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well the qoute about being able to channel zombie bears for a few seconds could be any thing from 5-15 seconds that they feel is right.

with Blood ritual and a 0,9 weapon and 11 mana regen you will be able to channel you bears for atleast 13 seconds you run out of mana and you will get all that mana back in 13 seconds, so if you just attack with 2-3 waves repossision yourself and then attack again with 2-3 waves and your mana should last for a great amount of time.

if we take 3 mana regen (no max mana) items and VQ and SA you will be able to get your mana back in 7,5 seconds. witch and thats a pretty short time period. sure its much slower then WW barb and critical mass wiz but those are using other mechanics to do so.

Quote from PsyBomb

Ruppgu, I don't remember if I posted it in THIS thread, but (yep, it was on the previous page) Bats is not going away. If anything, it's getting better overall, due to being able to actually use cooldowns as needed instead of blowing them for regen. The build kites a lot more than bears, so the increased base regen is a HUGE help, plus dropping a Rain Dance while actually being able to have defenders out will top you off while simultaneously upping your damage by 20% for 20 seconds.

The only difference is that, if you want to use VQ, you replace at least one of your cooldowns with Spider Queen (cast every 15-19 seconds) or Pyrogeist (cast every 4-8 seconds). Part of the Blog was that cast animations are getting quicker for us, as well. Heck, I'm not even going to be using VQ, instead shifting to some Max Mana gear and Spiritual Attunement.

An important thing to note (that I think a lot of people are forgetting) is that the best way to play the game in 1.0.4 will be to group (compared to solo in the past). Grouping combined with pets that (hopefully) survive well enough will cause most of the kiting we currently do to go away.

Even in 1.0.3 I'd have to throttle my bat casts after I cast zombie wall due to mana (and that's with VQ up). The build will definitely have to change. I'm hoping I can find a build that'll work great with my MF gear (which only has mana regen on the main hand).

My concerns;

Sacrifice ? Needs a huge damage buff to work like the way it is : %500-600 wd per dog or even more

Dots ? Haunt %575 wd over 15 secs. Locust Swarm %360(%468) wd over 8 secs. Barbs are getting %700(%903) wd over 5 sec : if they wont buff these dots as they buffed barb dot it will be a big issue.

Spells like Spirit Barrage , Fire Bats without Dire Bats , Acid Cloud needs huge buffs so using them shouldnt feel like you are wasting mana and you can use primary spell over them.

Mass Confusion sucks pretty much against elites most of the time when you cast it they start moving to each other for hitting yet confusion breaks before they hit.

Summoning passives are quite useless too they should increase fetish and dog spawn chances.

And not to mention i expect huge buffs to primary spells. Playing with zombie bears or bats feel like playing a dh or wizard. I want to play with dots , pets, exotic spells .

just out of the blue what do you think that the new upgraded witch doctor set will have as its set bonuses?
2P: INT possibly 200-250 (its an ilvl 63 set afterall old one was ilvl 61)
3P: could be mana regen flat 20 or something like 20% more mana regen
4P probably some new gimmiky proc to summon some spirit that will spew raining zombie fishes everywhere.

anyway, my point is one of the new set bonuses on our new set could have mana regen on it if thats the case with the right setup people will have close to unlimited mana again.
This is fair as natalyas set gives DHs almost unlimited disc for things like shadow power and smoke screen.

and nobody know if at this stage some other items will have mana regen on them or if it will be exclusive to voodoo mask, mojo and cermonial knife.

the buffs witch doctor gets is just underwhelming

jars gets buffed alot but nothing on locus swarm and haunt. and a minimal damage buff to spirit barrage.

looking at the list of new items it seems like some of the items that could roll +max mana (frostburn, hellcat, xephirian, and stone of jordan) this could just be a miss in the planing but i find it rather odd.

also it seems that mojos and sources will lose about 40 from its max damage value and thats seems extremely odd.

i realy hope this is a miss in the data mining.

but i noticed something funny Zombie dogs gets 45 base CD, Tribal rites will reduce that CD by 25% and homocullus will reduce it by 20. its still not enougth to summon dogs and exploding em on any frequent basis, but with the new grasp of the dead, circle of life (30%) and grave injustice i could see a potential Sacrifice build.

there's a ton of changes to common primary/secondary damage dealing abilities which are incredible. I don't see how there's any need for complaints about the VQ change.

