attack speed = faster animation. Do your homework before you complain.
The effects of AS% on animations makes sense, even with the nerf. But the fact that you need to stack AS% to make rather base abilities useful creates for extremely one dimensional play. Using an item affix to make base abilities functional is lazy mechanics.
The thread wasn't a complaint but rather adjustments I'd like to see, as well as we have all suggested.
i never head anyone about the attack animations, i agree on the other points...
But having played a wd myself i didn't have any probs with slow animations whatsoever.
What also helps is a faster weapon, you really cant say grasp casts slow with a 1.4-1.5 weapon
Some classes/specs have weaknesses which u can overcome with different spec/gear/tactic. Every ranged class has probs with fast movign stuff while melee overall have more probs with big hard hitting mobs. Its the ranged class in general, not just wd and imo has nothing to do with animations.
Derwiv33, Mana as a concept is not meant to be infinite. It's a lot closer to it in this game than in most. I am perfectly fine with someone who does not want to use any of the three potential pieces being limited in their offensive options. Even in that case, you still have SA/VQ/BR to support yourself.
So a wizard with best gear can "break the game" with infinate Archon but a BiS WD is now only as efficient as a mid-geared Wizard?
You assume no PtV which is like skipping Glass Cannon on a wizard. PtV turns 122 into 158 for bats. With my AS of 1.5 that is 238 mana/second which means I need 59.5 mana/second regen to be mana neutral. It isn't possible.
Additionally I am stuck with iLevel 62 items because of my limit to mana regen. Yet your idea ties improvements only to gear which means only the richest WDs will see a solution since Blizzard will make it apply to new gear only.
First: Infinite Archon is way over the top-end gear-wise. Once you get that far on a Wis you're better off actually dropping Archon altogether and just using other cooldowns constantly. When you get to that point on a Wizard, though, you have to be using at least some Wiz-specific pieces in order to get AP On Crit, or you run yourself out of gas. Same deal as our discussion about mana regen gear, actually.
That's neither here nor there, though, since if you're that far on the top end on a Witch Doctor you can have over 36 bonus regen nowadays (assuming Ceremonial Blade, Mask, and Mojo all have it), meaning 54 bonus regen in the +50% theory for a total of 74 per second. Dire Bats builds almost never take PtV these days, though, since it mathematically reduces your total damage any time you have a stand-and-shoot phase. We can math it out for reference. 158 per cast at 1.4 casts per second makes it 221 mana per second spent, or 147 net per second. This means you get 5 consecutive casts, or roughly 3.5 seconds stand and shoot. The break point here is to get one additional cast off, to equal the 20% bonus from Pierce.
Without Pierce, 122 per cast at 1.4 casts per second comes to about 171 mana per second, or 97 net per second. This is 7 consecutive casts, or 5 seconds stand-and-shoot. Any time you have 4.2 or more seconds standing, not taking Pierce ups your overall damage.
Anyway, I digress. This is only one of the ways mana can be balanced out, and is also viewing this isolated element in a vaccuum. No matter what comes our way, as long as it is at least a moderate increase to our mana regen mechanics we will adapt to it. Hopefully it will be enough that I can leave behind VQ builds and be happy with Attunement, but we'll have to see.
They really need to move us away from [cheap spell + PtV] or [expensive spell + VQ] because that summarizes the vast majority of effective builds at this point. They really just hint at an overall problem with mana - either we're relying on a spell that can't possibly use up our mana, so we pair it with PtV, or we're using a spell that can, in no way, be supported by normal mana regen so we take VQ.
Something about that simply doesn't seem "right" to me.
You know if they buff pets it's not going to make a huge difference in how WDs play I think.
The point of this game is farming elites/champions, and even when pets are buffed, they'll probably still have trouble surviving elites/champions unless you're spec'd and geared for it. And since Blizzard is clearly not going to allow pets to do real damage, it's not going to matter much if they buff pets.
Being able to tank white mobs is pretty meaningless when you reach D3's "endgame."
