As soon as I leveled up to, IIRC, 54, I tried using Leaching Beasts.
After using them for some hours, I concluded that their healing ability is almost useless. The heal cant heal enough to let them stay alive, or to heal me efficiently, even talking about white mobs.
Im alos using Jungle Fortitude and Zombie Handler, but still, the heal is extremly low.
So, I opted for using Rabid, at least the extra damage does a little better.
One cool thing is that leeching beast also procs off thorn damage if you have Fierce Loyalty passive. I once tried just for the kicks stacking thorn to 17k dmg (it actually doesn't cost me more than 300k to get enough gear to do act2). With that amount of thorn each hit the dogs take actually heal you for 1-2k.
Of course the actual dmg my WD heal were garbage with full thorn gear. But considering thorn is a "garbage" stat most of the time I can see getting some decent gear with really high thorn damage output as well.
I killed inferno Diablo a couple days ago on my WD. I've got around 2500 regen, some 3500 or so thorns, 800-ish resists, using 1h+mojo so armor is a bit low, 45K health and 22.5K DPS.
My pets rarely die on anything. On Diablo the only things that killed them were the fire pool (run away and port your pets to you), and the clone which sometimes killed the dogs.
The thing about leeching beasts is that with it you gain 50% (10% on inferno) of the thorns damage as life to the beasts, as it counts as their damage.
All the four other characters of mine, each 60 and in different acts of inferno, have basically been quite underwhelming, as I'm very bad in making money in the AH. However, I just started buying these int/vit/res all/regen gear, some pieces with thorns, each piece less than 100K, and I had found a 1100dps Echo (the fear is very nice), and when I started hitting inferno act 2 and 3, and realizing I can pretty much kill anything with no problems whatsoever, I knew I had something special on my hands.
My gear cost like 700K or less (I did find the legendary mace though, of course), and I can do a full clear of acts 3 and 4 with 0 deaths and no skipping on anything.
I'm not sure whether having leeching beasts makes a difference though. I've not tried the other dogs, since these ones seem to do the job quite well.
Why is it that ppl 90% of the time post to show off their AH'ed gear?, the only useful part of your post is that they heal throught thorns, wich I didnt know, the rest is gear-pennis.
I killed inferno Diablo a couple days ago on my WD. I've got around 2500 regen, some 3500 or so thorns, 800-ish resists, using 1h+mojo so armor is a bit low, 45K health and 22.5K DPS.
My pets rarely die on anything. On Diablo the only things that killed them were the fire pool (run away and port your pets to you), and the clone which sometimes killed the dogs.
The thing about leeching beasts is that with it you gain 50% (10% on inferno) of the thorns damage as life to the beasts, as it counts as their damage.
All the four other characters of mine, each 60 and in different acts of inferno, have basically been quite underwhelming, as I'm very bad in making money in the AH. However, I just started buying these int/vit/res all/regen gear, some pieces with thorns, each piece less than 100K, and I had found a 1100dps Echo (the fear is very nice), and when I started hitting inferno act 2 and 3, and realizing I can pretty much kill anything with no problems whatsoever, I knew I had something special on my hands.
My gear cost like 700K or less (I did find the legendary mace though, of course), and I can do a full clear of acts 3 and 4 with 0 deaths and no skipping on anything.
I'm not sure whether having leeching beasts makes a difference though. I've not tried the other dogs, since these ones seem to do the job quite well.
Why is it that ppl 90% of the time post to show off their AH'ed gear?, the only useful part of your post is that they heal throught thorns, wich I didnt know, the rest is gear-pennis.
Because with 3 billion gold worth of gear you could make any randomly generated spec work? The whole point of quoting AH price on gear is to tell you that it's not that much of an investment you'd have to make.
Or would you rather prefer me telling you a skill/spec that only works once you have 100k dps and 500% critdmg which cost you additional 1 billion gold?
