Thanks to the new changes in Patch 2.0.5 the Rhen'ho Flayer builds with Plague of Toads proc aton of fetishes! Before the damage was mediocre, good for clearing Tier 1 and Tier 2, since it was excellent AoE, but then any Plague of Toads build has to have some sort of single target damage increase.
Fetish Sycophants passive
Now procs on hit rather than on cast, and will be affected by proc coefficients
The chance to summon has been increased from 5% to 10% to compensate
With this new change, AoE damage is calculated in, making the Plague of Toads damage considerably higher then running around with a Firebats build. What makes Plague of Toads better than Firebats is the fact that you don't need a whole lot of Attack Speed% on your gear. Along with the fact that Plague of Toads has a much larger radius of AoE damage. Making Firebats not as great.
Also the double proc of AoE damage from the Rhen'ho Flayer seems to help quite a bit. There is sometimes a ramp of time of at least two mob packs. However, on many occasions the first mob pack will grant you 5-10 fetishes.
A few issues I have running with a Poison plague of toads build, is the fact that the Cindercoat is only fire elemental dmg, and decrease to fire skills. Making Acid Cloud or Zombie Bears not effected, and mana costly. Then having to have a 2 piece Zuni to help out with mana problems if having to use a lot of single target. Gargantuan - Wrathful Protector also has some problems with poison build since it's purely fire, and that's a lot of burst that you would be losing. One possible helpful hint is if you're using Overwhelming Desire. Charmed essentially is confusion, from what I've researched, making Addling Toads and Mass Confusion proc the extra damage from the necklace.
Require Items for this build:
Rhenho' Flayer, Mask of Jeram, Taskers and Theo, and a lot of Physical damage increase. Since this build now transfers all damage into the fetishes that proc like mad from the Plague of Toads. What this also does is slowly moves away from the Gargantuan and going with large Physical damage abilities such as Piranhas(Bogadile) and a few others will be the bread and butter.
Another side note, from my testing this morning group play at higher levels of difficulty is much different. I saw a huge increase in damage from my Fetishes and the group when using as many party buffs as possible. So this build like normal will end up being another way of being a party buffer!
Hope to hear some feedback! Ran this morning in a few T4 groups, and got my first Cow Level Rift!
Here's a sneak peak in Torment 3 video. This is not like my typical videos, this is more just to show how quick the proc rate really is!
I'll be updating the guide to patch 2.0.5. Due to the new changes of procing AoE, this build is capable of having 10-15 fetishes out at any given time. Mind you I don't have tasker's and theo or zunimassa, and my clear speeds about doubled on Torment 3.
@p1ng I'm quite sure it must be on your end, since nobody has had the problem. I've also watched my multiple videos from my phone and tablet to test them out. It seems like the sound is just fine.
@Crazyboy88 I was just using an estimation, since the previous cap on CHD was about half the damage of what it is now. But thank you for the clarification.
Yes, I still actually have my Homunculus because the average damage is very decent. You should see quite a big change in damage when you drop the Zunimassa's off-hand. That is also true about the Homunculus, that you'll get a free Zombie Dog regeneration, so dropping Summon Zombie Dogs for Zombie Charger is a big difference. This topic also brings up two tangents.
The first is that Blizzard made two types of off-hands, one with half the amount of average damage, and the other with double the average damage. Average damage is calculated into weapon damage, and if you ever do get a chance to look at a dps formula you'll find that weapon damage is the foundation for all damage that any character does. So when you have a larger amount of weapon damage, and all the additional factors are calculated in, in theory you'll have a large increase in DPS.
I think Blizzard was trying to make some very powerful off-hands, and in turn reduce the effectiveness of them. So like the Zunimass's off-hand adds into the pot of the Zunimassa's set bonus. I've also seen a off-hand that is similar in damage, but it makes it so your Zombie Dogs takes 25% of the damage dealt to you. So you can see that the special abilities are crazy! But you lose about half of the damage gained from having higher average damage. So in our case in this Plague of Toads build, where we are trying to maximize the amount of Plague of Toads damage, the highest dps off-hand would be massive scale in damage.
The other tangeeant is that in this last patch 2.0.4 there was many undocumented changes. One I can't find a official Blizzard source, but you can easily go and confirm, and that is that pets as of now do not have a cap on their Crit Damage. Before their Crits were reduced by 50%. What this does now is that pet builds are extremely viable.
So an example, cooldown active spell Fetish Army (Rune: Legion of Daggers) increases Fetish Army amount of fetishes by 3. With some simple math, before you would have 5 Fetishes attacking at 180%. Now you have 8 that are attacking at 180%. With this new buff to pets, if you have a Crit Chance of 50% and 5 Fetishes, they would approximately crit for 2.5 times a second. With 8 fetishes they crit 4 times a second. These crits now deal double damage. So you can see that this new added buff is a bit crazy. This tangent relates to your Homunculus. If you have a passive ability located on an item that summons Zombie Dogs, and now deal double the crit damage, that's pretty darn crazy. So in some sense the Homunculus is one of the best off hands for the Witch Doctor, if you want to see some extra damage output.
Yes, I've enjoying Mass Confusion also. It didn't dawn on me until I was making the video for this build that Mass Confusion is much better than Big Bad Voodoo. That's because Grave Injustice scales much better with lower cooldown abilities.
To explain it in a bit more detail, if you take Big Bad Voodoo and you kill 60 monsters in 1 minute with Grave Injustice, you will refresh the cooldown. However, if you kill 30 monsters, in 30 seconds with Mass Confusion it will be refreshed with Grave Injustice. The easier way to look at it is that if you have no time frame elapsed it would require 120 kills to refresh Big Bad Voodoo, and Mass Confusion only requires 60. Because of this I've actually have had Mass Confusion refresh as little as 10 seconds. Because I kill 50 monsters with in 10 seconds. The crowd control on Mass Confusion is amazing also since it makes the confused monsters attack each other, instead of you. Granted Big Bad Voodoo can be great in party groups that already has a lot of crowd control.
Well since they buffed Haunt the Quetzalcoatl is actually a very powerful helm now. My only problem with these powerful DoT builds though is that on lower difficulties such as Torment 1, you won't have time to throw out Haunt and Locust Swarm. At least you get a few more pieces of gear. I'm almost finishing up two videos for this build, and you will see if you watch the gameplay one, that normal monsters practically die instantly. However, I do like these DoT builds once you get up to Torment 3 or so, because the monsters then have a lot more health, so your DoT's can actually do some work. So for now if you don't have a helm better than the Quetzalcoatl, definitely use it in your build.
Since you do have the Cindercoat try out the Zombie Charger (Rune: Explosive Beast), otherwise I do like your setup of using Haunt for the extra single target damage.
Something to take into consideration is that since you're using Creeping Death passive with Locust Swarm (Rune: Pestilence), that no matter what rune that you're using it will consistently spread. So in some sense if you're using the passive Creeping Death, the Pestilence rune is quite wasteful, and you should try out Searing Locusts rune. The Searing Locusts rune hits the hardest in the Locust Swarm rune family and it also scales with your Fire damage.
