I do not want to play a wizard basically don't like nuke concept. I am more of a DOT damage kind of player. I have made a few builds all having good control and defense with single target and multi target dps. My only question is at higher difficulties do you think a WD will have to have atleast one summon or will a properly built non summon be not only viable but strong.
You will never be as strong as a WD with pets, but it might be playable.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"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?"
Tartarus (btw he's my favorite Cryx solo, especially with e-Gaspy), I too am incredibly interested to see how viable non pet builds are for the WD. My main in WoW was an Affliction Warlock and it definitely played to my gaming preferences. The strength of DoT's is they don't require us to stand and cast; we can cast them and kite/move away/CC while everything gets burned down.
My opinion is that WD's will utilize their pets at minor damage dealers that occupy mobs while you cast your spells. WD build's that don't use pets will dig into the vast amount of utility CC spells and opt to rely on those in place of summons. I think of pets more as CC that deal some damage more than I would rely on them for straight damage, but that's just me.
From what you describe the main departure is my use of Well of Souls as a nuke spell, but it just looks too interesting to pass up. Resentful Spirit is the obvious DoT, thought I might also play around with Searing Locusts once that becomes an option and go for a straight DoT build. What inspired me to make this build in the first place was Mass Confusion. After seeing the post about how much health/damage Inferno mobs have it seems like a no brainer for the WD and has the potential to increase our damage to epic levels. GoTD as a low CD slow, Horrify to send mobs scrambling, and Spirit Walk for getting out of trouble. I'm going to try it as a solo/coop hybrid to see how it performs, and with how Gruesome Feast is worded we might also get the buff if we're in range when our Barb/Monk friends suck up an orb. Unlike a lot of other builds I see that use Vision Quest, they often take high CD utility to keep the regen bonus. I don't personally agree with this tactic and prefer lower CD spells that I can cast multiple times in an encounter over 2 minutes on Fetish Army and Big Bad Voodoo (almost requiring Grave Injustice which works directly against Vision Quest).
The other option I'm toying with into is a poison DoT synergy build to gain a respectable 40% Damage Reduction (this could be clutch in Inferno). The support uses Dogs as another source of poison/CC, Spirit Walk as our 'Uh Oh' button, and Mass Confuse as a CC/buff option. What we loose out with Gruesome Feast we gain through survivability. My main concern with this build is the amount of mana our main damage spells are using.
Do you have links that could give us a better sense of what you're thinking for non-pet builds?
You will never be as strong as a WD with pets, but it might be playable.
We don't know that for certain yet. All we know for certain is that in-house Blizzard's testers found it more difficult to play without pets. Some Blizzard testers who have contributed to this comment have less than a hundred hours total in playing the game. Since Feburary, I've done over a couple hundred hours of beta testing. I have no experience in the later difficulty levels, but I do know that I spent a lot of time with the Witch Doctor, and playing petless always felt different between most patches and you had to adjust. We have no information to confirm or deny how much experience the people who came to the conclusion who played petless, and found the game harder, had with the Witch Doctor class before making their statements.
For all we know the statement and data was gathered from people in-house that are in truth absolutely horrible with the Witch Doctor class, or they are in fact just plainly doing it wrong. We won't know until later next week, after people have beat normal and start moving into the more difficult levels.
We know that the Witch Doctor class was designed that one (of many) well supported playstyle and intent was to be pet/summoner centric. That is all we really know at the moment.
The necro had more than just a summoner build in D2 that was successful and the necro was a favorite of even Blizz, and the Witch Doctor is their attempt of making a spiritual successor of the necro, I doubt they'll make pet/summoner builds the ONLY viable playstyle.
I have high hopes that petless builds will be viable, even if they are more challenging to play.
And as for the Blizzard employees, just because they may not be as good as us doesn't mean that we can COMPLETELY discount their opinions. The fact of the matter is that they have played Inferno difficulty and we have not. No matter how good/bad they are, their opinion on endgame build viability is the most authoritative until we can prove otherwise once we get our own hands on the game.