Also, he didn't say they heal through thorns, I did
I killed inferno Diablo a couple days ago on my WD. I've got around 2500 regen, some 3500 or so thorns, 800-ish resists, using 1h+mojo so armor is a bit low, 45K health and 22.5K DPS.
My pets rarely die on anything. On Diablo the only things that killed them were the fire pool (run away and port your pets to you), and the clone which sometimes killed the dogs.
The thing about leeching beasts is that with it you gain 50% (10% on inferno) of the thorns damage as life to the beasts, as it counts as their damage.
All the four other characters of mine, each 60 and in different acts of inferno, have basically been quite underwhelming, as I'm very bad in making money in the AH. However, I just started buying these int/vit/res all/regen gear, some pieces with thorns, each piece less than 100K, and I had found a 1100dps Echo (the fear is very nice), and when I started hitting inferno act 2 and 3, and realizing I can pretty much kill anything with no problems whatsoever, I knew I had something special on my hands.
My gear cost like 700K or less (I did find the legendary mace though, of course), and I can do a full clear of acts 3 and 4 with 0 deaths and no skipping on anything.
I'm not sure whether having leeching beasts makes a difference though. I've not tried the other dogs, since these ones seem to do the job quite well.
Why is it that ppl 90% of the time post to show off their AH'ed gear?, the only useful part of your post is that they heal throught thorns, wich I didnt know, the rest is gear-pennis.
Because with 3 billion gold worth of gear you could make any randomly generated spec work? The whole point of quoting AH price on gear is to tell you that it's not that much of an investment you'd have to make.
Or would you rather prefer me telling you a skill/spec that only works once you have 100k dps and 500% critdmg which cost you additional 1 billion gold?
Also, he didn't say they heal through thorns, I did
He did mention it too.
Im not (and I wont) use the AH, I find the game more fun without it.
Why is it that ppl 90% of the time post to show off their AH'ed gear?, the only useful part of your post is that they heal throught thorns, wich I didnt know, the rest is gear-pennis.
Most everyone uses the AH and doesn't have much gold, so information like what he provided is almost universally appreciated by forumgoers. At 25k damage he's not bragging at all, it's very low and I imagine he must kill very slowly, especially in acts 3-4. In fact, I have more health and similar resists to him, and I imagine that to "never die", as he claims, he must have very fast reflexes and kite a lot. The lower your damage the longer a fight takes and the more you have to react if your dogs die, if you get teleported on, etc. That's not really even my style of play, I like to have a smoke and a drink and really chill out when I play my WD. But I digress...
Im not (and I wont) use the AH, I find the game more fun without it.
Choosing to handicap yourself by not using something that the developers explicitly included in the game and encourage us to use doesn't make you special. If it's how you enjoy playing that's one thing, but obviously part of the enjoyment is thinking you're special and everyone else is wrong, which is just silly.
~~~
@ OP: If your dogs are dying post-patch, try boosting your all-resists, or try boosting your health and using the Blood Ritual and Fierce Loyalty passives in conjunction. Loyalty shares your regen with the pets, and ritual gives you 1% health per second to share. It may seem odd to give up jungle fort, but with enough regen they can take more damage and still be more survivable.
Even with great gear, your dogs' damage will be quite low compared to your damage and your garg's damage, so at best leeching will help keep them alive, but will probably not help keep *you* alive. For that, get a little LoH and do some damage. I have about 450 LoH vs. a ~50k health pool, and I find that a grasp of the dead with a few mobs in it taking damage, or a few rounds of zombie bears, fills my health bubble quite nicely.
The reason why the developers want us to use the AH, is more than clear, and the reason why a shit ton of players stopped playing D3, is related. Feeling special?, not at all, I just "discovered" the reason behind the boredom that this game transformed into once I started using the AH, thats all, and is not my idea, or anything like it.
