Thanks Muilpeer, I like your Born's two set, once I get the blackthorne belt, i'll switch my shoulder and chest to Born's, great suggestion.
Regarding the Homing Pads, it's actually a great shoulder, when your spirit walk is on CD and you are about to be hit by something (let's say arcane beam) and you don't wanna move away because you'll lose CC on the elites, then you can simply spam portal button to trigger the 64% damage reduction (btw is very very helpful). I think a lot of people underestimate how useful this item could be (when the roll is good). Let me know your thoughts.
Only had time to check out the first part of the video. Nice video, nice information on how the build works, but maybe a bit too beginner for the high gear requirement (SMK, lightning amu), while missing beginner information if aiming at people just starting the build.
- The build will prevent elites to proc "active" affixed. Fire chain, molten and electrified will still work. Fire chain you can avoid, blackthorn helps agains molten, making the lightning amulet mandatory for the electrified affix (got nerfed a bit, but still hits hard if you got 3 dh with high breakpoint in the party).
- I did not catch any information about legendary gems. You only really need 1 legendary gem: Efficacious Toxin gem (10% party damage buff). Swiftness can be useful as a 2nd, for the extra cooldown.
- If you do go with an SMK, I would go with taskers as well. The reason you use this weapon is for the cooldown reset, and taskers are the only thing that makes your pets faster. If you don't have the SMK, I would suggest to use the more commonly dropped "last breath". Without SMK, drop the fetish army for something like Hex-Jinx.
- Personally I'm not using the cooldown belt but the blackthorn belt, allowing me to go with the born shoulders and chest, a bit more cooldown and 15% life from set bonus.(and a bit more xp, nice to level faster). Without an SMK, I would look into Asheara's shoulders+gloves+(pants/boots). This will call your followers (with the relic so they don't take damage) with a 50% uptime, and they do have some nice damage buffs for the party and crowd control as well.
- I would use a homunculus. With taskers and SMK, you can drop tribal rites for fierce loyalty (movement speed). The dogs also help to block electrified affix for the party and (used to, not sure it still works) can take that thunderstorm/frozen pulse/jailer proc that might happen before you got the entire pack under control. On top of that, you can roll cooldown on a mojo, not on a shield.
PS: I saw you got a damage% roll on your SMK, I would reroll it to cooldown for this build. Try to max out cooldown, in high level greater rifts you want spirit walk up as often as you can.
PPS: I noticed you have been putting paragon point into life% first. While that might net in more "sheet toughness", it also makes your healing (life per second, life per hit, additional health for healthglobes) less efficient. I would try to max reduction rolls (all res/armor, in that order, ranged/melee reduction in secondaries, elite damage reduction on chest) first, before adding life% to items/paragon. Not only for WD/support, but for all classes/builds.
Only had time to check out the first part of the video. Nice video, nice information on how the build works, but maybe a bit too beginner for the high gear requirement (SMK, lightning amu), while missing beginner information if aiming at people just starting the build.
- The build will prevent elites to proc "active" affixed. Fire chain, molten and electrified will still work. Fire chain you can avoid, blackthorn helps agains molten, making the lightning amulet mandatory for the electrified affix (got nerfed a bit, but still hits hard if you got 3 dh with high breakpoint in the party).
- I did not catch any information about legendary gems. You only really need 1 legendary gem: Efficacious Toxin gem (10% party damage buff). Swiftness can be useful as a 2nd, for the extra cooldown.
- If you do go with an SMK, I would go with taskers as well. The reason you use this weapon is for the cooldown reset, and taskers are the only thing that makes your pets faster. If you don't have the SMK, I would suggest to use the more commonly dropped "last breath". Without SMK, drop the fetish army for something like Hex-Jinx.
- Personally I'm not using the cooldown belt but the blackthorn belt, allowing me to go with the born shoulders and chest, a bit more cooldown and 15% life from set bonus.(and a bit more xp, nice to level faster). Without an SMK, I would look into Asheara's shoulders+gloves+(pants/boots). This will call your followers (with the relic so they don't take damage) with a 50% uptime, and they do have some nice damage buffs for the party and crowd control as well.
- I would use a homunculus. With taskers and SMK, you can drop tribal rites for fierce loyalty (movement speed). The dogs also help to block electrified affix for the party and (used to, not sure it still works) can take that thunderstorm/frozen pulse/jailer proc that might happen before you got the entire pack under control. On top of that, you can roll cooldown on a mojo, not on a shield.
PS: I saw you got a damage% roll on your SMK, I would reroll it to cooldown for this build. Try to max out cooldown, in high level greater rifts you want spirit walk up as often as you can.
PPS: I noticed you have been putting paragon point into life% first. While that might net in more "sheet toughness", it also makes your healing (life per second, life per hit, additional health for healthglobes) less efficient. I would try to max reduction rolls (all res/armor, in that order, ranged/melee reduction in secondaries, elite damage reduction on chest) first, before adding life% to items/paragon. Not only for WD/support, but for all classes/builds.
