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This thread has received more attention than it deserved, I think. Unfortunately, it seems this only ends with people constantly flaming each other :(.

*Consistently stabs thread* DIE, DIE, DIE!

Crap, I'm so tired.

Although I agree that Haunt is not the best used for direct damage, the point I am trying to make is to not use it for the damage, but solely for healing over time. Of course, at this point, no one can say for sure how effective Haunt will be in either case until launch.

Edit: Meant to quote Lamanous.

Quote from Lamanous

i hardly read patch notes, as im not in beta. But even still. casting haunt 9x on a group of mobs would take longer to do than pop grasp and burn with acid rain or even poison dart spam. And not to mention the fact that i'd probably only get 2 ticks before the monsters died, which again, seems like more time wasted than gained.

Don't forget that Haunt will automatically switch to a new target after the previous one dies. So let's say enemies do die within two ticks (which is unlikely for Hell and Inferno), you won't have to keep casting it if you so choose. This alone should leave you enough time to cast other spells while being healed.

Quote from Antirepublican

Quote from Myk_Kudybka

Quote from Lamanous

If you look at the abilities for monks healing, some wd spells, even potions.. they're all in the thousands.. 35,000 for a single potion, which is ROUGHLY GUESSTIMATED at 15% of total hp.. so 155 life per second seems incredibly low for haunt to heal back at higher levels.

You're right, the other classes do have better healing skills than the WD. Since this class lacks a decent source of life regain (potions have a cooldown, so their limited to one use per mob fight), I think the 155 life leech from a number of different targets is the best way for the WD to gain health without worrying for cooldowns.

Idk about that.

Sacrifice can yield over 47k worth of healing, and sacrifice which is only a 15 sec CD can yield over 20k hp.

The wizard in contrast has no direct heals, and only has a heal over time if she takes galvanizing ward.
Well magic weapon - blood magic - might heal...maybe.

True, Sacrifice is also a great alternative. The only problem I have with it is that in order for me to use it I have to allocate that and Summon Zombie Dogs in two slots, and these skills have no effectiveness in my build. For anyone else's build, I'm sure it would work great for the same purpose.

Quote from Lamanous

If you look at the abilities for monks healing, some wd spells, even potions.. they're all in the thousands.. 35,000 for a single potion, which is ROUGHLY GUESSTIMATED at 15% of total hp.. so 155 life per second seems incredibly low for haunt to heal back at higher levels.

You're right, the other classes do have better healing skills than the WD. Since this class lacks a decent source of life regain (potions have a cooldown, so their limited to one use per mob fight), I think the 155 life leech from a number of different targets is the best way for the WD to gain health without worrying for cooldowns.

IMHO, Haunt isn't completely useless. As I mentioned in one of my earlier posts, Haunt can still be used to gain a lot of life per second. According to the Consuming Spirit tooltip, it can leech at a maximum of 155 life per second for every unique target. Since generally Witch Doctors (along with Wizards) would have the lowest Vitality, I'd say this is pretty good for a cheap 15 mana cost.

I'm planning on still using Haunt as a secondary skill to leech life with Consuming Spirit. For primary damage, I'll be going with Firebats.

Ah, so it's similar to most other channel skills. I wasn't looking at it like that :facepalm:. Thanks for the clarification.

Today, when I was fighting the SK, I noticed something strange: when I used haunt (which now does 360% weapon damage), I was only hitting about 3-5 damage per second. However, when I switched to Poison Dart (100% weapon damage) I was finally hitting around 13-17 damage, and my current weapon does 17.2.

Am I looking at the damage values of Haunt incorrectly? Or am I missing something? I would think that 360% weapon damage would hit higher than 100% with Poison Dart. If anyone is able to clarify this to me it would be appreciated.