I was arguing with some guy on a different forum just now on the topic of the similarities and differences between the Witch Doctor and the Necromancer, and while doing so I came up with a build for the Witch Doctor.
It's pretty obvious, and, of course, this is most probably not going to work in the actual game because locust swarm and fire bomb are low level spells, not to mention they may not use skill trees anymore. This is a Witch Doctor Summoning Master :P:
Max Summon Mongrel and/or Mongrel Management (if they still use the same system)
Max Locust Swarm
Max Fire Bomb
Max Dispatch Creature (whatever spell that destroys Mongrels in an explosion)
+ Synergies
First of all, one thing to note is that Locust Swarm, Fire Bomb, and Summon Mongrel are basically special synergies, because if you put points into them all, you deal more combined damage. What is better, simply casting Locust Swarm, or casting Locust Swarm + having a mongrel attacking with Locust Swarm cast on him + his melee damage?
Same situation with Fire Bomb. What if both Fire Bomb and Locust Swarm effects can be cast on the Mongrel at the same time? Scary. But the reason I have both is to combat potential immunities.
This means that there will be synergies in one way or another.
Dispatch Creature, while being similar to corpse/poison explosion is a bit different because while corpses just lie on the ground, your creatures are most probably fighting the enemy, and so dispatching them would almost always mean you are going to hurt some enemy. Depending on the mechanics of the spell, it may hurt more if the mongrel has more health (like corpse explosion) making it pretty nasty, and another synergy, and also magic damage giving me one more thing to combat hell. I'd probably won't do this, though, because that would end up being a lot of points.
On the other hand, if Dispatch Creature does not rely on health but just has increasing magic damage, you can try increasing the amount of mongrels and other pets and just make a build based of making pets and dispatching them all day long.
Apart from that, I am having problems with finding applications for Dispatch Creature. I doubt it's too powerful, and it requires you to put points into summoning while corpse explosion didn't.
Speaking of Zombie wall, personally, it's basically Bone Wall + Iron Maiden with static damage. But I have a thought that it's going to become much weaker, because Bone Wall and Iron Maiden was already 2 different spells, while Zombie Wall is one. Iron Maiden is also monster based, making it basically more useful and adaptive than just a wall that deals damage. I also wonder if you can cast locust swarm or fire bomb on Zombie Wall, but if they did not show that perhaps you can't so as to avoid similarity.
END OF WALL OF TEXT
So what do you think about how the classes are going to use their skills?
The rest of WD's spells do not really interest me since we lack info, I am not really a big fan of the barb so far so if you have any ideas as to what are you going to do with the barb (besides maxing WW, of course), please post them.
We don't know how skill trees work, or how many skill points you receive.
However, as a longtime Assassin player, I can tell you they would have to buff the holy hell out of Fire Bomb to make it useful in any game. It had decent damage (on par with Fireball) and it had a larger radius, but the in air time of the actual spell was so long you'd be dead before you could kill anything with it.
Assassin's Fire Bomb didn't affect any summons, it did not have AoE, and if you die before it hits the ground you are doing something very wrong. If there is one thing that DII never had an issue with is running away.
Also, WD's Fire Bomb seems to have less of a time spent to cast it. It could be cast on the ground, like meteor. I didn't really think meteor was useless. Monsters were usually pretty slow.
The problem lies in that, as spells and traps go, if you're not doing 2k damage per spell or trap (or completely bypassing resistance) then you can't kill whatever it is you're attacking in Nightmare and Hell.
The max damage of Fire Bomb and Fire Ball were exactly the same, until you added Sorcs Fire Mastery skill on which made a max Fire Ball with Synergies do something like 4k damage per hit in a 1yrd radius. That's much better than a Fire Bomb which only did 1.3k in a 3.8yrd radius.
But the ability of the Witch Doctor to buff his pets with spells is pretty awesome, it could turn even the most seemingly useless things into usable spells.
I never really bothered with fire bomb because I only did melee assassins... but I did have a fireball sorceres, and I used meteor for crowds - I believe it's a matter of damage, as you said.
I actually wonder what are they going to do to make sure spells like Fire Bomb are useful if they don't deal too many damage. Perhaps summon units can add percentage values from their empowerment. For instance, a unit of level 4 may add 75% damage of the spell cast on him, but on level 20 he does like 400% damage :P.
well since spellcasters are notoriously hard for me the first time around, i'll post a cinematic teaser build for my barb. non ww that is...
well first skill other than ww i noticed was the seismic slam. so this is gonna be a pvm type barb.
max seismic slam and likely synergies.
