Every time I go through the skills and make a build, I mentally eliminate a few skills right off the bat because I either just don't like them or think they're crappy skills.
Spiders - I hate the spiders so much. It takes so long before they do any damage it's just a sluggish skill. It's also very hard to aim without the leaping rune. I can't see myself EVER using spiders in a build.
BigBadVoodoo - I might use this in a build at some point but it sounds like such a crappy skill. The mana rune and the healing rune sound pretty good but the fact that it's only active for 20 seconds out of 2 minutes is a killer for me. Also, I don't believe you can move very far from the cast point until you lose the buff. I could possibly see myself using this with a grave injustice build or maybe a vision quest build but it seems worse than the other 2 minute skills. I don't care about cast speed as a WD unless I have an odd build that relies on massive casting of a cheap mana skill like darts. If you do the math this skill is crap unless you have a way around the cooldown.
Spirit Walk - It seems like a worthless skill with any rune beyond the honored guest/healing journey runes. I can almost guarantee I'll NEVER use spirit walk with any rune but those.
With all things considered, I'd say only hating 3 skills is pretty good! What skills/runes do you hate?
Spiders - I hate the spiders so much. It takes so long before they do any damage it's just a sluggish skill. It's also very hard to aim without the leaping rune. I can't see myself EVER using spiders in a build.
Spiders - I hate the spiders so much. It takes so long before they do any damage it's just a sluggish skill. It's also very hard to aim without the leaping rune. I can't see myself EVER using spiders in a build.
spiders, spirit walk, plague of toads, and hex are the ones that stick out in my mind. I won't know for sure until the full game is release and I've tried every rune combination.
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At the End of Days, Wisdom shall be lost, as Justice falls upon the world of men.
Valor shall turn to Wrath, and all Hope will be swallowed by Despair.
Death, at last, shall spread its wings over all- as fate lies shattered forever.
Spiders - I hate the spiders so much. It takes so long before they do any damage it's just a sluggish skill. It's also very hard to aim without the leaping rune. I can't see myself EVER using spiders in a build.
Every time I go through the skills and make a build, I mentally eliminate a few skills right off the bat because I either just don't like them or think they're crappy skills.
Spiders - I hate the spiders so much. It takes so long before they do any damage it's just a sluggish skill. It's also very hard to aim without the leaping rune. I can't see myself EVER using spiders in a build.
BigBadVoodoo - I might use this in a build at some point but it sounds like such a crappy skill. The mana rune and the healing rune sound pretty good but the fact that it's only active for 20 seconds out of 2 minutes is a killer for me. Also, I don't believe you can move very far from the cast point until you lose the buff. I could possibly see myself using this with a grave injustice build or maybe a vision quest build but it seems worse than the other 2 minute skills. I don't care about cast speed as a WD unless I have an odd build that relies on massive casting of a cheap mana skill like darts. If you do the math this skill is crap unless you have a way around the cooldown.
Spirit Walk - It seems like a worthless skill with any rune beyond the honored guest/healing journey runes. I can almost guarantee I'll NEVER use spirit walk with any rune but those.
With all things considered, I'd say only hating 3 skills is pretty good! What skills/runes do you hate?
Spiders can be seen as dots, 4 spiders, that each attack twice. They are NOT hard to aim, and they give you the ability to throw OVER walls or down below off ledges, giving you the advantage in that aspect.
Big bad voodoo is a pretty good skill, because its an area of effect for your whole team, allowing you to deal tha much needed damage on harder difficultie champion and rare mobs. Plus the 30 perent damage rune for EVERYONE is just soo good.
The Doc is my favorite class, has my favorite skills, but also has some of ym least favorite skills :/
Spiders, and toads I will use only if I do a pet build and grudgingly at that.
Bats, I don't like them on the Doc.
zombie chargers except explosive beast
any wall of zombies that is not a wall
rain of corpses for grasp, kiss of death for acid, and the vision quest passive.
Basicly every other skill is amazing to me (note: BBV needs to work on pets to be included)
Absolute favorite skills: Mass Confusion and Acid cloud
Edit: I think this is an opinion thread right? some of the skills I listed I know are empirically great, they are just not for me.
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If that made sense to you, Bravo! I think I even confused myself...
The Doc is my favorite class, has my favorite skills, but also has some of ym least favorite skills :/
Spiders, and toads I will use only if I do a pet build and grudgingly at that.
Bats, I don't like them on the Doc.
zombie chargers except explosive beast
any wall of zombies that is not a wall
rain of corpses for grasp, kiss of death for acid, and the vision quest passive.
Basicly every other skill is amazing to me (note: BBV needs to work on pets to be included)
Absolute favorite skills: Mass Confusion and Acid cloud
Edit: I think this is an opinion thread right? some of the skills I listed I know are empirically great, they are just not for me.
Don't think he is talking about disliking spells graphically...
