I'm not quiet at level 60 yet, but when I was reading some posts about a thorn build, where the enemies would take hits from your dogs I thought would be neat and clever.
Is this doable? What other stats should I look for?
As far as I know I've only seen discussion on either a variation on a Splinters build, or a Vision Quest build.
I"ve info (from an not so secure source) that Blizz tested the skills and runes by creating level 60 character and giving him "dream gear" (best gear they wanted). They did not tested the whole process of farming obtaining gear with each build (this would take years of test). They just tested different skills and build using absolutly perfect gear.
In case this info is truth, the vast majority of builds in D3 are actually viable, but some are freakly gear dependent. So if you have rolls in all slots you can make anything work. I mean, if you play Act II with full lvl61 gear with high rolls of phys res, int, vit, armor and thorns affixes you might make it work.
Take this info as grant of salt through. It might be that some strategies in the game are undoable. I tend to believe this info cause with right gear i can use dogs on Act 2 (info through they are not execly tanking).
I"ve info (from an not so secure source) that Blizz tested the skills and runes by creating level 60 character and giving him "dream gear" (best gear they wanted). They did not tested the whole process of farming obtaining gear with each build (this would take years of test). They just tested different skills and build using absolutly perfect gear.
In case this info is truth, the vast majority of builds in D3 are actually viable, but some are freakly gear dependent. So if you have rolls in all slots you can make anything work. I mean, if you play Act II with full lvl61 gear with high rolls of phys res, int, vit, armor and thorns affixes you might make it work.
Take this info as grant of salt through. It might be that some strategies in the game are undoable. I tend to believe this info cause with right gear i can use dogs on Act 2 (info through they are not execly tanking).
I remember a blizzard source saying the testers on inferno recieved RANDOMIZED gear and after that used drop gear. Giving them perfect gear wouldnt make any sense any way.
And at the moment pets DO NOT scale with gear, so idk exactly what kind of tests you did. Blizzard said they are considering making pets scale off vit, tho nothing certain yet.
They do scale with gear (not Vit, but resists help a lot). That said, I think you're being a bit too optimistic if you think pets will be a good choice in Act 2 and beyond with the current state of Inferno.
I"ve info (from an not so secure source) that Blizz tested the skills and runes by creating level 60 character and giving him "dream gear" (best gear they wanted). They did not tested the whole process of farming obtaining gear with each build (this would take years of test). They just tested different skills and build using absolutly perfect gear.
In case this info is truth, the vast majority of builds in D3 are actually viable, but some are freakly gear dependent. So if you have rolls in all slots you can make anything work. I mean, if you play Act II with full lvl61 gear with high rolls of phys res, int, vit, armor and thorns affixes you might make it work.
Take this info as grant of salt through. It might be that some strategies in the game are undoable. I tend to believe this info cause with right gear i can use dogs on Act 2 (info through they are not execly tanking).
I remember a blizzard source saying the testers on inferno recieved RANDOMIZED gear and after that used drop gear. Giving them perfect gear wouldnt make any sense any way.
And at the moment pets DO NOT scale with gear, so idk exactly what kind of tests you did. Blizzard said they are considering making pets scale off vit, tho nothing certain yet.
Summons scales with: armor, resistances and dodge (dex).
The build sounds great in theory, but in practice it is very difficult to build up enough Thorns to matter in any meaningful content. That said, I could see Act 1 Inferno gear or sharp AH work leading to a pet-heavy build ripping early Hell or maybe even Hell Whimsy apart like this. Its big weakness, though, is anything that has ranged attacks, since you will lost all of the item budget you spent on Thorns and all the slots you used on pet summons.
Doesn't work. Thorns is a pretty terrible stat really. Just supplemental damage.
The max thorns damage you can get is around like 22k right? That's garbage compared to other spells.
Also, thorns doesn't work against ranged classes that don't switch to melee attacks at close range. For example, quill beasts switch to a melee attack when you get in their face, skeletal archers do not. Also, there's no way to increase the damage that thorns does by any means. There's no way to get it over 22k.
The bottom line here that people need to realize is that Blizzard has intentionally not included passive builds in Diablo 3. A lot of people, including myself, wondered about making a build similar to how a summon necro worked in D2 but there just isn't a way to effectively use pets to do all the work for you. Which was clearly Blizzard's intention. Wizards are probably better at that style of play than WDs honestly.
The closest thing to a passive pet build is of course using CC items. But I think it's guaranteed that'll get nerfed at some point and your pets don't do damage in that build anyway.
Blizzard has deliberately designed a game where you can't just summon an army of minions and walk around lazily killing things, it's just not effective at all.
Pets are designed to tank things, usually just temporarily, so that you can stand still and cast spells.
Actually if WD pet scaling will be fixed then thorn build along with mantra of retribution can grant a nice additional dmg. Although it'd require some serious itimization to work out, but past getting certain dps affixes for specific item thorns is probably the only affix to increase your dmg. Although i think that either thorns themself needs buffing, or talents scaling with then (like barbarians +50%).
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Is this doable? What other stats should I look for?
As far as I know I've only seen discussion on either a variation on a Splinters build, or a Vision Quest build.
Thanks for any feed back.
If and when pets are buffed AND presuming they also can make use of thorns, then it should be doable.
In case this info is truth, the vast majority of builds in D3 are actually viable, but some are freakly gear dependent. So if you have rolls in all slots you can make anything work. I mean, if you play Act II with full lvl61 gear with high rolls of phys res, int, vit, armor and thorns affixes you might make it work.
Take this info as grant of salt through. It might be that some strategies in the game are undoable. I tend to believe this info cause with right gear i can use dogs on Act 2 (info through they are not execly tanking).
They do scale with gear (not Vit, but resists help a lot). That said, I think you're being a bit too optimistic if you think pets will be a good choice in Act 2 and beyond with the current state of Inferno.
Summons scales with: armor, resistances and dodge (dex).
The max thorns damage you can get is around like 22k right? That's garbage compared to other spells.
Also, thorns doesn't work against ranged classes that don't switch to melee attacks at close range. For example, quill beasts switch to a melee attack when you get in their face, skeletal archers do not. Also, there's no way to increase the damage that thorns does by any means. There's no way to get it over 22k.
The bottom line here that people need to realize is that Blizzard has intentionally not included passive builds in Diablo 3. A lot of people, including myself, wondered about making a build similar to how a summon necro worked in D2 but there just isn't a way to effectively use pets to do all the work for you. Which was clearly Blizzard's intention. Wizards are probably better at that style of play than WDs honestly.
The closest thing to a passive pet build is of course using CC items. But I think it's guaranteed that'll get nerfed at some point and your pets don't do damage in that build anyway.
Blizzard has deliberately designed a game where you can't just summon an army of minions and walk around lazily killing things, it's just not effective at all.
Pets are designed to tank things, usually just temporarily, so that you can stand still and cast spells.