I'm not saying that we discount, discredit or ignore their opinions. I'm saying that their opinions are irrelevant until more data is gathered. They've offered a data point, that, 'At higher difficulties of the game, playing a witch doctor without pets is more difficult'. Until we have more data, more people playing, which will also give context to the Blizzard opinion, we are truly unable to make any real sense out of the viability of any build.
For instance, they've never actually linked or stated what builds they've used (to my knowledge) in their 'pet usage' Witch Doctor build (for obviously good reasons, if they state that they played with that build, then many people are going to flock to it without thinking, making it a cookie cutter build), to them, simply having corpse spiders is enough to constitute a 'pet build'. Often when people hear 'pet' tossed in with builds for the Witch Doctor they assume something that includes at least mongrels or the gargantuan along with a few other summons. That may totally not be the case.
My intent though is not towards any kind of bashing or advocating a certain way people should be playing. I'm simply aiming towards quite the opposite in fact, I'm simply trying to put forth the reasons why, since we haven't had full access to the game to properly gather data and context, shouldn't be throwing any themed builds out the window as barely playable but not 'viable' or anything in that train of thought.
The problem with horrify is that things run off in random directions, so if you do an AOE burst after that, it's gonna suck. And, as they run back into the fight, it might be possible they bring newly aggroed friends with them.
In practice, who knows. But horrify seems like an awfully dicey spell to be casting.
problem is no spell is going to be better than a pet. a pet gives you constant defense and damage that no timered spell that the WD has can match.
you can't cast 3-6 spells at the exact same time. but, you can cast a spell and have a bunch of pets defending/attacking at the same time. no other WD spell can come close to that kind of benefit.
i'm sure it's possible to play without pets, but it's never going to be better
Unbreakable Grasp + Acid Rain should offer lots of good damage versus anything moving towards you.
Splinters + Haunt can be used to take down individual targets quickly. Haunt in particular can be used to take out weak range attacking targets, as well as providing damage on the move.
Consuming Spirit offers one way to regen health outside of health globes and potions.
Mass Confusion can be used on Rare or really big packs of enemies, and a 45 second cooldown is VERY short.
Horrify you can use in case you get cornered or something goes horribly wrong and you need to get more distance between you and other things. Phobia buys you more time on top of that.
You won't stay in one spot if you wanted a build like this to work, you'd always be moving, always kiting, thus making it very hard for anything but teleporting capable mobs to catch up to you. In those cases you still have haunt + horrify, and you should have already been using mass hysteria on them to begin with.
It'll be an extremely active playstyle, and you have to be very aware of what's going on during combat. You don't have the health shields pets and summons can offer. Instead you have a different toolkit. You have a greater damage potential. Powerful close ranged aoe attacks aren't as much of a concern for you (I'm looking at you Leoric cleaves!) since you want to avoid those.
I wouldn't call making something like this work in comparison to any build that uses a summon or pet, 'harder' I'd call it different.
Also remember, most of the pets and summons have cooldowns as well, and if they die for any reason, be it stupid or for purpose, they can't come back and offer any further utility until the cooldown is over. Proper management of your pets/summons to get the most out of them is something that still has to be considered. Maybe they won't get one shot in Inferno, that doesn't mean they won't get two or three shot. That doesn't mean that some rare or elite pack may kill them off when they go running off ahead, and when you finally reach the fight, all three dogs are starting to look far worse for wear.
Fact remains that we do not know yet.
To illustrate the point the best:
We have all grown up on hamburgers and french fries. Recently we have been told that out in the big wide world there exists things other than hamburgers and french fries. There are foods that are long and stringy, but are made out of the same things that buns can be made out of. These long stringy things can be covered in a sauce made out of the same things as ketchup and with onions chopped up in them. Then hamburger patties that are rolled up into balls are then added into the mix. From a nutritional standpoint, it contains many of the same things that we're used to with hamburgers, but it's in an entirely different form, something we haven't tried yet. We are incapable of judging if it's good or bad, and even if someone comes over and tells us that they liked this variation of the exact same ingredients less than hamburgers, their opinion doesn't constitute as an irrefutable fact. That is how they felt towards the meal, that doesn't make the meal inherently flawed. (I was thinking of taking the ingredients used to make a hamburger and then compare them to other dishes from various different cultures, but after doing just Italian I quickly realized that I could write a twenty page essay on this matter. By the way, for those who didn't quite get it, I was comparing hamburgers to spaghetti and meatballs, with a tomato and onion marinara.)