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One is never hurt by being given additional choices, only by taking them away. A QUADRILLION MAGIC FIND is worthless if you can't kill shit!
ancient spear for barbarian. i just cannot find it much of useful (ok for pvp maybe)
call of the ancients and wrath of the berserker - i really hate the way blizzard went with those skills with 2 minutes cooldown and active for 15 sec ... cmon, keep this shit for your WoW. also other skills for other classes that follow this mechanic like:
shadow power for dh (3 sec active ... is this a joke, what can i do in 3 sec?)
big bad voo doo
fetish army
archon
mirror image
also:
wave of light for monk - looks ridiculos
edit- i got there from the quick links and didnt look its just WD forum. anyway. like i said - those skills with big cooldown and short active time are not my favourite.
ancients and bersker are REALLY good, hence the long cooldown. Bersker rune for 100 percent damage, double your damage out put...and then some. Ancients can double or even deal more than that in total dps, PLUS they tank for you, allowing you to live longer/without as much worry. If they made it a lower cooldown, they would have to be nerfed to the ground in order to stay balanced.
Shadow power can allow you to heal to full , especially useful on a single tough mob/boss and theres no health pot you can use/globes. Yes co uld be better but not so bad that it cant be used
fetish army adds a ton of damage per second. They also can tank for you. Useful for tougher mobs.
as i said above Big bad voodoo is a pretty good skill, because its an area of effect for your whole team, allowing you to deal tha much needed damage on harder difficultie champion and rare mobs. Plus the 30 perent damage rune for EVERYONE is just soo good.
Archon adds abilities that do a lot more damage.500 percent + last time archon was available to be seen.
Mirrior images are a good distraction for harder mobs when you are solo wizard. Gives you time to kite/damage them. Plus the rune that allows them to mirrior your skills and do 10 percent of the damage each. 20 percent extra damage, and since they might cast in areas that you didnt cast, allows for more damage over a larger range. More damage AND survivability, not bad.
Saying that skills with long cds aren't worth it is not a good arguement. On hell and inferno, when you encounter rare and champion mobs, having a burst on damage and utility is a good idea. The fact of the matter is you won't be using that many pure offensive/damage abilities, because since you can spam them, theres no reason to go into a rotation.
Go into a rare mob pack, pop 1 or 2 skills with long cd's that allow for more damage, spam your generator (3 skills so far), use your resource dump (4 skills), use your defensive ability to get away or to prevent damage (5 skills). Right there, thats five skills used up and mainly for the fight your using left and right click.
People don't realize that you won't need more than 1 or 2 primaries, and 1-2 dumps that will most likely be one aoe and one single target, and the rest of the skill slots will be used to defensive or damage burst. It's going to be funny when people have 4 dumps and 2 primarys and end up dieing because they cant get away or cant burst damage the rare mobs effectively.
Spirit walk I will never use (unless it gives a speed bonus)
Spirit barrage seems to suck as well, 108 mana for 190% damage while poison dart deals 140% damage for 10 mana.
You just wait bud =) What people don't seem to realize is that you can't walk through enemies, so they CAN surround you and your effed. That's why a skill like say Tempest Rush is so useful even if the damage isn't that high, because it lets you path through enemies. Now AFAIK the WD doesn't have anything else to let him do this except for spirit walk. Sure you can try to mass confuse or horrify and those will probably work well too.
The Doc is my favorite class, has my favorite skills, but also has some of ym least favorite skills :/
Spiders, and toads I will use only if I do a pet build and grudgingly at that.
Bats, I don't like them on the Doc.
zombie chargers except explosive beast
any wall of zombies that is not a wall
rain of corpses for grasp, kiss of death for acid, and the vision quest passive.
Basicly every other skill is amazing to me (note: BBV needs to work on pets to be included)
Absolute favorite skills: Mass Confusion and Acid cloud
Edit: I think this is an opinion thread right? some of the skills I listed I know are empirically great, they are just not for me.
Don't think he is talking about disliking spells graphically...
I wasn't either. I was refering to disliking skill function.
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If that made sense to you, Bravo! I think I even confused myself...
Spirit walk I will never use (unless it gives a speed bonus)
Spirit barrage seems to suck as well, 108 mana for 190% damage while poison dart deals 140% damage for 10 mana.
Well, it's 190% instant as physical vs 100% + 40% dot as poison, so there's your tradeoff. That said, I still don't like the look of Spirit Barrage. Others I probably won't use except to test out for fun, or they just won't fit in my planned build:
Spirit Walk
Hex
Horrify
Big Bad Voodoo
Haunt may also prove useless on regular monsters since it takes 12 seconds to do full damage.
Spirit walk I will never use (unless it gives a speed bonus)
Spirit barrage seems to suck as well, 108 mana for 190% damage while poison dart deals 140% damage for 10 mana.
You just wait bud =) What people don't seem to realize is that you can't walk through enemies, so they CAN surround you and your effed. That's why a skill like say Tempest Rush is so useful even if the damage isn't that high, because it lets you path through enemies. Now AFAIK the WD doesn't have anything else to let him do this except for spirit walk. Sure you can try to mass confuse or horrify and those will probably work well too.
I'd prefer Horrify if I'm surrounded because then I won't take damage while I escape (since everything with be feared). If you use spirit walk you'll take damage while you run away.
Like I said before though, the mana regen on the one rune is pretty sweet. More mana = more dps afterall.
I think each skill has its use and its place. For example you may not think a rock useful, but if your trapped in a glass box you would be happy you have it.
Well, it's 190% instant as physical vs 100% + 40% dot as poison, so there's your tradeoff.
Not to mention that unless you're waiting a second or so between each dart, the 40% dot often gets overwritten with each dart so the reality is that you're getting maybe 120% weapon damage out of it per cast. It's partly what also makes the spiders such an attractive alternative.
