It depends what your goal is. Do you want to challenge yourself with higher monster levels or do you just want to farm as quickly and efficiently as possible?
This will still be the best farming spec imo but if you want to turn up the monster level, this spec won't be as good. That said, no matter what spec you're using, if you turn up the monster level you're also losing efficiency. I wouldn't use this spec for the infernal machine either.
You must have some wicked gear for that to actually work out for you. For me, it was an expensive and frustrating experience.
1.) I don't know how you function with only having zbears for an attack. Anything that runs away is an extreme pain (even worse if it's molten). You need a ranged skill.
2.) I couldn't survive without having zdogs out to distract. It wasn't an issue for early Act 3 but the later stuff in Act 3 was killing me (both trash and elites).
3.) I liked having the speed glyph for horrify but it made reflects damage and certain trash packs a huge headache. I must not have the gear yet to pull this off. Possibly once I get rid of my magic find....
4.) I can't stand Mass Confusion. The very first pack I used it against was knockback.... it took 2-3 times longer to kill because the stupid mobs would punt each other to different parts of the map. I know this was an odd situation but I was not a fan. I did not experience a noticeable increase in kill time either so.... not worth it.
Thanks for the input. My gear cannot handle it though or I simply don't like the playstyle. Maybe it will work better for others.
Thanks for the good advice. The only thing I disagree with is your advice about using Tyrael's might. I think the 4 piece zuni set is HUGE and you need the chest if you're going to use Thing of the Deep. Also, lifesteal is very important for making reflects damage packs easier... sometimes the health globes don't drop at 50% health and that's when you can have trouble (not dying but you'll have to wait for spirit walk to come back). Lifesteal isn't needed (I don't have it on my MF weapon) but it does help out a lot if you have it.
Personally, I run out of mana on extra health massive units (like tremors) so some of your advice is a bit based on your current gear (you seem to have a ton of +mana regen/max mana/zbear reduction pieces).
I'll try the movespeed boost on horrify and see if I really need the armor boost at my gear level. I've had that rune on my mental checklist to try once I start removing some of my MF gear so we'll see how it goes. Mass confusion seems like an interesting skill to have. I may have to try it instead of dogs but I think I might start dying on trash without my dogs... I don't think my gear is at your level yet in terms of survivability.
How do you stand breaking down doors/objects with zbears? It's so slow and cumbersome. Even if I never used darts for damage it still saves a lot of time in the keeps breaking down doors. My keep clears are much slower when I only have zbears on my bar. I don't think BBV really adds much when you're killing elites in 2-3 seconds anyway. Also, there are times where I can't be close enough to use zombie bears due to molten/arcane if it's an enemy that runs away.
Any of you use Life steal? I am considering getting manajumas carving knife, just not sure if its worth it (Its pretty expensive with 90% crit and socket)
It helps a lot with reflects damage and with keeping your health topped off in general. It's worth it.
Do you find it worth it not to have socket and crit dmg on weapon? For me the dmg increase in going those compared to raw dps is huge
It's up to you how much you want to spend. If you want crit + socket + lifesteal + decent DPS... you'll pay over 10x the price to get something with less DPS.
If you plan on using this build though, you need to keep in mind that a bear crit (even with very little to no crit dmg) will kill almost anything. So yeah... your DPS number will increase by a lot but how much of that is overkill? Solely relying on that number can cause problems. It does make elites melt faster though so it depends on your current gear if you're happy with the speed of elite kills. When I'm using my regular gear I have a stone of jordan and elites just melt so I don't care a bit about crit dmg or a socket on my weapon.
Any of you use Life steal? I am considering getting manajumas carving knife, just not sure if its worth it (Its pretty expensive with 90% crit and socket)
It helps a lot with reflects damage and with keeping your health topped off in general. It's worth it.
I run a quite similar build and I have two suggestions for improvement, depending on gear or playstyle.
I personally run with the umbral shock rune for spirit walk. I find that the two second walk is really not necessary in
this build as you are almost constantly spirit walking. Also, umbral shock combos really well with the vengeful spirit rune.
This means I activate spirit walk, run in, soul harvest them and everything that survives dies from umbral shock.