I'm not saying that we discount, discredit or ignore their opinions. I'm saying that their opinions are irrelevant until more data is gathered. They've offered a data point, that, 'At higher difficulties of the game, playing a witch doctor without pets is more difficult'. Until we have more data, more people playing, which will also give context to the Blizzard opinion, we are truly unable to make any real sense out of the viability of any build.
For instance, they've never actually linked or stated what builds they've used (to my knowledge) in their 'pet usage' Witch Doctor build (for obviously good reasons, if they state that they played with that build, then many people are going to flock to it without thinking, making it a cookie cutter build), to them, simply having corpse spiders is enough to constitute a 'pet build'. Often when people hear 'pet' tossed in with builds for the Witch Doctor they assume something that includes at least mongrels or the gargantuan along with a few other summons. That may totally not be the case.
My intent though is not towards any kind of bashing or advocating a certain way people should be playing. I'm simply aiming towards quite the opposite in fact, I'm simply trying to put forth the reasons why, since we haven't had full access to the game to properly gather data and context, shouldn't be throwing any themed builds out the window as barely playable but not 'viable' or anything in that train of thought.
I don't think I was talking about what you seem to think I was talking about. I'm not disagreeing with you. Like I said, I don't doubt that there'll be Inferno-viable petless builds. All I'm saying is that Blizzard employees have said that playing petless is more challenging - of course it's impossible to use what Blizzard has said to apply to how successful a specific petless build will be.
Corpse Spiders- Leaping Spiders can lob over front lines to target things. granted will auto target but if placed right will hit the target area you want
Grasp of the dead - Unbreakable grasp to keep things at bay longer
Locust Swarm - Searing Locust to help burn that summoner in the back or single target dps
Mass confusion - Paranoa to get damge buff and reduce hostile targets at beginning of fight
Wall of zombie - barricade used as oh crap button to escape
Fire bats - dire bats as a mana dump and long range dps
Obviously this is all theory as i have never played the beta and I know i will need elective mode on. I know this wont be ideal and will get seriously reworked as I level and try to find out what works and what doesnt. I am not completely against summons but using an ability where I am only gettting a summon seems like I will get more utility out of other things. Maybe getting dogs on the map through circle of life or through the other rune from mass confusion will have to see while I am playing. If it doesnt work I guess I will slowly start adding summons until I can play with the least amount possible.
You will never be as strong as a WD with pets, but it might be playable.
We don't know that for certain yet. All we know for certain is that in-house Blizzard's testers found it more difficult to play without pets. Some Blizzard testers who have contributed to this comment have less than a hundred hours total in playing the game. Since Feburary, I've done over a couple hundred hours of beta testing. I have no experience in the later difficulty levels, but I do know that I spent a lot of time with the Witch Doctor, and playing petless always felt different between most patches and you had to adjust. We have no information to confirm or deny how much experience the people who came to the conclusion who played petless, and found the game harder, had with the Witch Doctor class before making their statements.
For all we know the statement and data was gathered from people in-house that are in truth absolutely horrible with the Witch Doctor class, or they are in fact just plainly doing it wrong. We won't know until later next week, after people have beat normal and start moving into the more difficult levels.
We know that the Witch Doctor class was designed that one (of many) well supported playstyle and intent was to be pet/summoner centric. That is all we really know at the moment.
The necro had more than just a summoner build in D2 that was successful and the necro was a favorite of even Blizz, and the Witch Doctor is their attempt of making a spiritual successor of the necro, I doubt they'll make pet/summoner builds the ONLY viable playstyle.
yes we do know that for certain. without a doubt. stop trolling. a petless WD may be "VIABLE" but it will never beat a WD with pets in inferno. unless the other WD is a moron/has retarded skills
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"once the pretty hardcore gamers we had testing inferno found it fairly difficult, we then we doubled it" -trolololol jay wilson
With all due respect - I don't think pets are the end-all be-all solution. I don't think they vastly out-weigh the other options either.