So gear wise, keep the helm for now, your shoulder you'll want to try to get rid of the Resist All and the Fetish Army stat is useless if you're not using Fetish Army. The Fetish Sycophants that summons Fetishes don't scale with this damage. I thought they did for quite awhile, until I did some research on this %damage. So right now your shoulders are very solid for the core stats. But the other 2 attributes are very undesirable for a witch doctor. The all resist you have to remember you pick up with Intelligence. I'm now sitting at 9322 ish, and I gain 932 All Resist just from my intelligence.
Your neck try to roll Fire damage on, because you will see a GIGANTIC damage increase with your toads. This spec is all about maximizing the amount of damage with Plague of Toads, so you literally can run around just spamming Plague of Toads all day. There's also a breaking point where this build turns Torment 1 into a joke, and that's what I was aiming for when I created this build.
Your chest is quite nice, but if you arn't using Piranhas and you haven't reforged anything, definitely reforge the piranhas to vit. Glove are quite solid, but as much as Attack Speed is good for this Plague of Toads builds, Critical Damage is much more desirable. So try to roll crit damage on those gloves. Something to keep in mind is that life on hit on your gloves will give you an extra boost when you use Zombie Dogs (Rune: Leeching), for any extra healing later on. So if you find yourself not having enough healing in T1 and or T2, you can swap out Zombie Dogs on to your bar and have a decent chunk of healing coming in.
Your bracers are exactly what you want, just raise the crit chance and fire damage as you play more and further progress your character. Both your rings are quire solid, but the Bul-katho's wedding band, I would try to put crit chance on the ring over attack speed. Because the more you crit, the faster you will dominate monsters. Your belt is definitely good, but if you haven't rerolled anything try to reroll the resist all to Plague of Toads damage. Your pants are solid, but since you don't have any sockets they're quite low for damage, so try to add 2 sockets to those. Your weapon I wouldn't change, I might switch the attack speed for vit, but you get a large boost of weapon damage from the attack speed. Your Boots are frickin amazing. And your offhand is obviously quite good, I'm just sad that the Zunimassa's rolls that low on avg dmg, because you're losing a lot of dmg because of it. So if you ever switch into a poison build the Zunimassa's off hand would be amazing, but right now since your trying to maximize the damage, try to roll your blood shards on mojos. I've spent somewhere around 5000 bloodshards and have gotten quite a few offhands. As soon as you find a thing of the deep you can throw on the Gruesome Feast passive, and watch your damage go from around 600k to 1 mill easy.
So here's a link to a build that you can try out: Plague of Toads & DoT's
So your left click primary is still Plague of Toads, Zombie Charger(Rune: Explosive beast) is for your single target enemies. Haunt is for additional damage to single target, especially bosses. Locust Swarm (Rune:Searing Locusts) is for the extra AoE damage. Spirit Walk for the mobility and defensive. Mass Confusion (Rune: Paranoia) for the damage boost and crowd control. I just switched from Big Bad Voodoo to this Mass Confusion skill, and it's up twice more than Big Bad Voodoo, and it also has a Crowd Control aspect to it. So it's definitely worth while trying out and switching too. You don't have to change your passives.
This is a build that will scale very well with higher torment: Plague of Toads & Locust Swarm
The only problem with this build is that you will want to try to obtain a Thing of the Deep, to pick up health globes. If you don't it'll be more of a party build than a powerful single player. Than what you will do for a single boss fight or ubers you'll want to swap to this:
Plague of Toads & Single Target DoT
This is along the lines of what I do, I swap out for big boss fights. Not exactly rift guardians, because they die to quickly. But if you're doing bounties on Torment 3, you'll want to swap out Locust Swarm for haunt, and then drop Grave Injustice. Because Grave Injustice is worthless for most boss fights that no adds spawn in.
So I hope this helps, I'm trying to get a video polished up for this guide so that it's easier to understand and see the benefits. Because I realized that I can write a paper on how to make this build but if nobody sees how powerful this build is, nobody will try it. I also apologize for the length, but a DoT build can actually be quite powerful and with the helm you have it will make a great alternative build instead of using the Mask of Jeram. I've actually been trying to find the Quetzcoatl because it's possible that this build in later torments will out perform a fetish build. I just have to test it out.
Fire Damage Increase! Intelligence, Vitality, and Crit Chance.
Belt
Intelligence, Vitality, and Plague of Toads Damage.
4th Primary Attribute depends on if it is a legendary. Hellcast Wasitguard, I'm currently using this with the Attack Speed at the 4th Primary Attribute.
Pants
Intellegience, Vitality, Plague of Toads Damage, and 2 sockets.
I'm currently using Helltooth Leg Guardsw/ the Shoulders to make a 2 piece that gives me 1500 intelligence just from my legs (adding in set bonus).
Rings
Stone of Jordancan roll very well, with more Fire Damage increase.
Otherwise look for Tri-factor rings. Or Intelligence, Vitality, Crit Damage, and Crit Chance.
Boots
Intelligence, Vitality, Movement Speed
4th Primary Attribute can be Zombie Charger increase or Toughness boost
Main-Hand
Rhen'ho Flayer, I'm currently using Intelligence, Vitality, and a Socket on it.
If for whatever reason you have an excessive amount of toughness you can swap out the Vitality roll to Area Damage.
Preferably Thing of The Deep, for the bonus 20 yard pickup to scale Grusome Feast.
Make sure to have Intelligence, Crit Chance, and Plague of Toads Damage on it.
The last attribute can be vitality, socket, or area damage.
Prep for Torment 1
To farm Torment 1 with ease, the max toughness you want to be is 4 million. I've found that this is the sweet spot. So if you find that you're only farming Torment 1, then don't worry about it much past that. The reason for this is because Spirit Walk will get you out of tight spots, and when you have the buffs from Gruesome Feast and Soul Harvest, you can reach 1 million plus toughness gain.
Make sure to have at least 30%+ Fire Damage. If you don't obtain this, you won't feel the full potential of the build. 700-800k damage with Pierce of the Veil should give you decent clear speeds for Torment 1.
Paragon points should be optimized, dropping all some intelligence for the max movement speed. All offensive paragon's should be maximized based off what you for Crit Hit Damage. Offensive: Crit Hit Damage > Attack Speed > Crit Hit Chance, and cooldown reduction sounds completely worthless to me. Defensive you want to max out Life Regen first and formost. Resist to all is useless on a high intelligence character. Then go into armor. Lastly is the utility column, focus primarily on Area Damage and then go into Skills Cost Reduction.
Prep for Torment 2
It's a popular misconception that Torment 2 is much harder than Torment 1. When really it isn't. The max toughness I would want to see on my Witch Doctor in Torment 2 is 4.5 million. However, your damage should be at least 900k-1 million mark with Pierce of the Veil. If you don't have this with at least 45% bonus fire damage, you should be going back down to Torment 1.
Paragon points should follow Torment 1 preparation.
Prep for Torment 3
Torment 3 is tough. Your toughness should be sitting above 5 million base at this point. 6 million is probably the max I would want to reach, because at this point you can be putting toughness primary attributes into healing attributes. Your damage should be above 1 million at this point. Hopefully by now you have put on Plague of Toads % damage on 2 or 3 pieces of your gear. Also at this point I would hope you have +70% Fire Elemental damage. Which is actually not hard to achieve since I've found the gear in about a week after Reaper of Souls. Toughness you will find to be a bit more challenging to come by. Thankfully the new set pieces can roll quite well to push you above the 5 million toughness mark.
