Thanks for the informative reply Goriki. I'll definitely give it a try! Question about the Bruiser rune though - how often does it stun? I'm not at home right now so I can't test it but I thought I heard something towards every ~3 seconds?
I went to your DiabloProgress link but it's not showing your Soul Harvest build (I didn't click update!) What rune would you recommend? The 60second duration or the healing one?
@Rencol - I'll definitely give that a look. Thanks!
Since patch 1.0.4 and the buffs that Witch Doctors got to their pets I decided to finally dust off my favorite class and play them in Hardcore. So far I feel pretty confident in my build/playstyle (on Inferno Belial), but am unsure if this will be viable for act 3 farming. Here's the build:
So basically templar/garg/dogs for meat shields, locust swarm and corpse spider spam for damage. Spirit walk & horrify for the "oh-shit" moments. Will this type of slow-aoe damage/tank build work for act 3? Or would you have other recommendations to do act 3.
I think it will be cleared. However, it will take a lot of time building characters which will be able to. I doubt you'll be able to survive and make progress there without the very best gear in the game, not to mention the best team of players.
Sure it looks hard as hell but the monsters and bosses are definitely killable from what I've been able to see.
What people are doing now in softcore Inferno is just stupid. People have been lvl60 for a day or two and there is literally no gear on the market to gear out characters properly. They make progress simply because they are playing softcore and because they spend a lot of time with the game. Theres no way they would beat it otherwise. In hardcore, slow and steady is what will make the first Inferno clear possible.
They are clearing inferno due to cheese tactics and improper play. I mean why would blizzard allow you to resurrect during a boss fight a endless amount of times, you could have someone just sitting in the back ressing people all day long. I fully expect hardcore to not even be cleared in inferno before the year ends. It took GDstudio 25 hours of straight farming gear and dieing 100000 times just to beat act 1
This was my thought as well. Even though they are farming Act 1 & 2 (possibly 3 by this point) it still comes at the cost of countless insta-gibs. I'm also curious if anyone knows of a current Hardcore stream that's in Hell/Inferno? If they're even that far, that is.
I'd replace dart with medusa spiders for a cheap, spammable AoE slow. firebomb+ghost bomb is a spammable AoE damage dealer.
If you have pets, you won't need grasp. Both serve the same purpose. Keeping monsters away from you, and distracting enemies while you bomb away damage dealers. Horrify is a good replacement for something that slip thru the pets, hopefully you can drive them off of you and they will get distracted by the pets.
Searing Locusts might serve better than Devouring swarm. That way you can be delivering Fire and Poison damage with LS and ZC. You'll lose the small mana bomus...but in that case spam CS while recovering mana. The Beta witch doctors had over 300 mana. at lvl 13. At lvl 60 farming hell, your mana pool might be around 1000+. 37 mana is not much.
Yeah my first choice was to go with Fire Bomb w/the 28 yard AoE rune, as that with locusts & Grasp of the Dead seemed like good AoE damage. I just felt that I needed at least one "heavy hitting" single target spammer to fill in the gaps when I'm low on mana.
With a little over a week left before my life gets put on hold, I've been playing around with different builds I think will be viable for farming hell to prepare for inferno, with possibly keeping the build in inferno if it's successful. I'd like to hear your input.
The focus is to try to find a happy balance between AoE, some direct damage as well as control without sacrificing too much of each for the build to be viable. Also with the addition of the Nephalim Valor buff in inferno, do you feel this build will be able to achieve solo status?
Some notes on my thoughts for this build:
Poison Dart: Spined Dart - for some single target damage with on-demand mana regen to fill in the gaps of the more expensive spells.
Locust Swarm: Devouring Swarm - From the videos I've seen, Locust Swarm seems to spread pretty quickly even without the Pestilence rune, so in order to pump this out at a high rate I felt the mana regen was the way to go. This assumes you gain the mana every time it spreads and not just when you cast it.
Zombie Charger: Zombie Bears - The thought of this rune just seems awesome to me, and seems to have the potential for some really good AoE depending on the AI of the bears and how they travel/how many come out.
