I've been toying around with this build in general after it was initially posted.
First I took the OPs approach and stacked very high crit modifiers both crit chance and critical damage where ever I could without a huge hit to int. The build was very fun with direbats and absolutely hilarious with Zombie wall (Pile On).
My character sheet (estimated):
30-33k damage
30% crit
209% crit damage
Direbats were critting for 150K+ virtually. The really fun thing though was Pile On it was criting for 500K and I saw as high as 750K. This skill alone totally obliterated boss packs (minus reflect damage as it would one shot me).
The problem with the build however is it sacrificed almost all my ias. My two handed weapon was staple to getting such a high crit modifier but it was slow and I was a sitting duck for range mobs. This became a huge issue for where I'm farming now... Siegebreaker.
I decided to swap out the (1k dps) two hander with over 100% crit bonus to a blue 1k dps one hander with a 300ish dmg offhand. The result is less then stunning crits but it allows me to control space better leading me to survive easier. Right now I'm running with the cookie cutter splinter build with Direbats instead of splinters and Vision Quest. The build is very good for farming. Some stated having issues over splinters, but I think splinters sucks because of it's single target nature. Face it minibosses are tough no matter your spec but direbats let me blow up entire rooms of guys almost instantly something that would take forever on a splinters build. Just last night I had a 56 kill streak on the bridge after a few casts.
Does the build have a downside? Yes your skill is by no means spammable like splinters and to get vision quest going requires skills on cooldown, but once you get to act3 or 4 you will be constantly having your utility skills on cooldown with spirit walk as backup. I love the build for farming.
Why do I not see WD using Locust Swarm? I am only in Hell Act III so things may change in Inferno but I absolutely LOVE Locust Swarm.
It's usable and actually fairly good once you get used to using it. The problem with it isn't the range it's and the DoT nature of damage. I could cast one firebat and it does immediate damage to tons of mobs or I could cast Swarm and pray it jumps to additional mobs. It's a clunky spell on how it jumps that makes it frustrating to use. I'd rather use zombie wall. It's damage in AOE is actually really good and it has the bonus of holding mobs for me to direbat them more.
This said I've seen doctors using swarm in inferno. It's definitely not a unused skill it just isn't for me. When I cast a spell I need instant results not 8 seconds of results because the longer mobs are alive the longer I'm at risk of getting 1 shot.
I've done a few seigebreaker (act3) runs with a mage friend of mine with about the same level of gear. I won't say no problem to that, but it was mostly insane spearthrower elites that caused the problems
I have a similar build stat-wise with 39,5k DPS and 38,5% crit chance, but my crit damage is 195%. I use ceremonial knife + mojo and I have a high attack speed (1.95 currently) There is no way I can beat the elites in Act 3 even if I'm duoing with someone.
Personally I still have trouble with some of the elites in Act 2. I consider kiting a long time to be a problem as well, because I can clear 3 dungeons with 5-8 elites and butcher + warden in Act 1 in 10-15 minutes. Even though I can clear Act 2 bosses with 5 stacks of nephalem valor, I prefer doing butcher runs because they are more profitable when considering the time/reward-ratio.
Either way, the crit-builds are very effective for WDs. I prefer one-hander + mojo, because you can get +crit chance from the mojo and you cast faster.
Earlier today we were hot-knifing inferno act 3 elites. I was using Slam Dance in place of Hex and since both that and Archon are a 120 second cooldown, coordinating both Slam Dance and Archon with walls was proving easy enough. Wall + Slam + Archon was proving really effective.
I think a big part of the inferno problem is that people haven't been viewing the party as a single unit. This is also how we farm inferno ponies, but we have two monks as well.
I greatly appreciate this information you're posting. I was amped before release on WD - played Necro in D2 for ever... usually gravitate toward Necro classes in games),
I just felt... underpowered around 35~ (I know, a bit early) and just couldn't fall in love with the class. I switched to Monk and haven't looked back since.
Until now.
This really interests me and I have been feeling a bit eager to break away from Monk-only D3 time. This seems like a great opportunity!
Any chance of getting a gear post from each of you?
I find that the builds are a great starting point, for sure. Still, I think I personally would benefit from a bit more guidance based on your gearing choices. I found that helped immensely when switching to Monk.
It'll take a bit of doing, but I hope you consider it! Thank you!!! I am going to try this out tonight.
As far as my gear progression with the build, I toyed with getting some attack speed, mostly because the cast animation for zombie wall could be a bit rough, but went back and forth on the value. I also abandoned a bunch of my vit / resistances for more int, just to see what kind of a damage increase it would net, but the results were mediocre at best.
I'm currently sitting on:
38K damage
37% crit
244% crit damage
1.o attacks per second
18K life / ~250 all resist / 3K armor
You can gear for whatever you want / can afford really, but shooting for at least 33% crit is nice, just because it "guarantees" at least one of your splinters darts will crit.
That said I have temporarily shelved my witch doctor until 1.03, possibly longer. I really don't like farming seigebreaker. I think other classes have an easier time of it, and might be "death zerging" a little less than WD is forced to, but I basically don't enjoy fighting monsters that I can't afford to have on the screen (kiting).
Even with monster damage being fixed though, WD is in a very rough spot when it comes to our resource. This build focuses on the least expensive of our "high mana cost / high damage" spells, and is still considered by most to just be wildly inefficient.
