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I think this has changed since 2.4.1 above GR 71. I googled and saw this.

http://www.diablofans.com/forums/diablo-iii-general-forums/diablo-iii-general-discussion/165821-2-4-1-new-dmg-xp-numbers-and-what-they-mean-for

So monster damage doubles every 30 tiers after GR 71.

Yup a lot of people posting on this in the technical forums. At least one of my clanmates has the same issue. Changing options settings don't seem to prevent the issue. Also what you're doing doesn't seem to matter. I've crashed once in a rift, once when idling in town, once while in inventory in town, and once while chatting from the main menu.

I should note that (at least for the large majority) this is a tonight-only thing. Most people have been playing with 2.2 (including myself) on Tuesday and Wednesday without issue. The rampant and widespread crashes only seem to have started tonight.

I've done 33 in 11 min as a HC Wizard without Unity, using Ancient Burning Axe of Sankis and Halo of Arylse. This is just an average map, not ideal.

I'm guessing I could do around 35-37, but as a risk-averse HC, that would be too much danger for me. Just waiting on the second unity drop to start pushing towards 40.

Very impressed by Paistos' no-unity Hardcore 39 clear. Must have been scary stuff. I think there are some suicidal wizards in my clan who did 40+ in HC without Unity. You're all crazy!

Thanks for the vid. Now I'm really interested in trying these changes out on the PTR.

Quote from Pv3hard

I think this build actually has potential to build into something nice if you stack lightning dmg and and CDR, putting the lightning storm rune on blizzard and the lightning rune for hydra, or simply swapping hydra for the lightning runed Archon for melting those elites. You progression in tiered rifts will be hindered most by the speed that you can keep elites so therefore you'll need some kind of nuke for each other the elite packs.

Since you can easily incorporate 3-4 elements into this build, I would imagine it synergizes very well with Tal Rasha's 6pc? And if you can incorporate Arcane then you can get that 3000%+ damage meteors (see next 2.1 PTR patch) every 8 seconds to help with elites.

As per an earlier post in another DoT build thread on this forum, I'll suggest a variation of the OP's build:

Replace soul harvest or paranoia with Spirit Barrage - Well of Souls. The dps boost of channeling an essentially free 475+(65*3)% damage spell on elite packs is more effective than the damage boost of either soul harvest or paranoia. Combine with high Area Damage to make it even more effective. Also instead of recasting DoTs (especially Haunt) on elites to make sure you got a crit cast, just focus down the highest HP ones with SB.

Consider Piranhado instead of other Piranhas runes because it both stuns and gathers mobs. Since you're already using Grave Injustice, this will reset the cooldown very quickly. The gathering ability also allows you to spread Locust Swarm very fast, and lets your Area Damage be more effective.

For hardcore, Consuming Spirit for haunt is very effective, letting you build up a lot of health regen for elite packs (6k+/sec)

I am running with a similar build for Hardcore, but some significant differences too:

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#egUhlY!fTRS!aZacbY
Key differences from OPs build:

• Spirit Barrage-Well of Souls for direct damage as needed.
• Haunt-Consuming Spirit for Regen
• Locust Swarm-Searing Locust to increase DoT damage (spread rate is fast anyway with Piranhado, see below)
• Piranhas-Piranhado for grouping mobs for Locust Swarm and Spirit Barrage Combo + permanent damage debuff to mobs
• Zombie Dogs-Burning Dogs for extra DoT damage to mobs (with Midnight Feast this is 30% per second x 4 dogs = 120% weapon damage per second AoE on top of regular hits for 18% damage each)
• Rush of Essence so Haunt returns mana (costs 50, returns 100), which you'll need to chain cast Piranhado, and so you can infinite cast Spirit Barrage.
• Grave Injustice for CD reduction to Spirit Walk and Piranhado

Key Stats:

• All dps stats work well, but should have a lot of Area Damage (I run with 50-60%) so Spirit Barrage (and presumably Locust Swarm/Burning Dogs but I haven't tested) burn groups faster.

Playstyle:

• On small spread out groups, use either Haunt or Spirit Barrage (Haunt for high hp mobs, SB for low hp mobs so Well of Souls extra spirits mops them up)
• On large groups: Piranhado to group up mobs, Locust Swarm while mobs are stunned, Spirit Barrage to burn down faster if necessary. The high mob density caused by Piranhado makes Locust Swarm spread very quickly, and the spell stuns. As mobs die, the cooldown drops quick so you can chain stun large groups.
• On elite packs: Piranado+Locust Swarm to get the debuff/dot up fast on all mobs, then individually Haunt each one to get massive regen ticking. While the high regen is ticking, you can get away with not moving out of things so you can spam Spirit Barrage until all the elites die.
• On bosses: Sameas above really but you don't get the high regen from multiple haunts, but you'll burn fast with SB spam on a single target. Tends to even out.

