Complete WD Guide for HARDCORE
by the #1 Heroscore HC WD in the World :
haXudon
I. Introduction
I have written this guide because I feel like I'm the best person to be talking about it since I have never played any other class but a Witch Doctor from the very beginning and I have never played softcore mode. I am the first person in NA who reached level 60 as a hardcore WD and ever since that day my only goal was to be the best WD of all time.
This guide will include everything hardcore, from starting the game at level 1 and progressing through all the difficulties, up until farming efficiently in A3. I will also include tips and tricks on how to survive the game and even how to survive the most feared monster of all, the "DC" (disconnect) monster, which is what killing most of the hardcore players. I will put basic strategies on how to do infernal machines and doing paragon leveling in hardcore.
II. The Basics
First thing you need to know when playing in HC is the fact that...
YOU WILL DIE! Yes this is true, nobody in HC has never experienced death yet. It will just be a matter of time when you die, but for sure, you will experience losing a character one way or another. So the best way to deal with it is just prepare your minds and hearts once you sign that disclaimer and enter the YOLO (you only live once) realm. How do you do that? Simple, acceptance is the key, perseverance to become better, and ultimately just sheer love of the game. But don't worry, even though your first character will eventually die, this guide will teach you how easy it is to get back to where you were and have an even better character.
Next, you need to know that there are ways to prevent death at any point of the game. You need to learn how to play with a group. Playing with people you trust increases your life expectancy by a really large margin. I probably don't need to explain this. Also, use a voice chat program like vent or skype. Make sure you have a reliable internet and power source. Most HC players have an emergency backup power for their computers and router/modem just in case power goes out unexpectedly.
Other tips:
- Never AFK while you're in a party and in a lobby. Party leader can resume game and might put you in a checkpoint where there are monsters around.
- Do not AFK in town, or anywhere else for that matter, and have quickjoin on. There are bad people out there who will try to PK (player kill) you.
- Never join public games. They can kick you while you are fighting monsters and your character will not leave the game immediately because of the 10 second timer.
III. Normal
When you first start into the game and have no bank, you need to focus on leveling up quick and safe. You’re lucky because you now represent the most OP class in the game and I will teach you how to level up as quickly as possible.
All you need to do in Normal is level up to level 10. Then if you’re lucky and have good friends, you can probably afford to buy a Split Tusk with socket and ask your friends to borrow a really high-level ruby. Also buy a Genzaniku since this will help you kill stuff really fast. Now go create a new game at MP10 and finish Normal mode.
While progressing, you need to focus a lot on high int and decent vit, I say about 2:1 ratio. Get some average damage and attack speed jewelries. The build you need to use is splinters, firebats, soul harvest, unbreakable grasp, dogs, spirit walk, jungle fortitude and blood ritual.
Link to this build:
http://us.battle.net...cdZYU!ac!aZZaaa
If you have gold in bank, buy upgrades along the way from the auction house if you feel like you’re not killing stuff fast enough, again still focusing on high int and some vit.
IV. Nightmare
Nightmare is where stuff hits hard and where you need to start thinking about mitigation and getting your level high enough to make this difficulty a cake. Fortunately, we started doing Normal in MP10, so you would probably be about level 35-40 before you even begin Nightmare.
When you play in Nightmare difficulty, you need to play a bit more passively and just let your pets tank. This is true even on higher difficulties except in Inferno, but we’ll get to that later.
The secret to being successful in Nightmare as a WD is to out-level the monsters and use high level skills. I will show you how:
- Restless Giant – nothing in Nightmare can kill your Gargantuan. You need to capitalize on that. Let it tank for you while you’re at the back doing dps.
- Acid Cloud – get Acid Rain and eventually Slow Burn. This will be your dps skill along with Splinters. Acid Cloud procs the most LOH (life on hit) effect, so get as much LOH as you can.
- Spectrum – if you have the gold, go buy one of these. This is a 1h sword with required level of 30 but the stats are for Inferno level. Get one with either high dps or high LOH.
- Fetish Army – I cannot remember how many times Fetish Army saved my life or my party member’s life in Nightmare or even in higher difficulties. I know not a lot of WDs don’t use this skill in softcore. But somehow in hardcore, this skill becomes really useful because once you summon the fetishes they instantly aggro most of the mobs and even provide path blocking. I got walled, or jailed too many times in tight spaces and can’t get out but when I summon fetishes, I get about 2-3 seconds extra just enough for my spirit walk cooldown to come back up.
- Passive Trifecta – Jungle Fortitude, Pierce the Veil, Spirit Vessel. No argument here, use them and you win.
Link to this build:
http://us.battle.net...iUPT!aWe!abZaZZ
V. Hell
Now there are two ways to play in Hell as a WD. One is to play like how you would play in Nightmare, just play passively, stay at the back, let your pets tank, kite with Unbreakable Grasp or Hex, and use choke points. But another is to use high level gear with level requirement reduction. Now the second option assumes that you have gold to spend on gear, don’t worry though you only need to spend once and you can use them over and over again to level up new characters. If you have friends though, you can borrow their leveling gear.