1 to ground stomp (unless this is a synergy)
1 to leap if not a synergy.
max all battle order type skills and masteries of your type - granted they exist.
since leap and ground stomp stun minor foes, gather mobs and use it to stun them, leap is for escaping + stun, then spam seismic around until everything is dead. im not sure whether seismic will be purely physical dmg, that is most likely though.
in pvp cleave seems to be more effective, not counting ww >.>
there arnt many builds for a barb yet...and it seems like all of the skills shown so far in are for mobbing and spamming...
but WD seems much more captivating atm to dream up builds
a summoner pvp type seems really good, but since we havent seen all his curses and spells...:D
just max his mongrels, and his fire bomb or locust (assuming poison or something elemental/magical, not sure though) to take advantage of poor immunities. and then chuck fire bombs and explode your mongels from time to time.
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Remember the String of Ears
"to the worm in horseradish, the world is horseradish."
since leap and ground stomp stun minor foes, gather mobs and use it to stun them, leap is for escaping + stun, then spam seismic around until everything is dead. im not sure whether seismic will be purely physical dmg, that is most likely though.
I kinda forgot that ground stomp stuns enemies, taht's interesting. These skills remind me of WCIII skills, except a WCIII Blademaster had a whirlwind spell after DII I think, as well.
Since ground stomp stuns, it's probably weaker then other spells. Are we having another skill that people are going to put just one point in? I hate that.
Speaking of leap, hopefully, it'll be useless without a lot of points in it (aka, small radius, kinda what DII did but moreso). Maybe leap should only gain stun and attack on higher levels. :cool:
Quote from "applesoffury" »
in pvp cleave seems to be more effective, not counting ww >.>
What do you mean? Do you mean attack radius or what.
I kinda forgot that ground stomp stuns enemies, taht's interesting. These skills remind me of WCIII skills, except a WCIII Blademaster had a whirlwind spell after DII I think, as well.
Since ground stomp stuns, it's probably weaker then other spells. Are we having another skill that people are going to put just one point in? I hate that.
Speaking of leap, hopefully, it'll be useless without a lot of points in it (aka, small radius, kinda what DII did but moreso). Maybe leap should only gain stun and attack on higher levels. :cool:
What do you mean? Do you mean attack radius or what.
well stomp should be a one point max skill, if u know what i mean, theres no use for 50 ft radius stun for 1 min...unless stomp and leap are synergies, then one might consider adding more points.
well the trend is, if it attacks more than 1 target, the dmg is less. not counting AoE spells.
cleave looks like it can maybe hit 3 max, so the dmg is more "concentrated" while seismic looks like it knock out as many in that line as there can be, so id imagine less dmg for that skill than cleave when both are maxed.
Lord de Seis
i ahte that guy, he had immunities to all my chars...if it was my sorc...fire...my other sorc...ice...my barb...physical...he was harder than diablo to me.
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Remember the String of Ears
"to the worm in horseradish, the world is horseradish."
i ahte that guy, he had immunities to all my chars...if it was my sorc...fire...my other sorc...ice...my barb...physical...he was harder than diablo to me.
Diablo's panzy. Making pre-bosses more powerful than bosses is just... wrong.
I suppose since they are using the different skill maxes system perhaps it wouldn't matter if 1-slot skills were there.
Um, what is it then? :confused: A special ability of WD"s or something, like Unsummon? As far as I know, they didn't really say how the skill was cast or what was it called, for that matter. All they said is "he can destroy them in a magica burst of energy" or something.
i'm sure there won't be any single point skill, unless it's leap, which seems tactic/utility oriented rather than combat focused, though i could be wrong
i'm sure there won't be any single point skill, unless it's leap, which seems tactic/utility oriented rather than combat focused, though i could be wrong
It's pretty obvious, and, of course, this is most probably not going to work in the actual game because locust swarm and fire bomb are low level spells, not to mention they may not use skill trees anymore. This is a Witch Doctor Summoning Master :P:
Max Summon Mongrel and/or Mongrel Management (if they still use the same system)
Max Locust Swarm
Max Fire Bomb
Max Dispatch Creature (whatever spell that destroys Mongrels in an explosion)
+ Synergies
First of all, one thing to note is that Locust Swarm, Fire Bomb, and Summon Mongrel are basically special synergies, because if you put points into them all, you deal more combined damage. What is better, simply casting Locust Swarm, or casting Locust Swarm + having a mongrel attacking with Locust Swarm cast on him + his melee damage?
Same situation with Fire Bomb. What if both Fire Bomb and Locust Swarm effects can be cast on the Mongrel at the same time? Scary. But the reason I have both is to combat potential immunities.
This means that there will be synergies in one way or another.
Dispatch Creature, while being similar to corpse/poison explosion is a bit different because while corpses just lie on the ground, your creatures are most probably fighting the enemy, and so dispatching them would almost always mean you are going to hurt some enemy. Depending on the mechanics of the spell, it may hurt more if the mongrel has more health (like corpse explosion) making it pretty nasty, and another synergy, and also magic damage giving me one more thing to combat hell. I'd probably won't do this, though, because that would end up being a lot of points.
