I used to love the "horde of pets" style play of a pet-focused necromancer in Diablo 2, but the skeletons (which made up the majority of your horde) tended to get rolled once you got past normal difficulty. Considering the witch doctor, which is the closest thing D3 has to a necro, has fewer pets than a full-skele + golem necromancer, are the pets more durable? I wanted to try and focus on a zombie/pet build for my WD, but if I find out that my zombie dogs are getting destroyed before they can even hit anything, that plan obviously isn't going to work. Beta testers, how have the pets been working for you? Does it seem like they scale well?
Well I assume actually both the "pet build" and the "explode all the dogs build" would both be viable, although they may play very differently. It seems you will have to dedicate several skills and passives to them though. Honestly the pets have to be good since they take up one of your limited skill slots.
Here's hoping they're viable. Pet/support build for me to begin with, playing with the mates. Pets should ideally be a good tool on harder difficulties to help deal with the greatly increased incoming damage.
Yeah I'm hoping they're viable as well. Since we know their damage is based on the PC's, at least we know they'll scale that way, what I'm wondering is how their health will scale. It will also be interesting to see if they receive difficulty scaling, if any of you have played TQ you'll know what I'm talking about.
There is a recurring point being made in this thread that I think should be expanded upon. Yes, all pets do damage based off of your weapon damage, as do all other skills in D3. The most persistent pets, like the zombie dogs, do only a small portion of weapon damage currently though, I believe it's 15%. Gargantuan deals 25% weapon damage by default and obsidian wall of zombies are the only ones that do close to base weapon damage worth of damage, with 117%.
While I'm certain an all pet build will be viable, as far as damage and scaling goes, I think it'd be the most productive when trying to justify the damage to reflect and justify the abilities that will actually make the spec function. The reason being that zombie dogs and gargantuan alone cannot make the spec work.
For instance weighing corpse spiders versus plague of toads versus wall of zombies. All of which do decent damage, can summon pets but have significantly different mana costs.
How will one go about to fund the cost of a summoning build? Will you maintain a complete pet theme and use a golden runed corpse spider, or will you differ to a spirit spell like haunt with a passive like rush of essence?
Simply nodding and agreeing that a pet build is viable without actually putting any material forth makes the thread largely pointless and no different from talking to a mirror. If you're posting in this thread and simply agreeing just to get a beta key then you're failing horribly as what has been said so far in this thread is no different from saying, "I agree with this" which will not qualify your post to be counted towards the beta key contest.
weather its viable or not i think imma still go and try it out past the normal difficulties cause i agree with you the necro pet build in d2 was alot of fun and espeically pre-nerf lol where it was 20 skels 20 skel mages 20 revives and a golem here to the good old days
I feel like pet builds will be less about using the pets for damage and more for protection, so that the WD will be able to cast his spells and attacks. It will be interesting to see if they can balance the pets to not be killed immediately after normal difficulty, because that's a lot of the problem that Druids and Necromancers had in Diablo II.
That said, I think they'll pull it off. It will also be the first Witch Doctor build I try.
I really hope the pet builds are viable. I always loved my necro in D2. I believe one of the biggest advantages to pets will be the ability to test damage and see how hard Hell and Inferno monsters will be hitting. I will be rolling a WD in hardcore just for that reason. I'd rather see my pets explode then my friends at level 60 running into a unique pack in inferno!
The dogs however total 45% weapon damage (60% if you have the passive), as well as heal themselves (If runed). That is pretty significant damage.
http://us.battle.net...bhPd!aZb!bYacbb
This is the most pet centric build I can think of, but I don't think it'll work that great. But some simple changes would make it fine.
And really, builds aren't that important when everything is changing this weekend anyways.
Just because a patch and wipe is coming in doesn't mean everything is changing over the weekend. The current wipe is most likely related to more auction house testing which they've seemed to have a fairly heavy focus on for the past month. Apart from some fine tuning I think skills/runes are relatively at where they're going to be for release since we're anywhere two to five months from release, most likely three to four months.
That being said, MandyMemory, one thing that I find concerning with your build is the lack of mana regen. Switch the color of the runes on your corpse spiders and plague of toads and you've got a probably more solid build. The toads will more damage per cast than they would previously (In the fact that they previously did 150% weapon damage per toad IF they exploded but with the indigo they would now do 143% weapon damage every second for two seconds in a controlled area. A potential 450% burst is nice, but 286% controlled area is more efficient), and the spiders will give you some more active mana regen.