A second skill I do not agree with ( might depend on gear) is horrify. I understand your reasoning, but from my experience the Gargantuan provides the same level of protection, if not better, while constantly dealing damage and killing random single monsters.
Additionally, horrify makes the monsters scatter, which is something you dont want with this build. Therefore I feel like the Gargantuan is the better choice in this slot, if you are not craving for a pure survival skill.
You don't understand how you're supposed to use horrify in this build. When I use horrify, I use it before I enter a pack. Horrify is only used for the 100% armor increased. If there was a way to turn off the fear, I would do it. For example, I use it between every pack in the fields of slaughter because there's a lot of ranged monsters that hits me (and millions of monsters that occasionally melee me pretty good). I'll also use it before I engage an elite pack. Horrify is 100 times better than garg for this build.
I tried umbral shock... I couldn't stand having a 2 second spirit walk because even with a 3 second spirit walk, a lot of times I can't make it to a pack. This is pretty important now that I added vengeful spirit because I want to spirit walk into the middle of the pack of enemies and hit vengeful (which usually kills all the weaker monsters). If walk fails before I reach the pack, not only is my travel time increased, but my vengeful spirit will hit less monsters (and it will be more risky that I take a lot of hits). Thanks for the suggestions though! Other people may enjoy it more.
@windwalk... what is your gear like? I had around 45k DPS (before soul harvest) when I first started this build. Do you have enough pickup radius gear? I would suggest at least 20 for this build. Make sure you're close enough that Grave Injustice is proccing with every kill.
Is this build all about stacking as much int as possible only?Is crit%/crit damage important or just a luxury?
I bought yesterday cheap 1050 dps knife with 10%as, 600 loh, max mana and regen but without socket. So i am thinking how crit damage interact with this build because i am a bit confused (dinged 60 as wd 2 days ago so i am not yet that familiar )
It's helpful but overpriced for WD imo. If you're on a budget, get some crit % from cheaper pieces (mojo, gloves) and a bit of crit dmg where you can but don't go out of your way. My weapon doesn't have crit dmg OR a socket... but because of that I got a 1200 dps 1 hander with 142 int, 80 vit, and 2.5% lifesteal for only 10M. If I wanted to add crit dmg to that... well... I didn't find any on the AH at all with that much dps... and the ones in the 1000-1100 range were 50M+... that's just not worth it.
The reason crit dmg is not as good is because once you start getting GOOD gear, you'll be 1 shotting white mobs without a crit. This means all the crit % + crit dmg that you have is mostly wasted. When your crit is only helping you on tremors and elites, it starts to lose it's value a lot. That's not to say it's worthless, it's far from it... but it is a very expensive stat to add to your gear and you can faceroll act 3 without it.
Made another small change. I changed the zdog rune back to life link. This rune is totally open-ended really. Since I now have lifesteal on my weapon I don't notice the HP gain from leeching and I'm starting to kill things so quickly that I don't really need the dogs. 10% less damage will be more useful and from my brief testing over lunch, I'll almost always have the cooldown back before all of my dogs are dead.
The best advice I can give is to take the basic design of this build and them change it to make it work best with your gear. Never be happy just because the build does well... there's always room for improvement and often times certain stats will change what will be best for you.
I have found a small upgrade to the build (depending on your gear).
I found that I didn't really need the Soul to Waste rune on soul harvest since I kill things so quickly it's fairly common to run into another pack of 5+ monsters before 30 seconds. I tried out Vengeful spirit instead and OH MY GOD it's so awesome in a few areas (keep, field, rakkis, crater mostly).
At my gear level, vengeful kills smaller mobs. If I have some gruesome stacks going it will even kill middle hp monsters. The best part is that it has no cast time and is INSTANT so if you're in the keep you can keep on running when you 1 shot a pack of monsters with it. It's awesome with fallen as well because they won't have a chance to run away. I'm loving it. It does take a bit to get used to. You will want to use it as a nuke but you want to make sure that you aren't overwriting a 5 stack with something worse (a 4 stack probably isn't too bad but going down to a 2-3 stack might be harmful to overall speed).
