Pet doc can do some serious damage thats not in question. That said, I don't think those of you that think its *faster* than jade have played jade correctly.
I have good but not godly gear and my harvest does 0.5 billion damage off the bat w/ haunt and swarm. If im wearing harringtons and its procced, it goes well over 1b per cast. If im in a group with a variety of other buffs, i've seen it go over 2b per cast.
Keep in mind of youre rolling around bursting groups youre resetting your (already low) cooldowns constantly, and should have excellent uptime on spirit walk as well.
The issues as I see it are: at some point (above t6) your damage becomes incapable of efficiently triggering cd reduction from grave injustice and you end up sitting around doing not much waiting for harvest to come off cd. Additionally, I understand that in greater rifts the mob damage escalates quickly; optimizing jade gear doesn't leave a lot of room for survival stats and you're going to get one shot anytime youre not in spirit walk (and even 1 shot through it in you don't move fast enough.)
Pet doc has much better SUSTAINED damage which alleviates the issues with cdr and also substantially bettersuitability.
I think Jade has way better AoE but pet doc will rape Jade on single target rift guardians and there is no comparison. The problem with Jade is that you need to have density, pet doc doesn't. In G.rifts, it will come down to density for a Jade doc. Pet doc isn't near as good as jade in aoe situations.
Vs ubers, Pet doc is going to destroy Jade though, in high density rifts, Jade will always be better. If Blizzard buffs rift density in build 3 of 2.1 PTR, that is going to buff Jade a whole lot.
You don't benefit from Grave Injustice on single target fights unless it has adds. I think it evens out, I think Jade docs will move on to two-handers in 2.1.
I like pet doc better, although I do have Hexxing Pants, Starmetal kukri. I pump out serious damage, if I can craft a hellfire amulet in 2.1 with Gruesome feast passive, its going to be crazy.
Fully buffed against elites, my super dog hits for 100mil, fetishes will hit 35mil. I've had 5 stacks of feast before they made super dog from Tallmans finger good which caused me to drop Gruesome feast and had fetishes hitting for 70mil a pop while the feast buff is on.
The only 2h I would use outside of Crusader would be Furnace on Jade Doc if I ever stopped playing summoner. I don't think they're good enough yet, we still have the problem of sockets.
The man responsible for the state Monk and Wizard, these classes have been a complete cluster frick for a long long time. This dev is so out of touch that many don't even know where to begin. So much valuable feedback has been given by several MVP's who know both classes in and out and the opposite has been addressed.
In regards to channeling, I have no idea why they even bothered with it. I was running T5 ray of frost build with light of grace. Now this isn't the best build, but it was something different than the norm. The spells should have been made to be viable on T6, now he's really borked the entire mechanics behind channeling as of build 2 of 2.1 PTR. Monks are in such a ridiculously bad place, the synergy of both classes are no where close to where they should be.
Witch Doctors are so good because there is perfectly synergy between items and abilities. The person responsible for Witch Doctor actually plays the class and understands the mechanics. There are strong pets, there is a strong synergy to turn dots into a powerful nuke using a 6 piece endgame set. The philosophy is solid, clear and concise behind the Witch Doctor class. Wizard and monk philosophy is all over the place, it is a complete incoherent mess.
For whatever reason, Don Vu just doesn't get it. I think if both of these classes don't have a clear direction by the time the games official competitive mode goes live then he needs to fall on the sword. I could understand these problems with a new game and you're still kinda figuring things out with your philosophy behind classes but its been over two years now, you should have a clear vision of what a class should be by now.
Monk and Wizard have been all over the place since release.
Barb, you get the whole master of melee feel, even though they also need some buffs, but their role is pretty much defined.
Witch Doctor is pretty much dots and pets, it is defined.
Demon Hunter is pretty much shoot shit/beast master, its role is defined.
Crusader, a tanky class that can be melee or ranged, its role is now defined after several RoS patches, ironically, Don Vu is also responsible for Crusader.
Wizard, supposed to be the master of elements but really never has been, undefined role. Wizards throwing their hands up in confusion.
Monk, supposed to be an agile melee with healing added, undefined role. Dex now retconned from dodge into armor
I agree, there needs to be a fix to the split farming. I'm not about to say something like 'cmon it's easy just fix it blizz', BUT, it does seem like it would be simple for each bounty to require a player to be next to / near when it finishes, or they don't get credit and can't game hop to get free caches.
There already is a fix for split runs.
If I hit a chest in a different area, a legendary for you can drop and you'd never know it unless you physically enter the zones where other people have cleared bounties and checked your map for orange stars.
Very easy to miss legendary's while split farming.
I've watched Kongor one time and I don't get the hype. I don't care what streamers do but I was amazed at all the people that follow him. The guy cries constantly over "legs".
He seems pretty vapid when it comes to real, actual, intelligence. He doesn't give off a laid back presence like Alkaiser or even Kripp(not a fan of him). I had a buddy tell me if you want to see the next method of lameness ongoing in RoS than just watch Kongor for 5 mins and he'll be doing it.
Dunno, just don't get the hype of some of these guys.