From checking out different builds my guess is that a summoning WD will work if you commit to it. In D2 being a summoning necro only worked if you spent all (or nearly all) of your skill points in that tree, and I do believe that will be similar with the WD. If you're trying to divide up your skills into multiple categories (e.g. some in summoning, some in spirit) my guess is that it won't be as effective. If you plan your runes right so that your skills build on each other I think it could be really good. Plus you get the potentially added benefit of being able to get a snack while your pets do all the work. I'd love to try it and see how it works!
i will be building a poison army style with the WD http://us.battle.net...PQSR!WZd!ccaZaZ
here is a copy of my build, will be focusing on using my pets with poison dmg, and some range poison attacks as well!
While that does certainly make a heavy poison focus, I'd like to offer some things that you may want to think over. While initially mana is not an issue for the WD, if you watch beta videos, as time goes on you will notice that mana regeneration does become proportionately less powerful once the characters get past level 10, when you compare it to level 1 through 3. To me it seems that the mana regeneration at lower levels is purposefully high to make it easier to get adjusted to the game controls. At higher levels though, when you should be adjusted to the controls enough, it becomes a resource that you actually need to manage. With that in mind, you may want to look towards some sort of passive or a rune that will offer you some sort of mana regeneration. I'd honestly suggest getting a rune that gives you mana regeneration for this reason: Passive mana regeneration gives you fixed regeneration. Fixed regeneration will always give you too much mana when you don't use it, and too little mana when you need it the most. Active regeneration on the other hand can give you just the right mana that you need and you won't sacrifice as much damage potential to get it.
If you're thinking that you'll gear for mana regeneration instead, I'd like to also offer this thought: any stats you use for mana regeneration could have been stats to do more damage or even magic find. So instead of having one slightly weaker ability all of your abilities will be weaker than if you just had one that helped with your mana regen.
Now a suggestion to how you can incorporate an active mana regen ability into your poison pet army build would be this: swap out fetish army for the golden runed spirit walk. This also gives you a quick escape ability as well as a fairly active mana regen ability. Two aspects every WD needs.
While I'm certain an all pet build will be viable, as far as damage and scaling goes, I think it'd be the most productive when trying to justify the damage to reflect and justify the abilities that will actually make the spec function. The reason being that zombie dogs and gargantuan alone cannot make the spec work.
For instance weighing corpse spiders versus plague of toads versus wall of zombies. All of which do decent damage, can summon pets but have significantly different mana costs.
How will one go about to fund the cost of a summoning build? Will you maintain a complete pet theme and use a golden runed corpse spider, or will you differ to a spirit spell like haunt with a passive like rush of essence?
Simply nodding and agreeing that a pet build is viable without actually putting any material forth makes the thread largely pointless and no different from talking to a mirror. If you're posting in this thread and simply agreeing just to get a beta key then you're failing horribly as what has been said so far in this thread is no different from saying, "I agree with this" which will not qualify your post to be counted towards the beta key contest.
Of the options you listed this is how I plan to make mine work. I plan on having grasp and gold spiders as my mana dumps and with grave injustice both should be going pretty much nonstop. At least thats the plan lol.
Pet builds are gonna be the one of the most popular WD builds. Can't understand ppl who gonna try to play WD without pets. For me Dogs+Garg are must have skills for any WD. Actually 3 skill for me are mandatory:Dogs, garg and GotD. Other 3 skills determine your playstyle.
Hope it is gonna be viable on higher difficulties than normal but i reallu doubt it because there is no escape skill like Spirit Walk and no mana regen. I could use Big Bad Voodoo as a mana regen ability with proper runestone but then it loses the full power of the skill.
So my conclusion: pet builds are viable but untill you realize that you could use skill slots more effective and become more active in fight=>everything would depend of you and not of NPC.
Valenir, I'd stay away from making big bad voodoo your mana regen ability, at least until you have an absurdly large mana pool. Big bad voodoo is a 2 min cooldown ability by default, 1.5 minute cooldown with the passive tribal rites. I'd leave big bad voodoo with its crimson rune and put a golden one in haunt instead. Yes that means you're going to have a much smaller burst potential, but your build really does lean more towards a group buff & farming boss/rares build. I say that because you have two 2 minute cooldown abilities that until inferno mode, you probably won't be able to pop at every pack of enemies or even every other pack. They also both work best when used together, and so it's kinda like an all in heavy burst build for bosses or even pvp.
Just my thoughts though, feel free to ignore them if it pleases you.