Hi RiffSphere,
Thanks so much for your detailed feedback, there's definitely things which I can improve on in terms of the video content as well as my gear etc. I'm in the process of improving a lot of the things pointed out by you (might take time depending on how lucky i get with the drops etc) I agree with mostly of what you said, regarding legendary gems, yeah I'm currently using Effecacious as my first gem, however when I have a second socket at some point, i intend to use Moratorium as that provide damage spread (give you more chance to survive), however i also see the benefits of using the Swiftness one too.
Bane of the Trapped applies the slow, which would be necessary for the Cull the weak passive of Demon Hunters if they dont apply it themselves. That's what he was aiming for.
For 4pc Asheara: I wear it myself and it works really well...I threw some utility items on my followers to test it and was careful to not use knockback/pull things as I assumed it would hinder the tanking ability of myself, just like you described: http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Goreki-2483/hero/1310388
The items are far from optimal...just some things I found in my stash and some crappy crafted hellfire rings. The only things I farmed for this purpose were the Overwhelming Desire amulets, which is not alot of fun (act3 bounties), so they are also bad rolled
Thanks dude for the comments, do you know how long the followers last for before they get dismissed? Also do you possibly know the proc rate of it and does it proc of pet attacks?
w00t w00t. are you saying that T&T is useless for WD pets/FA? Can I get a source on that pls?
He does not say that they are useless, only that IAS does not apply to them. They do however scale IAS as additional damage. If T&T does not increase the attack speed of fetishes than it will increase the damage per hit.
Considering the build not getting the IAS for fetishes is quite useless... Can someone verify that it's actually so? I was under a completely different assumption.
Hi dude, thanks for the question. This may vary from person to person, for me I have just under 50% CD reduction, together with SMK, I personally don't struggle with CD on fettish army or Big Bad Voodoo at all. Therefore I chose to use the St Archew's for extra survivability which I find more useful especiallyl at higher levels.
Your explanation is right although you are kind of missing the point of the actual discussion here, which is the support WD.
The reason why T&T is an option for the support WD is that it synergizes with SMK. Faster attacks = more cooldown reduction for Fetish Army and BBV through SMK. That being said, T&T can only be a viable option if you have SMK, because we don't care about our own damage, but about survivability, CC and buffing party damage, where T&T won't offer anything special.
Since the stat "attack speed" does not increase the actual attack speed of pets (like you said), it is useless for the full support build.
In my opinion Tasker and Theo is not the best option anyway. Yes it synergizes with SMK, but honestly it's not needed. I can stack BBV ontop of each other so even more CDR on it won't help. Alternatives like St. Archews or Ashearas gloves are much easier to optain, so it's more likely to get good ones with decent tank stats and 8% CDR.
Edit: And no, fetishes don't proc any on-hit effects other than the ones of "Pain Enchancer" and "Efficacious Toxin" gems.
I actually dropped T&T for a nicely rolled St Archew's and I really didn't notice a huge decrease in CDR. I mean im at 50% already and spamming BBV more than I need to the proc from St Archew's was more beneficial to me. Now I just need a fkn Xephirian...
I'm glad that you found helpful information here man.
I felt with a Xephirian, you spirit walk into the mobs and start CC'ing them, not really needing more toughness/survivability from St Archew's. Having BBV off cooldown faster was useful for me, since I would pop 1 over at the DH's and 1 in the middle of the pack for the monk. But I guess it comes down to playstyle/preference/rolls on other items.
Yeah, i think once I have Blackthorne belt and Born's 2 set, I might consider changing.
Great videos i was thinking about trying this out, just need the smk. Do you have any worrys about this build getting nerfed because its the only cc in game without diminishing returns?
Thanks for your positive feedback chadwx. that's a great question and concern, tbh, i had the same concern as you :). So I wouldn't throw away any of your other gear, however this spec is not invincible, you still run into many difficult and dangerous situations, I actually personally think it's about right just now. HOwever can't really tell whether it'll get nerfed or not.
Regarding the Homing Pads, it's actually a great shoulder, when your spirit walk is on CD and you are about to be hit by something (let's say arcane beam) and you don't wanna move away because you'll lose CC on the elites, then you can simply spam portal button to trigger the 64% damage reduction (btw is very very helpful). I think a lot of people underestimate how useful this item could be (when the roll is good). Let me know your thoughts.
Hi RiffSphere,
Thanks so much for your detailed feedback, there's definitely things which I can improve on in terms of the video content as well as my gear etc. I'm in the process of improving a lot of the things pointed out by you (might take time depending on how lucky i get with the drops etc) I agree with mostly of what you said, regarding legendary gems, yeah I'm currently using Effecacious as my first gem, however when I have a second socket at some point, i intend to use Moratorium as that provide damage spread (give you more chance to survive), however i also see the benefits of using the Swiftness one too.