I managed to get the Invoker set + crafted out some of the demons set for a thorns build. Every armor had + thorns(except pants, don't think those can roll +thorns). I ran F.loyalty, 5 dogs+1 garg. I experimented with all kind of other passives, nothing seemed to work.
I used Hack(thorn damage applied axe) mine rolled 95% thorn damage so I could spam no cost aoe primary(plague of toads to see how effective it would be) I socketed it with top tier topaz gem, all other sockets had +220 int gems, 280 gems wouldn't of made that drastic difference needed.
When hack didn't cut it, I went with a Neanderthal, 3485 thorns damage+socket topaz.
The damage was absolutely terrible, It isn't viable past normal, really slow in T1. This is extremely disappointing. I ran SoulHarvest for the extra +int, I used Piranha's for more damage.
Really really disappointed, this is probably never going to be viable unless F.loyalty gets a severe make over where it greatly enhances thorns to pets. Farming that invoker set was tough, I had really hoped it would be a lot better when stacked with the demons set.
Conclusion, not viable unless you want to speed run normal rifts for shards. DoT builds are probably better for that anyway. Seems like Thorns is Barb and Crusader exclusive since they have ways to multiple thorns damage with passives.
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Vs ubers, Pet doc is going to destroy Jade though, in high density rifts, Jade will always be better. If Blizzard buffs rift density in build 3 of 2.1 PTR, that is going to buff Jade a whole lot.
You don't benefit from Grave Injustice on single target fights unless it has adds. I think it evens out, I think Jade docs will move on to two-handers in 2.1.
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Fully buffed against elites, my super dog hits for 100mil, fetishes will hit 35mil. I've had 5 stacks of feast before they made super dog from Tallmans finger good which caused me to drop Gruesome feast and had fetishes hitting for 70mil a pop while the feast buff is on.
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In regards to channeling, I have no idea why they even bothered with it. I was running T5 ray of frost build with light of grace. Now this isn't the best build, but it was something different than the norm. The spells should have been made to be viable on T6, now he's really borked the entire mechanics behind channeling as of build 2 of 2.1 PTR. Monks are in such a ridiculously bad place, the synergy of both classes are no where close to where they should be.
Witch Doctors are so good because there is perfectly synergy between items and abilities. The person responsible for Witch Doctor actually plays the class and understands the mechanics. There are strong pets, there is a strong synergy to turn dots into a powerful nuke using a 6 piece endgame set. The philosophy is solid, clear and concise behind the Witch Doctor class. Wizard and monk philosophy is all over the place, it is a complete incoherent mess.
For whatever reason, Don Vu just doesn't get it. I think if both of these classes don't have a clear direction by the time the games official competitive mode goes live then he needs to fall on the sword. I could understand these problems with a new game and you're still kinda figuring things out with your philosophy behind classes but its been over two years now, you should have a clear vision of what a class should be by now.
Monk and Wizard have been all over the place since release.
Barb, you get the whole master of melee feel, even though they also need some buffs, but their role is pretty much defined.
Witch Doctor is pretty much dots and pets, it is defined.
Demon Hunter is pretty much shoot shit/beast master, its role is defined.
Crusader, a tanky class that can be melee or ranged, its role is now defined after several RoS patches, ironically, Don Vu is also responsible for Crusader.
Wizard, supposed to be the master of elements but really never has been, undefined role. Wizards throwing their hands up in confusion.
Monk, supposed to be an agile melee with healing added, undefined role. Dex now retconned from dodge into armor
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Sycophants are too unreliable in higher torments now. Always moving keeps me out of thunderstorms and frozen dot radius.
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If I hit a chest in a different area, a legendary for you can drop and you'd never know it unless you physically enter the zones where other people have cleared bounties and checked your map for orange stars.
Very easy to miss legendary's while split farming.
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He seems pretty vapid when it comes to real, actual, intelligence. He doesn't give off a laid back presence like Alkaiser or even Kripp(not a fan of him). I had a buddy tell me if you want to see the next method of lameness ongoing in RoS than just watch Kongor for 5 mins and he'll be doing it.
Dunno, just don't get the hype of some of these guys.
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I used Hack(thorn damage applied axe) mine rolled 95% thorn damage so I could spam no cost aoe primary(plague of toads to see how effective it would be) I socketed it with top tier topaz gem, all other sockets had +220 int gems, 280 gems wouldn't of made that drastic difference needed.
When hack didn't cut it, I went with a Neanderthal, 3485 thorns damage+socket topaz.
The damage was absolutely terrible, It isn't viable past normal, really slow in T1. This is extremely disappointing. I ran SoulHarvest for the extra +int, I used Piranha's for more damage.
Really really disappointed, this is probably never going to be viable unless F.loyalty gets a severe make over where it greatly enhances thorns to pets. Farming that invoker set was tough, I had really hoped it would be a lot better when stacked with the demons set.
Conclusion, not viable unless you want to speed run normal rifts for shards. DoT builds are probably better for that anyway. Seems like Thorns is Barb and Crusader exclusive since they have ways to multiple thorns damage with passives.