As far as gear, I would suggest staying away from crit dmg (to save money) because honestly... with this build you'll 1 shot most whites and elites die really fast anyway. You don't need high crits. They do nothing for whites so it's only useful for elites (and lifesteal I suppose).
I picked up a new weapon as well I have lifesteal on my weapon now and I don't even need to use spirit walk for reflects damage. It's nice.
Beyond "This is my build, this is how it works," I think Ruppgu is saying "Eventually all late game WD farming builds will look very close to this" which I agree.
Gruesome Feast / Grave Injustice: This combo is just sick if your damage can support it (basically one shotting everything). Grave Injustice enabling so much spirit walking is just too valuable to pass up. With enough kill speed / pickup range Gruesome Feast outpaces Pierce the Veil pretty easily.
I think eventually as damage scales what you will see is people migrating away from bears and towards Acid Rain as the damage is more instant and a 24 yard range is just insane.
Like I said, the things I'm saying pertain to WD at complete top levels of gear. I saw a WD streamer the other day with near best in slot gear and he had 288K character damage without pierce the veil. At that point I couldn't imagine anything surviving your acid cloud, except maybe a few elites, but even then splinters is probably 3 shotting.
I'm confused by people saying you had mana problems with this build. Were you not killing things fast enough or were you killing things out of Grave Injustice range? With big groups around I couldn't drop below half mana if I tried.
I agree... acid rain is the next step if you reach an amount of damage that insane. I'm only at 50-60k with it spiking to 90-100 with self buffs.
I use dogs instead of garg because they offer more distractions so I'm not getting 100% of the mob focus. The damage from garg would not be noticeable because I kill things so quickly.
I'm not sure if I properly displayed the playstyle based on a few of the comments. The defensive slots are pretty much needed no matter how much survival stats you have. The defensive skills allow you to play in a style which speeds up play. I spirit walk into a pack of 20 mobs, blow them up it 2-3 bears and then spirit walk to the next pack. Sometimes they'll all smack me enough before they die and that's where I need the huge buff of armor (or spirit vessel). What exactly would you have in there besides fear that would increase the damage that much? Once you reach a point where white mobs die in 1-2 hits damage doesn't matter much at all. It only matters for elite packs which take only a few seconds to kill anyway. You will see a bigger increase in farming speed by being able to play at mach speed. The fact that the defensive skills let you play in such an aggressive manner is way better than having 10-20k more dps or what-not because we're already at the 1 shot breaking point.
I don't sit back and shoot darts hardly at all. I only mentioned it because there are times where there are 6-7 arcane beams where the mobs are or the area is completely filled with molten fire. These are times where I don't care how good of defensive stats you have, you won't be in there at melee range.
Good info about mana regen bilge... it really did change things once I got the 4 piece zuni. During trash I'm nearly always at full mana and that is huge. I don't agree that picking Thing of the Deep means you have to give up damage but if you don't want to spend 30-40M, you will likely be giving up damage vs your older mojo (I'm only giving up 2k with my middle of the road TotD). A well rolled thing of the deep is the best mojo out there imo because it has mana regen and max mana. The uhkapian serpant doesn't.
How you survival reflect damage? You have no leech.
I tried that with a 80k dps, no leech gears and reflect dmg killed me. Now I replaced the Skorn with a cheap 2 handed staff with 1k LOH and able to cruise through act 3 w/o any problem.
Most packs die before spirit walk ends. Also, once the mobs hit 50% & trash around it dies, globes drop and get sucked right up instantly due to the high pickup range. Finally, after spirit walk ends I can pop horrify for 100% armor. Reflects damage is not an issue at all... even without a lifesteal weapon. That said, I have a lifesteal weapon and I'd like to use it but I don't want to give up 44% magic find. I would suggest a lifesteal weapon but mostly for trash... reflects damage is easy even with 0 lifesteal.
Disclaimer:
This build requires good gear (which I will list) and is meant to be a build that you can strive for and eventually use to farm the end game efficiently. This build is all about speed and making farming runs the quickest possible. Without a few key pieces of gear this build will not be possible but once you acquire that it's the quickest farming build out there for WDs. I've noticed a lot of high-end WDs switching over to this build about the same time as me (I thought I was coming up with something original but apparently I wasn't ). It's starting to become a fairly popular build so I wanted to make sure to get the word out to d fans people. I know most people don't have this kind of gear yet but it will give you an idea of what types of gear to strive for to be able to pull this off.
