I recently leveled my WD to 60, and transfered my wizard gear over. My question is what build would be best utilized with my current gear set. Any suggestions will be tested by myself, i just need a guide to steer me in the right direction...
You're pretty swell suited to run the classic farming build since you have thing of the deep for 20 yards of pickup radius (a little more is even preferred).
You can switch out splinters for the primary of your choice. FIrebomb / Flashfire is also extremely competitive.
I encourage you to also at least try Acid Cloud / Acid Rain rune instead of zombie bears as the radius is huge and the damage is more instantaneous.
The zombie dogs and gargantuan can also be swapped out to whatever you want, if you feel you don't need them to tank for you. Personally I've had a lot of fun with Spirit barrage / Manitou, or even subbing gargantuan for sacrifice / provoke the pack.
The other skills are basically set in stone though. Play the build for a while (make sure you are killing stuff within your 20 yard pickup radius) and it'll all make sense. Grave Injustice / Gruesome Feast are the big combo everything is operating on. Pop your character sheet open every now and then and watch your DPS jump 50K with Gruesome Feast stacks.
You can get pickup radius from other 7 other armor slots (anywhere from 5 to 49 yds depending on number of slots and pickup radius value on each piece) without even touching Thing of the Deep. 2h Skorn on Acid Rain is just way more efficient for both speed of kill and mana.
As you can see, currently i am using life steal echoing fury with a socket, and things of deep 1h/mojo combo. I do oomph alot, and was curious if skorn is the route i need to go.
Oh, and LoH over life steal? even if im unbuffed 124k dps?
If you plan to run bears your best bet is 1hander, (With crit dmg and socket) and thing of the deep. The gruesome feast/grave injustice build with the yardage pickup from TOTD keeps your mana pretty high. I personally use spirit walk with the mana regen rune becasue with grave injustice the CD on your spirit walk during large mob fights gets reset every couple seconds. That with a couple peices of mana regen gear and or Zuni 4 set and you can spam bears for a very long time.
As been metioned in other posts the down fall of that build is the range of bears. If you wanted to sacrifice your 3rd passive for vision quest and use a something the procs that then you could potentially spam bears spirit walk get vision quest up and wait for a bit and you should be good.
Lastly the thing I have found with the witch doctor is that play style can be very weird compared to other classes, it take some practice before you find the sweet spot range on bears.
Oh, and LoH over life steal? even if im unbuffed 124k dps?
In a Acid Rain / Rain of Toads build, yes. I tested both a 6.0% Life Steal Skorn and my current 1500+ LoH Skorn and it's no contest. I'm always solo and char sheet dps is usually in the 150-190k range with Soul Harvest and Gruesome Feast buffs going. At those levels, the LoH Skorn crushed the Life Steal Skorn which I sold back. That said, Acid Cloud and RoT both have very strong coefficients. Your mileage may vary if you used Bears or the like.
In terms of mana, 4 pc Zuni does wonders for your regen -- between the set bonus, a slow 2 hander, Gruesome Feast and Grave Injustice Passives, it gets pretty hard to oom even with using Pierce the Veil 30% extra mana costs.
The issue i am running into right now in making the choice is, my current gear set does not have the proper range pickup, and im solely relying on the deep for range. I have never been good at knowing what to upgrade to, or when its okay to lose dps for more utilization. If anyone can assist me with this in game, would be much appreciated.
I do want to try the 2h charger build, but i wont have the range to make it worthwhile. I feel if i try to get range pickup gear, i would lose alot of dps, and im not sure i want to do that yet. If someone can friend me in game, and give me pointers, would be much appreciated. My battlenet id is shanksta#1596... thanks
You could try to regear for 2H plus pickupradius, but like you said, it's going to be expensive and you'll probably lose gold for the same amount of damage output, possibly even less.
TotDeep should give you all the pickup radius you need at this point in the game. Just stand right next to the trash as you're killing it - you're going to blow it up in a couple of casts anyway. Once 1.05 comes out and you're cranking Monster Power you might want to kill from slightly farther back, but I'm not even sure that's true.
