Of course they did because the WD is meant to summon creatures as defense. Even blizz said the petless WD is a gimmick build, in which you are intentionally nerfing yourself.
The heal rune still seems like a nice choice to me.
9%WD -> 4.5% healing for the pet -> 2.25% Weapon Damage healing to you? I'd still take Indigo over that.
unless you have good damage. 2.25% x 3 or x4 with the zombie handler passive. so 9% of your weapon dmg constantly healing you as they attack? ya thats awesome. people are really underestimating that rune. before when the indigo rune was 40% sure it was way better, now that its gimped to a mere 10% id much rather have the healing rune. also its healing them for double that so its keeping you both alive. VS just transfering 10% of your dmg to them and not healing either of you. and since the zombie handler passive got a 40% life nerf your probably going to need more healing for your dogs
Yah and dont forget about the healing to the dogs themselves... They are your tanks after all.
It would really come down to how hard things hit in Inferno.
If Zombie dogs cant stay alive in inferno, then a huge portion of the WD class is borked.
Pets are the backbone of the WD!
I think it's a given that Zombie Dogs won't survive in Inferno, I think it will be much more about surviving for however long you have left on that 60 second cooldown.
My DPS is 77.25. Weapon damage and DPS are not the same thing. If mobs hit for 30,000 damage and 3,000 kills my pets, then no amount of healing is going to do them any good either now is it?
i didnt say 3k was their max health. i specifically said just in this scenario they were almost dead. healing for BOTH you and them is more important then just a small dmg reduction that merely TRANSFERS a small amount of dmg from you to them. honestly dont see how your even attempting to argue that 10% reduction is in any way better. from any stand point its superior. before when it was 40% it was better. not anymore, get over it.
If a mob hits for 30k and my pet heals for 1k, are my pets going to live? Are they going to live longer than if they weren't healing for 1k? Maybe by 1 hit at some point.
Both of the runes are bad. I'd rather the one that gives me a chance at not being 1 shot, which the developers have already said that if you don't devote a ton of your resources into defense, will happen.
Of course they did because the WD is meant to summon creatures as defense. Even blizz said the petless WD is a gimmick build, in which you are intentionally nerfing yourself.
The heal rune still seems like a nice choice to me.
9%WD -> 4.5% healing for the pet -> 2.25% Weapon Damage healing to you? I'd still take Indigo over that.
unless you have good damage. 2.25% x 3 or x4 with the zombie handler passive. so 9% of your weapon dmg constantly healing you as they attack? ya thats awesome. people are really underestimating that rune. before when the indigo rune was 40% sure it was way better, now that its gimped to a mere 10% id much rather have the healing rune. also its healing them for double that so its keeping you both alive. VS just transfering 10% of your dmg to them and not healing either of you. and since the zombie handler passive got a 40% life nerf your probably going to need more healing for your dogs
A little bit of math to go with that. My 24.3 DPS axe has an average weapon damage of 18, assuming intelligence affects dogs damage then it goes up to 39 damage. 9% of 39 damage is 3.51, assuming the game rounds the value up to 4. Then I heal for 4 hp everytime all 4 of my dogs hit. I already have over 1200 life. The conversion doesn't bode well.
you have 1200 life and only 39 dps? did u just stack tons of vit? lol. i have on average around 800 life when i have around 50 dps. and actually that sounds about right for the beginning of the game. if you look at the healing from haunt or other healing spells/effects. its pretty low like 2-4. but again this scales with your damage, so if you stacks more dps you will get healed for more. this isnt meant to be insane healing, just extra healing.
some more math. as seen in some blizzcon playthroughs, people are hitting the monsters for 5,000 dmg. and thats not even a crit. rounding up, 10% of 5000 is 500. so 500 HP everytime your dogs attack. and 1000 HP healed to your dogs? thats awesome. people are speculating based on monk healing numbers that we will have around 50,000 life. so 500 hp is 1% of that. so if it was worded "your dogs heal you for 1% of your max health per hit" would you feel better about it then? i know thats not how its calculated, but you get what i mean. and who knows if those classes were stacking damage.
lets assume mobs can hit u for like 30,000 dmg. so 10% dmg reduction is 3,000. this is transferred to your dogs. oh shit that was it, your dogs are now dead (not saying your dogs have that little life, just in this scenario it was enough to kill them) now u have to run away and now you dont have dmg reduction OR healing. your pets need survivability just like you do.