I obviously don't feel like putting numbers or math into this post right now (mostly because I'm not really trying to discredit you, just throwing in my opinion)
But..
Pets will be nice and everything...but I see them as being a waste if you're not going to go all-in or at least dedicate part of your build for them.
There are other spells like Mass Confusion and Zombie Wall that you can use...Obviously they won't have constant up-time like pets (assuming said pets haven't been slain while the skill is on CD)..
but...I think it's just play-style more than anything. If you look at the numbers...the pets really only add up to like 70% weapon damage. You have to count for their movement speed, their attack frames, where the enemies are, if they're alive or not, etc. There are a lot of factors going into the pets.
I'm just saying that you have to count all of the factors in and think about it..
I think you guys are just placing too much thought into the "if" statement of them being alive. There are other factors that can go against my opinion; such as how high the CC resist of Inferno mobs can go, mob behavior and skills (think of the Sand Leapers in A2 D2), etc.
That's why I'm not putting any numbers into it or anything. There are just a lot of factors that go into both sides of the equations and I think at the end of the day we'll see the ultimate truth when it comes to application once we have our grimy little paws on Inferno..
With all due respect - I don't think pets are the end-all be-all solution. I don't think they vastly out-weigh the other options either.
I obviously don't feel like putting numbers or math into this post right now (mostly because I'm not really trying to discredit you, just throwing in my opinion)
But..
Pets will be nice and everything...but I see them as being a waste if you're not going to go all-in or at least dedicate part of your build for them.
There are other spells like Mass Confusion and Zombie Wall that you can use...Obviously they won't have constant up-time like pets (assuming said pets haven't been slain while the skill is on CD)..
but...I think it's just play-style more than anything. If you look at the numbers...the pets really only add up to like 70% weapon damage. You have to count for their movement speed, their attack frames, where the enemies are, if they're alive or not, etc. There are a lot of factors going into the pets.
I'm just saying that you have to count all of the factors in and think about it..
I think you guys are just placing too much thought into the "if" statement of them being alive. There are other factors that can go against my opinion; such as how high the CC resist of Inferno mobs can go, mob behavior and skills (think of the Sand Leapers in A2 D2), etc.
That's why I'm not putting any numbers into it or anything. There are just a lot of factors that go into both sides of the equations and I think at the end of the day we'll see the ultimate truth when it comes to application once we have our grimy little paws on Inferno..
no offense but nice way to say aboslutely nothing. and no one is using pets for damage. they are meant to be TANKS, they might as well do no damage. the extra dmg isnt anything to count on. you just count on each one distracting 1 monster a piece at least which will be great with 4 dogs + garg. 5 inferno mobs distracted at all times during all fights will be amazing for you to lob your powerful ranged attacks without nearly as much panic if you had none.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"once the pretty hardcore gamers we had testing inferno found it fairly difficult, we then we doubled it" -trolololol jay wilson
no offense but nice way to say aboslutely nothing. and no one is using pets for damage. they are meant to be TANKS, they might as well do no damage. the extra dmg isnt anything to count on. you just count on each one distracting 1 monster a piece at least which will be great with 4 dogs + garg. 5 inferno mobs distracted at all times during all fights will be amazing for you to lob your powerful ranged attacks without nearly as much panic if you had none.
The dogs doing no damage would make them rather pointless. On-top of that you don't know the exact mechanics and numbers behind their scaling methods. They could be "okay" or they could be "great".
Knowing that they work is one thing; knowing how well they can work is another.
Your behavior really astounds me. If you really knew as much as you did you'd be a millionaire and writing dozens of books a year.
Am I disputing the facts about pets? No I never said that they won't win out. I just said that they're not the end-all be-all and that for all we know due to many factors we are not aware of (when it comes to the inner workings and numbers) - They could be placed close enough to other utility skills for the disparity to not really matter.
Also: What about the situations where you fight 20-40 monsters at once? Your situation only seems to account for 5 mobs.
no offense but nice way to say aboslutely nothing. and no one is using pets for damage. they are meant to be TANKS, they might as well do no damage. the extra dmg isnt anything to count on. you just count on each one distracting 1 monster a piece at least which will be great with 4 dogs + garg. 5 inferno mobs distracted at all times during all fights will be amazing for you to lob your powerful ranged attacks without nearly as much panic if you had none.
