it takes so freaking long.
I've tried Zuni w and w/o Kukri, phys, poison, dart mask, you name it. The most effective choice (xp and items per hour, clearing speed) is:
Ren'ho with explosive toads + fire + big dog on T5. Unity is useless (get serpent). Even Sodj is useless. Just get shitloads of plain good dps, put some +fire on amulet and bracers and you are done, everything in sight just dies. You don't need control, you don't need life leech, you just smash with fire.
Why T5? T6 is just not effective: takes too long, there is risk of death, you need to adjust gear for more hp-armor-mitigation. Not worth it, just clear T5 as fast as you can and you are fine.
Sorry for my english dudes! )
Proper placed Piranhado + Soul Harvest (Vengeful Spirit) and every little trash mobs dies instantly...
Rofl the charging adds that one shot you on T6 through your sharknato say otherwise. Nearly every elite @T6 and a surprising amount of non elites have ways around this attack. It is amazing for party, but if your running anything other than Jade at higher torments I can't express how ineffective this talent is.
Taking it or not taking it is up to the player, I would suggest that many people do use it, if only to see how effective it really is against a rift full of adds from act 5, or large white mobs. Never mind elites at T6 they are usually too large to even be affected by the knockback effect, negating strongarm bracers.
I've seen many twitch streamers with a fire build for their pets. I have recently picked up the starmetal knife (cooldown reduction with fetish attacks) and am wondering what the best build is. Wouldnt a physical build be better since I would concentrate on fetishes with a 4-piece zunimassa? Or would it not make a difference?
With that you free up the fetish passive slot (also because of overwrite as stated by above poster).
Your main damage dealer is big dog and 2 two fire fetish caster from tiki torchers. The two fetish caster cannot be killed, so this work even without starmetal.
Of course with starmetal you have bbv always up and pwn everything, lucky you!
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Spiral-1401/hero/65250518
The thing I don't like about physical damage is that I don't care for any of the non-pet-related physical skills, and there's too few of them to choose from. Pile-On, for example. Feels like it's far too narrow, and I feel like I'm not taking advantage of that synergy if I go all in on a physical damage build and don't use all physical based skills. I've been considering a build without Sycophants, to avoid the overwrite, as I have the kukuri and can get pretty frequent army casts, though I may just accept the overwrite as having Sycophants to fill in the blanks of the 15 fetish cap still increases the kukuri proc rate leading to earlier BBV/army casts. Or might go with another Zombie dog passive in place to further buff a gargantuan fire dog.
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Spiral-1401/hero/65250518
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Spiral-1401/hero/65250518
You say "go Jade Set and Dot Build" like everyone has a Jade Set lying around. I have yet to complete / get the final set bonus for a single set that wasn't crafted. I have one piece of Zuni, one piece of Jade, 2-3 helltooth pieces. Not using any active skills sounds boring as hell to me and would drive me to play something else. Not everything is viable only if it allows you to do T6 HC.
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Spiral-1401/hero/65250518
I also don't really like Wrathful because he's pretty slow and only manages to land a couple of attack before disappearing.And freaking fetishes block him almost every time. So I'm mostly running with Bruiser. Although my gear is far from perfect and I've started WD only recently (yet managed to get a lot of decent pieces of equipment).
And the last question - is losing around 100k sheet damage worth switching to Rhen'ho and explosive toads? I like the ET, I have Fire bonus on bracers and it spawns fetishes quickly. But my Rhen'ho is only 2100 DPS (although with INT and socket) compared to some first-try-crafted 2500 DPS ceremonial knife. When running Ghom on time I killed him faster with 2500 DPS knife and rain of toads, but the difference was only 4 seconds. The packs of creeps are blown away like motherfuckers with the rhen'ho-ET setup though.
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/12880008074
The passives that add an additional dog do buff the gargantuan dog.
IMO in most cases, good legendary effects totally outweigh most damage increases. I've never used Rhen'ho but I've heard good things - I would stick with it.
Agree with you on the Wrathful garg - he's fun to use and see the massive damage he puts out, but his AI needs some work. It's much too frustrating to drop him on an elite pack, and completely ignore it because he sees an imp run in and catch his attention then dart away while he lumbers away and burns 50%+ of his duration on chasing something he can kill 30 times over in one swing. And that's not even the only issue as you mentioned. I might still use him from time to time to switch things up but don't care for it for general use.