This guide will focus more on the second option. But wait, you thought this guide is for people who just started Hardcore and doesn’t have a good amount of gold. If so, Hell is where you will spend most of your time farming and leveling up. If you’re trying to progress, you will find that higher Acts increase in difficulty quite substantially. So you will go back to lower Acts and farm for gold while increasing in MP level for more of that magic find and gold find. You might get bored staying in Hell and wanting to get to Inferno and start farming for those GFG legendaries. Don’t worry! I will teach you secrets on how to get rich fast! Then once you have the gold, you can buy those level reduced items and start playing in Hell blindfolded.
Farmer’s Secrets:
- Leoric’s Signet – Act II Normal Difficulty (MP10). The route to use is start in Path to the Oasis, Ruined Cistern full clear, Dahlgur Oasis full clear, and Ancient Cave full clear. Experiment around with builds to make these runs efficient and fun. I suggest using Flash Fire, Jaunt, Grave Injustice (if you have at least 20 pickup radius), and Acid Rain.
- Buriza Do Kyanon – Act III Nightmare Difficulty (MP10). There is no specific route to use since this crossbow can drop anywhere. But the most efficient route is go where there are a big density of mobs, and that is Crater 2, Keeps 2, Rakkis Crossing going to Fields of Slaughter, and Skycrown, might even be worthwhile to kill the warden.
- Sledge Fist – Act I Hell Difficulty. This one might be a bit too difficult to farm since you need to farm this in Hell which means you might not be able to go higher MP. But if you get bored farming in Normal or Nightmare, this is the item you need to look for. Make sure to open containers and chests too.
Now let’s talk about builds you will use in Hell. First of all, there is really no one-build-rules-them-all for a WD. The reason being is that the WD is the most flexible class of all, other classes might disagree but let me prove why. One of the strengths of a WD is its ability to dps and tank at the same time, no other class can do that naturally with relatively cheap gear. A WD has a second chance in life; you can actually die and live to tell the tale. This allows the WD to do riskier builds for different purposes, use high-risk high-reward gear, or use a build to quickly jump in the middle of the fight surrounded by arcane beams, molten and desecrator to save party members.
What is important to understand for aspiring WDs is that your build and your gear should work hand in hand. Hell difficulty is the best place to start the practice of choosing upgrades well suited for the target build. So I will offer great builds and corresponding gear to be successful in Hell and beyond.
Zombie Bears
Link:
http://us.battle.net...iUTQ!bce!bcZZcZ
Using a bear build in hell, you will realize that you will not have enough mana to sustain it. So the best thing to do is to choose your other skills that support your bear spamming. Hex and Bruiser are there to CC some of the annoying elites that run away or try to focus you.
The gear you will look for are mostly focused on mana regen or max mana. For dps, get crit damage and crit chance and don’t get any attack speed items. Get slower weapons with good base damage and preferably with lifesteal. For ehp, focus getting high vit, use a shield if you’re feeling squishy. Get about 1:1 ratio of int and vit. You will get most of your life back from health globes so don’t worry about life on hit or life regen at this point.
Acid Cloud
Link:
http://us.battle.net...ZUYT!aXe!bbaaYY
For those that prefer a safer gameplay or those using less ideal gear, you might want a build that allows you to progress safely through Hell. This is the build for you. This build revolves around decent life on hit items, probably about 500 or more total. Get as much attack speed bonus on your items for higher dps and more chance to proc loh. This build can become really powerful and even viable in Inferno and higher MP levels once you upgrade your gear for more attack speed, int and loh. Jungle Fortitude and Bad Medicine allows you to become a tanking machine. Basically, as long as you don’t get CC’d, you will absorb low damage while gaining ridiculous life back. The aura on your dogs and garg also proc loh effects.
VI. Inferno
Progression in Inferno is easy once you acquire better gear. The focus of this guide is to get you into Inferno and start farming for your gear. At this point I highly advice playing with a party. If you just got into Inferno, you need to start thinking about farming efficiently, right off the bat. This will dictate which items you need to go after and what group composition best suit your gamestyle.
Now the goal is to get to A3 MP0 and be able to survive there. You may need to farm lower acts multiple times just to get all your items to level 60 or higher. These are roughly the target stats for A3 Inferno MP0:
Int – 2000
Vit – 1200
HP – 50k
DPS – 40k
All Res – 600
Armor – 3000
So now that you know what you’re aiming for, let me teach you the best farming builds in Hardcore Inferno.
Grave Injustice
Link:
http://us.battle.net...dUYT!TYe!Yccabc
This build is by far the best build for a farming WD. The key to this build is pickup radius. Once you get a decent Thing of the Deep, there is no other go-to build than this one. Grave Injustice allows you to Spirit Walk almost indefinitely as long as there are mobs around to kill. So this makes runs so much faster.