The dogs doing no damage would make them rather pointless. On-top of that you don't know the exact mechanics and numbers behind their scaling methods. They could be "okay" or they could be "great".
Knowing that they work is one thing; knowing how well they can work is another.
Your behavior really astounds me. If you really knew as much as you did you'd be a millionaire and writing dozens of books a year.
Am I disputing the facts about pets? No I never said that they won't win out. I just said that they're not the end-all be-all and that for all we know due to many factors we are not aware of (when it comes to the inner workings and numbers) - They could be placed close enough to other utility skills for the disparity to not really matter.
Also: What about the situations where you fight 20-40 monsters at once? Your situation only seems to account for 5 mobs.
20-40 monsters? the most monsters i ever saw in one cluster in the beta or in any video was like 11 (besides the jar of souls event). which i said the dogs will distract at LEAST 1 monster. and even if their okay they still are the end-all be-all for a SUMMONER class. . what is this rediculous need for people to argue against a classes main mechanics? lets make barbs and monks without spenders or argue that a ranged barb will be as effecient as a melee one. saying you want to make a melee WD/DH/wiz or ranged barb VIABLE is one thing but anyone saying that they can be equal is just being an embecile
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"once the pretty hardcore gamers we had testing inferno found it fairly difficult, we then we doubled it" -trolololol jay wilson
I have high hopes that petless builds will be viable, even if they are more challenging to play.
And as for the Blizzard employees, just because they may not be as good as us doesn't mean that we can COMPLETELY discount their opinions. The fact of the matter is that they have played Inferno difficulty and we have not. No matter how good/bad they are, their opinion on endgame build viability is the most authoritative until we can prove otherwise once we get our own hands on the game.
Ohh please, blizzard is worth billions. Do you seriously think the average player can compete with their professional game testers? No. If they say that the petless WD is much more difficult in higher difficulty, then it is. The game testers have played this game for like a year now. I am pretty sure they know WTF they are talking about.
Also, its pretty dang blatantly obvious that pets are by far the best defense in the game. Of course its going to be harder not using them.
Another issue is that its far more efficient using 4 skills, and having 2 mostly passive skills, than 6 active skills. You will play better by keeping it simple, and that's not even considering all the passive dmg you are getting.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"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?"
those last 2 spots? nothing is better than pets. you already have your best damage spells, and pets do *some* damage, so already they have a dps advantage over everything else that would be doing nothing most of the time. pets are 'always on' defense. no other spell matches that.
no matter what 4 spells you pick or what passives you choose, those 2 spots are for pets if you want the better build. i might play a petless WD at some point just for the fun of it, but i'm going to do so understanding it's significantly worse.
those last 2 spots? nothing is better than pets. you already have your best damage spells, and pets do *some* damage, so already they have a dps advantage over everything else that would be doing nothing most of the time. pets are 'always on' defense. no other spell matches that.
no matter what 4 spells you pick or what passives you choose, those 2 spots are for pets if you want the better build. i might play a petless WD at some point just for the fun of it, but i'm going to do so understanding it's significantly worse.
this this this and this again
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"once the pretty hardcore gamers we had testing inferno found it fairly difficult, we then we doubled it" -trolololol jay wilson
those last 2 spots? nothing is better than pets. you already have your best damage spells, and pets do *some* damage, so already they have a dps advantage over everything else that would be doing nothing most of the time. pets are 'always on' defense. no other spell matches that.
no matter what 4 spells you pick or what passives you choose, those 2 spots are for pets if you want the better build. i might play a petless WD at some point just for the fun of it, but i'm going to do so understanding it's significantly worse.
Are you trolling? I can agree to the point that a pet or several is good because it is constantly on and that's one or two less skills you have to worry about. The dogs just aren't that damaging, some here on this forum even called them useless. They are a good distraction but hardly more than that. The garg is on the other hand the better choice imo.
You can't just state that a build without pets is going to be weaker. It's all in the building of the build and the gear obviously. A WD with maybe 3 highly damaging skills and maybe 3 CC skills is going to be good imo.