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Spiral-1401/hero/65250518
Personally, i cycle between all 3 depending on mood (fire, physical, poison), but have ditched sycophants since 2.05, not for the overwrites as much, but as they block the 'real' fetishes and big dog. Important note, this is softcore, generally casual T4/5 Runs, I can see the clear advantages for physical and sycophants in hardcore and at t6 (leeching beast, more blockers, work in an uhkapian serpent etc).
All 3 seem to work well, butthe reason poison is my favourite currently is generally pet overcrowding In public games, so i switch around depending on the group. As always, build on what the RNG has delivered you with good rolls, and the +skill rolls you find (dog, garg, fetsh army), as these make a huge difference.
Have: tot, moj, zuni set (2 of 3 with fa damage), RoRG, all Soj flavours, tall man's finger, sunkeeper/skanky/doombringer, 2/3 ele amulets. (some items fairly terribad rolls)
Don't have: renho flayer, starmetal kukri and a few other things for sure!
My recent favourite is poison fa (dogless with tanks in the group, such as monk or crusader). Why?
- swampland waders, can hit 4 elemental slots with poison & still use sunkeeper/soj/auguild's, without creating pet jams.
- in open areas at least, the dart fetishes target fast and often outside the elite cc range for affixes (but they are terribad indoors!)
- good poison choices to fill out skills for cc and damage, (pick from: bbv, addling, wave of mutilation/pirhanado, pestilence with hwoj, bears, acid stuff, etc...)
However! big dog is so good and the AI effective... But you can't have moj, zuni set, tmf and soj all at once, got to drop one. Choices choices! (hence: smk BiS and rarest item). This is balance and variety
Gibber -http://www.diabloprogress.com/hero/cluckkent-2878/Gibber/5143630
N.b. actually, having posted this... i'm off to try a physical big dog + passive sycophants build... :). Not let go of the full zuni set bonus for too long!
I'm currently running in full Poison build (Rhen'ho + Addling Toads; Poison Gargantuan Dog; Poison Gargantuan; Piranhas Mutilating Wave + BBV & Jaunt) with Poison damage only on bracers and enjoying it a lot. I was playing in Fire (although I personally cannot call Rain of Toads / Piranhas + Fire Dog & Fire Gargantuan a Fire build because it's mixed) before with a higher DPS simple knife and it was boring because I only had to spam low-damaging ROT and wait until fetishes and gargs finish off elites and whiteys (whiteys were the most boring ones to wait for). Now I massacre everything with those crazy confusing toads. They even confuse bosses, which is pretty awesome! I even went up to T5, although I've only started WD about a week ago days ago and was doing T4 for the last days.
And I've come to a strong conviction that Toads is probably the only worthy attack of WD at the moment, Spiders being completely useless (enjoyed Spider Queen when levelling), Bomb and Dart being too weak.
My build and gear just in case:http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Havoc-2232/hero/43896127
Pet WD never lack single target dps (ie elites and rift bosses). Never. They die in seconds no matter what withGargantuan and BBV.
What we lack is AOE, and this is really annoying in open space with tonloads of little mobs. Our fetishes and dogs start to kill them one by one, running around and it takes so freaking long.
I've tried Zuni w and w/o Kukri, phys, poison, dart mask, you name it. The most effective choice (xp and items per hour, clearing speed) is:
Ren'ho with explosive toads + fire + big dog on T5. Unity is useless (get serpent). Even Sodj is useless. Just get shitloads of plain good dps, put some +fire on amulet and bracers and you are done, everything in sight just dies. You don't need control, you don't need life leech, you just smash with fire.
Why T5? T6 is just not effective: takes too long, there is risk of death, you need to adjust gear for more hp-armor-mitigation. Not worth it, just clear T5 as fast as you can and you are fine.
Sorry for my english dudes! )
Taking it or not taking it is up to the player, I would suggest that many people do use it, if only to see how effective it really is against a rift full of adds from act 5, or large white mobs. Never mind elites at T6 they are usually too large to even be affected by the knockback effect, negating strongarm bracers.