On the other hand, if Dispatch Creature does not rely on health but just has increasing magic damage, you can try increasing the amount of mongrels and other pets and just make a build based of making pets and dispatching them all day long.
Apart from that, I am having problems with finding applications for Dispatch Creature. I doubt it's too powerful, and it requires you to put points into summoning while corpse explosion didn't.
Speaking of Zombie wall, personally, it's basically Bone Wall + Iron Maiden with static damage. But I have a thought that it's going to become much weaker, because Bone Wall and Iron Maiden was already 2 different spells, while Zombie Wall is one. Iron Maiden is also monster based, making it basically more useful and adaptive than just a wall that deals damage. I also wonder if you can cast locust swarm or fire bomb on Zombie Wall, but if they did not show that perhaps you can't so as to avoid similarity.
END OF WALL OF TEXT
So what do you think about how the classes are going to use their skills?
The rest of WD's spells do not really interest me since we lack info, I am not really a big fan of the barb so far so if you have any ideas as to what are you going to do with the barb (besides maxing WW, of course), please post them.
We don't know how skill trees work, or how many skill points you receive.
However, as a longtime Assassin player, I can tell you they would have to buff the holy hell out of Fire Bomb to make it useful in any game. It had decent damage (on par with Fireball) and it had a larger radius, but the in air time of the actual spell was so long you'd be dead before you could kill anything with it.
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Hardcore
E-Sports
Also, WD's Fire Bomb seems to have less of a time spent to cast it. It could be cast on the ground, like meteor. I didn't really think meteor was useless. Monsters were usually pretty slow.
The problem lies in that, as spells and traps go, if you're not doing 2k damage per spell or trap (or completely bypassing resistance) then you can't kill whatever it is you're attacking in Nightmare and Hell.
The max damage of Fire Bomb and Fire Ball were exactly the same, until you added Sorcs Fire Mastery skill on which made a max Fire Ball with Synergies do something like 4k damage per hit in a 1yrd radius. That's much better than a Fire Bomb which only did 1.3k in a 3.8yrd radius.
But the ability of the Witch Doctor to buff his pets with spells is pretty awesome, it could turn even the most seemingly useless things into usable spells.
Words I hate in Gaming Culture:
Epic
Hardcore
E-Sports
I actually wonder what are they going to do to make sure spells like Fire Bomb are useful if they don't deal too many damage. Perhaps summon units can add percentage values from their empowerment. For instance, a unit of level 4 may add 75% damage of the spell cast on him, but on level 20 he does like 400% damage :P.
well first skill other than ww i noticed was the seismic slam. so this is gonna be a pvm type barb.
max seismic slam and likely synergies.
1 to ground stomp (unless this is a synergy)
1 to leap if not a synergy.
max all battle order type skills and masteries of your type - granted they exist.
since leap and ground stomp stun minor foes, gather mobs and use it to stun them, leap is for escaping + stun, then spam seismic around until everything is dead. im not sure whether seismic will be purely physical dmg, that is most likely though.
in pvp cleave seems to be more effective, not counting ww >.>
there arnt many builds for a barb yet...and it seems like all of the skills shown so far in are for mobbing and spamming...
but WD seems much more captivating atm to dream up builds
a summoner pvp type seems really good, but since we havent seen all his curses and spells...:D
just max his mongrels, and his fire bomb or locust (assuming poison or something elemental/magical, not sure though) to take advantage of poor immunities. and then chuck fire bombs and explode your mongels from time to time.
"to the worm in horseradish, the world is horseradish."
Since ground stomp stuns, it's probably weaker then other spells. Are we having another skill that people are going to put just one point in? I hate that.
Speaking of leap, hopefully, it'll be useless without a lot of points in it (aka, small radius, kinda what DII did but moreso). Maybe leap should only gain stun and attack on higher levels. :cool:
What do you mean? Do you mean attack radius or what.
well the trend is, if it attacks more than 1 target, the dmg is less. not counting AoE spells.
cleave looks like it can maybe hit 3 max, so the dmg is more "concentrated" while seismic looks like it knock out as many in that line as there can be, so id imagine less dmg for that skill than cleave when both are maxed.
i ahte that guy, he had immunities to all my chars...if it was my sorc...fire...my other sorc...ice...my barb...physical...he was harder than diablo to me.
"to the worm in horseradish, the world is horseradish."
I suppose since they are using the different skill maxes system perhaps it wouldn't matter if 1-slot skills were there.
It's the decisions you make when you have no time to make them that define who you are.
"to the worm in horseradish, the world is horseradish."
RIP: Demon Hunter: lvl 50 | Barb: lvl 60 (plvl 5) | Monk: lvl12 & lvl70 (plvl 200)