To sum it up: Without the mana regeneration bonus from 1.0.3-vision quest, the witch doctor is not able to sustain high amount of damage as long as he can now. Because the damage of the bears will remain same in 1.0.4 and that seems to be the DPS they want witch doctors to do at best, it will mean that the witch doctor's kill-speed is going to drop. We would simply want to have the 1.0.4 changes without losing our fastest way of clearing content. By all means they should boost the less effective builds to be competitive, but removing the competition does more harm than good.
I don't think we known enough about the patch yet to say this is necessarily true. Given the amount of iterations they did internally testing zombie dogs alone, I would be loathe to suggest they're simply going to throw a big change like this on VQ with no consideration for the impact it will have on sustained or burst dps. They may well miss the mark to some degree or other, but I'm far more optimistic about having more potentially viable (and exceptional) builds available than I am pessimistic about retaining the one build which has become standard.
VQ in it's current iteration really does more to hamstring build diversity than any other skill in the game. I think blizzard realized it was never going to be able to simply buff up short-cooldown spells or tweak longer cooldown spells when the scenario for most WDs was to simply stack a bunch of long cooldown spells for no other reason than their lengthy cooldown.
Anyway, I think we'll have more to theorize with in the coming weeks, so there's really no point in getting too worked up over the previews today.
More builds at the cost of what we currently have, which isn't all that much. I liked bears as much as anyone, but you can't be serious that you'd rather have the status quo than an entirely re-worked skillset to play with?
That's like saying you'd rather live in chains because you like field-work anyway.
If you haven't seen the official page yet, they did change VQ as expected (30% mana regen after using a signature spell - permanent if one of those signature spells is rune as a summon ala spider queen), but base mana regen is up from 20 to 45.
I don't have the napkin math to support a projection about how well this will balance out compared to current VQ builds, but it appears their goal (and they are still internally testing) is to level off mana consumption. Whether or not that will translate into "not enough burst," or "holy crap I can spam bears for days," remains to be seen.
If I had to take an honest guess at their goal I would think that the number of bears you can cast before needing to regen would be something equivalent to the number of blizzard casts a wizard can get off before running out of AP. Of course that's an imperfect comparison given the different resource systems and skill synergies, but you get the idea. The (laudable) goal appears to be for current VQ build to be able to save those hefty cooldowns for when they are actually needed, rather than having them churned over constantly in order to keep the passive running.
Again, I won't guess on how close to the mark they will actually come, but I would have to take issue with anyone who thinks the current situation with VQ is superior to their general proposal.
if it's true, it's a major nerf to vision quest builds which would turn me off a lot. If there was one thought in my head going into the changes, it was that I hope they don't touch builds people currently enjoy (vision quest builds).
VQ is just one passive skill. Far better that blizzard change it than try to adjust every skill relative to it's current iteration (assuming it caused problems in relation to the general re-balancing effort). Something tells me they wouldn't arbitrarily change the skill just because people currently use it.
either the WD would need a significant buff overall to compete with the wizards efficiency or the wizard would have to be nerfed.
I don't see a significant nerf coming the wizard's way. CM builds might be over the top, but not much more so than ww/tornado, cyclone monks, and any old DH. The big ticket for 1.0.4 was supposedly skill build diversity so I feel pretty comfortable expecting Blizzard to deliver on viable pet builds amongst other things. I wouldn't hazard a guess as to how competitive it will be to start, but if the scaling is done well it ought to be on par with some of the tankier builds (given that having a lot of pets is a defensive playstyle).
I'm still very hopeful, but not touching my WD until the patch. My frustration with the class grows every time I get another character to 60 (three down, two to go).
I would be overjoyed to be able to use a pet-centric build in act2+ inferno (without using a cc gimmick build), but I would settle for having more petless builds become viable. Mana as a resource doesn't bother me. I think they could quite easily tweak regen and spell costs to offset it's weaknesses.
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I don't think we known enough about the patch yet to say this is necessarily true. Given the amount of iterations they did internally testing zombie dogs alone, I would be loathe to suggest they're simply going to throw a big change like this on VQ with no consideration for the impact it will have on sustained or burst dps. They may well miss the mark to some degree or other, but I'm far more optimistic about having more potentially viable (and exceptional) builds available than I am pessimistic about retaining the one build which has become standard.
VQ in it's current iteration really does more to hamstring build diversity than any other skill in the game. I think blizzard realized it was never going to be able to simply buff up short-cooldown spells or tweak longer cooldown spells when the scenario for most WDs was to simply stack a bunch of long cooldown spells for no other reason than their lengthy cooldown.
Anyway, I think we'll have more to theorize with in the coming weeks, so there's really no point in getting too worked up over the previews today.
That's like saying you'd rather live in chains because you like field-work anyway.
I don't have the napkin math to support a projection about how well this will balance out compared to current VQ builds, but it appears their goal (and they are still internally testing) is to level off mana consumption. Whether or not that will translate into "not enough burst," or "holy crap I can spam bears for days," remains to be seen.
If I had to take an honest guess at their goal I would think that the number of bears you can cast before needing to regen would be something equivalent to the number of blizzard casts a wizard can get off before running out of AP. Of course that's an imperfect comparison given the different resource systems and skill synergies, but you get the idea. The (laudable) goal appears to be for current VQ build to be able to save those hefty cooldowns for when they are actually needed, rather than having them churned over constantly in order to keep the passive running.
Again, I won't guess on how close to the mark they will actually come, but I would have to take issue with anyone who thinks the current situation with VQ is superior to their general proposal.
VQ is just one passive skill. Far better that blizzard change it than try to adjust every skill relative to it's current iteration (assuming it caused problems in relation to the general re-balancing effort). Something tells me they wouldn't arbitrarily change the skill just because people currently use it.
I don't see a significant nerf coming the wizard's way. CM builds might be over the top, but not much more so than ww/tornado, cyclone monks, and any old DH. The big ticket for 1.0.4 was supposedly skill build diversity so I feel pretty comfortable expecting Blizzard to deliver on viable pet builds amongst other things. I wouldn't hazard a guess as to how competitive it will be to start, but if the scaling is done well it ought to be on par with some of the tankier builds (given that having a lot of pets is a defensive playstyle).
I would be overjoyed to be able to use a pet-centric build in act2+ inferno (without using a cc gimmick build), but I would settle for having more petless builds become viable. Mana as a resource doesn't bother me. I think they could quite easily tweak regen and spell costs to offset it's weaknesses.