The Build:
Splinters - This skill slot is up to you. I chose splinters for a few reasons. 1.) It's quick. Originally I had spirit barrage in my build but it's SO SLOW. I like to use something fast to bust down doors and it was insane how slow spirit barrage is. 2.) It's ranged. Sometimes you need a bit of ranged against a pack. You can't always get close safely so that's when I'll use splinters instead of bears. 3.) It's great to finish things off. A lot of the times, my target will die from the first splinter and then the next few splinters will finish off other targets. I've seen other people use firebomb for this slot but it's nice to have a high single target spell for those cases where close range isn't an option. Also, it helps against mobs that run away which is the biggest weakness of this spec. I can't imagine doing those packs with firebomb since it'll take forever to single target each of the mobs.
Zombie Bears - At 236% x 3, this is the most damaging spell we have. On top of this, most of Act 3 is indoors so you can stand with your back to a wall and hit the same target with all 3 bears. There isn't a single spell that competes and I can't see an end-game farming build without it unless you hit insane DPS levels where you can 1 shot things with abilities with more range.
Horrify - It took me awhile to add this to my build. I was about to give up on this build before I tried horrify because I was dying a few times a run and it was slowing me down. The 100% armor makes a huge difference. I keep it up 100% of the time when I'm fighting ranged (or anything that will hit me a lot). It's also good to use if you get in a bad spot. An added bonus of this skill is that it makes my Zdogs very rarely die. I used to run with BBV instead in this slot. It was nice since I could use BBV every other elite pack typically but I prefer the extra armor from horrify. Fields of slaughter can get ugly without it. I'll spirit walk into the middle of 10 mobs (that hit hard) so without the armor, I just die.
ZDogs - I went with leeching beasts because my dogs were dying too much with life link. When the dogs die, I often follow pretty quickly if it's a tough elite pack (horde of extra health tremors for example).
Spirit Walk - This is mostly used to travel quickly between packs of monsters. Jaunt was picked for the extra second of travel time. I also use spirit walk against reflects damage packs. If I have a decent gruesome stack going, I'll kill most packs before it ends or they will die shortly after it ends... either way, reflects damage typically isn't a problem.
Soul Harvest - I picked soul to waste because non of the other options would really be helpful. I like running with a constant 5 stack on. Not only does it give me the added resistances but the extra damage is nice. All the other runes are not needed or redundant with this build.
Spirit Vessel - The 2 seconds off the cooldown of spirit walk means it takes a smaller pack to kill before your spirit walk is back to travel again. This saves you minutes off your clear time. A lot of times the pack is only 5-6 monsters large so you'll need those extra 2 seconds to instantly get spirit walk back off cooldown.
Gruesome Feast - Since you're like a vacuum cleaner with thing of the deep, gruesome is really awesome. While clearing trash, you'll always have a few stacks going and you'll have insane amounts of int. I believe I've seen 4000 int at times on my character. Things just melt. This is also your main source of mana. If you have high mana (I have close to 1000) you'll get a ton of mana pack per globe.
Grave Injustice - The main point of this is to get spirit walk back off cooldown. As an added bonus, you also get heals and mana.
The Gear:
Required Gear:
* Thing of the Deep: This guy isn't too expensive unless you insist on a top tier one. You can get one for a few Mil that will suit you. The most important thing is the 20 pickup radius. This makes Gruesome and Grave Injustice work. An alternative would be to get 3-4 pieces of pickup radius gear. I would highly suggest Thing of the Deep instead though.
* All resist and vit gear. This is an aggressive build. You will start to die once your defensive stats can't keep up. I have 330 all resist before resist from int and it works pretty well. Also, I would suggest trying to stay around at least 30k hp. I start proccing spirit vessel more than I'd like when I drop below that mark.
* High int gear. The higher the better. The more int you have, the more it gets boosted from gruesome feast. I don't think you should completely ignore crit and crit dmg but they are mostly only useful on elite packs. Once you get your int high enough, you'll 1 shot almost all white mobs.