The only skill I'm not interested in is Hex; it seems like such limited crowd control for a class that has so many other options.
spirit walk will be extremely useful in pvp and soloing inferno, as well as in HC mode imo.
it's the only skill that besides being the best panic moment skill WD has (along with horrify), also seems to break out of you being frozen/feared/etc.
as far as WD skills I dont like right now...
not a big fan of hex in the form Ive seen it form. too random and unpredictable. Ill try it but meh seems a bit useless unless you want a movement boost. unless you can somehow spam it with grave injustice I dont see much use for me.
spirit barriage is just a waste imo. prolly the worst skill here. single damage with runes that dont anything interesting. the only useful thing is that its not very mana-demanding.
toads in basic form is just not my thing at all.
not a huge fan of sacrifice because it implies you have to use dogs and have a specific summon build which Ill try but I like to have control and AI of pets is never good imo.
fetish army seems pretty damn weak unless you use the ambush rune...but what good is ambush when you cant control it ?
Hex is pretty worthless. LOL factor aside. It might change one or two if you are lucky in a mob, I would rather have something with crowd control. Or better defensively.
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I want to travel to exotic places, meet interesting people. And then throw spider-filled jars of pottery at them.
With all things considered, I'd say only hating 3 skills is pretty good! What skills/runes do you hate?
Aah, you hate Big Bad Voodoo? I really like that skill, and with Tribal rites the cd will go down to a minute and half, which isn't too bad. I think Rain Dance will work well for mana heavy builds, and Boogie Man will be great for zombie dog builds. Personally I'm torn between Slam Dance and Ghost Trance, damage or regen for the entire party. I think this will be a situational decision. I can say that BBV will work great during boss fights.
It's funny that I saw this topic. Yesterday I was going through the skill calculator, and as I excluded the skills I like from my build, I couldn't help feel that when the game is released, I'll probably look at these skills in a different light. I may hate them now, but in practice they may work a whole lot different than I expect them to.
Any way, as a Wizard, the skills that I'm not really into at the moment are: Energy Twister, I hated the druid twister in D2; Storm Armor, it just seem less useful compared to the other armor spells; and Arcane Torrent, was really excited about this skill until I saw it used in a video and it wasn't quite what I expected so I'm skeptical until I try it.
Yeah, only three out of twenty-five skills, not bad at all.
Poison Dart: Descent single target dmg, but the primary problem is that it's not spammable on a single target without a large loss in dmg, as DoTs don't stack.
Splinters: Great single target, and cheap. Numbing Dart: Sucks PvM, maybe usable in PvP but seems lackluster compared to Haunt - grasping spirit. Spined Dart: One would have to use this about 10 times to gain enough mana to cast one high dmg spell. Flaming Dart: Why would anyone even use this over splinters unless they just wanted fire dmg? Snake to the face: Only seems useful in PvP.
Corpse Spiders: Descent single target dmg, but their effectiveness is based completely on the mobs health and how well you aim.
Blazing Spiders: 31% more Damage is fairly good. Spider Queen: No info Leaping Spiders:They get into position quicker, and do more dmg. This drastically helps to offset the aim and mob HP problem that plagues this skill. Widowmaker: Could potentially return quite a bit of mana. Medusa Spiders: Seems rather crappy. Even if spammed it would seemingly only be effective at slowing a few mobs. Far too much chance involved.
Plague of Toads: Medium ranged skill that has a small aoe component.
Explosive Toads: More damage, and explosions. Toad of Hugeness: CC's one mob and does mediocre dmg. Hex seems infinitely better. Rain of Toads: What is the area? Addling Toads: 15% chance to make your opponents fight for you for 4 seconds. Toad Affinity: Crap. How much could you spam this to care enough about the mana cost?
Firebomb:Cheap long ranged AoE, but doesn't do much dmg.
Flash Fire: Removes the small area of effect feature, but allows it to jump to multiple targets, thus making it quite powerful in medium to large groups. Up to 385% weapon dmg on 7+ targets. Roll the Bones: Allow the skull to bounce up to two times. Even if it doesn't direct itself at other targets, it should be quite good at mobs in a line. Fire Pit: +24% dmg if they stand there for 3 seconds....crap. Pyrogeist: Turn a spammable single target dmg ability into a mediocre non-spammable single target dmg ability... Ghost Bomb:+20% dmg in a huge aoe. Now look at firepit, scratch your head and laugh.
Grasp of the Dead: Great AoE slow with a decent radius and dmg.
Unbreakable Grasp: Increased Slow Amount, good stuff. Groping Eels: 30% more dmg, good stuff. Death is life: 5% chance is pretty low, but there is some synergy with certain builds that could make it worthwhile. Desperate Grasp: -2 seconds from cooldown. At higher level of play this might become useful. Rain of Corpses: Lose your slow component, but does massive dmg in that area. The only problem is that WD's rather lack a replacement aoe slow.
Firebats: Solid Frontal cone damage, but requires you to fight quite close.
Dire Bats: Lost the front cone, but gain a arge damage increase, and large range increase. Vampire Bats: Max health and dmg output is unknown, thus making this skill an unknown. Plague Bats: Slow dmg increases usually mean that you will rarely be able to build up to the max, as you need to remain mobile. Though there seems to be some builds that prefer mid range combat. Hungry Bats: Great single target dmg with homing capability. Cloud of Bats: Bats spawn on you, so you have to be close to danger to do similar dmg....