My DPS is 77.25. Weapon damage and DPS are not the same thing. If mobs hit for 30,000 damage and 3,000 kills my pets, then no amount of healing is going to do them any good either now is it?
Of course they did because the WD is meant to summon creatures as defense. Even blizz said the petless WD is a gimmick build, in which you are intentionally nerfing yourself.
The heal rune still seems like a nice choice to me.
9%WD -> 4.5% healing for the pet -> 2.25% Weapon Damage healing to you? I'd still take Indigo over that.
unless you have good damage. 2.25% x 3 or x4 with the zombie handler passive. so 9% of your weapon dmg constantly healing you as they attack? ya thats awesome. people are really underestimating that rune. before when the indigo rune was 40% sure it was way better, now that its gimped to a mere 10% id much rather have the healing rune. also its healing them for double that so its keeping you both alive. VS just transfering 10% of your dmg to them and not healing either of you. and since the zombie handler passive got a 40% life nerf your probably going to need more healing for your dogs
A little bit of math to go with that. My 24.3 DPS axe has an average weapon damage of 18, assuming intelligence affects dogs damage then it goes up to 39 damage. 9% of 39 damage is 3.51, assuming the game rounds the value up to 4. Then I heal for 4 hp everytime all 4 of my dogs hit. I already have over 1200 life. The conversion doesn't bode well.
Of course they did because the WD is meant to summon creatures as defense. Even blizz said the petless WD is a gimmick build, in which you are intentionally nerfing yourself.
The heal rune still seems like a nice choice to me.
9%WD -> 4.5% healing for the pet -> 2.25% Weapon Damage healing to you? I'd still take Indigo over that.
unless you have good damage. 2.25% x 3 or x4 with the zombie handler passive. so 9% of your weapon dmg constantly healing you as they attack? ya thats awesome. people are really underestimating that rune. before when the indigo rune was 40% sure it was way better, now that its gimped to a mere 10% id much rather have the healing rune. also its healing them for double that so its keeping you both alive. VS just transfering 10% of your dmg to them and not healing either of you. and since the zombie handler passive got a 40% life nerf your probably going to need more healing for your dogs
It would really come down to how hard things hit in Inferno.
Of course they did because the WD is meant to summon creatures as defense. Even blizz said the petless WD is a gimmick build, in which you are intentionally nerfing yourself.
The heal rune still seems like a nice choice to me.
9%WD -> 4.5% healing for the pet -> 2.25% Weapon Damage healing to you? I'd still take Indigo over that.
Of course channeled spells are influenced with increased atk speed....otherwise they would all be crap at high gear levels.
You are really grasping at straws ya know. If you like the poison dart thats fine, they did buff it up and make it viable now...but dont go off and say its the king and the best, cuz its not true.
PS: Zombie dogs are not bad either...idk wtf you are smoking, but people will read that crap and prob believe it. They are meatshields, they always were...
Their runing options are all now very bad, were as before they had some really interesting and powerful choices. Hell, every build I made used to take Zombie Dogs just for Soul Link. Zombie Handler took a big time nerf, they're much worse off now than they were, we can atleast say that. Whether they will be good in Inferno I think we all kind of assume they will be relatively mandatory, but who knows. I think Blizzard went off the deep end with them.
Edit: As far as channeled speeds and attack speed, I think they are affected but I haven't been able to prove it yet. The only thing that can survive a spurt of Firebats from my WD is the Skeleton King and there isn't a frenzy shrine there to help me out.