Not required but helpful:
* Max Mana: Max mana gear is great since you'll be getting a lot of mana pack from gruesome feast.
* Lifesteal or health on kill is great. With this build you'll be in the middle of the action so both of these are great to keep your health topped off.
* +Armor: You'll get hit a lot so + armor will be nice to have. Thanks to horrify (and being able to have it up almost all the time) armor is a lot better than most builds.
* Zuni 4 piece: This is not required but it will speed up your run a ton. This is something to eventually strive for but you can do this build before you get a set. Between the mana regen and mana on kill, my mana typically stays topped off during trash clearing. I can spam bears as long as I like.
* Lacuni Prowlers: This is another piece that is not required but it will improve the speed on your runs so much thanks to the run speed increase.
Weaknesses:
* The one big weakness of this build is the range of zbears. Because of this, those fat wizard guys in Act 3 are the hardest packs. A lot of times it will be hard to hit them with bears. If you can, corner one and completely blow him up. I'll rely on splinters more for these mobs and they'll take a bit longer to kill.
* Extra Health: Sometimes I'll run out of mana on extra health mobs since it takes longer to get them to 50% where they may drop globes. It will help more when I lose my MF weapon and get something with mana regen/max mana.
The Results:
This build is SICK with the right gear. Places like the keeps and crater go insanely fast.... sprint Barb fast. It's great. When your bears kill whites in 1-2 casts, you can spirit walk into a pack, kill them all and then spirit walk to the next pack. It cut my clear time in half. It only takes around an hour now to do a complete Act 3 clear (last 2 bosses + every area excluding the 2 areas outside the town). I haven't found a faster build and the deaths are very low with horrify, dogs, and spirit vessel all protecting you.
//edit: thanks gnarf
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This will still be the best farming spec imo but if you want to turn up the monster level, this spec won't be as good. That said, no matter what spec you're using, if you turn up the monster level you're also losing efficiency. I wouldn't use this spec for the infernal machine either.
You must have some wicked gear for that to actually work out for you. For me, it was an expensive and frustrating experience.
1.) I don't know how you function with only having zbears for an attack. Anything that runs away is an extreme pain (even worse if it's molten). You need a ranged skill.
2.) I couldn't survive without having zdogs out to distract. It wasn't an issue for early Act 3 but the later stuff in Act 3 was killing me (both trash and elites).
3.) I liked having the speed glyph for horrify but it made reflects damage and certain trash packs a huge headache. I must not have the gear yet to pull this off. Possibly once I get rid of my magic find....
4.) I can't stand Mass Confusion. The very first pack I used it against was knockback.... it took 2-3 times longer to kill because the stupid mobs would punt each other to different parts of the map. I know this was an odd situation but I was not a fan. I did not experience a noticeable increase in kill time either so.... not worth it.
Thanks for the input. My gear cannot handle it though or I simply don't like the playstyle. Maybe it will work better for others.
Thanks for the good advice. The only thing I disagree with is your advice about using Tyrael's might. I think the 4 piece zuni set is HUGE and you need the chest if you're going to use Thing of the Deep. Also, lifesteal is very important for making reflects damage packs easier... sometimes the health globes don't drop at 50% health and that's when you can have trouble (not dying but you'll have to wait for spirit walk to come back). Lifesteal isn't needed (I don't have it on my MF weapon) but it does help out a lot if you have it.
Personally, I run out of mana on extra health massive units (like tremors) so some of your advice is a bit based on your current gear (you seem to have a ton of +mana regen/max mana/zbear reduction pieces).
I'll try the movespeed boost on horrify and see if I really need the armor boost at my gear level. I've had that rune on my mental checklist to try once I start removing some of my MF gear so we'll see how it goes. Mass confusion seems like an interesting skill to have. I may have to try it instead of dogs but I think I might start dying on trash without my dogs... I don't think my gear is at your level yet in terms of survivability.
How do you stand breaking down doors/objects with zbears? It's so slow and cumbersome. Even if I never used darts for damage it still saves a lot of time in the keeps breaking down doors. My keep clears are much slower when I only have zbears on my bar. I don't think BBV really adds much when you're killing elites in 2-3 seconds anyway. Also, there are times where I can't be close enough to use zombie bears due to molten/arcane if it's an enemy that runs away.