Haunt: Dot that does a ton of single target dmg, its just too bad the runes seem so mediocre.
Consuming Spirit: Gain 155 life per second, but what is max health and dmg output of mobs? It also doesn't scale, maybe OP when leveling? Resentful Spirit: 0% dmg for 0 seconds.... Lingering Spirit: If there is no target, the spirit lingers for 10 seconds. What are the odds I will be in the same area after the mobs die fighting? Seem pretty slim. Also, I don't believe the duration resets when it jumps. Grasping Spirit: 30% slow. Great in PvP. Draining Spirit: You gain about as much mana as it costs, but its not all that expensive.
Locust Swarm: Does massive amounts of dmg, and jumps to multiple targets, but cost a shitload of mana.
Pestilence: Jumps twice instead of once, thus exponentially increasing the speed at which they spread on large groups. Devouring Swarm: Could potentially offset the huge cost, but only on medium sized groups. Cloud of Insects: They swarm takes time to spread, effectively giving you sufficient time to kill the guys in the front. By the time you get to the guys in the back the likely haven't been diseased very long. Increasing the duration in most situations would seem to accomplish littel to nothing. Diseased Swarm: They have to be killed by the locust to spawn the cloud, and the cloud doesn't do all that much dmg. Searing Locusts: 30% dmg increase, good stuff.
Rabid Dogs: Dots don't stack, and the dmg increase is pathetic anyways. Final Gift: They can't possibly die often enough for this to be terribly useful. Life Link: Not bad for PvP, but inferior to leeching beasts for PvM. Burning Dogs: 2% dmg, enough said. Leeching Beasts: They don't hit hard, but it helps to keep them and you alive. They are solely tanks after the changes, and this is the only rune that reflects that.
Horrify: Mass AoE CC, but it causes the mobs to run in all directions, this eliminating capabilities with AoE.
Phobia: +2 seconds on fear. Maybe useful on higher levels. Stalker: +20% increased run speed. meh. You would likely get further away with the extra 2 seconds, but it would help you get away assuming some mobs didn't get feared. Face of Death: Doubles the diameter, making it fear almost everything. Frightening Aspect: 100% armor after casting for 8 seconds. Seens lackluster compared to the other defensive options. The mobs should be feared for 4 seconds + run time equates to this being near useless. Ruthless Terror: Terrible. This spell is situational in iteslf and has a CD, thus the average mana gain is nothing extraordinary.
Spirit Walk: Why would this really ever be useful? And in the rare situations it would be useful, other defensive skills would be better.
Jaunt: Increases the duration to 50%. Honored Guest: Regen 30% of mana Umbral Shock: 85% dmg after spirit walk ends...Aren't you supposed to be putting range between you and them? Isn't that the point? Severance: 100% weapon dmg when you run through enemies. Meh, how often would you want to run through mobs? Healing Journey: Regen 14% of max life.
Hex: Fetish that periodically CC's, and causes them to take more dmg.
Hedge Magic: Periodically heals allies for 1861. Is this a lot? Does it heal pets over you? Jinx: Increases the dmg chickens take to 20%. Not bad, assuming they can chicken champions. Angry Chicken: So the enemy turns into a chicken and has a chance to die? Painful Transformation: 12% dmg ensures this can't be good, no matter how long they stay as chickens. Unstable Form: Hexed enemies explode when they die. This is decent considering they take more dmg than the other mobs around.
Soul Harvest: Great dmg buff, however, its tricky to apply and diminishes in value with gear.
Swallow Your Soul: Just bad. The buff last 30 seconds, and an extra tad of mana over that time frame is not even remotely worth it. Siphon: 2171 life per target...Sounds good, but how much is that compared to your max? Langush: 60% slow added to harvested enemies. Might make the buff less dangerous to apply, but nothing amazing. Soul to Waste: Doubles the duration, thus you need to use it far less. The problem is a lot of your time is actually spent running between areas, so the added duration doesn't do a heck of a lot. Vengeful Spirit: 70% wpn dmg. Not a lot of dmg, but not bad considering you get it for buffing yourself.
Sacrifice: Large dmg, but you lose your tanky dogs.
Black Blood: Huge slow in a large area, and for a long duration. Next of Kin: Only really useful for a build built around sacrifice. Pride: Gain Gain 300 mana per dog. Almost certainly restores almost all your mana. For the Master: 6200 Life per dog. Likely nearly a full heal. Provoke the Pack: 5% dmg boost per dog for 30 seconds is fair. Doesn't seem worth it to lose your pets for a damage buff.
Mass Confusion: Forces your enemy to fight themselves for 12 seconds. 1 min CD
Unstable Realm: -15 Sec from CD. Pretty good. Devolutiong: Not bad, particularly useful for a sacrifice build. Mass Hysteria: More CC, good. Paranoia: +20% dmg Mass Hallucination: 22% wpn dmg per second spirit rampages, but how big/fast is it.
Leprous Zombie: How long does the vapor stay, regardless it seems to kinda suck. Undeath: Potentially triples the range. Not bad. Wave of Zombies: 3* 72 = 216% Hardly even a dmg increse & hard to aim. Explosive Beasts: 236% dmg explosive + AoE + fast + longer range Zombies Bears: Huge dmg boost, but short range.