A huge potential toughness increase that is a must have is the socket in helm. Previously I never cared for a socket, but when doing T3 runs a Flawless Royal Amethyst in a socket in your helm can produce a 1 million toughness increase. However, I only run with the Amethyst in my helm in Torment 3+. Torment 2 doesn't seem to have enough damage to make me switch from a 41% experience gain to a 23% life gain.
Paragon points should be focused into more defense. Dropping intelligence for vitality would be helpful, I still use movement speed in this difficulty so I try to cap it out. Offensive, Defensive and Utility would stay the same.
Torment 4 and beyond
I can only speculate at this point. Due to the fact I do not have crit chance on my neck, along with high damage rings. An Andariel Visage also might put me a bit higher on the damage scale, since the +20% Fire Elemental would put me around the 95% range. I could see then possible having enough damage to do Torment 4 solo, in almost perfect gear. Toughness would be also a major concern for me personally, so when you drop Fetish Sycophants when you drop the Mask of Jeram for Andariel Visage, I would personally pick up Jungle Fortitude passive. Which would give you a much needed boost of toughness. Also if damage at this point is actually not much of a concern, throwing in Wall of Zombie or a Pet would help keep a lot of the aggro off you. My favorite pet in these super high difficulties is Zombie Dogs - Leeching. It's a lot of bonus healing of you have the life on hit, somewhere on your gear.
Paragon Points should mirror Torment 3, except for in Utility. If using Zombie Dogs - Leeching for the extra healing, capping Life on Hit could save your butt over having a lot of Area Damage.
Conclusion
These put together in a perfect synergy will make you have above 70% Fire Damage Increase and 40% Plague of Toads Damage. Putting in the factor that if you have higher level gear, you could be sitting easily around 1.1-1.3 million damage unbuffed. This is how I achieve T3 rift clears under 10 minutes. My fastest time so far in solo has been 7 minutes.
The strengths for this build is really the massive amount of AoE damage. The Area Damage proc of the Plague of Toads skill is that cause. Along with the massive amount of mobility that you're gaining from Graves Injustice passive. I've seen many other builds, and killing white trash mobs is what procs the Graves Injustice passive the most, and this build does just that.
Two weaknesses that can be a problem with this build is that the single target can be quite low. With the Cindercoat and Zombie Charger it makes up for the loss on Pierce of the Veil. What's possible is switching out Pierce of the Veil for a mana regen passive, so instead going for pure damage, the build can go for a plague of toad spam but have a an extreme amount of potential single target dps. However, when the Mask of Jeram dropped for me I use it, over switching out the 20% damage increase from Pierce of the Veil (I like seeing Plague of Toads hit for 8 million damage). The last weakness is waller elite, rare, and champ packs. Waller blocks Plague of Toads and Zombie Charger completely. However, if the monster is standing right up against the wall, Zombie Charger's explosion will hit them. So keep that in mind when playing this build that you will have to pop Spirit Walk to maneuver into a new position, or try to hit monsters with the explosion of Zombie Charger.
I also apologize for the spacing in the formatting and the possibility of extra punctuation. Every time I find something to edit, the processing of the submit seems to erase my spaces in between certain characters of the linked items. Along with adding extra gaps above headings.
I recently switched from Wizard, being my main in Diablo 3 vanilla, to Witch Doctor in Reaper of Souls. My Witch Doctor I've already put on 190 hours of gameplay within the past few weeks! I'm so glad I switched.
The first thing everybody should be aware about before getting excited about a build, is that in Reaper of Souls your build should focus around what legendariesare dropping for you. This makes it 10 times easier to play the game, along with getting to higher difficulty content faster. So needless to says the following build will require a specific legendary or two to be able to farm Torment 3 or higher.
The Clean Up Crew - Fire Style
First and for most the legendary required for this build is: Rheno'ho Flayer. This legendary gives your Plague of Toads active spell the capability of seeking out enemies, and a chance to blow up twice. It seems to blow up twice 100% of the time, but the chance is based off how Blizzard worded the legendary effect, "Plague of Toads now seek out enemies and can explode twice." So I would just ignore the wording and continue on.
As you can see the major component is that you have a powerful left click spammable ability. Plague of Toads (Rune: Explosive Toads)is that skill. Now we have to take care of your mana pool. Because Plague of Toads being a skill that doesn't cost mana, you will have excessive amount mana. Dumping this mana into a high damaging ability is our main goal. So I pick up Zombie Charger (Rune: Explosive Beast).
This is why I call it Fire style, because every single high damaging ability, is using fire damage.
Passive Skill Explanation
In my basic party build you will also see the core passives that I currently use on my Witch Doctor.
Pierce the Veil, a very powerful passive that increases your damage by 20% but increases mana costs by 30%. I use this even at low gear levels, but as I found more and more gear the best item to counteract this effect is the Cindercoat. This makes it so when you do have to do single target, Zombie Charger (Rune: Explosive Beast)can be let loose almost double the amount of casts without the Cindercoat.
Gruesome Feast, this passive is not only highly offensive but it is also highly defensive. In-game with my set bonuses I'm sitting around 9,200 intelligence unbuffed. As soon as I pick up one health globe it goes to 10,120 intellegience. The defensive part is that almost 1000 intelligence is also calculated as All Resistance. So you gain more all resist based off 10% of your Intelligence. But this also is multiplicative. If you pick up another health globe my intelligence will jump to 11,132. This goes on and on to the point where you get topped at 5 stacks. Where this tops off also scales with Soul Harvest. So I reach fully buffed around 1.7 million damage and 14,000 int. Which comes out to be a massive amount of resistances. However, if you want to make this passive perform to it's full potential you have to pick up: Thing of the Deep. The 20 yard additional pickup range makes it so you only have to slightly move to pickup health globes. So a single elite pack at first can be a bit tricky. But as soon as you kill a minion, and pick up that one health globe, it's a down hill roll. This exponentially goes up, I've been in T2-T3 groups where we pull the Rift Guardian and 3 elite packs. I didn't die, but those elite packs did. Because by the time that first elite pack dies, your damage will have almost double, so when you turn to face the other packs, they melt do to the high damage.
Grave Injustice, not only being a defensive passive skill for the 1% max life and mana regen, it's also offensive because of the reduce cooldown per enemy kill in 20 yards. This passive makes it so that the basic party build, with large cooldown abilities is also effective in single player. But this passive mainly scales exponentially in party mode. This passive also makes speed runs possible. As you achieve higher damage you will be capable of melting white trash mobs with a single mouse click, what this does is it reduce the cool down on Spirit Walk, giving a HUGE boost of mobility. At my current damage, Torment 1 is a steam roll,Plague of Toads (Rune: Explosive Toads)eliminates all white trash mobs in a single click, and this scales almost to the point of Torment 3.