Grasp of the Dead: Desperate Grasp - I chose this over Unbreakable Grasp due to my experience from Beta and how a faster cooldown on this spell could be amazing in the harder difficulties. More snares = more potential for mobs to spread Locust Swarm and be hit by Zombie Bears. Plus it's a small AoE as well.
Zombie Dogs: Leeching Beasts - This is more or less to keep them alive as much as possible. Now I know in Inferno mobs have a higher probability to ignore them and come to me, but even if just 10% of the mobs are attacking the dogs, that's less I have to deal with chasing me.
Gargantuan: Restless Giant - This was chosen for an extra single target DPS boost vs the champions/elite packs
As far as passives go, I think they're self-explanatory. I might consider swapping Pierce the Veil for Jungle Fortitude if things get really nasty out there.
Thoughts? Constructive criticism is always welcome.
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I went to your DiabloProgress link but it's not showing your Soul Harvest build (I didn't click update!) What rune would you recommend? The 60second duration or the healing one?
@Rencol - I'll definitely give that a look. Thanks!
Since patch 1.0.4 and the buffs that Witch Doctors got to their pets I decided to finally dust off my favorite class and play them in Hardcore. So far I feel pretty confident in my build/playstyle (on Inferno Belial), but am unsure if this will be viable for act 3 farming. Here's the build:
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#bYXhUT!ade!acYaaa
So basically templar/garg/dogs for meat shields, locust swarm and corpse spider spam for damage. Spirit walk & horrify for the "oh-shit" moments. Will this type of slow-aoe damage/tank build work for act 3? Or would you have other recommendations to do act 3.
Critique away please.
This was my thought as well. Even though they are farming Act 1 & 2 (possibly 3 by this point) it still comes at the cost of countless insta-gibs. I'm also curious if anyone knows of a current Hardcore stream that's in Hell/Inferno? If they're even that far, that is.
If you think it will, what's your reasonable estimate before we see such an achievement?
Yeah my first choice was to go with Fire Bomb w/the 28 yard AoE rune, as that with locusts & Grasp of the Dead seemed like good AoE damage. I just felt that I needed at least one "heavy hitting" single target spammer to fill in the gaps when I'm low on mana.
With a little over a week left before my life gets put on hold, I've been playing around with different builds I think will be viable for farming hell to prepare for inferno, with possibly keeping the build in inferno if it's successful. I'd like to hear your input.
Here's the build: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#aSfZYT!dWb!bZcYcZ
The focus is to try to find a happy balance between AoE, some direct damage as well as control without sacrificing too much of each for the build to be viable. Also with the addition of the Nephalim Valor buff in inferno, do you feel this build will be able to achieve solo status?
Some notes on my thoughts for this build:
Poison Dart: Spined Dart - for some single target damage with on-demand mana regen to fill in the gaps of the more expensive spells.
Locust Swarm: Devouring Swarm - From the videos I've seen, Locust Swarm seems to spread pretty quickly even without the Pestilence rune, so in order to pump this out at a high rate I felt the mana regen was the way to go. This assumes you gain the mana every time it spreads and not just when you cast it.
Zombie Charger: Zombie Bears - The thought of this rune just seems awesome to me, and seems to have the potential for some really good AoE depending on the AI of the bears and how they travel/how many come out.
Grasp of the Dead: Desperate Grasp - I chose this over Unbreakable Grasp due to my experience from Beta and how a faster cooldown on this spell could be amazing in the harder difficulties. More snares = more potential for mobs to spread Locust Swarm and be hit by Zombie Bears. Plus it's a small AoE as well.
Zombie Dogs: Leeching Beasts - This is more or less to keep them alive as much as possible. Now I know in Inferno mobs have a higher probability to ignore them and come to me, but even if just 10% of the mobs are attacking the dogs, that's less I have to deal with chasing me.
Gargantuan: Restless Giant - This was chosen for an extra single target DPS boost vs the champions/elite packs
As far as passives go, I think they're self-explanatory. I might consider swapping Pierce the Veil for Jungle Fortitude if things get really nasty out there.
Thoughts? Constructive criticism is always welcome.