The reason why the developers want us to use the AH, is more than clear, and the reason why a shit ton of players stopped playing D3, is related. Feeling special?, not at all, I just "discovered" the reason behind the boredom that this game transformed into once I started using the AH, thats all, and is not my idea, or anything like it.
I don't use the AH much either, but frankly it's not fair of you to criticize the first reply without making it clear before hand that you play by your own rules. It also makes you seem like a troll to use your own help thread to spout the oft-repeated "AH ruining D3," meme you have parroted elsewhere who knows how many times. Not only does that not help us provide you with feedback, but it essentially stops and derails the conversation you started.
I don't know what to call this thread other than a coincidental, possibly elaborate trolling effort. If it isn't, you should seriously consider not asking for help if you're going to treat every response in this most asinine fashion.
Not wanting to use AH is fine, and I can understand why you might want to farm your own gear.
However, don't you always hate that feeling when you got some super awesome gear drop that your class cannot use? Or how about an awesome gear drop right after you just got a super awesome gear that made the second one outdated.
Now, if there is some way to turn those gear that could've been good otherwise into some kind of a point system.... Perhaps you could turn those point you've collected and turn it into some gear that you could use. To make that even better, we'll let the community decide on how much the points should be awarded for each gear you decide to "turn in". This way you still farm your own gear but you get a chance to turn 100 mediocre gear into the one gear that fits your need.
And for simplicity's sake, let's call those point "gold".
Leeching Beasts does not proc off of Thorns, this was established in a different topic. If they could, then anyone with greater than about 5k thorns plus good defenses would be literally immortal to any melee attacker, which is not the case.
However, Leeching Beasts is most certainly not useless by any means. Though it is not GREAT regen, it is noticeable and gets more so as your gear improves. Any time my personal regen is not quite enough to compensate for incoming damage in certain areas (I use Fierce Loyalty), I use Leeching to put it over the top.
Yea, leeching beasts are crap. I'm using burning dogs. Very nice addition to humongoid's damage. Soul link is the only useful alternative with pet-based builds.
and I had found a 1100dps Echo (the fear is very nice)
Tbh if this mace is semi-decent rolled it costs more then my gear alltogether.
Myself i'm using leeching beasts since i totally skiped regen/LoH gear (they're non factor and i'm simply forgetting to swap rune every time). ~30K hp/~60K dps with soul harvest (dmg rune on it is just so good)/800-900 resists and 4K armor (actually most gear came from my CM Wiz i've been playing from time to time). With this stats Act 3 is a walk in the park (after using spirit vessel passive i never die even half asleep). Act 4 is harder becouse pets actually die to different mobs abilities.
Only significant healing from leeching beasts would come if you stack really lots of thorn dmg, but that's useless since thorns are gimped and have too many limitations: most mobs attack too slow to make thorns a significant portion of your dmg, they're working only on melee hits. It's way more efficient to trade thorns for regen/sec with same fierce loyalty passive - your survivability goes up, pets survivability goes up.
So long story short: thorns system is too weak and needs to be remade completly, leeching dogs are underpowered and not worth using. You can live without any LoH/Hp regen becouse health orbs are enough on their own.
Dogs are meatshield. They die a lot, period. I've tried every rune, and I've found that Leeching gives them the most survivability. The heals aren't for you, since the amount is negligible, they are for the dogs.
Rabid dogs is a nice single-target damage boost.
Final Gift is nice if you have Gruesome Feast.
Life Link sucks, they just die faster.
Burning Dogs is a nice AoE damage boost, at 2% dmg per second.
I use Grave Injustice, which helps keep the pets alive through trash packs, which is most of the playing time. Against elites, they always die, unless I can split them up, which usually isn't priority since I need them all together to maximize damage (Soul Harvest damage rune, Lob Blob Bomb, Ghost Bomb).
I neve rliked Burning Dogs, at 26k damage they tick for 200. I very much like Life Leech, dogs hit for 2k so it's not a bad heal it combination with the amount of Life Regen I have.