Fetish Sycophants, is my only passive that I would say is not required for this build to perform to it's full potential. I use this passive because I have the item Mask of Jeram. The bonus pet damage makes a single fetish be absolutely amazing. Currently a single one of my fetishes, without any buffs, can crit up to 2 million damage. As I scale with Gruesome Fest and Soul Harvest, and achieve a higher damage, I see my fetishes double in damage. Making this passive HIGHLY offensive, and a bit defensive, because each fetish actually tanks mobs for you. I also use this passive without Mask of Jeram, because it gives that constant damage in the background of your main damage abilities. That constant damage is what many classes and or builds lack. So by having it in your build it makes the game seem a bit smoother.
Active Skill Explanation Fetish Armyprimarily scales with the item Mask of Jeram, so you don't have to use it if you don't want. A possible alternative is Locust Swarm (Rune: Searing Locusts), this ability gives you even more AoE damage. Also if you have the passive Creeping Death, Locust Swarm is not only a dangerous AoE damage ability, but it is also amazing single target. Having to only being applied once, it will tick hard, scaling with your +% Fire Elemental damage on your gear.
Mass Confusion (Rune: Paranoia)is a short burst damage boosting ability, and also a chance to be a 12 second crowd control to monsters within the radius of Mass Confusion. One thing to keep in mind with Mass Confusion is that the blast radius centers around your character.
Hex (Rune: Angry Chicken):is a extra burst damage ability that can be thrown on your bar. This also provides a smaller additional boost in mobility. This also stacks with Spirit Walk. So if you pop Spirit Walk then:Hex (Rune: Angry Chicken), you will for whatever reason rocket even further and faster.
Summon Zombie Dogs (Rune: Burning Dog):is also a favorite of mine. I'm a huge fan of pet builds, and throwing this in, for Fetish Army, makes it so that you have that underlining constant damage ticking away. Zombie Dogs are also one of the better pets. Their health pool is very high, and additionally are very fast moving.
Spirit Walk, this skill nobody should change. When first starting out your damage may be weak, so then movement is not a key factor. But as you scale higher with your damage, and can one shot mobs on Torment 1, then higher movement speed is a must. Along with being a high movement speed increase, which will overall decrease your clear speeds, Spirit Walk is also a highly defensive spell. Before in the Wizard (370 hours of gameplay mp10 etc.) the Illusionist,passive I would always choose over any damage reducing passive. The reason why is because if you have high reaction time, you can avoid ALL damage altogether. This is the same with Witch Doctors. However, Spirit Walk is even more over powered! You may not be able to teleport through walls, but you turn into spirit that can be free moving. You can also cast while in Spirit Walk! Making this ability for me my favorite on frozen packs. When the frozen orbs spawn, I just stand in them waiting for orbs to almost explode, and I pop spirit walk. Which makes you not freeze, and you can put in even more damage. This higher mobility also makes you escape jailer, along with wallers with ease. Making the skill a must have in later difficulties.
Itemization
Intelligence, not only increases your damage, but it also increases your defenses by giving you All Resistances. By having Soul Harvest,and:Gruesome Feast,in your build, Intelligence becomes a highly sought after stat on all pieces of gear. This also includes sockets and set bonuses. So as soon as possible make sure to get the highest level of gems you can obtain, in this case being Flawless Royal Topaz. These will make an item with sockets much more desired over items without (Chest, Legs, and Off-Hand).
Critical Hit Damage and Critical Hit Chance, needless to say are the primary attributes that you want to maximize on all pieces of your gear. I would rather have these two primary attributes over a socket.
Attack Speed Increase +% is also a demanded stat. Since this Plague of Toads build operates off how fast you can throw out your toads. Try to achieve as much as possible. 1.8-2.0 attack speed, is a very health area, along with being the cap in my opinion. Because any higher than this small section you will sacrifice to much toughness, Crit Chance and or Crit Damage.
Chance to Deal +% Area Damage on Hit, is a god stat that I would only throw on when you achieve higher levels of damage and gear availability. The reason for this is,Plague of Toads (Rune: Explosive Toads),sends out 3 frogs. These 3 frogs then have a chance have exploding twice, due to the required weapon:Rheno'ho Flayer. The proc chance of Area Damage goes to the max of 6 possibilities per cast. This is the major reason why,Rheno'ho Flayer,is so powerful. Champion packs that are stacked are immediately melted due to the damage from the toads, and Area Damage procing simultaneously. If you are not aware of what Area Damage does it has a 20% chance doing the percentage of damage you have, to enemies in 10 yards of the proc'd target. The percentage of damage is easily explained as 100% Chance to Deal Area Damage on Hit will duplicate the spell's damage that proc'd the Area Damage, and the damage is applied to all monsters within 10 yards. Making it's a highly desired stat.
Spell Rotation
Soul harvest on cool down to increase the amount of intelligence you have, along with having additional explosive burst.
If monsters are greater than 1, hold down left click for Plague of Toads spam.
If a single monster high health monster, Zombie Charger burst.
If on a boss fight, pop all cool downs at the beginning of the fight. Empty mana pool with Zombie Charger, and spam Plague of Toads as much as possible.
Gameplay Tips
Force stand still is your best friend for this build. I love popping Spirit Walk and then running forward with left click, and tapping the shift key. This motion forces you to cast plague of toads, but you're also moving incredibly fast. Making you steam roll through monsters almost as fast as a barbarian whirlwind/spring build.
Make sure to use Plague of Toads for all damage possible if there's multiple mobs. If there's a single tough mob in the middle of a pack the Area Damage will take care of him. If not clear the rest of the mobs out, or Zombie Charger mana dump the high health monster.
Popping cooldowns in groups, on packs will give the entire group a massive burst damage. They also help you of course in single player, but definitely get into the habit of not using cooldowns for anything but Elite and Champ packs.
Soul Harvest keyed in time with a few plague of toads can be a extra burst damage that will wipe out a almost dead pack. Soul harvest can be casted while moving. So when sprinting through a pack, spamming plague of toads, and if you pass the pack and they're almost dead, just drop a Soul Harvest. This will guarantee they die, and you get the extra cooldown reduction to on Spirit Walk and the rest of your abilities.
Something that I have been noticing when soloing T3 rifts, is that if you circle a champion pack, while spamming Spirit walk. The Plague of Toads will home in on the champion pack. It's a really stupid dance, but getting into the habit makes you move more often. Keeping you out of damage abilities on the ground. But also picking up health globes also. Making this build a highly defensive build later on in higher difficulties of gameplay. Also by having pets to tank for you, you're able to circle Elite or Champ packs with ease.
Battletag: Hellcast#1981
My gear replicates much of the Potential Gear in the second post, I've gotten very lucky. Also feel free to whisper me with any question in-game, I'm on the US servers. Also if I'm free I'm more than willing to join up in a game to show off what I can accomplish with this build. It's a good way of seeing the build in action of course, and also comparing the builds damage output to a build that you maybe currently using.
Looking amazing! However, one thing I noticed on the "Stream" section is that when you click on a live streamer, the page is a bit odd looking(Video is not centered etc.). Granted it's a simulation of Twitch's page, so for a simulation it looks amazing!
On another note, the white color around when a person is typing there message, is very bright (Text entry box, "where I'm writing this text now", whichever). You guys captured the essence of the new style of Diablo 3, but since everything is such a dark contrast, the white is a bit blinding. So changing it to an off color tan, or the same color as this text, would solve the issue!
Other then those two things, frickin amazing job!!!! Give your developers a huge pat on the back, and a six pack of beer.
