First of all i apologize for any mistakes that i might make in my writing, because english is not my native language, but i think it's also quite well.
I want to present my version of the build around [b]Sacrifice. [/b]It's my first official build write down, so pls don't expect it to be perfect :P.
So, the build is revolving around[b]Zombie Doges & Sacrifice[/b]as the main damage skill, as it is now on the PTR.About the build: yes, i saw one or two similar builds and mine is not 100% complete and perfect yet, but for my early testings it did quite well, surprisingly. This introduction includes also some theory crafting and i didn't manage to record a video of this build in action, simply because i didn't ever do one (and don't know how to/which progs/no time). Also, I think this build is weighted like ~60% : 40% fun to efficiency. I will show the build with some variations that one may choose to adjust the needs of each one. I came to the idea because my Jade WD is almost perfect geared and i wanted more diversity in my pet builds. Ok, enough of forewords, let's go!
Info about the skills from patch notes (spoiler to save some space in post, sorry if unnecessary):
Chance to summon a Zombie Doge has been reduced from 30% to 15%
[b]Core of the Build:[/b]
I think the first thing that points out is the nice increased damage. Now it makes this skill more viable than ever before. But it's not just the damage why I chose to try out this skill. It makes much fun for me to blow them up and really deal damage with it. As you also can see, the skill can be used with TMF now, which triples it's damage and creates another nice synergy with TMF. This is also part of the variant of the core build.
While almost every rune is interesting (except of pride, because we won't need any mana), i see only two viable choices: [b]Next of Kin[/b] (not touched by patch) & [b]Provoke the Pack.[/b]For the Master is not that effective, I think, because it needs all doges to be by your side for full potential of the rune and because of the fact, that you sometimes miss the shots, you would lose all the doges at once. I personally prefer Next of Kin, because I feel most flexible with this one. It has a 35% chance that a sacrificed doge respawns as a new one, waiting to be sacrificed again! Provoke the Pack can almost double your damage for 5sec but I think you don't benefit from the increase of damage if you just don't have any doges
Now, because of Sacrifice as our main damage delaer, I would focus on Physical element.
Well, let us put up this main spec now and talk a bit about the other skills I use.
This spec is for the normal build, without TMF and i find it slightly more fluent, but I'll talk about the one with TMF later, too (variations).
[b]Skills:[/b]
[b]Sacrifice[/b]: Next of Kin (main skill)
[b]Piranhas[/b]: Piranhado (pretty much almost in every spec a nice-to/must-have)
[b]Zombie Dogs:[/b] Life Link -- I chose Life Link simply because of the occasional 10% reduced damage u take, when not all dogs have been sacrificed.
[b]Soul Harvest[/b]: Vengeful Spirit(1) - additional damage of physical type
[b]Spirit Walk:[/b] Jaunt - mandatory in every WD spec for defense/mobility, Jaunt because we don't need mana(reg)
Gargantuan:[/b] Restless Giant(1) - deals physical damage and rages on elites, quite useful rune I think
[b]Passives[/b]:
[b]Circle of Life[/b] - though it had a nerf from 30% to 15% chance, it's still useful in my opinion. Also it's still in 20yrd radius, which is enlargable
[b]Fierce Loyalty[/b](2) &[b]Midnight Feast[/b](2)- for additional dogs as well as speed for you and damage for garg
[b]Pierce the Veil[/b] - obviously perfect, because we don't need mana so we just take the 20% dmg increase
(1): exchangable skills for your own variations/preferations (2): change these to fit your needs when you use TMF, for example Gruesome Feast and Spirit Vessel.
There are also other skills that you could use for (1) and (2), for example the active ones could be BBV:Boogie Man & Mass Confusion: Devolution (despite the nerf from 50->30%) and Tribal Rites with Grave Injustice for the synergy of lowering the cooldowns as much as possible, but then you would have to go for another CDR rolls on equip and paragon which could be difficult to maintain enough damage output.
Would look like this.
I have to admit, I have to test this variation of spec a bit more, but for now I would hold on to the main spec.
[b]Itemization:[/b]
The item that really benefits this spec, is the Homunculus, which provides the useful ability to spawn doges continiously every X sec. Best version would be of course with 4sec. I didn't find a PTR version yet, so i can't tell you if it still rolls with fixed Elite dmg reduce and allres, maybe someone knows already and could post here.
