Managed to spent sometime trying the new PTR 2.1.2 which just came out a few days ago, I think so far the changes in the next patch are very positive (at least to me), it was a little disappointing to only see one witch doctor change so far (I expected a bit more). I've recorded a short video of myself giving my a few cents on the Greater Rift changes and also showing the first greater rift I did with my demon hunter friend (it was at level 39), but you will be able to have an idea of what the mob density is like now. Later on we went on to clear level 49 and got ranked at 170 (at the time), all thanks to the consistent mob density really.
So overall i've been impressed with the improvements on greater rifts, the different pylons are actually quite useful now, for example speed pylon allows you to run through mobs and knock them up in the air therefore proccing strongarm. The shield pylon (OMG.!!!), I use to hate reflect damage mobs, now it's time for them to taste their own medicine
I'll be trying different things on PTR in the next wee while and will keep you guys updated.
Hey thanks for the correction man, me and my friends were stuck on lvl 41 for a long time, it was because of all the helpful feedback from previous people that allowed us to improve and progress. I'm hoping to carry on progressing week after week.
With your previous feedback and suggestions, I've been improving my gameplay and managed to down 43 with my friend (progressing slowly but surely). I started using Ring of Larceny now because of the speed buff it gives, it really allows me to sprint ahead my friend without having to use spirit walk, so that I can save my spirit walk for when engaging deadly elites, therefore dying less.
If you have any feedback and suggestions on how I could improve my gameplay, I would really appreciate it, please either post your comments here or on my youtube video.
This video is purely for entertainment purposes, if you've had a hard day, I hope this video can help you feel happier and relaxed :). After many hours of trying, we managed to improve our best time by 3 seconds so it was still very tight.
Apologies ahead for the excessive swearing and trolling in the video.
I don't see:
1) How this is new - the TikTank already exists and have been tried out with Halcyon's. TotD isn't new either.
2) Why you would need the extra CC of the Halcyon's when you have Horrify that's doing almost the same but with longer cooldown (of BBV)?
The thing with most parties aiming for higher trial keys is still the lack of damage to clear in time since most have a support guy in the party.
Maybe there is something I've missed.
Hi Kyparn, Thanks for your feedback. The purpose of using Halcyon is really to take advantage of its knockback effect in order to proc the extra damage on your Strongarms (not for the CC effect) :). depending on how good your strongarm is, it can basically give your party a permanent damage buff of up to 30% on mobs within your BBV radius. I have given a very detailed explanation and gameplay demonstration to show how this mechanism works, if you have time, please check it and you might find it helpful.
Thing of the Deep is there to increase the proc rate of your Grave Injustice, this means you can cast skills more often, this is especially useful for mass confusion later, as you'll be able to have mass confusion ready for every wave.
I came up with this build specifically for helping me and my friends to obtain high level greater rift keystones during trials. We typically get level 44 and 45 (3 man). It's not a very long video and so I definitely recommend watching through it, hopefully you are going to find it helpful.
If you have any feedback, please do not hesitate to post it here or on my youtube video.
This was my first time clearing 42 with a DH friend, and we literally finished it with 0 seconds left lol! Sharing this video mostly for entertainment and feedback purposes as it was so tight! It also shows how when you suddenly get a good map it just changes everything. Also hoping you guys can hear what we are saying when playing. Enjoy, any feedback or comments will be welcomed.
I would call out immediately the dps should back up. Try to cc the current pull with a piranhado and leave the pull yourself and back up too. Try to find a chock point in an already cleared area of the map and hope all the elites get their at once and try to cc the whole pack again.
There are two things you can do on "triple pulls":
1) Try to control everything, pay maximum attention to not die when Spirit Walk is on cooldown and make crazy pulls and AoE-fear in combination with running around like a headless chicken whenever Spirit Walk is up. Needs very good teamplay with the second support (if available) and a bit of luck.
2) Back off. Just fall back, try to "split" the packs and hope one stays back, or drag them around a corner so that you can stack them on top of each other. Of course not possible on every map, but sometimes the better solution. Plus, when going back and playing defensively a "battle resurrect" of any player who gets killed is possible - if you go "all in" it's more likely "kill them or wipe".
Whatever you do, it requires extremely good coordination (Teamspeak announcements, no discussion but everyone immediately reacts), a quick decision, and a bit of luck. There are situation where you simply can't do anything.
We had a rift yesterday with ONLY Executioner packs. Literally, every single champion/elite was executioner (non-pullable big mobs). At one point we had 4 (!) of them - with nasty affixes. There's no way not to die in that case (especially since it was on 48). Still cleared it in ~20 minutes IIRC. But some rifts are just impossible... it's all RNG:
Bagstone, thanks for your suggestions, it's definitely going to help us progress as a team.