He isn't trolling. I agree completely; those last 2 skill slots should be reserved for pets.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"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
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Epicurus
My opinion is that WD's will utilize their pets at minor damage dealers that occupy mobs while you cast your spells. WD build's that don't use pets will dig into the vast amount of utility CC spells and opt to rely on those in place of summons. I think of pets more as CC that deal some damage more than I would rely on them for straight damage, but that's just me.
This what I've been cooking up so far:
http://us.battle.net...ZjXU!WYU!ZZaYbc
From what you describe the main departure is my use of Well of Souls as a nuke spell, but it just looks too interesting to pass up. Resentful Spirit is the obvious DoT, thought I might also play around with Searing Locusts once that becomes an option and go for a straight DoT build. What inspired me to make this build in the first place was Mass Confusion. After seeing the post about how much health/damage Inferno mobs have it seems like a no brainer for the WD and has the potential to increase our damage to epic levels. GoTD as a low CD slow, Horrify to send mobs scrambling, and Spirit Walk for getting out of trouble. I'm going to try it as a solo/coop hybrid to see how it performs, and with how Gruesome Feast is worded we might also get the buff if we're in range when our Barb/Monk friends suck up an orb. Unlike a lot of other builds I see that use Vision Quest, they often take high CD utility to keep the regen bonus. I don't personally agree with this tactic and prefer lower CD spells that I can cast multiple times in an encounter over 2 minutes on Fetish Army and Big Bad Voodoo (almost requiring Grave Injustice which works directly against Vision Quest).
The other option I'm toying with into is a poison DoT synergy build to gain a respectable 40% Damage Reduction (this could be clutch in Inferno). The support uses Dogs as another source of poison/CC, Spirit Walk as our 'Uh Oh' button, and Mass Confuse as a CC/buff option. What we loose out with Gruesome Feast we gain through survivability. My main concern with this build is the amount of mana our main damage spells are using.
Do you have links that could give us a better sense of what you're thinking for non-pet builds?
We don't know that for certain yet. All we know for certain is that in-house Blizzard's testers found it more difficult to play without pets. Some Blizzard testers who have contributed to this comment have less than a hundred hours total in playing the game. Since Feburary, I've done over a couple hundred hours of beta testing. I have no experience in the later difficulty levels, but I do know that I spent a lot of time with the Witch Doctor, and playing petless always felt different between most patches and you had to adjust. We have no information to confirm or deny how much experience the people who came to the conclusion who played petless, and found the game harder, had with the Witch Doctor class before making their statements.
For all we know the statement and data was gathered from people in-house that are in truth absolutely horrible with the Witch Doctor class, or they are in fact just plainly doing it wrong. We won't know until later next week, after people have beat normal and start moving into the more difficult levels.
We know that the Witch Doctor class was designed that one (of many) well supported playstyle and intent was to be pet/summoner centric. That is all we really know at the moment.
The necro had more than just a summoner build in D2 that was successful and the necro was a favorite of even Blizz, and the Witch Doctor is their attempt of making a spiritual successor of the necro, I doubt they'll make pet/summoner builds the ONLY viable playstyle.
And as for the Blizzard employees, just because they may not be as good as us doesn't mean that we can COMPLETELY discount their opinions. The fact of the matter is that they have played Inferno difficulty and we have not. No matter how good/bad they are, their opinion on endgame build viability is the most authoritative until we can prove otherwise once we get our own hands on the game.
For instance, they've never actually linked or stated what builds they've used (to my knowledge) in their 'pet usage' Witch Doctor build (for obviously good reasons, if they state that they played with that build, then many people are going to flock to it without thinking, making it a cookie cutter build), to them, simply having corpse spiders is enough to constitute a 'pet build'. Often when people hear 'pet' tossed in with builds for the Witch Doctor they assume something that includes at least mongrels or the gargantuan along with a few other summons. That may totally not be the case.
My intent though is not towards any kind of bashing or advocating a certain way people should be playing. I'm simply aiming towards quite the opposite in fact, I'm simply trying to put forth the reasons why, since we haven't had full access to the game to properly gather data and context, shouldn't be throwing any themed builds out the window as barely playable but not 'viable' or anything in that train of thought.