Follow the build exactly as I posted it. Don't try to squeeze in pierce the veil. Once you start picking up health globes your damage is going to outpace monster health by quite a bit anyway. If you're really having trouble with mana you could change spirit walk rune Jaunt to Honored Guest. You'll lose 1 second on the duration, but at that point if you're still having mana problems you must be doing something wrong.
Lastly 2H vs. 1H is pretty close to a wash anyway IMO. The only reason I went skorn in the first place was to try to maximize %elemental damage on things like Zuni's boots, SOJ, and Tal Rasha's ammy. Before the %damage only applied to physical and only to your minimum damage (skorn wins out big on both). With the patch it's going to take average damage between min and max, so echoing fury is going to be just as good as far as %elemental damage goes.
Friended you in game in case you want to ask more questions.
Iam facing similar issue wih my WD. i have been running with manajuma+totd but i sold them. Bought few items with +7 pickup (I have 21 yards atm) therefore I want to change either to Skorn or 1h+mojo(with decent dmg, crit, etc).
I have bought Skorn (1370 DPS, 172% crit dmg, 330 int) yesterday but it did not had any LoH or Life Steal which caused constant suicide on reflect dmg mobs. So i sold it and iam looking for new upgrade. I wanted to buy Skorn with 5%+ Life Steal but they are pretty expensive although i will be able to spend up to 90 mil on weapon. Now I have read that Emberos is suggesting LoH but Iam not sure if it will be enough. My WD is not the best geared - http://eu.battle.net...32/hero/6541172 (ignore the build)
what do you think? should I go for 1h+mojo or Skorn with LoH/LS ? thank you for your input
ofc it requires more research. i like to destory mobs and farm fast, yet iam thinking about uber bosses and some survability would be nice. i like combination of acid cloud on large packs and quickly destroy elites stream of bears. I just dont know how it will work on uber bosses
iam not going strictly for skorn but with my limited budget (90 mil) it looks like ill get more from it then from some middle range 1h+mojo
I played with an INT/VIT Skorn and about 200 all resist for a good bit of 1.0.4. Damage reflect was the one thing that caused me issues in that setup but even without any LoH/Leech, they were workable with some pauses to wait for Spirit Walk or a health globe pickup. The main times they'd get me is when I was zooming through, just come out of a Jaunt, see a pack and before I got a read of affixes, Soul Harvest Vengeful Spirit and Acid Rain on their head -- omg I'm dying, no I'm dead
That said, let me give you my experience and why I'm saying, for an Acid Rain build, I like LoH better:
The main reason I upgraded to a Life Steal / Life Leech Skorn was for Infernal Bosses and 1.0.5. I started out with a 6.0% Life Leech as that seemed to be the forum consensus if you could output high damage. My first test was to stand in a niche and eat Ghom clouds and damage while dpsing him down (basically to simulate some of the conditions of the Ghom/Rakk infernal fight). The Life Leech Skorn was not up to the task. I could not sustain in the cloud with just a straight weapon swap. Even when I added in higher resist gear/regen, a +546 LoH / 332 regen amulet, and swapped passives / skills about for better defense, it still couldn't sustain. I will say it was reasonably good in farm content and handled damage reflect packs so I could take them down without pause.
But as my primary reason was for infernal fights and it didn't do the job, I went out and bought a Rare 2h with 1550 LoH for 2 mill to test (I basically wanted to see if LoH would work before investing in a much higher priced Skorn). I took the Rare out - only swapped in the amulet from above and left all other gear/skills/passives the same - and sat in Ghom clouds dropping Acid Rain and RoT. I could sustain in the cloud at full health interminably. So I sold the rare back for 200k profit, sold the Leech Skorn back for 5 mill loss (sold for more than I bought but 15% AH cut whacked me). I didn't feel too bad though as I bought a 1567 LoH Skorn for 20 mill less than the original Leech Skorn so all-in-all I saved some budget.