After some of the replies pointed to other classes doing "way more damage", I went over to the skill calculators and realized that their weapon damage %modifiers are actually much lower than our WD nuke abilities. Example: the demon hunter staple Nether Tentacles hits for 155% weapon damage. You can see blizzards design intent - dire bats does much higher %based damage so they made it cost much more of our resource.
The imbalance begins when you realize a demon hunter can run hatred completely dry, and still have a full pool of discipline ready to kite / survive. WD doesn't have this option. Our only true options within our passives to combat this shortcoming are spiritual attunement, and vision quest. Attunement is nice, but not really strong enough on it's own, especially since our big damage increase passive amplifies our mana problems (PtV). We're left with vision quest, which feels unnecessarily clunkly. I'm going to cut my ramblings short and just say mana is a huge problem. It's rooted in bad passives, and is the reason the agreed upon "best build" revolves around spamming a primary.
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Because it requires melee range and in Acts 3/4 of Inferno you get 1 shot by almost everything.
First I took the OPs approach and stacked very high crit modifiers both crit chance and critical damage where ever I could without a huge hit to int. The build was very fun with direbats and absolutely hilarious with Zombie wall (Pile On).
My character sheet (estimated):
30-33k damage
30% crit
209% crit damage
Direbats were critting for 150K+ virtually. The really fun thing though was Pile On it was criting for 500K and I saw as high as 750K. This skill alone totally obliterated boss packs (minus reflect damage as it would one shot me).
The problem with the build however is it sacrificed almost all my ias. My two handed weapon was staple to getting such a high crit modifier but it was slow and I was a sitting duck for range mobs. This became a huge issue for where I'm farming now... Siegebreaker.
I decided to swap out the (1k dps) two hander with over 100% crit bonus to a blue 1k dps one hander with a 300ish dmg offhand. The result is less then stunning crits but it allows me to control space better leading me to survive easier. Right now I'm running with the cookie cutter splinter build with Direbats instead of splinters and Vision Quest. The build is very good for farming. Some stated having issues over splinters, but I think splinters sucks because of it's single target nature. Face it minibosses are tough no matter your spec but direbats let me blow up entire rooms of guys almost instantly something that would take forever on a splinters build. Just last night I had a 56 kill streak on the bridge after a few casts.
Does the build have a downside? Yes your skill is by no means spammable like splinters and to get vision quest going requires skills on cooldown, but once you get to act3 or 4 you will be constantly having your utility skills on cooldown with spirit walk as backup. I love the build for farming.
It's usable and actually fairly good once you get used to using it. The problem with it isn't the range it's and the DoT nature of damage. I could cast one firebat and it does immediate damage to tons of mobs or I could cast Swarm and pray it jumps to additional mobs. It's a clunky spell on how it jumps that makes it frustrating to use. I'd rather use zombie wall. It's damage in AOE is actually really good and it has the bonus of holding mobs for me to direbat them more.
This said I've seen doctors using swarm in inferno. It's definitely not a unused skill it just isn't for me. When I cast a spell I need instant results not 8 seconds of results because the longer mobs are alive the longer I'm at risk of getting 1 shot.
I think a big part of the inferno problem is that people haven't been viewing the party as a single unit. This is also how we farm inferno ponies, but we have two monks as well.
I greatly appreciate this information you're posting. I was amped before release on WD - played Necro in D2 for ever... usually gravitate toward Necro classes in games),
I just felt... underpowered around 35~ (I know, a bit early) and just couldn't fall in love with the class. I switched to Monk and haven't looked back since.
Until now.
This really interests me and I have been feeling a bit eager to break away from Monk-only D3 time. This seems like a great opportunity!
Any chance of getting a gear post from each of you?
I find that the builds are a great starting point, for sure. Still, I think I personally would benefit from a bit more guidance based on your gearing choices. I found that helped immensely when switching to Monk.
It'll take a bit of doing, but I hope you consider it! Thank you!!! I am going to try this out tonight.
I'm currently sitting on:
38K damage
37% crit
244% crit damage
1.o attacks per second
18K life / ~250 all resist / 3K armor
You can gear for whatever you want / can afford really, but shooting for at least 33% crit is nice, just because it "guarantees" at least one of your splinters darts will crit.
That said I have temporarily shelved my witch doctor until 1.03, possibly longer. I really don't like farming seigebreaker. I think other classes have an easier time of it, and might be "death zerging" a little less than WD is forced to, but I basically don't enjoy fighting monsters that I can't afford to have on the screen (kiting).
Even with monster damage being fixed though, WD is in a very rough spot when it comes to our resource. This build focuses on the least expensive of our "high mana cost / high damage" spells, and is still considered by most to just be wildly inefficient.
After some of the replies pointed to other classes doing "way more damage", I went over to the skill calculators and realized that their weapon damage %modifiers are actually much lower than our WD nuke abilities. Example: the demon hunter staple Nether Tentacles hits for 155% weapon damage. You can see blizzards design intent - dire bats does much higher %based damage so they made it cost much more of our resource.
The imbalance begins when you realize a demon hunter can run hatred completely dry, and still have a full pool of discipline ready to kite / survive. WD doesn't have this option. Our only true options within our passives to combat this shortcoming are spiritual attunement, and vision quest. Attunement is nice, but not really strong enough on it's own, especially since our big damage increase passive amplifies our mana problems (PtV). We're left with vision quest, which feels unnecessarily clunkly. I'm going to cut my ramblings short and just say mana is a huge problem. It's rooted in bad passives, and is the reason the agreed upon "best build" revolves around spamming a primary.