If you have this, almost everything else is pretty much standard and not too hard to get:
Andy's (physical%)
ordinary amulet with physical%, CHC, CHD, INT - though I'm gonna look for the new Hellfire amu with an additional passive like Zombie Handler for an additional doge
RoRG & SoJ would be best I think (tested with Unity though because I don't have a phys% SoJ)
Aughild's shoulders & bracers (phys% of course)
Mojo - Homunculus as mentioned before
Weapon Doombringer for additional phys%, but you may just use Sun Keeper or the best you have
Harrington Waist is BiS belt here I think, unless you don't have it, then use other
as the armor I used Blackthornes, as well as
the panties of Blackthornes and
Ice Climbers as boots, but also free of choice if you don't have, I just used what i had on mules..
For the use of TMF I switched Blackthornes chest for Aughilds and took Blackthornes boots, TMF + SoJ/Unity as rings then.
Strongarm Bracers would be a good choice, too, but then you would have to manage other way with Blackthornes.
Defense - Allres > Life% / Def / LifeReg -- just fit your needs
Adventure - Area Dmg > LoH > Gold
Gameplay:
Well, gameplay is really simple: cast Piranhado to gather mobs and trigger additional damage, shoot some torpedo doges and white trash should be down (tested in T6 with my char), also similar way with elites. For rift bosses or left over lonely Rambo - elites you would possibly have to shoot all doges and kite while waiting for additional ones to spawn. 3 sec while in Spirit Walk should be enough to avoid damage until the first doge spawns again. Otherwise just use active skill of Zombie Doges, also as a torpedo salve for example: cast all doges on elite pack until originals and respawns are all gone, spawn additional ones by yourself and another salve.
Difficulties:
A bit lackluster it gets when fighting Rift boss, you will have to wait sometimes for doges to spawn.
Also the doge torpedos fire from their positions, that means it occasionally will take some milliseconds until they arrive at your target.
The End
TL;DR: Doges everywhere! If no understandiche, just read from the top
I hope you enjoyed reading my build suggestion at least a bit, so feel free to leave a comment for feedback/criticism/trolling.
hm ye thought of adding Fetish Army from Zunimassas, too. but didn't come to test it yet. This way, the focus is ofc not only on dogs and might make the gameplay a bit more safe. Just wanted to try a dogs-only-build and went quite well. gonna try furthermore if i can squeeze a bit more of this spec.
ye i'm gonna look how the vids in D3 are recorded and made in a rather small size, because my inet is really slow, it would take days to upload it maybe^^. Or if someone gives hints about how to make D3 vids, that would be great, too !
@Gorazin
maybe it would give perma-doges, but maybe it wouldn't do anything, because it might just work with "normal" death, let's see ^^
What do you think about combining 4-sec Homunculus with Sac/Provoke the pack? Currently it gives me constant +20% dmg buff (I run with 4 dogs) but according to the rune desc in 2.1 you should be able to keep 10 stacks for a total of 200% buff permanently.
The ingame description is bugged. Blizzard rep confirmed that the damage buff will stack up to 5 times.
Well, it's still +100% buff which is insane.
Upd: Okies, so I did the test on the PTR and found that stacking doesn't refresh the duration, i.e. each stack has it's own 5 sec duration so you can't keep all the 5 stacks permanently but you can burn all your dogs quickly to have a very short duration huge buff (and huge sac damage as well).
ye as i mentioned, you could also use provoke the pack, but i personally find it not as handy as Next of Kin, because you buff yourself yes, but this buff has no use if you have no dogs anymore and have to wait till the next spawns. with next of kin you sometimes can just spam like 10 shots. maybe it depends also on difficulty, because in like T3-4 you can buff yourself and can run around while waiting for next dog, but i tested in T6, so there you can't really run for a long time, because mobs are angry and do damage to yourself in that time
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
\m/,
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First of all i apologize for any mistakes that i might make in my writing, because english is not my native language, but i think it's also quite well.
I want to present my version of the build around [b]Sacrifice. [/b]It's my first official build write down, so pls don't expect it to be perfect :P.
So, the build is revolving around[b]Zombie Doges & Sacrifice[/b]as the main damage skill, as it is now on the PTR.About the build: yes, i saw one or two similar builds and mine is not 100% complete and perfect yet, but for my early testings it did quite well, surprisingly. This introduction includes also some theory crafting and i didn't manage to record a video of this build in action, simply because i didn't ever do one (and don't know how to/which progs/no time). Also, I think this build is weighted like ~60% : 40% fun to efficiency. I will show the build with some variations that one may choose to adjust the needs of each one. I came to the idea because my Jade WD is almost perfect geared and i wanted more diversity in my pet builds. Ok, enough of forewords, let's go!