As the Ghom test proved with the Rare, the 1567 LoH Skorn + the 546 LoH ammy sustains easily there. For standard farm content, I keep my current critical hit amulet and gear as you see in my profile. Even with only a small amount of regen on gear and no other LoH resources, I can go all out DPS on any damage reflect pack without any concern. Acid Rain drop on a pack heals me for a ton.
That's about as clear as I can make it -- but I will say again, the LoH Skorn works better for me specifically because of the high coefficients on Acid Rain and RoT. If you were to play with a different skill setup and used primary/spender with lower coefficients, it's very possible Life Leech Skorn is better. If you know you are going to stick with Acid Rain (currently using in your profile), want more life return, and a smaller investment, LoH Skorn with 1500+ LoH is the better choice. If you think you may switch to Bears or another skill setup, maybe Leech will be preferable but I won't speak to that as authoritatively as I haven't done the work to evaluate both weaps in that scenario.
Azri you have very high damage and very low all resist. A skorn with LS / LOH is not going to solve that problem. If you're running around with 30K life and 100K damage, reflect packs are gonna cause a problem, and by problem I mean you have to use spirit walk, almost kill them, possibly wait 10 seconds for spirit walk to come off cooldown and then kill them.
Emberos is providing some sweet information from his experience with the two types of regen on skorn, but keep in mind he has almost twice the life pool you do.
My advice to everyone in this thread is to not let that gold burn a hole in your pocket and wait until Tuesday to re-evaluate what you want to do, because-
1. The patch will change your farming experience / goals.
2. EVERYTHING is going to drop in price drastically over the next month or so.
Thank you for the details! I do like bears for their high crits but it is not really neccessary for me to have them. I was thinking about improving my crit chance + crit dmg to ramp up acid cloud damage (i love this spell). Swapping bears for frogs is OK with me although I have not tried them yet but if i understand this correctly RoT will hit more often than bears for example = more heals with LoH. Overall it looks nice and I do not need to kill everything in 2 seconds so iam OK witl loosing bears its more about having fun and not dying because i oneshot myself. i will look for nice Skorn with 1.5-2k LoH (they should be cheaper then LS versions) and invest rest of the money into better gloves or something that will bring my dmg higher
@Kinch : thank you for your input as well. I will do some research first to see if i can improve my resists and HP if possible. Usually I do not buy stuff very fast. I tend to search for upgrades and evaluate them. Regarding my HP i was running with 55k with mojo and old parts without pickup radius. It is something i will definetely look into
checked the AH and it does not look very good iam considering 1H+mojo alternative and still looking at upgrades.
I have tested RoT and it is interesting way to heal up and alternative for no mana situations. Getting decent Skorn is bit complicated as I dont know how much LoH i should look for. I have found entry level skorn with 1416 LoH, 295 int, 142 critdmg and 1270 dps for 30 mil but i dont know if that amount of LoH will be enough. Ofc i can spend additional money on raising my resist+hp
My advice to everyone in this thread is to not let that gold burn a hole in your pocket and wait until Tuesday to re-evaluate what you want to do, because
This is probably the most sound advice, but my personal experience is I spend it it as fast as I make it.
That being said its my personal opinion that despite the increased drop rate of legendary's that the SOJ will stand the test of time, with its massive increase of 20-30% dmg against elites, for the people who want to farm at higher MPL (Monster power levels) a high end soj will be a must. Purely speculation but I think the reasoning behind this is sound.
Emberos your build is really good. Maybe not so much dmg as with bears but i feel like I have more control over the battle. My skor is not the best but it will have to do for now. I laso updated few things now. Not the greatest but I can survive reflect dmg packs without greater issue I only die when i am not paying attention
www.diabloprogress.com/hero/shanksta-1596/Tiki/26534037
It's basically this-
http://us.battle.net...UdYT!YTe!acacca
You can switch out splinters for the primary of your choice. FIrebomb / Flashfire is also extremely competitive.
I encourage you to also at least try Acid Cloud / Acid Rain rune instead of zombie bears as the radius is huge and the damage is more instantaneous.