In practice, who knows. But horrify seems like an awfully dicey spell to be casting.
you can't cast 3-6 spells at the exact same time. but, you can cast a spell and have a bunch of pets defending/attacking at the same time. no other WD spell can come close to that kind of benefit.
i'm sure it's possible to play without pets, but it's never going to be better
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#aZeXij!ZYf!aaaaaa
Unbreakable Grasp + Acid Rain should offer lots of good damage versus anything moving towards you.
Splinters + Haunt can be used to take down individual targets quickly. Haunt in particular can be used to take out weak range attacking targets, as well as providing damage on the move.
Consuming Spirit offers one way to regen health outside of health globes and potions.
Mass Confusion can be used on Rare or really big packs of enemies, and a 45 second cooldown is VERY short.
Horrify you can use in case you get cornered or something goes horribly wrong and you need to get more distance between you and other things. Phobia buys you more time on top of that.
You won't stay in one spot if you wanted a build like this to work, you'd always be moving, always kiting, thus making it very hard for anything but teleporting capable mobs to catch up to you. In those cases you still have haunt + horrify, and you should have already been using mass hysteria on them to begin with.
It'll be an extremely active playstyle, and you have to be very aware of what's going on during combat. You don't have the health shields pets and summons can offer. Instead you have a different toolkit. You have a greater damage potential. Powerful close ranged aoe attacks aren't as much of a concern for you (I'm looking at you Leoric cleaves!) since you want to avoid those.
I wouldn't call making something like this work in comparison to any build that uses a summon or pet, 'harder' I'd call it different.
Also remember, most of the pets and summons have cooldowns as well, and if they die for any reason, be it stupid or for purpose, they can't come back and offer any further utility until the cooldown is over. Proper management of your pets/summons to get the most out of them is something that still has to be considered. Maybe they won't get one shot in Inferno, that doesn't mean they won't get two or three shot. That doesn't mean that some rare or elite pack may kill them off when they go running off ahead, and when you finally reach the fight, all three dogs are starting to look far worse for wear.
Fact remains that we do not know yet.
To illustrate the point the best:
We have all grown up on hamburgers and french fries. Recently we have been told that out in the big wide world there exists things other than hamburgers and french fries. There are foods that are long and stringy, but are made out of the same things that buns can be made out of. These long stringy things can be covered in a sauce made out of the same things as ketchup and with onions chopped up in them. Then hamburger patties that are rolled up into balls are then added into the mix. From a nutritional standpoint, it contains many of the same things that we're used to with hamburgers, but it's in an entirely different form, something we haven't tried yet. We are incapable of judging if it's good or bad, and even if someone comes over and tells us that they liked this variation of the exact same ingredients less than hamburgers, their opinion doesn't constitute as an irrefutable fact. That is how they felt towards the meal, that doesn't make the meal inherently flawed. (I was thinking of taking the ingredients used to make a hamburger and then compare them to other dishes from various different cultures, but after doing just Italian I quickly realized that I could write a twenty page essay on this matter. By the way, for those who didn't quite get it, I was comparing hamburgers to spaghetti and meatballs, with a tomato and onion marinara.)
I don't think I was talking about what you seem to think I was talking about. I'm not disagreeing with you. Like I said, I don't doubt that there'll be Inferno-viable petless builds. All I'm saying is that Blizzard employees have said that playing petless is more challenging - of course it's impossible to use what Blizzard has said to apply to how successful a specific petless build will be.
Corpse Spiders- Leaping Spiders can lob over front lines to target things. granted will auto target but if placed right will hit the target area you want
Grasp of the dead - Unbreakable grasp to keep things at bay longer
Locust Swarm - Searing Locust to help burn that summoner in the back or single target dps
Mass confusion - Paranoa to get damge buff and reduce hostile targets at beginning of fight
Wall of zombie - barricade used as oh crap button to escape
Fire bats - dire bats as a mana dump and long range dps
Obviously this is all theory as i have never played the beta and I know i will need elective mode on. I know this wont be ideal and will get seriously reworked as I level and try to find out what works and what doesnt. I am not completely against summons but using an ability where I am only gettting a summon seems like I will get more utility out of other things. Maybe getting dogs on the map through circle of life or through the other rune from mass confusion will have to see while I am playing. If it doesnt work I guess I will slowly start adding summons until I can play with the least amount possible.
yes we do know that for certain. without a doubt. stop trolling. a petless WD may be "VIABLE" but it will never beat a WD with pets in inferno. unless the other WD is a moron/has retarded skills
I obviously don't feel like putting numbers or math into this post right now (mostly because I'm not really trying to discredit you, just throwing in my opinion)
But..