Spirit Barrage: Rather expensive, but not much bang for the buck.
The Spirit is Wiling: Reduces mana cost by almost half, but the dmg isn't much better than splinters, so why even bother? Well of Souls: Not bad, extra 90% wpn dmg to random targets. Phantasm: Mediocre AoE DoT. Phlebotomize: Good amount of lifesteal. Manitou: Not bad, passive dmg is good.
Acid Rain: Larger Area. Lob Blob Bomb: Slightly more DoT dmg Slow Burn: Slightly more DoT dmg Kiss of Death: Need to be in close to do basically the same dmg....maybe even in a smaller area. Corpse Bomb: More dmg, and its instant.
Wall of Zombies: Good defensive skill, with good dmg, but rather long CD now.
Barricade: Double the size, double the protection. Unrelenting Grip: Great slow component. Creepers: Does it make holes in the wall? Are they invincible pets for 5 seconds? Sounds good. Pile On: Lose all the defense, but huge dmg CD. Dead Rush: So zombie chargers that split up and go in all directions?
Humongoid: Cleave would be a huge dmg increase on average. Relentless Giant: Huge Increase in his power when you need him the most. Wrathful Protector: Absolutely terrible. Turn your best Pet into a bad dps CD. Big Stinker: Decent dmg, would work well with bad medicine. Bruiser: Periodically stuns, but how often?
Big Bad Voodoo: 20% Atk and movement speed boost for whole group. Primarily for group play.
Jungle Drums: +10 second duration Rain Dance: Huge mana regen. Slam Dance: 30% dmg increase Ghost Trance: 5% heal per second Boogie Man: Good for spawing dogs for sacrifice build or on boss fight.
Fetish Army: Summon 5 annoying fetishes. 20% wpn dmg each for 20 seconds. 2000% wpn dmg assuming they don't die.
Fetish Ambush: 250% wpn dmg to nearby enemies when they are summoned. Sounds good, but do you want to be surrounded by mobs in your face? Sounds like a bad game plan to me. Devoted following: -30 second CD. Ok, but it needs to be worth a skill slot for me to care. Legion of Daggers: Summons 8 feishes. Potential 3200% wpn dmg. Tiki Torches: Summons 2 fetishes that AoE. Meh, the legion of daggers yields 60% more, this is only 30%. Chances they AoE enough to merit the loss in #s and dmg seems slim. Head Hunters: Summons 2 ranged fetishs. Meh, the melee ones seem pretty quick.
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"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?"
Epicurus
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Spiders - I hate the spiders so much. It takes so long before they do any damage it's just a sluggish skill. It's also very hard to aim without the leaping rune. I can't see myself EVER using spiders in a build.
BigBadVoodoo - I might use this in a build at some point but it sounds like such a crappy skill. The mana rune and the healing rune sound pretty good but the fact that it's only active for 20 seconds out of 2 minutes is a killer for me. Also, I don't believe you can move very far from the cast point until you lose the buff. I could possibly see myself using this with a grave injustice build or maybe a vision quest build but it seems worse than the other 2 minute skills. I don't care about cast speed as a WD unless I have an odd build that relies on massive casting of a cheap mana skill like darts. If you do the math this skill is crap unless you have a way around the cooldown.
Spirit Walk - It seems like a worthless skill with any rune beyond the honored guest/healing journey runes. I can almost guarantee I'll NEVER use spirit walk with any rune but those.
With all things considered, I'd say only hating 3 skills is pretty good! What skills/runes do you hate?
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#b!c!Z
concerning the bad medicine... does spider queen do poison damage or something?
Valor shall turn to Wrath, and all Hope will be swallowed by Despair.
Death, at last, shall spread its wings over all- as fate lies shattered forever.
Yep. 16% poison damage per second AoE that lasts 16 seconds.
Spiders can be seen as dots, 4 spiders, that each attack twice. They are NOT hard to aim, and they give you the ability to throw OVER walls or down below off ledges, giving you the advantage in that aspect.
Big bad voodoo is a pretty good skill, because its an area of effect for your whole team, allowing you to deal tha much needed damage on harder difficultie champion and rare mobs. Plus the 30 perent damage rune for EVERYONE is just soo good.
I haven't seen enough to spiritwalk to judge it.
Spiders, and toads I will use only if I do a pet build and grudgingly at that.
Bats, I don't like them on the Doc.
zombie chargers except explosive beast
any wall of zombies that is not a wall
rain of corpses for grasp, kiss of death for acid, and the vision quest passive.
Basicly every other skill is amazing to me (note: BBV needs to work on pets to be included)
Absolute favorite skills: Mass Confusion and Acid cloud
Edit: I think this is an opinion thread right? some of the skills I listed I know are empirically great, they are just not for me.
A QUADRILLION MAGIC FIND is worthless if you can't kill shit!
ancients and bersker are REALLY good, hence the long cooldown. Bersker rune for 100 percent damage, double your damage out put...and then some. Ancients can double or even deal more than that in total dps, PLUS they tank for you, allowing you to live longer/without as much worry. If they made it a lower cooldown, they would have to be nerfed to the ground in order to stay balanced.