Clearly? Not so much. I don't think it was ever intended for Leeching Beasts to affect Sacrifice. You do know there is a Sac rune that heals you right?
Why is it that ppl 90% of the time post to show off their AH'ed gear?, the only useful part of your post is that they heal throught thorns, wich I didnt know, the rest is gear-pennis.
I agree. Isn't it patently obvious when someone has purchased gear thru the AH? Given enough gold/cash, any weird build will work.
I've been using leeching beasts. It seems to keep the dogs up longer against molten/plagued/lightning enchanted/reflects damage. I chose that rune as I don't use the dogs as a source of damage as much as a distraction while I dps unmolested.
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"For the price of one bullet you can eat 4 hotcakes." - Vash the Stampede.
It's definitely not useless but it will depend on your gear.
If you lack loh/lifesteal/regen and you have decent dps stats, you will notice the HP return on reflects damage packs. When I used to run this rune, I'd see my ticks go from 80 (regen from templar) to 200-300 a tick. The best thing about leeching beasts though is that it makes the dogs A LOT more viable.
There are 2 other runes that I think are worthwhile if you don't want leeching though...
* Life Link - The dogs will die a bit quicker so keep that in mind but the 10% damage reduction is really nice.
* Final Gift - If you are running a sac or gruesome feast build this might be worthwhile. Personally, I find the proc % a bit low for a gruesome build but it's a great rune for sac builds.
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After using them for some hours, I concluded that their healing ability is almost useless. The heal cant heal enough to let them stay alive, or to heal me efficiently, even talking about white mobs.
Im alos using Jungle Fortitude and Zombie Handler, but still, the heal is extremly low.
So, I opted for using Rabid, at least the extra damage does a little better.
Thoughts?
(Im in act 3 Hell, level 58, 5.2k dmg, 20khp)
Of course the actual dmg my WD heal were garbage with full thorn gear. But considering thorn is a "garbage" stat most of the time I can see getting some decent gear with really high thorn damage output as well.
Why is it that ppl 90% of the time post to show off their AH'ed gear?, the only useful part of your post is that they heal throught thorns, wich I didnt know, the rest is gear-pennis.
Because with 3 billion gold worth of gear you could make any randomly generated spec work? The whole point of quoting AH price on gear is to tell you that it's not that much of an investment you'd have to make.
Or would you rather prefer me telling you a skill/spec that only works once you have 100k dps and 500% critdmg which cost you additional 1 billion gold?
Also, he didn't say they heal through thorns, I did
He did mention it too.
Im not (and I wont) use the AH, I find the game more fun without it.
Most everyone uses the AH and doesn't have much gold, so information like what he provided is almost universally appreciated by forumgoers. At 25k damage he's not bragging at all, it's very low and I imagine he must kill very slowly, especially in acts 3-4. In fact, I have more health and similar resists to him, and I imagine that to "never die", as he claims, he must have very fast reflexes and kite a lot. The lower your damage the longer a fight takes and the more you have to react if your dogs die, if you get teleported on, etc. That's not really even my style of play, I like to have a smoke and a drink and really chill out when I play my WD. But I digress...
Choosing to handicap yourself by not using something that the developers explicitly included in the game and encourage us to use doesn't make you special. If it's how you enjoy playing that's one thing, but obviously part of the enjoyment is thinking you're special and everyone else is wrong, which is just silly.
~~~
@ OP: If your dogs are dying post-patch, try boosting your all-resists, or try boosting your health and using the Blood Ritual and Fierce Loyalty passives in conjunction. Loyalty shares your regen with the pets, and ritual gives you 1% health per second to share. It may seem odd to give up jungle fort, but with enough regen they can take more damage and still be more survivable.