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Fetish Sycophants passive
- Now procs on hit rather than on cast, and will be affected by proc coefficients
- The chance to summon has been increased from 5% to 10% to compensate
With this new change, AoE damage is calculated in, making the Plague of Toads damage considerably higher then running around with a Firebats build. What makes Plague of Toads better than Firebats is the fact that you don't need a whole lot of Attack Speed% on your gear. Along with the fact that Plague of Toads has a much larger radius of AoE damage. Making Firebats not as great.Also the double proc of AoE damage from the Rhen'ho Flayer seems to help quite a bit. There is sometimes a ramp of time of at least two mob packs. However, on many occasions the first mob pack will grant you 5-10 fetishes.
Here's an example Fire Plague of Toads build.
Poison Plague of Toads build.
A few issues I have running with a Poison plague of toads build, is the fact that the Cindercoat is only fire elemental dmg, and decrease to fire skills. Making Acid Cloud or Zombie Bears not effected, and mana costly. Then having to have a 2 piece Zuni to help out with mana problems if having to use a lot of single target. Gargantuan - Wrathful Protector also has some problems with poison build since it's purely fire, and that's a lot of burst that you would be losing. One possible helpful hint is if you're using Overwhelming Desire. Charmed essentially is confusion, from what I've researched, making Addling Toads and Mass Confusion proc the extra damage from the necklace.
Require Items for this build:
Rhenho' Flayer, Mask of Jeram, Taskers and Theo, and a lot of Physical damage increase. Since this build now transfers all damage into the fetishes that proc like mad from the Plague of Toads. What this also does is slowly moves away from the Gargantuan and going with large Physical damage abilities such as Piranhas(Bogadile) and a few others will be the bread and butter.
Another side note, from my testing this morning group play at higher levels of difficulty is much different. I saw a huge increase in damage from my Fetishes and the group when using as many party buffs as possible. So this build like normal will end up being another way of being a party buffer!
Hope to hear some feedback! Ran this morning in a few T4 groups, and got my first Cow Level Rift!
Here's a sneak peak in Torment 3 video. This is not like my typical videos, this is more just to show how quick the proc rate really is!
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Sneak Peak Patch 2.0.5
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@Crazyboy88 I was just using an estimation, since the previous cap on CHD was about half the damage of what it is now. But thank you for the clarification.
Torment 1 Gameplay
Torment 2 Gameplay
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I have the gameplay footage, in raw format. Just have to render, possibly commentate, and they should be posted up within the next 24 hours.
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Yes, I still actually have my Homunculus because the average damage is very decent. You should see quite a big change in damage when you drop the Zunimassa's off-hand. That is also true about the Homunculus, that you'll get a free Zombie Dog regeneration, so dropping Summon Zombie Dogs for Zombie Charger is a big difference. This topic also brings up two tangents.
The first is that Blizzard made two types of off-hands, one with half the amount of average damage, and the other with double the average damage. Average damage is calculated into weapon damage, and if you ever do get a chance to look at a dps formula you'll find that weapon damage is the foundation for all damage that any character does. So when you have a larger amount of weapon damage, and all the additional factors are calculated in, in theory you'll have a large increase in DPS.
I think Blizzard was trying to make some very powerful off-hands, and in turn reduce the effectiveness of them. So like the Zunimass's off-hand adds into the pot of the Zunimassa's set bonus. I've also seen a off-hand that is similar in damage, but it makes it so your Zombie Dogs takes 25% of the damage dealt to you. So you can see that the special abilities are crazy! But you lose about half of the damage gained from having higher average damage. So in our case in this Plague of Toads build, where we are trying to maximize the amount of Plague of Toads damage, the highest dps off-hand would be massive scale in damage.
The other tangeeant is that in this last patch 2.0.4 there was many undocumented changes. One I can't find a official Blizzard source, but you can easily go and confirm, and that is that pets as of now do not have a cap on their Crit Damage. Before their Crits were reduced by 50%. What this does now is that pet builds are extremely viable.
So an example, cooldown active spell Fetish Army (Rune: Legion of Daggers) increases Fetish Army amount of fetishes by 3. With some simple math, before you would have 5 Fetishes attacking at 180%. Now you have 8 that are attacking at 180%. With this new buff to pets, if you have a Crit Chance of 50% and 5 Fetishes, they would approximately crit for 2.5 times a second. With 8 fetishes they crit 4 times a second. These crits now deal double damage. So you can see that this new added buff is a bit crazy. This tangent relates to your Homunculus. If you have a passive ability located on an item that summons Zombie Dogs, and now deal double the crit damage, that's pretty darn crazy. So in some sense the Homunculus is one of the best off hands for the Witch Doctor, if you want to see some extra damage output.
Yes, I've enjoying Mass Confusion also. It didn't dawn on me until I was making the video for this build that Mass Confusion is much better than Big Bad Voodoo. That's because Grave Injustice scales much better with lower cooldown abilities.
To explain it in a bit more detail, if you take Big Bad Voodoo and you kill 60 monsters in 1 minute with Grave Injustice, you will refresh the cooldown. However, if you kill 30 monsters, in 30 seconds with Mass Confusion it will be refreshed with Grave Injustice. The easier way to look at it is that if you have no time frame elapsed it would require 120 kills to refresh Big Bad Voodoo, and Mass Confusion only requires 60. Because of this I've actually have had Mass Confusion refresh as little as 10 seconds. Because I kill 50 monsters with in 10 seconds. The crowd control on Mass Confusion is amazing also since it makes the confused monsters attack each other, instead of you. Granted Big Bad Voodoo can be great in party groups that already has a lot of crowd control.
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Since you do have the Cindercoat try out the Zombie Charger (Rune: Explosive Beast), otherwise I do like your setup of using Haunt for the extra single target damage.
Something to take into consideration is that since you're using Creeping Death passive with Locust Swarm (Rune: Pestilence), that no matter what rune that you're using it will consistently spread. So in some sense if you're using the passive Creeping Death, the Pestilence rune is quite wasteful, and you should try out Searing Locusts rune. The Searing Locusts rune hits the hardest in the Locust Swarm rune family and it also scales with your Fire damage.
So gear wise, keep the helm for now, your shoulder you'll want to try to get rid of the Resist All and the Fetish Army stat is useless if you're not using Fetish Army. The Fetish Sycophants that summons Fetishes don't scale with this damage. I thought they did for quite awhile, until I did some research on this %damage. So right now your shoulders are very solid for the core stats. But the other 2 attributes are very undesirable for a witch doctor. The all resist you have to remember you pick up with Intelligence. I'm now sitting at 9322 ish, and I gain 932 All Resist just from my intelligence.
Your neck try to roll Fire damage on, because you will see a GIGANTIC damage increase with your toads. This spec is all about maximizing the amount of damage with Plague of Toads, so you literally can run around just spamming Plague of Toads all day. There's also a breaking point where this build turns Torment 1 into a joke, and that's what I was aiming for when I created this build.