Pets will be nice and everything...but I see them as being a waste if you're not going to go all-in or at least dedicate part of your build for them.
There are other spells like Mass Confusion and Zombie Wall that you can use...Obviously they won't have constant up-time like pets (assuming said pets haven't been slain while the skill is on CD)..
but...I think it's just play-style more than anything. If you look at the numbers...the pets really only add up to like 70% weapon damage. You have to count for their movement speed, their attack frames, where the enemies are, if they're alive or not, etc. There are a lot of factors going into the pets.
I'm just saying that you have to count all of the factors in and think about it..
I think you guys are just placing too much thought into the "if" statement of them being alive. There are other factors that can go against my opinion; such as how high the CC resist of Inferno mobs can go, mob behavior and skills (think of the Sand Leapers in A2 D2), etc.
That's why I'm not putting any numbers into it or anything. There are just a lot of factors that go into both sides of the equations and I think at the end of the day we'll see the ultimate truth when it comes to application once we have our grimy little paws on Inferno..
no offense but nice way to say aboslutely nothing. and no one is using pets for damage. they are meant to be TANKS, they might as well do no damage. the extra dmg isnt anything to count on. you just count on each one distracting 1 monster a piece at least which will be great with 4 dogs + garg. 5 inferno mobs distracted at all times during all fights will be amazing for you to lob your powerful ranged attacks without nearly as much panic if you had none.
The dogs doing no damage would make them rather pointless. On-top of that you don't know the exact mechanics and numbers behind their scaling methods. They could be "okay" or they could be "great".
Knowing that they work is one thing; knowing how well they can work is another.
Your behavior really astounds me. If you really knew as much as you did you'd be a millionaire and writing dozens of books a year.
Am I disputing the facts about pets? No I never said that they won't win out. I just said that they're not the end-all be-all and that for all we know due to many factors we are not aware of (when it comes to the inner workings and numbers) - They could be placed close enough to other utility skills for the disparity to not really matter.
Also: What about the situations where you fight 20-40 monsters at once? Your situation only seems to account for 5 mobs.
20-40 monsters? the most monsters i ever saw in one cluster in the beta or in any video was like 11 (besides the jar of souls event). which i said the dogs will distract at LEAST 1 monster. and even if their okay they still are the end-all be-all for a SUMMONER class. . what is this rediculous need for people to argue against a classes main mechanics? lets make barbs and monks without spenders or argue that a ranged barb will be as effecient as a melee one. saying you want to make a melee WD/DH/wiz or ranged barb VIABLE is one thing but anyone saying that they can be equal is just being an embecile
Ohh please, blizzard is worth billions. Do you seriously think the average player can compete with their professional game testers? No. If they say that the petless WD is much more difficult in higher difficulty, then it is. The game testers have played this game for like a year now. I am pretty sure they know WTF they are talking about.
Also, its pretty dang blatantly obvious that pets are by far the best defense in the game. Of course its going to be harder not using them.
Another issue is that its far more efficient using 4 skills, and having 2 mostly passive skills, than 6 active skills. You will play better by keeping it simple, and that's not even considering all the passive dmg you are getting.
Epicurus
those last 2 spots? nothing is better than pets. you already have your best damage spells, and pets do *some* damage, so already they have a dps advantage over everything else that would be doing nothing most of the time. pets are 'always on' defense. no other spell matches that.
no matter what 4 spells you pick or what passives you choose, those 2 spots are for pets if you want the better build. i might play a petless WD at some point just for the fun of it, but i'm going to do so understanding it's significantly worse.
this this this and this again
He isn't trolling. I agree completely; those last 2 skill slots should be reserved for pets.
Epicurus