It has worked really really well for me so far but I'm still a 1-2 day old 70. Will update once I manage to gear up for T1/2, but based on my experience my guess is this build scales really well, as you're able to deliver tons of dps while avoiding a lot of damage simultaneously. Its big disadvantage is for group play where you overgear the difficulty since it lacks instant AoE damage. But this can be adapted easily by switching out Spirit Barrage or Locust Swarm for Acid Cloud-Acid Rain.

Quote from krypplingur

I'm failing to see how reducing drop rates is gonna fix any problem. Currently the problem with items is that you need to find literally 10.000 of same particular item to get a shot at it being good. I've played for almost 1500 hours on my toons now. I've found 3 trifecta items, 2 of them I just found this year and they all were super low crappy ones. Most I sold an item for was 100mil, rest were just 10-50mil and not even that many of them. If they reduced the drop chance they make the game even worse, unless they buff the chances to roll a trifecta, high main stat, 6 properties etc by like 50%+. Else I can't see it being a success in the future, it would kill the reason to farm gear cause you would need thousands of hours played just to have a chance to find 1 good item, and perhaps that item is gonna be worst trifecta ever, like my first trifecta item, 3% cc, 5ias and 23cd ~40dex ring, yeah crap.

From your post it does seem like you see how they are going to do it. They will be boosting the chances to roll good items in at least two ways:
1) Increasing the average value of individual stat rolls in the rares that do drop. For a single stat item this would mean instead of rolling 1-100 int and dropping, say 4 / 100 times, you roll 75-100 int and drop 1 / 100 of the time. This seems kind of like its not doing much than decreasing clutter, but say you have 6 stats. Now instead of each of those 6 stats rolling in a 1-100 range, they all roll in a 75-100 range. In the old way your probabilty of getting such an item was 0.25^6 or 2.4%. Now it will be 100%. Say they drop drop rate to 25% of current values...you still have 100 / 2.4 x 0.25 = 10x the probability of finding a good rare than before!!! (Actual values subject to change, but I'm using Travis Day's example as a basis).

2) Although not mentioned in the developer blog (its in Travis Day's very long response to Gosu's post) they are also looking at increasing the number of viable stat types as well: i.e. instead of only attack speed, CD, CC being effective, other stats will be effective for dps too. Say there is a pool of 25 stats now, of which 6 are considered viable for a good item (Str/Dex/Int, Vit, AR, AS, CD, CC). That means your 6 stat rare has a 1 in 177100 chance (maybe higher, have to remember my second year stats class) of getting all of these on the same item. If the pool is increased to say 20/25 desirable stats, then all of a sudden your probabilty becomes 1 in 5, or 35400x the current probability of finding a good rare.

Now likely the changes aren't going to be that drastic, but with two simple changes: higher/narrower stat roll ranges, and increased number of stats which are desirable, they can very greatly increase the probability of good rares dropping. With the changes above with numbers in tact, they could decrease the drop rate by 10x and you'd still find way more good rare items.

I've been a subscriber and regular viewer of Kagekaze's channel on YouTube since he started posting vidoes during the D3 beta. He is by far one of my favorite people to listen to during "Let's Play" videos and his commentary/analysis is generally spot on. Its too bad he doesn't have near the subscriber numbers he deserves for the high quality videos he posts. Hopefully this will be a good way to spread the word.

(Kagekaze: love your D3 Witch Doctor and PoE Shadow let's play series, keep'em coming!)

Tremors in the Stone for Normal/NM/Hell on MP10.

Go full cooldown spec + Cain's + Ruby in helm + Leorics (if you can get it). Go down to the Armory where Leah is. Burn all cooldowns. Kill Shadows. Don't talk to anyone, just quit. Resume game. Each repeat is 15-20 second once you get the hang of it. Repeat until its taking longer than 10 minutes to get a level. Then get a friend to boost you to the next difficulty. Rinse and repeat. In a few hours you'll hit 60, depending on how long you can stand doing the same thing over and over.

If you hit the game creation limit, take a break or just clear Keeps lvl 2.

You'll hate yourself for it, but its still the easiest way to power level.