It's up to you how much you want to spend. If you want crit + socket + lifesteal + decent DPS... you'll pay over 10x the price to get something with less DPS.
If you plan on using this build though, you need to keep in mind that a bear crit (even with very little to no crit dmg) will kill almost anything. So yeah... your DPS number will increase by a lot but how much of that is overkill? Solely relying on that number can cause problems. It does make elites melt faster though so it depends on your current gear if you're happy with the speed of elite kills. When I'm using my regular gear I have a stone of jordan and elites just melt so I don't care a bit about crit dmg or a socket on my weapon.
It helps a lot with reflects damage and with keeping your health topped off in general. It's worth it.
You don't understand how you're supposed to use horrify in this build. When I use horrify, I use it before I enter a pack. Horrify is only used for the 100% armor increased. If there was a way to turn off the fear, I would do it. For example, I use it between every pack in the fields of slaughter because there's a lot of ranged monsters that hits me (and millions of monsters that occasionally melee me pretty good). I'll also use it before I engage an elite pack. Horrify is 100 times better than garg for this build.
I tried umbral shock... I couldn't stand having a 2 second spirit walk because even with a 3 second spirit walk, a lot of times I can't make it to a pack. This is pretty important now that I added vengeful spirit because I want to spirit walk into the middle of the pack of enemies and hit vengeful (which usually kills all the weaker monsters). If walk fails before I reach the pack, not only is my travel time increased, but my vengeful spirit will hit less monsters (and it will be more risky that I take a lot of hits). Thanks for the suggestions though! Other people may enjoy it more.
@windwalk... what is your gear like? I had around 45k DPS (before soul harvest) when I first started this build. Do you have enough pickup radius gear? I would suggest at least 20 for this build. Make sure you're close enough that Grave Injustice is proccing with every kill.
It's helpful but overpriced for WD imo. If you're on a budget, get some crit % from cheaper pieces (mojo, gloves) and a bit of crit dmg where you can but don't go out of your way. My weapon doesn't have crit dmg OR a socket... but because of that I got a 1200 dps 1 hander with 142 int, 80 vit, and 2.5% lifesteal for only 10M. If I wanted to add crit dmg to that... well... I didn't find any on the AH at all with that much dps... and the ones in the 1000-1100 range were 50M+... that's just not worth it.
The reason crit dmg is not as good is because once you start getting GOOD gear, you'll be 1 shotting white mobs without a crit. This means all the crit % + crit dmg that you have is mostly wasted. When your crit is only helping you on tremors and elites, it starts to lose it's value a lot. That's not to say it's worthless, it's far from it... but it is a very expensive stat to add to your gear and you can faceroll act 3 without it.
The best advice I can give is to take the basic design of this build and them change it to make it work best with your gear. Never be happy just because the build does well... there's always room for improvement and often times certain stats will change what will be best for you.
I found that I didn't really need the Soul to Waste rune on soul harvest since I kill things so quickly it's fairly common to run into another pack of 5+ monsters before 30 seconds. I tried out Vengeful spirit instead and OH MY GOD it's so awesome in a few areas (keep, field, rakkis, crater mostly).
At my gear level, vengeful kills smaller mobs. If I have some gruesome stacks going it will even kill middle hp monsters. The best part is that it has no cast time and is INSTANT so if you're in the keep you can keep on running when you 1 shot a pack of monsters with it. It's awesome with fallen as well because they won't have a chance to run away. I'm loving it. It does take a bit to get used to. You will want to use it as a nuke but you want to make sure that you aren't overwriting a 5 stack with something worse (a 4 stack probably isn't too bad but going down to a 2-3 stack might be harmful to overall speed).
As far as gear, I would suggest staying away from crit dmg (to save money) because honestly... with this build you'll 1 shot most whites and elites die really fast anyway. You don't need high crits. They do nothing for whites so it's only useful for elites (and lifesteal I suppose).