In addition there could be some uses to channeled spells being locked in at 1 second, either for balancing reasons (Because honestly I'll use Crimson Firebats over practically every skill) or to help out big slow 2 handers that you might happen across / craft (Obviously the preferred set up is the Knife/Wanga Doll for the inborn mana regen they usually sport in addition to the bonus damage on the Wangas. But you can't control if you find a two-hander with great stats and dps over your current set up.
Another problem could be that most attacks have an in-born max attack speed because I don't believe I've seen an instance of animation clipping. So with channels not having an animation timer they could become massively imbalanced at high attack speeds.
Zombie Charger does less, Haunt does 350% now and its a supportive dps ability not a spam ability, under those circumstances many DoT abilities outdamage Splinter Darts, as they should.
Hungry Bats + Passive can counter Splinter Darts, but so could Splinter Darts + Passive put it back on top, so only Hungry Bats + Pierce + Vermin can actually full outdamage Splinter and you're giving up 2 passives to pull it off, nevermind the fact we don't know how it actually functions unfortunately.
I'm not sure why you're so adamant about Splinter Darts being bad, especially when you're using out-dated information in your arguements.
You are the one who wanted to talk about PURE single target dps...So what if you have to use 1 extra passive, for PURE single target dps hungry bats are better.
You looked at un-runed zombie charger.....with any rune it should outdmg poison dart. And even if it doesnt, who cares? Its still WAY WAY better in most situations...who cares if it does 5% less dmg?
Poison dart is king of jack and shit, and jack left to hang out with the Firebats.
You might have more updated information, but they don't make you take an IQ test to get into beta.
I think its kind of funny the loopholes you will jump through to try to not seem dumb. I called you out on bad information, and you bring up some BS argument about pure dps. I even prove that wrong, and now all thats left is ad hominem.
Sad, truly sad.
Zombie Charger has one rune that increases its damage, by ~4%. You may not know this but Zombie Charger has an extremely small hit box, is the slowest projectile in the game, and might also be the shortest ranged one on top of that. Not to mention it's an ability that can't be spammed due to its mana cost. It's a great skill for a very specific type of build.
We don't know how Hungry Bats fuctions. We don't know the quantity of bats per 1 second window, whether they home *on target* or seek the closest target, which could make it unwieldy. We also don't know if the channel will be modified by attack speed, which Splinter Darts are. Many variations could see the use of Hungry Bats change its functionality, let along that outside of Crimson, Firebats has a reletively short range. Which could be quite dangerous on the upper difficulties. As I recall you infered that Poison Dart would be not of much use in higher difficulties, but then go on to say that giving up 2 passives to make a skill able to out damage it proves your point? In Inferno Jungle Fortitude and Bad Medicine will almost assuredly be in most builds, and keeping as much distance between you and your target will likely be a very good idea to prolong your life.
Thank you OP for your detailed update. Not in beta, just trying to follow all these "adjustments" to the class I chose as my main.
Looking at Haunt (Consuming Spirit) is that 2 health return or 2%? It doesn't seem like 2 health would be that great (unless these abilities scale with level), considering the classes should have a large HP pool at higher levels. Even an ability like Leeching Beasts takes a severe hit in it's healing ability due to the lowered pet output. I just hope these abilities are tested and adjusted to scale and balance with the higher health levels.
I have read from some testers that the WD is still very strong in beta, however I think that largely has to do with the runes (3 shot dart and jumping spiders). I am more concerned with higher levels and how these changes will scale and or be effective. There are some drastic changes, which leads me to believe that maybe equipment later on might bring some of the abilities back up to prenerf levels.
Again, all this is speculation from a non tester and again thanks for the post.
Runes that provide healing scale as you level fortunately. I've yet to determine if they're also based on max health as well, as without that being the case the more tanky builds wouldn't see much use out of them.