The zombie dogs and gargantuan can also be swapped out to whatever you want, if you feel you don't need them to tank for you. Personally I've had a lot of fun with Spirit barrage / Manitou, or even subbing gargantuan for sacrifice / provoke the pack.
The other skills are basically set in stone though. Play the build for a while (make sure you are killing stuff within your 20 yard pickup radius) and it'll all make sense. Grave Injustice / Gruesome Feast are the big combo everything is operating on. Pop your character sheet open every now and then and watch your DPS jump 50K with Gruesome Feast stacks.
Discussion on the build can be found here -
http://www.diablofans.com/topic/68713-spirit-bears-an-end-game-farming-build/
and credit to Ruppgu
D3Progress: http://www.diabloprogress.com/hero/emberos-1608/Emberos/51824579
D3Progress: http://www.diabloprogress.com/hero/emberos-1608/Emberos/51824579
Oh, and LoH over life steal? even if im unbuffed 124k dps?
As been metioned in other posts the down fall of that build is the range of bears. If you wanted to sacrifice your 3rd passive for vision quest and use a something the procs that then you could potentially spam bears spirit walk get vision quest up and wait for a bit and you should be good.
Lastly the thing I have found with the witch doctor is that play style can be very weird compared to other classes, it take some practice before you find the sweet spot range on bears.
In a Acid Rain / Rain of Toads build, yes. I tested both a 6.0% Life Steal Skorn and my current 1500+ LoH Skorn and it's no contest. I'm always solo and char sheet dps is usually in the 150-190k range with Soul Harvest and Gruesome Feast buffs going. At those levels, the LoH Skorn crushed the Life Steal Skorn which I sold back. That said, Acid Cloud and RoT both have very strong coefficients. Your mileage may vary if you used Bears or the like.
In terms of mana, 4 pc Zuni does wonders for your regen -- between the set bonus, a slow 2 hander, Gruesome Feast and Grave Injustice Passives, it gets pretty hard to oom even with using Pierce the Veil 30% extra mana costs.
D3Progress: http://www.diabloprogress.com/hero/emberos-1608/Emberos/51824579
I do want to try the 2h charger build, but i wont have the range to make it worthwhile. I feel if i try to get range pickup gear, i would lose alot of dps, and im not sure i want to do that yet. If someone can friend me in game, and give me pointers, would be much appreciated. My battlenet id is shanksta#1596... thanks
TotDeep should give you all the pickup radius you need at this point in the game. Just stand right next to the trash as you're killing it - you're going to blow it up in a couple of casts anyway. Once 1.05 comes out and you're cranking Monster Power you might want to kill from slightly farther back, but I'm not even sure that's true.
Follow the build exactly as I posted it. Don't try to squeeze in pierce the veil. Once you start picking up health globes your damage is going to outpace monster health by quite a bit anyway. If you're really having trouble with mana you could change spirit walk rune Jaunt to Honored Guest. You'll lose 1 second on the duration, but at that point if you're still having mana problems you must be doing something wrong.
Lastly 2H vs. 1H is pretty close to a wash anyway IMO. The only reason I went skorn in the first place was to try to maximize %elemental damage on things like Zuni's boots, SOJ, and Tal Rasha's ammy. Before the %damage only applied to physical and only to your minimum damage (skorn wins out big on both). With the patch it's going to take average damage between min and max, so echoing fury is going to be just as good as far as %elemental damage goes.
Friended you in game in case you want to ask more questions.