The gear you need to go for are mostly crit chance and crit damage. Lifesteal weapon is mandatory for this build. A 50k dps WD can buff its dps to near 100k just with Soul Harvest and Gruesome Feast. You don’t need to go after mana regen items since you gain a lot of mana from health globes and killing mobs.
Locust Swarm
Link:
http://us.battle.net...dUYV!YTe!aaaZZb
This is one of the craziest builds I’ve seen for farming but very efficient. Basically the idea is to kills mobs as you ran away. The downside is, you don’t pickup anything but legendaries. You look at your map most of the time and just wait for that ping then come back to pick it up. Otherwise you just keep going running around the map and casting Locust Swarm and Acid Cloud. There is an art to it, your dps has to be enough that one cast of Locust Swarm and Acid Cloud should be enough to kill any type of mobs.
The key gear you need to look for to make this build to work is tons of pickup radius and items with increased locust swarm damage and acid cloud crit chance. Also Stone of Jordan with high damage against elites will be ideal for this build.
VII. Key Farming and Ubers
Key farming is efficient only on higher MP levels, MP5 or up. This means that you only need to start worrying about Infernal Machines if you can handle higher MP’s. So there’s a little bit of trying and testing on MP2 or MP3 until you feel that you’re ready. At this point you will naturally learn damage caps and ehp caps to be able to survive higher MP’s.
There is no specific build that I can suggest that focuses on key farming efficiency because there is none. The idea is that you need to use your best gear and use the build you are most comfortable with. But according to my experience, having Hex around is quite useful for disabling those KW’s. Also when you have a group already, you guys need to decide and synergize your builds to make runs safe and easy. Which means, as a WD you might be tasked of using Big Bad Voodoo for either more damage or healing.
One other tip for A2 KW, use Rain of Toads instead of Poison Darts. The main reason is, when the KW spins, your projectiles can bounce back and kill you or your party members. So be careful of that.
Healer Build
Link:
http://us.battle.net...XUQT!hde!ZYYabc
You know what makes a WD overpowered? It is his ability to take himself and any other class to MP10 Ubers in Hardcore. This build is self-explanatory but I will explain a little bit. This build allows you to summon dogs without any cooldown given the fact that you have acquired the necessary items to support this build. That is pretty useful because the rune, Final Gift, allows your dogs to leave health globes as they die or re-summoned.
You don’t do any damage, your only CC is Bruiser, but you’re working the hardest in your party. Your only job though, is to keep everyone alive. You have to be conscious of everyone’s health bar and whenever you see anybody’s health bar dip below 50%, start spamming your dogs and stop using sacrifice. Health globes still drop even when Sacrifice is not used.
Ideal team composition is, all 4 WD’s. The reason is, Gruesome Feast. If there is unlimited health globes, that means that WD’s can cast bears almost infinitely. If you’re doing MP10 Ubers, you need at least 150k dps from the 3 WD’s and the other one runs this build.
The gear needed for this build is tons of attack speed. The more attack speed you have, the faster you can cast dogs, which means more health globes. It is also important to note that at least one of the other party members need to have at least 20 pickup radius to pick up those health globes. In order to reach zero cooldown, you need 9sec on your helm, 20sec on your offhand by using Homunculus, 6sec on your ring or amulet by using either Skull Grasp, Stone of Jordan, or Mara’s Kaleidoscope.
VIII. haXudon’s Tips and Tricks- Move Key – there is keyboard binding in the options that is called the Move Key. Use this! Whenever you use spirit walk or when you have proc’d spirit vessel, spam your move key. It allows you to move without attacking any mob. Saved my life probably about 157 times.
- Dual primary – who said WD’s can’t dual wield? You can use two primaries at the same time for a lot of dps but it takes a lot of skill to cancel the animation so that you can cast the primaries alternately. My favorite is Left Click Flame Dart and Right Click Rain of Toads. Advantage? Use it for higher MP levels and for kiting. My experience, using dual primaries gives more sustainable dps than using a mana-extensive build like bears or cloud.
- Visibility and lag reduction – turn off numbers on your screen. The WD class gives you a lot of opportunity to make use of that insane apm. I rarely need to use Spirit Walk to dodge frozen or arcane beams. My ability to move precisely and time my movements and attacks is enough for me to be effective in combat and reserve my life-saving cooldowns. All this because I can see what is happening on my screen clearly. Also, if you’re having issues with lag at Rakkis Crossing, check Low FX in your options. That thing saved me from further computer freezes and lag disconnects.
- Scoundrel – when you find yourself soloing, make your Scoundrel into a CC machine. Buy him a decent Buriza Do Kyanon and Star of Azkaranth with high Freeze chance, and two 9% attack speed rings. Then spec him for multi-shot. When you’re soloing and got disconnected, you will have a higher chance to survive with a CC Scoundrel. Freeze makes elites and mobs unable to cast their spells. If they don’t get frozen, the Cold damage on the Buriza slows them down.
Edited by haXudon, 08 January 2013 - 03:55 AM.
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