I hoping for an iteration where you simply level and select the skill and then the rune you'd like to unlock for that skill, so those who are diving into the game knowing the build they want to run don't need to wait to 60 to use it.
That said, Blizzard is getting very close to crunch time and final polish I doubt they'll revisit the rune system until after the game goes gold, unfortunately.
What are people talking about?
Crimson Firebomb does 190% dmg as AoE.
Hungry bats hit for 200% wpn dmg, 240% w/ Vermin.
Posion dart still sucks ass. In fact with the huge nerf to Snake to the Face for PvP, i can't even think of a use for it now.
Edit: Dogs suck? LOL!
poison dart actually rules with the first rune. do u have the beta? its quite nice. 210% insta dmg
Its the beta...and runes drastically increase the potency of spells, generally. So of course it does good...but that doesnt meant its still going to be worth using in end game, just slightly more viable. Lots of abilities put up similar numbers and do actual aoe dmg.
As far as straight damage on demand the only abilities standing up to Poison Dart at the moment is a Vermin/Pierce Crimson Firebats, Zombie Charger, and Spirit Barrage. Two of those abilities cost significantly more than Poison Dart, as far as pure single target damage goes, Poison Dart is now the supreme king.
How is it the king again? So many competitors that do competitive or better dmg + AoE, and cost roughly the same..... Ohh and they have a much greater margin of erron in aiming as well.
They made poison dart viable, but its not king of shit.
Take note of how I said "Pure Single Target Damage" which is really indisputable, I don't know what else to tell you bud. Nothing except for Spirit Barrage does more damage in a 1 second duration than Splinter Darts, and Spirit Barrage costs 3x the mana of Splinter Dart and outdamages it by 5%. I really don't see how this is debatable.
Splinter Darts is the Boss Killer spam of choice.
Well Idk what to tell you, but you are dead wrong....heck even you said so.
Zombie Charger, Hungry Bats(+Passive) both do more Pure Single Target Dmg than posion dart, and have significant advantages. Haunt is 500% wpn dmg for 1 GCD, though you cant spam it.
I could prob find more if I tried, but I dont have all the updated info either.
Zombie Charger does less, Haunt does 350% now and its a supportive dps ability not a spam ability, under those circumstances many DoT abilities outdamage Splinter Darts, as they should.
Hungry Bats + Passive can counter Splinter Darts, but so could Splinter Darts + Passive put it back on top, so only Hungry Bats + Pierce + Vermin can actually full outdamage Splinter and you're giving up 2 passives to pull it off, nevermind the fact we don't know how it actually functions unfortunately.
I'm not sure why you're so adamant about Splinter Darts being bad, especially when you're using out-dated information in your arguements.
What are people talking about?
Crimson Firebomb does 190% dmg as AoE.
Hungry bats hit for 200% wpn dmg, 240% w/ Vermin.
Posion dart still sucks ass. In fact with the huge nerf to Snake to the Face for PvP, i can't even think of a use for it now.
Edit: Dogs suck? LOL!
poison dart actually rules with the first rune. do u have the beta? its quite nice. 210% insta dmg
Its the beta...and runes drastically increase the potency of spells, generally. So of course it does good...but that doesnt meant its still going to be worth using in end game, just slightly more viable. Lots of abilities put up similar numbers and do actual aoe dmg.
As far as straight damage on demand the only abilities standing up to Poison Dart at the moment is a Vermin/Pierce Crimson Firebats, Zombie Charger, and Spirit Barrage. Two of those abilities cost significantly more than Poison Dart, as far as pure single target damage goes, Poison Dart is now the supreme king.
How is it the king again? So many competitors that do competitive or better dmg + AoE, and cost roughly the same..... Ohh and they have a much greater margin of erron in aiming as well.
They made poison dart viable, but its not king of shit.