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http://www.diablofan...inferno-videos/
Also, Summoner Necros dominated PvE if the user had appropriate gear (enigma, etc) and used the appropriate skills (corpse explo, etc).
While I'm certain an all pet build will be viable, as far as damage and scaling goes, I think it'd be the most productive when trying to justify the damage to reflect and justify the abilities that will actually make the spec function. The reason being that zombie dogs and gargantuan alone cannot make the spec work.
For instance weighing corpse spiders versus plague of toads versus wall of zombies. All of which do decent damage, can summon pets but have significantly different mana costs.
How will one go about to fund the cost of a summoning build? Will you maintain a complete pet theme and use a golden runed corpse spider, or will you differ to a spirit spell like haunt with a passive like rush of essence?
Simply nodding and agreeing that a pet build is viable without actually putting any material forth makes the thread largely pointless and no different from talking to a mirror. If you're posting in this thread and simply agreeing just to get a beta key then you're failing horribly as what has been said so far in this thread is no different from saying, "I agree with this" which will not qualify your post to be counted towards the beta key contest.
That said, I think they'll pull it off. It will also be the first Witch Doctor build I try.
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http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#ZWbhPd!aZb!bYacbb
This is the most pet centric build I can think of, but I don't think it'll work that great. But some simple changes would make it fine.
And really, builds aren't that important when everything is changing this weekend anyways.
Just because a patch and wipe is coming in doesn't mean everything is changing over the weekend. The current wipe is most likely related to more auction house testing which they've seemed to have a fairly heavy focus on for the past month. Apart from some fine tuning I think skills/runes are relatively at where they're going to be for release since we're anywhere two to five months from release, most likely three to four months.
That being said, MandyMemory, one thing that I find concerning with your build is the lack of mana regen. Switch the color of the runes on your corpse spiders and plague of toads and you've got a probably more solid build. The toads will more damage per cast than they would previously (In the fact that they previously did 150% weapon damage per toad IF they exploded but with the indigo they would now do 143% weapon damage every second for two seconds in a controlled area. A potential 450% burst is nice, but 286% controlled area is more efficient), and the spiders will give you some more active mana regen.
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#bhgcXR!Wda!aZaaZa
That would synergize nicely with zombie handler if it did but sadly I think pets do not activate the bad medicine passive.
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#bhPQSR!WZd!ccaZaZ
here is a copy of my build, will be focusing on using my pets with poison dmg, and some range poison attacks as well!
While that does certainly make a heavy poison focus, I'd like to offer some things that you may want to think over. While initially mana is not an issue for the WD, if you watch beta videos, as time goes on you will notice that mana regeneration does become proportionately less powerful once the characters get past level 10, when you compare it to level 1 through 3. To me it seems that the mana regeneration at lower levels is purposefully high to make it easier to get adjusted to the game controls. At higher levels though, when you should be adjusted to the controls enough, it becomes a resource that you actually need to manage. With that in mind, you may want to look towards some sort of passive or a rune that will offer you some sort of mana regeneration. I'd honestly suggest getting a rune that gives you mana regeneration for this reason: Passive mana regeneration gives you fixed regeneration. Fixed regeneration will always give you too much mana when you don't use it, and too little mana when you need it the most. Active regeneration on the other hand can give you just the right mana that you need and you won't sacrifice as much damage potential to get it.
If you're thinking that you'll gear for mana regeneration instead, I'd like to also offer this thought: any stats you use for mana regeneration could have been stats to do more damage or even magic find. So instead of having one slightly weaker ability all of your abilities will be weaker than if you just had one that helped with your mana regen.
Now a suggestion to how you can incorporate an active mana regen ability into your poison pet army build would be this: swap out fetish army for the golden runed spirit walk. This also gives you a quick escape ability as well as a fairly active mana regen ability. Two aspects every WD needs.
Of the options you listed this is how I plan to make mine work. I plan on having grasp and gold spiders as my mana dumps and with grave injustice both should be going pretty much nonstop. At least thats the plan lol.
This build I gonna try: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#cYbhQP!aWi!aZacZa
Hope it is gonna be viable on higher difficulties than normal but i reallu doubt it because there is no escape skill like Spirit Walk and no mana regen. I could use Big Bad Voodoo as a mana regen ability with proper runestone but then it loses the full power of the skill.
So my conclusion: pet builds are viable but untill you realize that you could use skill slots more effective and become more active in fight=>everything would depend of you and not of NPC.
Just my thoughts though, feel free to ignore them if it pleases you.