Your chest is quite nice, but if you arn't using Piranhas and you haven't reforged anything, definitely reforge the piranhas to vit. Glove are quite solid, but as much as Attack Speed is good for this Plague of Toads builds, Critical Damage is much more desirable. So try to roll crit damage on those gloves. Something to keep in mind is that life on hit on your gloves will give you an extra boost when you use Zombie Dogs (Rune: Leeching), for any extra healing later on. So if you find yourself not having enough healing in T1 and or T2, you can swap out Zombie Dogs on to your bar and have a decent chunk of healing coming in.
Your bracers are exactly what you want, just raise the crit chance and fire damage as you play more and further progress your character. Both your rings are quire solid, but the Bul-katho's wedding band, I would try to put crit chance on the ring over attack speed. Because the more you crit, the faster you will dominate monsters. Your belt is definitely good, but if you haven't rerolled anything try to reroll the resist all to Plague of Toads damage. Your pants are solid, but since you don't have any sockets they're quite low for damage, so try to add 2 sockets to those. Your weapon I wouldn't change, I might switch the attack speed for vit, but you get a large boost of weapon damage from the attack speed. Your Boots are frickin amazing. And your offhand is obviously quite good, I'm just sad that the Zunimassa's rolls that low on avg dmg, because you're losing a lot of dmg because of it. So if you ever switch into a poison build the Zunimassa's off hand would be amazing, but right now since your trying to maximize the damage, try to roll your blood shards on mojos. I've spent somewhere around 5000 bloodshards and have gotten quite a few offhands. As soon as you find a thing of the deep you can throw on the Gruesome Feast passive, and watch your damage go from around 600k to 1 mill easy.
So here's a link to a build that you can try out: Plague of Toads & DoT's
So your left click primary is still Plague of Toads, Zombie Charger(Rune: Explosive beast) is for your single target enemies. Haunt is for additional damage to single target, especially bosses. Locust Swarm (Rune:Searing Locusts) is for the extra AoE damage. Spirit Walk for the mobility and defensive. Mass Confusion (Rune: Paranoia) for the damage boost and crowd control. I just switched from Big Bad Voodoo to this Mass Confusion skill, and it's up twice more than Big Bad Voodoo, and it also has a Crowd Control aspect to it. So it's definitely worth while trying out and switching too. You don't have to change your passives.
This is a build that will scale very well with higher torment: Plague of Toads & Locust Swarm
The only problem with this build is that you will want to try to obtain a Thing of the Deep, to pick up health globes. If you don't it'll be more of a party build than a powerful single player. Than what you will do for a single boss fight or ubers you'll want to swap to this:
Plague of Toads & Single Target DoT
This is along the lines of what I do, I swap out for big boss fights. Not exactly rift guardians, because they die to quickly. But if you're doing bounties on Torment 3, you'll want to swap out Locust Swarm for haunt, and then drop Grave Injustice. Because Grave Injustice is worthless for most boss fights that no adds spawn in.
So I hope this helps, I'm trying to get a video polished up for this guide so that it's easier to understand and see the benefits. Because I realized that I can write a paper on how to make this build but if nobody sees how powerful this build is, nobody will try it. I also apologize for the length, but a DoT build can actually be quite powerful and with the helm you have it will make a great alternative build instead of using the Mask of Jeram. I've actually been trying to find the Quetzcoatl because it's possible that this build in later torments will out perform a fetish build. I just have to test it out.
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Potential Gear
Helm- Intelligence, Vitality, Crit Chance, Socket.(Mask of Jeramfor constant underlining damage)
- Andarial's Visagefor max Fire Damage, Intelligence must have, Socket (Torment 3+), Vitality (Torment 2+), Crit (-tough +damage)
Shoulder- Intelligence, Vitality, Armor or %Life, Chance to Deal % Area Damage on Hit
Amulet- Fire Damage increase! Intelligence, Crit Hit Damage, and Crit Hit Chance.
- Crit hit Chance can be dropped for Vitality
Chest- Cindercoat, Intelligence, and Vitality. As many sockets as possible.
Gloves- MagefistIntelligence, Vitality, Crit Damage, Crit Chance.
- -Toughness +Damage = Tri-Factor w/ Intelligence (Tri-factor is Attack speed, Crit Damage, Crit Chance, w/ Core Damage Stat)
Bracers- Fire Damage Increase! Intelligence, Vitality, and Crit Chance.
Belt- Intelligence, Vitality, and Plague of Toads Damage.
- 4th Primary Attribute depends on if it is a legendary. Hellcast Wasitguard, I'm currently using this with the Attack Speed at the 4th Primary Attribute.
Pants- Intellegience, Vitality, Plague of Toads Damage, and 2 sockets.
- I'm currently using Helltooth Leg Guardsw/ the Shoulders to make a 2 piece that gives me 1500 intelligence just from my legs (adding in set bonus).
Rings- Stone of Jordancan roll very well, with more Fire Damage increase.
- Otherwise look for Tri-factor rings. Or Intelligence, Vitality, Crit Damage, and Crit Chance.
Boots- Intelligence, Vitality, Movement Speed
- 4th Primary Attribute can be Zombie Charger increase or Toughness boost
Main-Hand- Rhen'ho Flayer, I'm currently using Intelligence, Vitality, and a Socket on it.
- If for whatever reason you have an excessive amount of toughness you can swap out the Vitality roll to Area Damage.
- Intelligence and Socket are a must have.
- Socket should have a Flawless Royal Emerald.
Off-handPrep for Torment 1
To farm Torment 1 with ease, the max toughness you want to be is 4 million. I've found that this is the sweet spot. So if you find that you're only farming Torment 1, then don't worry about it much past that. The reason for this is because Spirit Walk will get you out of tight spots, and when you have the buffs from Gruesome Feast and Soul Harvest, you can reach 1 million plus toughness gain.Make sure to have at least 30%+ Fire Damage. If you don't obtain this, you won't feel the full potential of the build. 700-800k damage with Pierce of the Veil should give you decent clear speeds for Torment 1.
Paragon points should be optimized, dropping all some intelligence for the max movement speed. All offensive paragon's should be maximized based off what you for Crit Hit Damage. Offensive: Crit Hit Damage > Attack Speed > Crit Hit Chance, and cooldown reduction sounds completely worthless to me. Defensive you want to max out Life Regen first and formost. Resist to all is useless on a high intelligence character. Then go into armor. Lastly is the utility column, focus primarily on Area Damage and then go into Skills Cost Reduction.
Prep for Torment 2
It's a popular misconception that Torment 2 is much harder than Torment 1. When really it isn't. The max toughness I would want to see on my Witch Doctor in Torment 2 is 4.5 million. However, your damage should be at least 900k-1 million mark with Pierce of the Veil. If you don't have this with at least 45% bonus fire damage, you should be going back down to Torment 1.Paragon points should follow Torment 1 preparation.
Prep for Torment 3
Torment 3 is tough. Your toughness should be sitting above 5 million base at this point. 6 million is probably the max I would want to reach, because at this point you can be putting toughness primary attributes into healing attributes. Your damage should be above 1 million at this point. Hopefully by now you have put on Plague of Toads % damage on 2 or 3 pieces of your gear. Also at this point I would hope you have +70% Fire Elemental damage. Which is actually not hard to achieve since I've found the gear in about a week after Reaper of Souls. Toughness you will find to be a bit more challenging to come by. Thankfully the new set pieces can roll quite well to push you above the 5 million toughness mark.A huge potential toughness increase that is a must have is the socket in helm. Previously I never cared for a socket, but when doing T3 runs a Flawless Royal Amethyst in a socket in your helm can produce a 1 million toughness increase. However, I only run with the Amethyst in my helm in Torment 3+. Torment 2 doesn't seem to have enough damage to make me switch from a 41% experience gain to a 23% life gain.