Take note of how I said "Pure Single Target Damage" which is really indisputable, I don't know what else to tell you bud. Nothing except for Spirit Barrage does more damage in a 1 second duration than Splinter Darts, and Spirit Barrage costs 3x the mana of Splinter Dart and outdamages it by 5%. I really don't see how this is debatable.
Thanks Ellixmaji for the recap, it's very much appreciated.
WD undergo some tweaking and I think if they made a so widespread nerfing maybe it was needed.
Also we lack info on items affixes/suffixes, if they affect skills (increasing damage, reducing cost, reducing CD, etc) they can change our approach to skills.
As things are right now I think some builds will be way less effective than before, but we'll find ways to make them work, as we did before.
On a side note: I've seen people compare non-targetable single target skills (Poison Dart) against targetable single target DoT skills (Haunt) or even non targetable AoE skills (Fire Bomb)....a little comparing may be worth doing but let's not stretch it too far, they are very different skills, each useful in different situations and, most important, each suits a different gamestyle.
I feel more like people are trying to find the baseline, the skills that are generally optimal. There will always be builds, especially PvP ones that will use abilities that are not the situational norms because they're looking for specific things, such as favoring Alabaster Haunt over Splinter Dart for the on target click rather than a projectile.
But the nature of the game is that there will be a "Best mana efficient AoE", "Best pure AoE", "Best support DPS", etc, etc. Its taking those elements and trying to make a competent build out of it. And I think that's where a lot of heads start to butt, when someone favors corpse spiders over firebats because their other skills cover up the inherit weaknesses of the skills and make their strengths shine.
What are people talking about?
Crimson Firebomb does 190% dmg as AoE.
Hungry bats hit for 200% wpn dmg, 240% w/ Vermin.
Posion dart still sucks ass. In fact with the huge nerf to Snake to the Face for PvP, i can't even think of a use for it now.
Edit: Dogs suck? LOL!
poison dart actually rules with the first rune. do u have the beta? its quite nice. 210% insta dmg
Its the beta...and runes drastically increase the potency of spells, generally. So of course it does good...but that doesnt meant its still going to be worth using in end game, just slightly more viable. Lots of abilities put up similar numbers and do actual aoe dmg.
As far as straight damage on demand the only abilities standing up to Poison Dart at the moment is a Vermin/Pierce Crimson Firebats, Zombie Charger, and Spirit Barrage. Two of those abilities cost significantly more than Poison Dart, as far as pure single target damage goes, Poison Dart is now the supreme king.
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I think it's a given that Zombie Dogs won't survive in Inferno, I think it will be much more about surviving for however long you have left on that 60 second cooldown.
If a mob hits for 30k and my pet heals for 1k, are my pets going to live? Are they going to live longer than if they weren't healing for 1k? Maybe by 1 hit at some point.
Both of the runes are bad. I'd rather the one that gives me a chance at not being 1 shot, which the developers have already said that if you don't devote a ton of your resources into defense, will happen.
My DPS is 77.25. Weapon damage and DPS are not the same thing. If mobs hit for 30,000 damage and 3,000 kills my pets, then no amount of healing is going to do them any good either now is it?
A little bit of math to go with that. My 24.3 DPS axe has an average weapon damage of 18, assuming intelligence affects dogs damage then it goes up to 39 damage. 9% of 39 damage is 3.51, assuming the game rounds the value up to 4. Then I heal for 4 hp everytime all 4 of my dogs hit. I already have over 1200 life. The conversion doesn't bode well.
It would really come down to how hard things hit in Inferno.
9%WD -> 4.5% healing for the pet -> 2.25% Weapon Damage healing to you? I'd still take Indigo over that.
Their runing options are all now very bad, were as before they had some really interesting and powerful choices. Hell, every build I made used to take Zombie Dogs just for Soul Link. Zombie Handler took a big time nerf, they're much worse off now than they were, we can atleast say that. Whether they will be good in Inferno I think we all kind of assume they will be relatively mandatory, but who knows. I think Blizzard went off the deep end with them.