Shadow power can allow you to heal to full , especially useful on a single tough mob/boss and theres no health pot you can use/globes. Yes co uld be better but not so bad that it cant be used
fetish army adds a ton of damage per second. They also can tank for you. Useful for tougher mobs.
as i said above Big bad voodoo is a pretty good skill, because its an area of effect for your whole team, allowing you to deal tha much needed damage on harder difficultie champion and rare mobs. Plus the 30 perent damage rune for EVERYONE is just soo good.
Archon adds abilities that do a lot more damage.500 percent + last time archon was available to be seen.
Mirrior images are a good distraction for harder mobs when you are solo wizard. Gives you time to kite/damage them. Plus the rune that allows them to mirrior your skills and do 10 percent of the damage each. 20 percent extra damage, and since they might cast in areas that you didnt cast, allows for more damage over a larger range. More damage AND survivability, not bad.
Saying that skills with long cds aren't worth it is not a good arguement. On hell and inferno, when you encounter rare and champion mobs, having a burst on damage and utility is a good idea. The fact of the matter is you won't be using that many pure offensive/damage abilities, because since you can spam them, theres no reason to go into a rotation.
Go into a rare mob pack, pop 1 or 2 skills with long cd's that allow for more damage, spam your generator (3 skills so far), use your resource dump (4 skills), use your defensive ability to get away or to prevent damage (5 skills). Right there, thats five skills used up and mainly for the fight your using left and right click.
People don't realize that you won't need more than 1 or 2 primaries, and 1-2 dumps that will most likely be one aoe and one single target, and the rest of the skill slots will be used to defensive or damage burst. It's going to be funny when people have 4 dumps and 2 primarys and end up dieing because they cant get away or cant burst damage the rare mobs effectively.
You just wait bud =) What people don't seem to realize is that you can't walk through enemies, so they CAN surround you and your effed. That's why a skill like say Tempest Rush is so useful even if the damage isn't that high, because it lets you path through enemies. Now AFAIK the WD doesn't have anything else to let him do this except for spirit walk. Sure you can try to mass confuse or horrify and those will probably work well too.
I wasn't either. I was refering to disliking skill function.
Well, it's 190% instant as physical vs 100% + 40% dot as poison, so there's your tradeoff. That said, I still don't like the look of Spirit Barrage. Others I probably won't use except to test out for fun, or they just won't fit in my planned build:
Spirit Walk
Hex
Horrify
Big Bad Voodoo
Haunt may also prove useless on regular monsters since it takes 12 seconds to do full damage.
I'd prefer Horrify if I'm surrounded because then I won't take damage while I escape (since everything with be feared). If you use spirit walk you'll take damage while you run away.
Like I said before though, the mana regen on the one rune is pretty sweet. More mana = more dps afterall.
Not to mention that unless you're waiting a second or so between each dart, the 40% dot often gets overwritten with each dart so the reality is that you're getting maybe 120% weapon damage out of it per cast. It's partly what also makes the spiders such an attractive alternative.
The only skill I'm not interested in is Hex; it seems like such limited crowd control for a class that has so many other options.
it's the only skill that besides being the best panic moment skill WD has (along with horrify), also seems to break out of you being frozen/feared/etc.
as far as WD skills I dont like right now...
not a big fan of hex in the form Ive seen it form. too random and unpredictable. Ill try it but meh seems a bit useless unless you want a movement boost. unless you can somehow spam it with grave injustice I dont see much use for me.
spirit barriage is just a waste imo. prolly the worst skill here. single damage with runes that dont anything interesting. the only useful thing is that its not very mana-demanding.
toads in basic form is just not my thing at all.
not a huge fan of sacrifice because it implies you have to use dogs and have a specific summon build which Ill try but I like to have control and AI of pets is never good imo.
fetish army seems pretty damn weak unless you use the ambush rune...but what good is ambush when you cant control it ?
It's funny that I saw this topic. Yesterday I was going through the skill calculator, and as I excluded the skills I like from my build, I couldn't help feel that when the game is released, I'll probably look at these skills in a different light. I may hate them now, but in practice they may work a whole lot different than I expect them to.
Any way, as a Wizard, the skills that I'm not really into at the moment are: Energy Twister, I hated the druid twister in D2; Storm Armor, it just seem less useful compared to the other armor spells; and Arcane Torrent, was really excited about this skill until I saw it used in a video and it wasn't quite what I expected so I'm skeptical until I try it.
Yeah, only three out of twenty-five skills, not bad at all.
Yellow = Ok
Red = Bad
Green = Not enough Info
Poison Dart
Poison Dart: Descent single target dmg, but the primary problem is that it's not spammable on a single target without a large loss in dmg, as DoTs don't stack.
Splinters: Great single target, and cheap.
Numbing Dart: Sucks PvM, maybe usable in PvP but seems lackluster compared to Haunt - grasping spirit.
Spined Dart: One would have to use this about 10 times to gain enough mana to cast one high dmg spell.
Flaming Dart: Why would anyone even use this over splinters unless they just wanted fire dmg?
Snake to the face: Only seems useful in PvP.
Corpse Spiders
Corpse Spiders: Descent single target dmg, but their effectiveness is based completely on the mobs health and how well you aim.
Blazing Spiders: 31% more Damage is fairly good.
Spider Queen: No info
Leaping Spiders:They get into position quicker, and do more dmg. This drastically helps to offset the aim and mob HP problem that plagues this skill.
Widowmaker: Could potentially return quite a bit of mana.