I picked up a new weapon as well
I agree... acid rain is the next step if you reach an amount of damage that insane. I'm only at 50-60k with it spiking to 90-100 with self buffs.
I use dogs instead of garg because they offer more distractions so I'm not getting 100% of the mob focus. The damage from garg would not be noticeable because I kill things so quickly.
I'm not sure if I properly displayed the playstyle based on a few of the comments. The defensive slots are pretty much needed no matter how much survival stats you have. The defensive skills allow you to play in a style which speeds up play. I spirit walk into a pack of 20 mobs, blow them up it 2-3 bears and then spirit walk to the next pack. Sometimes they'll all smack me enough before they die and that's where I need the huge buff of armor (or spirit vessel). What exactly would you have in there besides fear that would increase the damage that much? Once you reach a point where white mobs die in 1-2 hits damage doesn't matter much at all. It only matters for elite packs which take only a few seconds to kill anyway. You will see a bigger increase in farming speed by being able to play at mach speed. The fact that the defensive skills let you play in such an aggressive manner is way better than having 10-20k more dps or what-not because we're already at the 1 shot breaking point.
I don't sit back and shoot darts hardly at all. I only mentioned it because there are times where there are 6-7 arcane beams where the mobs are or the area is completely filled with molten fire. These are times where I don't care how good of defensive stats you have, you won't be in there at melee range.
Good info about mana regen bilge... it really did change things once I got the 4 piece zuni. During trash I'm nearly always at full mana and that is huge. I don't agree that picking Thing of the Deep means you have to give up damage but if you don't want to spend 30-40M, you will likely be giving up damage vs your older mojo (I'm only giving up 2k with my middle of the road TotD). A well rolled thing of the deep is the best mojo out there imo because it has mana regen and max mana. The uhkapian serpant doesn't.
Most packs die before spirit walk ends. Also, once the mobs hit 50% & trash around it dies, globes drop and get sucked right up instantly due to the high pickup range. Finally, after spirit walk ends I can pop horrify for 100% armor. Reflects damage is not an issue at all... even without a lifesteal weapon. That said, I have a lifesteal weapon and I'd like to use it but I don't want to give up 44% magic find. I would suggest a lifesteal weapon but mostly for trash... reflects damage is easy even with 0 lifesteal.
This build requires good gear (which I will list) and is meant to be a build that you can strive for and eventually use to farm the end game efficiently. This build is all about speed and making farming runs the quickest possible. Without a few key pieces of gear this build will not be possible but once you acquire that it's the quickest farming build out there for WDs. I've noticed a lot of high-end WDs switching over to this build about the same time as me (I thought I was coming up with something original but apparently I wasn't
The Build:
Splinters - This skill slot is up to you. I chose splinters for a few reasons. 1.) It's quick. Originally I had spirit barrage in my build but it's SO SLOW. I like to use something fast to bust down doors and it was insane how slow spirit barrage is. 2.) It's ranged. Sometimes you need a bit of ranged against a pack. You can't always get close safely so that's when I'll use splinters instead of bears. 3.) It's great to finish things off. A lot of the times, my target will die from the first splinter and then the next few splinters will finish off other targets. I've seen other people use firebomb for this slot but it's nice to have a high single target spell for those cases where close range isn't an option. Also, it helps against mobs that run away which is the biggest weakness of this spec. I can't imagine doing those packs with firebomb since it'll take forever to single target each of the mobs.
Zombie Bears - At 236% x 3, this is the most damaging spell we have. On top of this, most of Act 3 is indoors so you can stand with your back to a wall and hit the same target with all 3 bears. There isn't a single spell that competes and I can't see an end-game farming build without it unless you hit insane DPS levels where you can 1 shot things with abilities with more range.
Horrify - It took me awhile to add this to my build. I was about to give up on this build before I tried horrify because I was dying a few times a run and it was slowing me down. The 100% armor makes a huge difference. I keep it up 100% of the time when I'm fighting ranged (or anything that will hit me a lot). It's also good to use if you get in a bad spot. An added bonus of this skill is that it makes my Zdogs very rarely die. I used to run with BBV instead in this slot. It was nice since I could use BBV every other elite pack typically but I prefer the extra armor from horrify. Fields of slaughter can get ugly without it. I'll spirit walk into the middle of 10 mobs (that hit hard) so without the armor, I just die.