Paragon points should be focused into more defense. Dropping intelligence for vitality would be helpful, I still use movement speed in this difficulty so I try to cap it out. Offensive, Defensive and Utility would stay the same.
Torment 4 and beyond
I can only speculate at this point. Due to the fact I do not have crit chance on my neck, along with high damage rings. An Andariel Visage also might put me a bit higher on the damage scale, since the +20% Fire Elemental would put me around the 95% range. I could see then possible having enough damage to do Torment 4 solo, in almost perfect gear. Toughness would be also a major concern for me personally, so when you drop Fetish Sycophants when you drop the Mask of Jeram for Andariel Visage, I would personally pick up Jungle Fortitude passive. Which would give you a much needed boost of toughness. Also if damage at this point is actually not much of a concern, throwing in Wall of Zombie or a Pet would help keep a lot of the aggro off you. My favorite pet in these super high difficulties is Zombie Dogs - Leeching. It's a lot of bonus healing of you have the life on hit, somewhere on your gear.Paragon Points should mirror Torment 3, except for in Utility. If using Zombie Dogs - Leeching for the extra healing, capping Life on Hit could save your butt over having a lot of Area Damage.
Conclusion
These put together in a perfect synergy will make you have above 70% Fire Damage Increase and 40% Plague of Toads Damage. Putting in the factor that if you have higher level gear, you could be sitting easily around 1.1-1.3 million damage unbuffed. This is how I achieve T3 rift clears under 10 minutes. My fastest time so far in solo has been 7 minutes.The strengths for this build is really the massive amount of AoE damage. The Area Damage proc of the Plague of Toads skill is that cause. Along with the massive amount of mobility that you're gaining from Graves Injustice passive. I've seen many other builds, and killing white trash mobs is what procs the Graves Injustice passive the most, and this build does just that.
Two weaknesses that can be a problem with this build is that the single target can be quite low. With the Cindercoat and Zombie Charger it makes up for the loss on Pierce of the Veil. What's possible is switching out Pierce of the Veil for a mana regen passive, so instead going for pure damage, the build can go for a plague of toad spam but have a an extreme amount of potential single target dps. However, when the Mask of Jeram dropped for me I use it, over switching out the 20% damage increase from Pierce of the Veil (I like seeing Plague of Toads hit for 8 million damage). The last weakness is waller elite, rare, and champ packs. Waller blocks Plague of Toads and Zombie Charger completely. However, if the monster is standing right up against the wall, Zombie Charger's explosion will hit them. So keep that in mind when playing this build that you will have to pop Spirit Walk to maneuver into a new position, or try to hit monsters with the explosion of Zombie Charger.
I also apologize for the spacing in the formatting and the possibility of extra punctuation. Every time I find something to edit, the processing of the submit seems to erase my spaces in between certain characters of the linked items. Along with adding extra gaps above headings.
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The Clean Up Crew - Fire Style
Torment 1Gameplay
Torment 2 Gameplay
Torment 3 Gameplay
Greetings! This is the first time writing a build on a public forums, but I have over 5000 hours of gameplay into Blizzards games, which gives me a bit of enjoyment writing this, and hopefully you too! So on to the build.
I recently switched from Wizard, being my main in Diablo 3 vanilla, to Witch Doctor in Reaper of Souls. My Witch Doctor I've already put on 190 hours of gameplay within the past few weeks! I'm so glad I switched.
The first thing everybody should be aware about before getting excited about a build, is that in Reaper of Souls your build should focus around what legendariesare dropping for you. This makes it 10 times easier to play the game, along with getting to higher difficulty content faster. So needless to says the following build will require a specific legendary or two to be able to farm Torment 3 or higher.
The Clean Up Crew - Fire Style
First and for most the legendary required for this build is: Rheno'ho Flayer. This legendary gives your Plague of Toads active spell the capability of seeking out enemies, and a chance to blow up twice. It seems to blow up twice 100% of the time, but the chance is based off how Blizzard worded the legendary effect, "Plague of Toads now seek out enemies and can explode twice." So I would just ignore the wording and continue on.
The basic party build.
As you can see the major component is that you have a powerful left click spammable ability. Plague of Toads (Rune: Explosive Toads)is that skill. Now we have to take care of your mana pool. Because Plague of Toads being a skill that doesn't cost mana, you will have excessive amount mana. Dumping this mana into a high damaging ability is our main goal. So I pick up Zombie Charger (Rune: Explosive Beast).
This is why I call it Fire style, because every single high damaging ability, is using fire damage.
Passive Skill Explanation
In my basic party build you will also see the core passives that I currently use on my Witch Doctor.
Pierce the Veil, a very powerful passive that increases your damage by 20% but increases mana costs by 30%. I use this even at low gear levels, but as I found more and more gear the best item to counteract this effect is the Cindercoat. This makes it so when you do have to do single target, Zombie Charger (Rune: Explosive Beast)can be let loose almost double the amount of casts without the Cindercoat.
Gruesome Feast, this passive is not only highly offensive but it is also highly defensive. In-game with my set bonuses I'm sitting around 9,200 intelligence unbuffed. As soon as I pick up one health globe it goes to 10,120 intellegience. The defensive part is that almost 1000 intelligence is also calculated as All Resistance. So you gain more all resist based off 10% of your Intelligence. But this also is multiplicative. If you pick up another health globe my intelligence will jump to 11,132. This goes on and on to the point where you get topped at 5 stacks. Where this tops off also scales with Soul Harvest. So I reach fully buffed around 1.7 million damage and 14,000 int. Which comes out to be a massive amount of resistances. However, if you want to make this passive perform to it's full potential you have to pick up: Thing of the Deep. The 20 yard additional pickup range makes it so you only have to slightly move to pickup health globes. So a single elite pack at first can be a bit tricky. But as soon as you kill a minion, and pick up that one health globe, it's a down hill roll. This exponentially goes up, I've been in T2-T3 groups where we pull the Rift Guardian and 3 elite packs. I didn't die, but those elite packs did. Because by the time that first elite pack dies, your damage will have almost double, so when you turn to face the other packs, they melt do to the high damage.
Grave Injustice, not only being a defensive passive skill for the 1% max life and mana regen, it's also offensive because of the reduce cooldown per enemy kill in 20 yards. This passive makes it so that the basic party build, with large cooldown abilities is also effective in single player. But this passive mainly scales exponentially in party mode. This passive also makes speed runs possible. As you achieve higher damage you will be capable of melting white trash mobs with a single mouse click, what this does is it reduce the cool down on Spirit Walk, giving a HUGE boost of mobility. At my current damage, Torment 1 is a steam roll,Plague of Toads (Rune: Explosive Toads)eliminates all white trash mobs in a single click, and this scales almost to the point of Torment 3.
