I was messing around with the talent calculator trying to get a few builds to work when I ran across the mana rune for sacrifice. I've never given it much thought before since sacrifice was completely worthless but now that it might be possible to use sacrifice, it might be our saving grace to spamming bears in 1.0.4.
First off, the gear requirements:
* A few pieces of Zombie Dog cooldown gear will help. I wouldn't get that legendary offhand (No point in giving up 20-30k dps for that pos)
* A few pieces with +pickup range
* A few pieces of +mana gear would help. If you have 3 dogs, you'll gain nearly 900 mana instantly. It'd be nice to use that to full effect.
* Mana regen helps but honestly... I would say it's not a requirement.
* A big 2 hander will make sacrifice hit harder, so I'd personally use a 2 hander. It will let you cast bears for longer as well.
The basic goal of the build will be to spam zombie bears until you go oom and then you sacrifice the dogs to instantly go back up to full mana. If you get in a pinch mana wise without any dogs, you can hit spirit walk to give you a brief bit of mana. Siphon is in there to help against reflects damage since it will be your biggest enemy with this build.
How to play vs an elite pack:
1.) Spam until oom (out of mana)
2.) Sac the first set of dogs
3.) Resummon dogs
4.) Spam until oom
5.) A few globes should be on the ground by now to pickup for extra mana
6.) Sac dogs when mana is needed
7.) Spam bears more
8.) If needed, pull a few trash mobs in to kill for more dogs if dogs is still on cooldown
9.) Profit
Between sac and a near endless stream of bears, the pack should die before you need to do anything too drastic. Against white mobs it'll be insanely easy because your dogs will mostly replenish themselves automatically. It's key to have the dog cooldown up for when you engage an elite pack.
It will take a bit of specialized gear and I think it'll work best while grouping (it'll be tough to stay alive without a few distractions) but I think you could definitely make this work. There are many slight modifications you can make with passives if you want to do less damage vs being safer. You could lower the dog cooldown if you wanted with tribal rites or you could pick up Jungle Fort to be able to take a few more hits.
This build could definitely work I think. You should be able to get like 4 full mana pools of bears out, which is like 16 casts or something. I would recommend like +20 regen for this build though, seems like it'll help if you can get it.
First off, the gear requirements:
* A few pieces of Zombie Dog cooldown gear will help. I wouldn't get that legendary offhand (No point in giving up 20-30k dps for that pos)
* A few pieces with +pickup range
* A few pieces of +mana gear would help. If you have 3 dogs, you'll gain nearly 900 mana instantly. It'd be nice to use that to full effect.
* Mana regen helps but honestly... I would say it's not a requirement.
* A big 2 hander will make sacrifice hit harder, so I'd personally use a 2 hander. It will let you cast bears for longer as well.
The basic goal of the build will be to spam zombie bears until you go oom and then you sacrifice the dogs to instantly go back up to full mana. If you get in a pinch mana wise without any dogs, you can hit spirit walk to give you a brief bit of mana. Siphon is in there to help against reflects damage since it will be your biggest enemy with this build.
How to play vs an elite pack:
1.) Spam until oom (out of mana)
2.) Sac the first set of dogs
3.) Resummon dogs
4.) Spam until oom
5.) A few globes should be on the ground by now to pickup for extra mana
6.) Sac dogs when mana is needed
7.) Spam bears more
8.) If needed, pull a few trash mobs in to kill for more dogs if dogs is still on cooldown
9.) Profit
Between sac and a near endless stream of bears, the pack should die before you need to do anything too drastic. Against white mobs it'll be insanely easy because your dogs will mostly replenish themselves automatically. It's key to have the dog cooldown up for when you engage an elite pack.
It will take a bit of specialized gear and I think it'll work best while grouping (it'll be tough to stay alive without a few distractions) but I think you could definitely make this work. There are many slight modifications you can make with passives if you want to do less damage vs being safer. You could lower the dog cooldown if you wanted with tribal rites or you could pick up Jungle Fort to be able to take a few more hits.
Here's the build:
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#fZUdYV!WZY!cbZZZb
I thought about using Rain Dance as well.
Something like this:
http://us.battle.net...UdYV!WTY!cZZZZc
Where Trial Rites can be swapped for Grave Injustice as well.
The amount of globes you'll get will be terrible so it's likely not a great build.
What sucks is that all these builds have less defense than most of us are used to, but I guess it's just something you have to get used to.
Gruesome Feast has gotten so much better because of the Sacrifice buff, I think it's probably bad not to use it.