Info about the skills from patch notes (spoiler to save some space in post, sorry if unnecessary):
Weapon damage [b]increased from 185% to 1090%[/b]
If you're wearing [b]The Tall Man's Finger, the damage is tripled to 3270%[/b] weapon damage for sacrificing your doge
- You do not gain additional damage if your giant doge represents more than 3 normal doges
Skill Rune - Black Blood
Has been redesigned
- Now stuns enemies in the impact area for 3 seconds
Skill Rune - Pride
Skill Rune - For the Master
Has been redesigned
- All your doges will now be sacrificed in a single cast for 1090% weapon damage each
Skill Rune - Provoke the Pack
Has been redesigned
Now gain 20% increased damage for 5 seconds when you sacrifice a doge
- This buff gains a stack with each cast and has a maximum of 10 stacks
Circle of Life
Chance to summon a Zombie Doge has been reduced from 30% to 15%
[b]Core of the Build:[/b]
I think the first thing that points out is the nice increased damage. Now it makes this skill more viable than ever before. But it's not just the damage why I chose to try out this skill. It makes much fun for me to blow them up and really deal damage with it. As you also can see, the skill can be used with TMF now, which triples it's damage and creates another nice synergy with TMF. This is also part of the variant of the core build.While almost every rune is interesting (except of pride, because we won't need any mana), i see only two viable choices: [b]Next of Kin[/b] (not touched by patch) & [b]Provoke the Pack.[/b]For the Master is not that effective, I think, because it needs all doges to be by your side for full potential of the rune and because of the fact, that you sometimes miss the shots, you would lose all the doges at once. I personally prefer Next of Kin, because I feel most flexible with this one. It has a 35% chance that a sacrificed doge respawns as a new one, waiting to be sacrificed again! Provoke the Pack can almost double your damage for 5sec but I think you don't benefit from the increase of damage if you just don't have any doges
Now, because of Sacrifice as our main damage delaer, I would focus on Physical element.
Well, let us put up this main spec now and talk a bit about the other skills I use.
This spec is for the normal build, without TMF and i find it slightly more fluent, but I'll talk about the one with TMF later, too (variations).
[b]Skills:[/b]
[b]Passives[/b]:
(1): exchangable skills for your own variations/preferations
(2): change these to fit your needs when you use TMF, for example Gruesome Feast and Spirit Vessel.
There are also other skills that you could use for (1) and (2), for example the active ones could be BBV:Boogie Man & Mass Confusion: Devolution (despite the nerf from 50->30%) and Tribal Rites with Grave Injustice for the synergy of lowering the cooldowns as much as possible, but then you would have to go for another CDR rolls on equip and paragon which could be difficult to maintain enough damage output.
Would look like this.
I have to admit, I have to test this variation of spec a bit more, but for now I would hold on to the main spec.
[b]Itemization:[/b]
The item that really benefits this spec, is the Homunculus, which provides the useful ability to spawn doges continiously every X sec. Best version would be of course with 4sec. I didn't find a PTR version yet, so i can't tell you if it still rolls with fixed Elite dmg reduce and allres, maybe someone knows already and could post here.If you have this, almost everything else is pretty much standard and not too hard to get:
Strongarm Bracers would be a good choice, too, but then you would have to manage other way with Blackthornes.
ParagonPoints / Stats on items:
Simple as with everything else:Core - Movement speed 'till max (25%)
Offense - Crit chance & Crit Dmg > Attack speed > Cooldown
Defense - Allres > Life% / Def / LifeReg -- just fit your needs
Adventure - Area Dmg > LoH > Gold
Gameplay:
Well, gameplay is really simple: cast Piranhado to gather mobs and trigger additional damage, shoot some torpedo doges and white trash should be down (tested in T6 with my char), also similar way with elites. For rift bosses or left over lonely Rambo - elites you would possibly have to shoot all doges and kite while waiting for additional ones to spawn. 3 sec while in Spirit Walk should be enough to avoid damage until the first doge spawns again. Otherwise just use active skill of Zombie Doges, also as a torpedo salve for example: cast all doges on elite pack until originals and respawns are all gone, spawn additional ones by yourself and another salve.Difficulties:
A bit lackluster it gets when fighting Rift boss, you will have to wait sometimes for doges to spawn.
Also the doge torpedos fire from their positions, that means it occasionally will take some milliseconds until they arrive at your target.
The End
TL;DR: Doges everywhere! If no understandiche, just read from the top
I hope you enjoyed reading my build suggestion at least a bit, so feel free to leave a comment for feedback/criticism/trolling.
HF & GL, Stay Metal & Hail Satan \m/,(-_-),\m/
thx for feedback
@Gorazin
maybe it would give perma-doges, but maybe it wouldn't do anything, because it might just work with "normal" death, let's see ^^
Upd: Okies, so I did the test on the PTR and found that stacking doesn't refresh the duration, i.e. each stack has it's own 5 sec duration so you can't keep all the 5 stacks permanently but you can burn all your dogs quickly to have a very short duration huge buff (and huge sac damage as well).