Fetish Sycophants, is my only passive that I would say is not required for this build to perform to it's full potential. I use this passive because I have the item Mask of Jeram. The bonus pet damage makes a single fetish be absolutely amazing. Currently a single one of my fetishes, without any buffs, can crit up to 2 million damage. As I scale with Gruesome Fest and Soul Harvest, and achieve a higher damage, I see my fetishes double in damage. Making this passive HIGHLY offensive, and a bit defensive, because each fetish actually tanks mobs for you. I also use this passive without Mask of Jeram, because it gives that constant damage in the background of your main damage abilities. That constant damage is what many classes and or builds lack. So by having it in your build it makes the game seem a bit smoother.
Active Skill Explanation
Fetish Armyprimarily scales with the item Mask of Jeram, so you don't have to use it if you don't want. A possible alternative is Locust Swarm (Rune: Searing Locusts), this ability gives you even more AoE damage. Also if you have the passive Creeping Death, Locust Swarm is not only a dangerous AoE damage ability, but it is also amazing single target. Having to only being applied once, it will tick hard, scaling with your +% Fire Elemental damage on your gear.
Mass Confusion (Rune: Paranoia)is a short burst damage boosting ability, and also a chance to be a 12 second crowd control to monsters within the radius of Mass Confusion. One thing to keep in mind with Mass Confusion is that the blast radius centers around your character.
Hex (Rune: Angry Chicken):is a extra burst damage ability that can be thrown on your bar. This also provides a smaller additional boost in mobility. This also stacks with Spirit Walk. So if you pop Spirit Walk then:Hex (Rune: Angry Chicken), you will for whatever reason rocket even further and faster.
Summon Zombie Dogs (Rune: Burning Dog):is also a favorite of mine. I'm a huge fan of pet builds, and throwing this in, for Fetish Army, makes it so that you have that underlining constant damage ticking away. Zombie Dogs are also one of the better pets. Their health pool is very high, and additionally are very fast moving.
Spirit Walk, this skill nobody should change. When first starting out your damage may be weak, so then movement is not a key factor. But as you scale higher with your damage, and can one shot mobs on Torment 1, then higher movement speed is a must. Along with being a high movement speed increase, which will overall decrease your clear speeds, Spirit Walk is also a highly defensive spell. Before in the Wizard (370 hours of gameplay mp10 etc.) the Illusionist,passive I would always choose over any damage reducing passive. The reason why is because if you have high reaction time, you can avoid ALL damage altogether. This is the same with Witch Doctors. However, Spirit Walk is even more over powered! You may not be able to teleport through walls, but you turn into spirit that can be free moving. You can also cast while in Spirit Walk! Making this ability for me my favorite on frozen packs. When the frozen orbs spawn, I just stand in them waiting for orbs to almost explode, and I pop spirit walk. Which makes you not freeze, and you can put in even more damage. This higher mobility also makes you escape jailer, along with wallers with ease. Making the skill a must have in later difficulties.
Itemization
Intelligence, not only increases your damage, but it also increases your defenses by giving you All Resistances. By having Soul Harvest,and:Gruesome Feast,in your build, Intelligence becomes a highly sought after stat on all pieces of gear. This also includes sockets and set bonuses. So as soon as possible make sure to get the highest level of gems you can obtain, in this case being Flawless Royal Topaz. These will make an item with sockets much more desired over items without (Chest, Legs, and Off-Hand).
Critical Hit Damage and Critical Hit Chance, needless to say are the primary attributes that you want to maximize on all pieces of your gear. I would rather have these two primary attributes over a socket.
Attack Speed Increase +% is also a demanded stat. Since this Plague of Toads build operates off how fast you can throw out your toads. Try to achieve as much as possible. 1.8-2.0 attack speed, is a very health area, along with being the cap in my opinion. Because any higher than this small section you will sacrifice to much toughness, Crit Chance and or Crit Damage.
Chance to Deal +% Area Damage on Hit, is a god stat that I would only throw on when you achieve higher levels of damage and gear availability. The reason for this is,Plague of Toads (Rune: Explosive Toads),sends out 3 frogs. These 3 frogs then have a chance have exploding twice, due to the required weapon:Rheno'ho Flayer. The proc chance of Area Damage goes to the max of 6 possibilities per cast. This is the major reason why,Rheno'ho Flayer,is so powerful. Champion packs that are stacked are immediately melted due to the damage from the toads, and Area Damage procing simultaneously. If you are not aware of what Area Damage does it has a 20% chance doing the percentage of damage you have, to enemies in 10 yards of the proc'd target. The percentage of damage is easily explained as 100% Chance to Deal Area Damage on Hit will duplicate the spell's damage that proc'd the Area Damage, and the damage is applied to all monsters within 10 yards. Making it's a highly desired stat.
Spell Rotation
- Soul harvest on cool down to increase the amount of intelligence you have, along with having additional explosive burst.
- If monsters are greater than 1, hold down left click for Plague of Toads spam.
- If a single monster high health monster, Zombie Charger burst.
- If on a boss fight, pop all cool downs at the beginning of the fight. Empty mana pool with Zombie Charger, and spam Plague of Toads as much as possible.
Gameplay Tips- Force stand still is your best friend for this build. I love popping Spirit Walk and then running forward with left click, and tapping the shift key. This motion forces you to cast plague of toads, but you're also moving incredibly fast. Making you steam roll through monsters almost as fast as a barbarian whirlwind/spring build.
- Make sure to use Plague of Toads for all damage possible if there's multiple mobs. If there's a single tough mob in the middle of a pack the Area Damage will take care of him. If not clear the rest of the mobs out, or Zombie Charger mana dump the high health monster.
- Popping cooldowns in groups, on packs will give the entire group a massive burst damage. They also help you of course in single player, but definitely get into the habit of not using cooldowns for anything but Elite and Champ packs.
- Soul Harvest keyed in time with a few plague of toads can be a extra burst damage that will wipe out a almost dead pack. Soul harvest can be casted while moving. So when sprinting through a pack, spamming plague of toads, and if you pass the pack and they're almost dead, just drop a Soul Harvest. This will guarantee they die, and you get the extra cooldown reduction to on Spirit Walk and the rest of your abilities.
- Something that I have been noticing when soloing T3 rifts, is that if you circle a champion pack, while spamming Spirit walk. The Plague of Toads will home in on the champion pack. It's a really stupid dance, but getting into the habit makes you move more often. Keeping you out of damage abilities on the ground. But also picking up health globes also. Making this build a highly defensive build later on in higher difficulties of gameplay. Also by having pets to tank for you, you're able to circle Elite or Champ packs with ease.
Battletag: Hellcast#1981My gear replicates much of the Potential Gear in the second post, I've gotten very lucky. Also feel free to whisper me with any question in-game, I'm on the US servers. Also if I'm free I'm more than willing to join up in a game to show off what I can accomplish with this build. It's a good way of seeing the build in action of course, and also comparing the builds damage output to a build that you maybe currently using.
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On another note, the white color around when a person is typing there message, is very bright (Text entry box, "where I'm writing this text now", whichever). You guys captured the essence of the new style of Diablo 3, but since everything is such a dark contrast, the white is a bit blinding. So changing it to an off color tan, or the same color as this text, would solve the issue!
Other then those two things, frickin amazing job!!!! Give your developers a huge pat on the back, and a six pack of beer.