Quote from Derwiv33

PS: Could you post your source?

front page of diablofans.com

anyway i think that the CD reduction from gear will go before tribal rights so it would be (45-10-20)-25%=11,25 seconds. so if you could kill 11 enemies within grave injustive range in the explotions with next of kin, grasp(gets 5%) and circle of life (gets 30%) it could be possible to to kill whole packs within that 11 second time frame.

I'm looking at the changes (for all classes) from the datamined information and... is it me, or does it seem a bit... incomplete?

I keep tellin' ya: exploding zombie dogs man...I'm gonna make it work !

great news everyone WDs new set seems to get 20 mana regeneration as its 4 p bonus, and its Great for all old VQ build out there. so lets see. a 2 h build using, 4P(head,chest,ring,boots) Head, VQ and blood ritual.
it also seems that Maras and SoJ will be able to roll all the skill effects, so getting thes will greatly reduce mana cost of firebats and zombie Charger, all 2Hs should get it 2 and not only Crossbow. so thats a possible mana cost reduction of 24-30 mana!

2H will get 45+14(head is i63)+20(4p) 79 mana regen
with vision quest that becomes 102 and with spiritual attunement 88 (both 114)
now 2 of the 3 reduction items will give you 16 cost reduction. = 140-16= 124
and with blood ritual 106 mana (or 119 witout skill reduction))

Now this should let you cast bears forever with the right gear.

with 1H then. 45+20+14+14+14 (remeber set will be ilvl63) = 107 mana regen with Zunimassa's Whispers and a CK alone.
now with vision quest it will go up to 139 (with SA and VQ = 150)
and with 3 mana reduction items (mara,soj,mojo) zombie charger will cost about 116 to cast.
and with blood ritual its about 99.

but now we have a CK and some attackspeed so that will bea increased by your aps of 1,5 so about 150 mana a second to channel zombie charger.

looking at this we just got our infinite bear spam right? sure it requires alot of gear and it should, cos its very overpowered.

Vomica, that actually looks really cool. As much as people are complaining about how far away from D2 this game is going, your post has just indicated the opposite. Most high-end D2 builds were ABSOLUTELY dependent on having a particular gear setup, many beyond the simple "add an extra level or two to your main skill). I am perfectly fine seeing this continue on, rewarding someone who makes the effort to acquire a highly specialized gear set to make their build work.

Heck, I'm trying to go for a Speed 2.0 Bats build focused around SA if I can manage it. Helmet with Bats bonus and + Max Mana, SoJ with Bats bonus, weapon and OH with Mana on them... it seems doable. If I can get past a certain longevity (that is, when it takes roughly 15 seconds to blow half of my mana pool), then it becomes effectively infinite once you account for non-Bat actions taken in combat. Further gains would allow me to either shift to other runes on some skills (like getting Jaunt or Healing Journey instead of Honored Guest), or grab Pierve the Veil (in a BATS BUILD).

I think beyond allowing such things to happen, the best part about the new legendary possibilities is that getting one for yourself becomes a build-inspiring drop (as opposed to a gear-inspiring build, like today). Finding a Stone of Jordan with an unusual but possibly strong skill bonus might prompt someone to try something new. Same goes for several of the other unique effects and set bonuses that I've seen. In all, I think Blizz ended up doing a surprisingly good job with this

Well th epoint is not to be able to cast em standing still doing nothing else.

you need to take into concideration that you need to cast support spells like grasp, zombie wall, soul harvest or mass confusion, once in a while. and that will let you regen some mana, and you will also have to move out of danger from time to time
moving will give you atleast 50-150 mana back depending on your gear.

also you will not need most of the stuff if you drop BBV - rain dance. this is where you will get the infinite mana to spam bears for atleast 20 seconds. and that should kill most stuff within that time period.

spirit walk honed guest will give you back alot of mana also.

another thing the new ruse of essence giving you 5 mana per sec per cast for 10 seconds could also be enought to bring mana back, especialy with haunts mana back glyph.

So... Mara's Kaleidoscope (Amulet), Stone of Jordan (Ring), and Skull Grasp (Ring) can all roll any skill affix post-patch. This opens up a lot of very scary possibilities, especially seeing some of the more twisted ones out there. What is awesome once can be downright intimidating when it can show up four times. Reduce Firebats cost by 48? Check. How about increasing Poison Darts damage by 60%? Hounds cooldown reduced by 39 seconds before accounting for passives (that's right, SIX SECOND cooldown on these guys)? No matter what, the old builds will remain viable with the right gearing choices, and this is only considering our own.