ZDogs - I went with leeching beasts because my dogs were dying too much with life link. When the dogs die, I often follow pretty quickly if it's a tough elite pack (horde of extra health tremors for example).
Spirit Walk - This is mostly used to travel quickly between packs of monsters. Jaunt was picked for the extra second of travel time. I also use spirit walk against reflects damage packs. If I have a decent gruesome stack going, I'll kill most packs before it ends or they will die shortly after it ends... either way, reflects damage typically isn't a problem.
Soul Harvest - I picked soul to waste because non of the other options would really be helpful. I like running with a constant 5 stack on. Not only does it give me the added resistances but the extra damage is nice. All the other runes are not needed or redundant with this build.
Spirit Vessel - The 2 seconds off the cooldown of spirit walk means it takes a smaller pack to kill before your spirit walk is back to travel again. This saves you minutes off your clear time. A lot of times the pack is only 5-6 monsters large so you'll need those extra 2 seconds to instantly get spirit walk back off cooldown.
Gruesome Feast - Since you're like a vacuum cleaner with thing of the deep, gruesome is really awesome. While clearing trash, you'll always have a few stacks going and you'll have insane amounts of int. I believe I've seen 4000 int at times on my character. Things just melt. This is also your main source of mana. If you have high mana (I have close to 1000) you'll get a ton of mana pack per globe.
Grave Injustice - The main point of this is to get spirit walk back off cooldown. As an added bonus, you also get heals and mana.
The Gear:
Required Gear:
* Thing of the Deep: This guy isn't too expensive unless you insist on a top tier one. You can get one for a few Mil that will suit you. The most important thing is the 20 pickup radius. This makes Gruesome and Grave Injustice work. An alternative would be to get 3-4 pieces of pickup radius gear. I would highly suggest Thing of the Deep instead though.
* All resist and vit gear. This is an aggressive build. You will start to die once your defensive stats can't keep up. I have 330 all resist before resist from int and it works pretty well. Also, I would suggest trying to stay around at least 30k hp. I start proccing spirit vessel more than I'd like when I drop below that mark.
* High int gear. The higher the better. The more int you have, the more it gets boosted from gruesome feast. I don't think you should completely ignore crit and crit dmg but they are mostly only useful on elite packs. Once you get your int high enough, you'll 1 shot almost all white mobs.
Not required but helpful:
* Max Mana: Max mana gear is great since you'll be getting a lot of mana pack from gruesome feast.
* Lifesteal or health on kill is great. With this build you'll be in the middle of the action so both of these are great to keep your health topped off.
* +Armor: You'll get hit a lot so + armor will be nice to have. Thanks to horrify (and being able to have it up almost all the time) armor is a lot better than most builds.
* Zuni 4 piece: This is not required but it will speed up your run a ton. This is something to eventually strive for but you can do this build before you get a set. Between the mana regen and mana on kill, my mana typically stays topped off during trash clearing. I can spam bears as long as I like.
* Lacuni Prowlers: This is another piece that is not required but it will improve the speed on your runs so much thanks to the run speed increase.
Weaknesses:
* The one big weakness of this build is the range of zbears. Because of this, those fat wizard guys in Act 3 are the hardest packs. A lot of times it will be hard to hit them with bears. If you can, corner one and completely blow him up. I'll rely on splinters more for these mobs and they'll take a bit longer to kill.
* Extra Health: Sometimes I'll run out of mana on extra health mobs since it takes longer to get them to 50% where they may drop globes. It will help more when I lose my MF weapon and get something with mana regen/max mana.
The Results:
This build is SICK with the right gear. Places like the keeps and crater go insanely fast.... sprint Barb fast. It's great. When your bears kill whites in 1-2 casts, you can spirit walk into a pack, kill them all and then spirit walk to the next pack. It cut my clear time in half. It only takes around an hour now to do a complete Act 3 clear (last 2 bosses + every area excluding the 2 areas outside the town). I haven't found a faster build and the deaths are very low with horrify, dogs, and spirit vessel all protecting you.
//edit: thanks gnarf