Even with great gear, your dogs' damage will be quite low compared to your damage and your garg's damage, so at best leeching will help keep them alive, but will probably not help keep *you* alive. For that, get a little LoH and do some damage. I have about 450 LoH vs. a ~50k health pool, and I find that a grasp of the dead with a few mobs in it taking damage, or a few rounds of zombie bears, fills my health bubble quite nicely.
I don't use the AH much either, but frankly it's not fair of you to criticize the first reply without making it clear before hand that you play by your own rules. It also makes you seem like a troll to use your own help thread to spout the oft-repeated "AH ruining D3," meme you have parroted elsewhere who knows how many times. Not only does that not help us provide you with feedback, but it essentially stops and derails the conversation you started.
I don't know what to call this thread other than a coincidental, possibly elaborate trolling effort. If it isn't, you should seriously consider not asking for help if you're going to treat every response in this most asinine fashion.
However, don't you always hate that feeling when you got some super awesome gear drop that your class cannot use? Or how about an awesome gear drop right after you just got a super awesome gear that made the second one outdated.
Now, if there is some way to turn those gear that could've been good otherwise into some kind of a point system.... Perhaps you could turn those point you've collected and turn it into some gear that you could use. To make that even better, we'll let the community decide on how much the points should be awarded for each gear you decide to "turn in". This way you still farm your own gear but you get a chance to turn 100 mediocre gear into the one gear that fits your need.
And for simplicity's sake, let's call those point "gold".
You see where I'm going with this?
However, Leeching Beasts is most certainly not useless by any means. Though it is not GREAT regen, it is noticeable and gets more so as your gear improves. Any time my personal regen is not quite enough to compensate for incoming damage in certain areas (I use Fierce Loyalty), I use Leeching to put it over the top.
Tbh if this mace is semi-decent rolled it costs more then my gear alltogether.
Myself i'm using leeching beasts since i totally skiped regen/LoH gear (they're non factor and i'm simply forgetting to swap rune every time). ~30K hp/~60K dps with soul harvest (dmg rune on it is just so good)/800-900 resists and 4K armor (actually most gear came from my CM Wiz i've been playing from time to time). With this stats Act 3 is a walk in the park (after using spirit vessel passive i never die even half asleep). Act 4 is harder becouse pets actually die to different mobs abilities.
Only significant healing from leeching beasts would come if you stack really lots of thorn dmg, but that's useless since thorns are gimped and have too many limitations: most mobs attack too slow to make thorns a significant portion of your dmg, they're working only on melee hits. It's way more efficient to trade thorns for regen/sec with same fierce loyalty passive - your survivability goes up, pets survivability goes up.
So long story short: thorns system is too weak and needs to be remade completly, leeching dogs are underpowered and not worth using. You can live without any LoH/Hp regen becouse health orbs are enough on their own.
Rabid dogs is a nice single-target damage boost.
Final Gift is nice if you have Gruesome Feast.
Life Link sucks, they just die faster.
Burning Dogs is a nice AoE damage boost, at 2% dmg per second.
I use Grave Injustice, which helps keep the pets alive through trash packs, which is most of the playing time. Against elites, they always die, unless I can split them up, which usually isn't priority since I need them all together to maximize damage (Soul Harvest damage rune, Lob Blob Bomb, Ghost Bomb).
I agree. Isn't it patently obvious when someone has purchased gear thru the AH? Given enough gold/cash, any weird build will work.
If you lack loh/lifesteal/regen and you have decent dps stats, you will notice the HP return on reflects damage packs. When I used to run this rune, I'd see my ticks go from 80 (regen from templar) to 200-300 a tick. The best thing about leeching beasts though is that it makes the dogs A LOT more viable.
There are 2 other runes that I think are worthwhile if you don't want leeching though...
* Life Link - The dogs will die a bit quicker so keep that in mind but the 10% damage reduction is really nice.
* Final Gift - If you are running a sac or gruesome feast build this might be worthwhile. Personally, I find the proc % a bit low for a gruesome build but it's a great rune for sac builds.