I have bought Skorn (1370 DPS, 172% crit dmg, 330 int) yesterday but it did not had any LoH or Life Steal which caused constant suicide on reflect dmg mobs. So i sold it and iam looking for new upgrade. I wanted to buy Skorn with 5%+ Life Steal but they are pretty expensive although i will be able to spend up to 90 mil on weapon. Now I have read that Emberos is suggesting LoH but Iam not sure if it will be enough. My WD is not the best geared - http://eu.battle.net...32/hero/6541172 (ignore the build)
what do you think? should I go for 1h+mojo or Skorn with LoH/LS ? thank you for your input
iam not going strictly for skorn but with my limited budget (90 mil) it looks like ill get more from it then from some middle range 1h+mojo
That said, let me give you my experience and why I'm saying, for an Acid Rain build, I like LoH better:
The main reason I upgraded to a Life Steal / Life Leech Skorn was for Infernal Bosses and 1.0.5. I started out with a 6.0% Life Leech as that seemed to be the forum consensus if you could output high damage. My first test was to stand in a niche and eat Ghom clouds and damage while dpsing him down (basically to simulate some of the conditions of the Ghom/Rakk infernal fight). The Life Leech Skorn was not up to the task. I could not sustain in the cloud with just a straight weapon swap. Even when I added in higher resist gear/regen, a +546 LoH / 332 regen amulet, and swapped passives / skills about for better defense, it still couldn't sustain. I will say it was reasonably good in farm content and handled damage reflect packs so I could take them down without pause.
But as my primary reason was for infernal fights and it didn't do the job, I went out and bought a Rare 2h with 1550 LoH for 2 mill to test (I basically wanted to see if LoH would work before investing in a much higher priced Skorn). I took the Rare out - only swapped in the amulet from above and left all other gear/skills/passives the same - and sat in Ghom clouds dropping Acid Rain and RoT. I could sustain in the cloud at full health interminably. So I sold the rare back for 200k profit, sold the Leech Skorn back for 5 mill loss (sold for more than I bought but 15% AH cut whacked me). I didn't feel too bad though as I bought a 1567 LoH Skorn for 20 mill less than the original Leech Skorn so all-in-all I saved some budget.
As the Ghom test proved with the Rare, the 1567 LoH Skorn + the 546 LoH ammy sustains easily there. For standard farm content, I keep my current critical hit amulet and gear as you see in my profile. Even with only a small amount of regen on gear and no other LoH resources, I can go all out DPS on any damage reflect pack without any concern. Acid Rain drop on a pack heals me for a ton.
That's about as clear as I can make it -- but I will say again, the LoH Skorn works better for me specifically because of the high coefficients on Acid Rain and RoT. If you were to play with a different skill setup and used primary/spender with lower coefficients, it's very possible Life Leech Skorn is better. If you know you are going to stick with Acid Rain (currently using in your profile), want more life return, and a smaller investment, LoH Skorn with 1500+ LoH is the better choice. If you think you may switch to Bears or another skill setup, maybe Leech will be preferable but I won't speak to that as authoritatively as I haven't done the work to evaluate both weaps in that scenario.
D3Progress: http://www.diabloprogress.com/hero/emberos-1608/Emberos/51824579
Emberos is providing some sweet information from his experience with the two types of regen on skorn, but keep in mind he has almost twice the life pool you do.
My advice to everyone in this thread is to not let that gold burn a hole in your pocket and wait until Tuesday to re-evaluate what you want to do, because-
1. The patch will change your farming experience / goals.
2. EVERYTHING is going to drop in price drastically over the next month or so.
@Kinch : thank you for your input as well. I will do some research first to see if i can improve my resists and HP if possible. Usually I do not buy stuff very fast. I tend to search for upgrades and evaluate them. Regarding my HP i was running with 55k with mojo and old parts without pickup radius. It is something i will definetely look into
Good fucking Job Blizzard Retards.
I have tested RoT and it is interesting way to heal up and alternative for no mana situations. Getting decent Skorn is bit complicated as I dont know how much LoH i should look for. I have found entry level skorn with 1416 LoH, 295 int, 142 critdmg and 1270 dps for 30 mil but i dont know if that amount of LoH will be enough. Ofc i can spend additional money on raising my resist+hp
This is probably the most sound advice, but my personal experience is I spend it it as fast as I make it.
That being said its my personal opinion that despite the increased drop rate of legendary's that the SOJ will stand the test of time, with its massive increase of 20-30% dmg against elites, for the people who want to farm at higher MPL (Monster power levels) a high end soj will be a must. Purely speculation but I think the reasoning behind this is sound.