Medusa Spiders: Seems rather crappy. Even if spammed it would seemingly only be effective at slowing a few mobs. Far too much chance involved.
Plague of Toads
Plague of Toads: Medium ranged skill that has a small aoe component.
Explosive Toads: More damage, and explosions.
Toad of Hugeness: CC's one mob and does mediocre dmg. Hex seems infinitely better.
Rain of Toads: What is the area?
Addling Toads: 15% chance to make your opponents fight for you for 4 seconds.
Toad Affinity: Crap. How much could you spam this to care enough about the mana cost?
Firebomb
Firebomb: Cheap long ranged AoE, but doesn't do much dmg.
Flash Fire: Removes the small area of effect feature, but allows it to jump to multiple targets, thus making it quite powerful in medium to large groups. Up to 385% weapon dmg on 7+ targets.
Roll the Bones: Allow the skull to bounce up to two times. Even if it doesn't direct itself at other targets, it should be quite good at mobs in a line.
Fire Pit: +24% dmg if they stand there for 3 seconds....crap.
Pyrogeist: Turn a spammable single target dmg ability into a mediocre non-spammable single target dmg ability...
Ghost Bomb:+20% dmg in a huge aoe. Now look at firepit, scratch your head and laugh.
Grasp of the Dead
Grasp of the Dead: Great AoE slow with a decent radius and dmg.
Unbreakable Grasp: Increased Slow Amount, good stuff.
Groping Eels: 30% more dmg, good stuff.
Death is life: 5% chance is pretty low, but there is some synergy with certain builds that could make it worthwhile.
Desperate Grasp: -2 seconds from cooldown. At higher level of play this might become useful.
Rain of Corpses: Lose your slow component, but does massive dmg in that area. The only problem is that WD's rather lack a replacement aoe slow.
Firebats
Firebats: Solid Frontal cone damage, but requires you to fight quite close.
Dire Bats: Lost the front cone, but gain a arge damage increase, and large range increase.
Vampire Bats: Max health and dmg output is unknown, thus making this skill an unknown.
Plague Bats: Slow dmg increases usually mean that you will rarely be able to build up to the max, as you need to remain mobile. Though there seems to be some builds that prefer mid range combat.
Hungry Bats: Great single target dmg with homing capability.
Cloud of Bats: Bats spawn on you, so you have to be close to danger to do similar dmg....
Haunt
Haunt: Dot that does a ton of single target dmg, its just too bad the runes seem so mediocre.
Consuming Spirit: Gain 155 life per second, but what is max health and dmg output of mobs? It also doesn't scale, maybe OP when leveling?
Resentful Spirit: 0% dmg for 0 seconds....
Lingering Spirit: If there is no target, the spirit lingers for 10 seconds. What are the odds I will be in the same area after the mobs die fighting? Seem pretty slim. Also, I don't believe the duration resets when it jumps.
Grasping Spirit: 30% slow. Great in PvP.
Draining Spirit: You gain about as much mana as it costs, but its not all that expensive.
Locust Swarm
Locust Swarm: Does massive amounts of dmg, and jumps to multiple targets, but cost a shitload of mana.
Pestilence: Jumps twice instead of once, thus exponentially increasing the speed at which they spread on large groups.
Devouring Swarm: Could potentially offset the huge cost, but only on medium sized groups.
Cloud of Insects: They swarm takes time to spread, effectively giving you sufficient time to kill the guys in the front. By the time you get to the guys in the back the likely haven't been diseased very long. Increasing the duration in most situations would seem to accomplish littel to nothing.
Diseased Swarm: They have to be killed by the locust to spawn the cloud, and the cloud doesn't do all that much dmg.
Searing Locusts: 30% dmg increase, good stuff.
Summon Zombie Dogs
Zombie Dogs: Good little tanks.
Rabid Dogs: Dots don't stack, and the dmg increase is pathetic anyways.
Final Gift: They can't possibly die often enough for this to be terribly useful.
Life Link: Not bad for PvP, but inferior to leeching beasts for PvM.
Burning Dogs: 2% dmg, enough said.
Leeching Beasts: They don't hit hard, but it helps to keep them and you alive. They are solely tanks after the changes, and this is the only rune that reflects that.
Horrify
Horrify: Mass AoE CC, but it causes the mobs to run in all directions, this eliminating capabilities with AoE.
Phobia: +2 seconds on fear. Maybe useful on higher levels.
Stalker: +20% increased run speed. meh. You would likely get further away with the extra 2 seconds, but it would help you get away assuming some mobs didn't get feared.
Face of Death: Doubles the diameter, making it fear almost everything.
Frightening Aspect: 100% armor after casting for 8 seconds. Seens lackluster compared to the other defensive options. The mobs should be feared for 4 seconds + run time equates to this being near useless.
Ruthless Terror: Terrible. This spell is situational in iteslf and has a CD, thus the average mana gain is nothing extraordinary.
Spirit Walk
Spirit Walk: Why would this really ever be useful? And in the rare situations it would be useful, other defensive skills would be better.
Jaunt: Increases the duration to 50%.
Honored Guest: Regen 30% of mana
Umbral Shock: 85% dmg after spirit walk ends...Aren't you supposed to be putting range between you and them? Isn't that the point?
Severance: 100% weapon dmg when you run through enemies. Meh, how often would you want to run through mobs?
Healing Journey: Regen 14% of max life.