Edit: As far as channeled speeds and attack speed, I think they are affected but I haven't been able to prove it yet. The only thing that can survive a spurt of Firebats from my WD is the Skeleton King and there isn't a frenzy shrine there to help me out.
In addition there could be some uses to channeled spells being locked in at 1 second, either for balancing reasons (Because honestly I'll use Crimson Firebats over practically every skill) or to help out big slow 2 handers that you might happen across / craft (Obviously the preferred set up is the Knife/Wanga Doll for the inborn mana regen they usually sport in addition to the bonus damage on the Wangas. But you can't control if you find a two-hander with great stats and dps over your current set up.
Another problem could be that most attacks have an in-born max attack speed because I don't believe I've seen an instance of animation clipping. So with channels not having an animation timer they could become massively imbalanced at high attack speeds.
Zombie Charger has one rune that increases its damage, by ~4%. You may not know this but Zombie Charger has an extremely small hit box, is the slowest projectile in the game, and might also be the shortest ranged one on top of that. Not to mention it's an ability that can't be spammed due to its mana cost. It's a great skill for a very specific type of build.
We don't know how Hungry Bats fuctions. We don't know the quantity of bats per 1 second window, whether they home *on target* or seek the closest target, which could make it unwieldy. We also don't know if the channel will be modified by attack speed, which Splinter Darts are. Many variations could see the use of Hungry Bats change its functionality, let along that outside of Crimson, Firebats has a reletively short range. Which could be quite dangerous on the upper difficulties. As I recall you infered that Poison Dart would be not of much use in higher difficulties, but then go on to say that giving up 2 passives to make a skill able to out damage it proves your point? In Inferno Jungle Fortitude and Bad Medicine will almost assuredly be in most builds, and keeping as much distance between you and your target will likely be a very good idea to prolong your life.
Runes that provide healing scale as you level fortunately. I've yet to determine if they're also based on max health as well, as without that being the case the more tanky builds wouldn't see much use out of them.
That said, Blizzard is getting very close to crunch time and final polish I doubt they'll revisit the rune system until after the game goes gold, unfortunately.
Zombie Charger does less, Haunt does 350% now and its a supportive dps ability not a spam ability, under those circumstances many DoT abilities outdamage Splinter Darts, as they should.
Hungry Bats + Passive can counter Splinter Darts, but so could Splinter Darts + Passive put it back on top, so only Hungry Bats + Pierce + Vermin can actually full outdamage Splinter and you're giving up 2 passives to pull it off, nevermind the fact we don't know how it actually functions unfortunately.
I'm not sure why you're so adamant about Splinter Darts being bad, especially when you're using out-dated information in your arguements.
Take note of how I said "Pure Single Target Damage" which is really indisputable, I don't know what else to tell you bud. Nothing except for Spirit Barrage does more damage in a 1 second duration than Splinter Darts, and Spirit Barrage costs 3x the mana of Splinter Dart and outdamages it by 5%. I really don't see how this is debatable.
Splinter Darts is the Boss Killer spam of choice.
I feel more like people are trying to find the baseline, the skills that are generally optimal. There will always be builds, especially PvP ones that will use abilities that are not the situational norms because they're looking for specific things, such as favoring Alabaster Haunt over Splinter Dart for the on target click rather than a projectile.
But the nature of the game is that there will be a "Best mana efficient AoE", "Best pure AoE", "Best support DPS", etc, etc. Its taking those elements and trying to make a competent build out of it. And I think that's where a lot of heads start to butt, when someone favors corpse spiders over firebats because their other skills cover up the inherit weaknesses of the skills and make their strengths shine.
As far as straight damage on demand the only abilities standing up to Poison Dart at the moment is a Vermin/Pierce Crimson Firebats, Zombie Charger, and Spirit Barrage. Two of those abilities cost significantly more than Poison Dart, as far as pure single target damage goes, Poison Dart is now the supreme king.