So I hope they buff pets, but it's not going to affect people's builds that much because they won't let the pets do high damage.
Obviously what they really need to do is fix how mana works and buff some of our weaker spells/passives somehow.
You know if they buff pets it's not going to make a huge difference in how WDs play I think.
The point of this game is farming elites/champions, and even when pets are buffed, they'll probably still have trouble surviving elites/champions unless you're spec'd and geared for it. And since Blizzard is clearly not going to allow pets to do real damage, it's not going to matter much if they buff pets.
Being able to tank white mobs is pretty meaningless when you reach D3's "endgame."
So I hope they buff pets, but it's not going to affect people's builds that much because they won't let the pets do high damage.
Obviously what they really need to do is fix how mana works and buff some of our weaker spells/passives somehow.
True, but if a pet could actually tank an elite for 5-10 seconds it would make your life so much easier.
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Playing Diablo since 97. I know nothing and having nothing good to say, I be a troll.
The focus of D3 is clearly on killing champion/rare packs.
If dogs/gargantuan aren't viable on champions/rares then they may as well not be on our bars. Therefore, it follows, that all our abilities have to have some kind of relevance when it comes to killing champions/rares. This applies to all classes, all spells, all runes, and all passives. Even if it makes our pets OP as hell on white mobs that is no different from Piercing Orb being OP as hell on white mobs.
Any ability which is not relevant to elites is an ability that is not relevant. Hopefully Blizzard keeps that in the back of thier mind as they're going over EVERYONES spells, runes, and passives.
What would REALLLLY help is if champ affixes got used on the pets, that would be sick.
I really don't expect this from Blizzard though, they'll probably make it so the pets are a lot stronger, but you have to stack higher defenses to tank champs. Or they'll make it so the Gargantuan can tank champs but the dogs are garbage. Which would be a definite improvement.
I mean I'm hoping for the best, but considering how much damage A3 champs can do, it would make pets really OP if they could tank that without stacking defensive stats.
I hadn't used Soul Harvest much until I swapped up my spec a bit lately and now I'm giving it a whirl instead of taking Hex or Horrify since I just don't feel like I need them for what I'm doing. Anyway...
I began to realize why I slowly moved away from Soul Harvest in the first place. 30s just is a horribly short length. Either the base duration needs to be upped significantly (60-120s) or they should change the mechanics so that using Soul Harvest while you already have the buff up refreshes the duration and adds to the stacks (if you have fewer than 5 stacks).
Having to suck 5 new souls every 30 seconds to keep a 5-stack is not remotely friendly to the player and they definitely could implement this in a way such that it doesn't require quite as much micromanagement.
I'm eagerly awaiting the 1.0.4 patch notes. Being as they're aiming for the patch going live on the last week of August I'd imagine we'd be seeing the rest of the blogs and notes probably within the next week, roughly.
heh be nice if soul harvest became a 5min buff that would siphon the souls of the dead to the 5 stacks... and would gradually wear off 1 stack every 30sec that there is not a corpse around to refresh the stack
then you would have to keep killing to keep the stacks up but it would work passively for ya...
Well according to the initial outline by Wyatt, I'm a happy WD. Just about everything in my post back at the beginning of July is getting addressed. Really like the VQ change, I'm predicting a lot of spider builds coming out soon.
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The effects of AS% on animations makes sense, even with the nerf. But the fact that you need to stack AS% to make rather base abilities useful creates for extremely one dimensional play. Using an item affix to make base abilities functional is lazy mechanics.
The thread wasn't a complaint but rather adjustments I'd like to see, as well as we have all suggested.
But having played a wd myself i didn't have any probs with slow animations whatsoever.
What also helps is a faster weapon, you really cant say grasp casts slow with a 1.4-1.5 weapon
Some classes/specs have weaknesses which u can overcome with different spec/gear/tactic. Every ranged class has probs with fast movign stuff while melee overall have more probs with big hard hitting mobs. Its the ranged class in general, not just wd and imo has nothing to do with animations.