Hex
Hex: Fetish that periodically CC's, and causes them to take more dmg.
Hedge Magic: Periodically heals allies for 1861. Is this a lot? Does it heal pets over you?
Jinx: Increases the dmg chickens take to 20%. Not bad, assuming they can chicken champions.
Angry Chicken: So the enemy turns into a chicken and has a chance to die?
Painful Transformation: 12% dmg ensures this can't be good, no matter how long they stay as chickens.
Unstable Form: Hexed enemies explode when they die. This is decent considering they take more dmg than the other mobs around.
Soul Harvest
Soul Harvest: Great dmg buff, however, its tricky to apply and diminishes in value with gear.
Swallow Your Soul: Just bad. The buff last 30 seconds, and an extra tad of mana over that time frame is not even remotely worth it.
Siphon: 2171 life per target...Sounds good, but how much is that compared to your max?
Langush: 60% slow added to harvested enemies. Might make the buff less dangerous to apply, but nothing amazing.
Soul to Waste: Doubles the duration, thus you need to use it far less. The problem is a lot of your time is actually spent running between areas, so the added duration doesn't do a heck of a lot.
Vengeful Spirit: 70% wpn dmg. Not a lot of dmg, but not bad considering you get it for buffing yourself.
Sacrifice
Sacrifice: Large dmg, but you lose your tanky dogs.
Black Blood: Huge slow in a large area, and for a long duration.
Next of Kin: Only really useful for a build built around sacrifice.
Pride: Gain Gain 300 mana per dog. Almost certainly restores almost all your mana.
For the Master: 6200 Life per dog. Likely nearly a full heal.
Provoke the Pack: 5% dmg boost per dog for 30 seconds is fair. Doesn't seem worth it to lose your pets for a damage buff.
Mass Confusion
Mass Confusion: Forces your enemy to fight themselves for 12 seconds. 1 min CD
Unstable Realm: -15 Sec from CD. Pretty good.
Devolutiong: Not bad, particularly useful for a sacrifice build.
Mass Hysteria: More CC, good.
Paranoia: +20% dmg
Mass Hallucination: 22% wpn dmg per second spirit rampages, but how big/fast is it.
Zombie Charger
Zombie Charger:
Leprous Zombie: How long does the vapor stay, regardless it seems to kinda suck.
Undeath: Potentially triples the range. Not bad.
Wave of Zombies: 3* 72 = 216% Hardly even a dmg increse & hard to aim.
Explosive Beasts: 236% dmg explosive + AoE + fast + longer range
Zombies Bears: Huge dmg boost, but short range.
Spirit Barrage
Spirit Barrage: Rather expensive, but not much bang for the buck.
The Spirit is Wiling: Reduces mana cost by almost half, but the dmg isn't much better than splinters, so why even bother?
Well of Souls: Not bad, extra 90% wpn dmg to random targets.
Phantasm: Mediocre AoE DoT.
Phlebotomize: Good amount of lifesteal.
Manitou: Not bad, passive dmg is good.
Acid Cloud
Acid Cloud: Huge Cost, large area, mediocre dmg.
Acid Rain: Larger Area.
Lob Blob Bomb: Slightly more DoT dmg
Slow Burn: Slightly more DoT dmg
Kiss of Death: Need to be in close to do basically the same dmg....maybe even in a smaller area.
Corpse Bomb: More dmg, and its instant.
Wall of Zombies
Wall of Zombies: Good defensive skill, with good dmg, but rather long CD now.
Barricade: Double the size, double the protection.
Unrelenting Grip: Great slow component.
Creepers: Does it make holes in the wall? Are they invincible pets for 5 seconds? Sounds good.
Pile On: Lose all the defense, but huge dmg CD.
Dead Rush: So zombie chargers that split up and go in all directions?
Gargantuan
Gargantuan: Awesome tank pet.
Humongoid: Cleave would be a huge dmg increase on average.
Relentless Giant: Huge Increase in his power when you need him the most.
Wrathful Protector: Absolutely terrible. Turn your best Pet into a bad dps CD.
Big Stinker: Decent dmg, would work well with bad medicine.
Bruiser: Periodically stuns, but how often?
Big Bad Voodoo
Big Bad Voodoo: 20% Atk and movement speed boost for whole group. Primarily for group play.
Jungle Drums: +10 second duration
Rain Dance: Huge mana regen.
Slam Dance: 30% dmg increase
Ghost Trance: 5% heal per second
Boogie Man: Good for spawing dogs for sacrifice build or on boss fight.
Fetish Army
Fetish Army: Summon 5 annoying fetishes. 20% wpn dmg each for 20 seconds. 2000% wpn dmg assuming they don't die.
Fetish Ambush: 250% wpn dmg to nearby enemies when they are summoned. Sounds good, but do you want to be surrounded by mobs in your face? Sounds like a bad game plan to me.
Devoted following: -30 second CD. Ok, but it needs to be worth a skill slot for me to care.
Legion of Daggers: Summons 8 feishes. Potential 3200% wpn dmg.
Tiki Torches: Summons 2 fetishes that AoE. Meh, the legion of daggers yields 60% more, this is only 30%. Chances they AoE enough to merit the loss in #s and dmg seems slim.
Head Hunters: Summons 2 ranged fetishs. Meh, the melee ones seem pretty quick.
Epicurus