No info about spiders and their crit damage bug?

i did a test for fun just to see how much mana regeneration i could come up to and i hit 1225 mana per second. sure i cheated a bit with honed guest but hey.

and here is a picture: http://i.imgur.com/xYdSi.jpg

without VQ, rain dance i got up to 127 mana regen while spamming spirit barrage.

Edit: did some calculations with the new mechanics and the possible max (in my gear) after the patch is somewhere around 834, its not practical just a maximum.

Quote from shaggy

I'm looking at the changes (for all classes) from the datamined information and... is it me, or does it seem a bit... incomplete?

I hope it's incomplete... I was expecting changes to sacrifice, haunt, locust swarm, etc. I wasn't expecting even more nerfs to us like the spirit vessel reduction to 2 seconds (and no mention of any fixes to the 3-4 bugs that come along with spirit vessel).

I'm pretty bummed by those changes if they're complete. I don't see any new viable builds that stand out besides adding pets to builds or trying a pet sac build (which imo will be a bit weak at farming since the game is about killing champs and you won't be able to spawn more dogs when you're no longer kills monsters when you reach a rare pack).

Quote from Ruppgu

Quote from shaggy

I'm looking at the changes (for all classes) from the datamined information and... is it me, or does it seem a bit... incomplete?

I hope it's incomplete... I was expecting changes to sacrifice, haunt, locust swarm, etc. I wasn't expecting even more nerfs to us like the spirit vessel reduction to 2 seconds (and no mention of any fixes to the 3-4 bugs that come along with spirit vessel).

I'm pretty bummed by those changes if they're complete. I don't see any new viable builds that stand out besides adding pets to builds or trying a pet sac build (which imo will be a bit weak at farming since the game is about killing champs and you won't be able to spawn more dogs when you're no longer kills monsters when you reach a rare pack).

Exact same feeling.

The patch where we're all probably going to be playing multiplayer is the one where we get pets who can tank.

No change to Pierce the Veil? I'm pretty shocked. Do we need to talk about the terrible design of this skill?

Also the number adjustments seem to fit in with everything else in the patch, and by that I mean Blizzard balances the math and completely overlooks the functionality of the skills. A good example of this is sacrifice. Even if you have no cooldown on summoning your dogs, you are basically casting two spells to deal 275% damage, or 137% per cast. I realize there is little to no mana cost involved, but I'd rather pay mana for a spell that does 200% damage every time I cast it.

Spirit barrage increase damage by 40%? Rush of Essence / mana returns is really the only reason to use this spell, and it might be enough, but come on - Dire bats for 220% damage AOE? Do they not realize that AOE is a big deal?

Horrify cooldown reduction but no reduction on Mass Confusion?

Huge increase to Acid Cloud DoT damage (not the problem) with a minor increase to the immediate damage (the problem).

The zombie charger changes are actually laughable. Smaller hit box /range / lower damage for the same mana cost? Sign me up!

Plague of Toads mana reduction (not the problem) and no damage increase / AI fix (the problem).

With a nice little nerf to spirit vessel to top things off. Was WD survivability that much greater than other classes? Was 1 second every 90 seconds really breaking the game?

Oh and the signs are there for nerfs to our LoH / CC procs too (burning dog wording changes, etc.). I don't expect to log in and see any of them functioning as they do in 1.03


WD will definitely feel less awkward to play after the patch, but if anything it seems like the slightly less powerful, with pets being the only true compensation. Other classes are having their skill trees flung open by things like actually desireable secondaries. When Barbs / Monks start nuking things with their new resource spenders, don't expect WD to gain any ground this patch. If the notes we see are the extent of the changes expect to fall further behind.

kinsh, you are pretty much spot on, mass confusion got a cooldown reduction via tribal rites tho still not good enough to use it. witch is a shame.

myself im probably going to run something like this ( http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#geYUhT!afc!ZccZcc ) after the patch (if they break pets CC proc rate) should be a fun way to play.

im baffled at the zombie charger changes no one will still not use any other rune other then explosive beast and bears unless they change the animation drastically. or have the cost reduced while using some of the runes.