First: Infinite Archon is way over the top-end gear-wise. Once you get that far on a Wis you're better off actually dropping Archon altogether and just using other cooldowns constantly. When you get to that point on a Wizard, though, you have to be using at least some Wiz-specific pieces in order to get AP On Crit, or you run yourself out of gas. Same deal as our discussion about mana regen gear, actually.
That's neither here nor there, though, since if you're that far on the top end on a Witch Doctor you can have over 36 bonus regen nowadays (assuming Ceremonial Blade, Mask, and Mojo all have it), meaning 54 bonus regen in the +50% theory for a total of 74 per second. Dire Bats builds almost never take PtV these days, though, since it mathematically reduces your total damage any time you have a stand-and-shoot phase. We can math it out for reference. 158 per cast at 1.4 casts per second makes it 221 mana per second spent, or 147 net per second. This means you get 5 consecutive casts, or roughly 3.5 seconds stand and shoot. The break point here is to get one additional cast off, to equal the 20% bonus from Pierce.
Without Pierce, 122 per cast at 1.4 casts per second comes to about 171 mana per second, or 97 net per second. This is 7 consecutive casts, or 5 seconds stand-and-shoot. Any time you have 4.2 or more seconds standing, not taking Pierce ups your overall damage.
Anyway, I digress. This is only one of the ways mana can be balanced out, and is also viewing this isolated element in a vaccuum. No matter what comes our way, as long as it is at least a moderate increase to our mana regen mechanics we will adapt to it. Hopefully it will be enough that I can leave behind VQ builds and be happy with Attunement, but we'll have to see.
Something about that simply doesn't seem "right" to me.
The point of this game is farming elites/champions, and even when pets are buffed, they'll probably still have trouble surviving elites/champions unless you're spec'd and geared for it. And since Blizzard is clearly not going to allow pets to do real damage, it's not going to matter much if they buff pets.
Being able to tank white mobs is pretty meaningless when you reach D3's "endgame."
So I hope they buff pets, but it's not going to affect people's builds that much because they won't let the pets do high damage.
Obviously what they really need to do is fix how mana works and buff some of our weaker spells/passives somehow.
True, but if a pet could actually tank an elite for 5-10 seconds it would make your life so much easier.
If dogs/gargantuan aren't viable on champions/rares then they may as well not be on our bars. Therefore, it follows, that all our abilities have to have some kind of relevance when it comes to killing champions/rares. This applies to all classes, all spells, all runes, and all passives. Even if it makes our pets OP as hell on white mobs that is no different from Piercing Orb being OP as hell on white mobs.
Any ability which is not relevant to elites is an ability that is not relevant. Hopefully Blizzard keeps that in the back of thier mind as they're going over EVERYONES spells, runes, and passives.
What would REALLLLY help is if champ affixes got used on the pets, that would be sick.
I really don't expect this from Blizzard though, they'll probably make it so the pets are a lot stronger, but you have to stack higher defenses to tank champs. Or they'll make it so the Gargantuan can tank champs but the dogs are garbage. Which would be a definite improvement.
I mean I'm hoping for the best, but considering how much damage A3 champs can do, it would make pets really OP if they could tank that without stacking defensive stats.
I began to realize why I slowly moved away from Soul Harvest in the first place. 30s just is a horribly short length. Either the base duration needs to be upped significantly (60-120s) or they should change the mechanics so that using Soul Harvest while you already have the buff up refreshes the duration and adds to the stacks (if you have fewer than 5 stacks).
Having to suck 5 new souls every 30 seconds to keep a 5-stack is not remotely friendly to the player and they definitely could implement this in a way such that it doesn't require quite as much micromanagement.
I'm eagerly awaiting the 1.0.4 patch notes. Being as they're aiming for the patch going live on the last week of August I'd imagine we'd be seeing the rest of the blogs and notes probably within the next week, roughly.
then you would have to keep killing to keep the stacks up but it would work passively for ya...