The main point of Grave Injustice - especially on high GR like 48+ - is that you get a few seconds off cooldown when the pack dies, which means you'll almost always have all your six spells up when running to the next pack. On paper GI might not look that useful, but if you swap it out you'll immediately miss it. When you run into a new pack and all your cooldowns are ready you might even consider waiting with Piranhado for a second, saving it for some Archers/Smoldering Constructs - but having all your CD spells available at this point is just absolutely priceless.
Besides, as Shinna mentioned, you'll get killed on higher GRs anyways; but if you only play 3 player and up to GR45 it's not that much of an issue. Btw, the Stormshield is hands down the best shield - it is superior to Ivory Tower in every aspect, and Wall of Man is unfortunately relatively useless in high-end content because the proc effect is too small to make a difference (as it doesn't scale). If you don't use a Stormshield, you might as well use a mojo.
You might find some more pointers in my support WD guide - which is the traditional build, but I tried to cover all alternatives and options and explain why this traditional build is probably so "optimal" that replacing anything is unlikely to make it better (as Shinna explained with the example of Paranoia, which should definitely kept).
Thanks man. yeah like Shinma mentioned getting rid of jungle fortitude in favour of GI now makes sense consider you'll get one or two shotted anyway. Our biggest problem right now is running into one champion and elite pack, then another pack off the screen gets pull and they can't be pulled by piranado, if we are unlucky the affixes are quite bad on both, then pretty much instant wipe for us and we would get stuck on those packs for a long time until we can line of sight and group them up (if the map has any line of sight).
Do you guys have any suggestions on how I should handle those situations?
I think in most standard situations, paranoia is still the best choice.
Mass Conf. havin nearly the same range as Horrify. There is no reason not to pick it just bcuz of the range. At some Point(45+) you need a decent killspeed vs. trash/elite packs to trigger the RG and complete the rift in time. MC provides a huge dmg bonus and helps a lot in regards of clear time. Grave Injustice is more or less on the same page. At some point havin 30 or 40 mil toughness realy doenst matter. You get nearly 2shoted by a white archer. So jungle fortidude wont help you in that scenario. Where as grave injustice provides a solid cd reduction. Its quite handy when your piranhado resets like 2 times while clearing a huge pack. You can drag mobs around more often and proc your strongarms. Usually the other tanks leaves at some point and keep finding new stuff. Providing all your Dmg Buffs for the DPS is important. Just grab some PU Radius from gear and the passive is realy realy handy.
On the other hand Haunt provides some source of range spell and i guess you use it to proc your gloves which is smart but you couldnt time it in any way. So most of the time this is a "wasted" and not reliable cc effect on the guardian.
In terms of gear i would simply switch out born´s set. Use a BT belt and go for 3pc BT and Asheara´s.
BT = Chest, Pants and Belt
Asheara´s = Gloves, Shoulders and Boots
You trade 10% CDR and 15% life vs. 20% life and 100 All Res plus havin your followers out for 50% of the time. When running SMK you dont need that much cdr becuz your FA resets 2 major cds. Havin both Rings/Amulet/Weapon/Gloves/Shoulders with max cdr rolls is more then enough combined with paragon and a diamond for the tiki mask.
For FA i would recommand the poison rune. Havin 2 "ranged fetishes" helps a lot vs. certain RGs with the uptime of BBV.
One point i totaly disagree is the stat prio for paragon. I think this is totaly messed up. Imo it should be like this:
Core: Movementspeed>Vit
Offensive: CDR>IAS>CC>CHD. Anything else b/c CDR is more or less "useless" bcuz you dont deal dmg anyways.
Utility: LoH(even its useless)>anthing else is useless too. You you run with no points assinged at all in this tab
Another thing you forgot is 2nd Stats. Imo its pretty important to stack range dmg reduction. Try get it on Chest, Bracers, Shield and Xaph Amulet(not likely but still). Most of the times of wont have troubles to survive melee engagements bcuz you can cc that pretty easy. Its those ranged mobs outside of fear range which could proc spirit vessel and giving you a hardtime to survive. In terms of 2nd resists i would stack arcane>phys=fire>poison. Cold and even more lighting(Xaph Amulet *wink*) is more or less useless.
thanks, there are a lot of useful learnings in there, I particularly like your suggestion on getting rid of jungle fortitude (trade for something else) at higher levels. I use to have mass confusion myself for the reasons you've mentioned above, despite all its benefits, I found that it was not very useful when it comes to situations where I need to handle 2 elite/champion packs (far away from each other) and immune to piranado pull. This was the main motivation behind why i came up with this, it is mostly targeted in minising damage to the whole party when running into difficult situations like that.
Like you mentioned the freeze proc from haunt is unpredictable, only a % of time (in my case roughly 52% proc rate every second), the idea is that the elites (far away from me) or Guardian would also proportionally reduce the number of times they can drop their affixes as result (due to the % freeze proc), therefore on average reducing things to avoid. Another benefit of the freeze which I've observed at least on the ranged mobs is that, it seems to also reset the cast sequence of the ranged mobs (spear, archer, mages etc) , as long as the projectile hasn't appeared yet, due to this effect, the ranged mobs would be significantly more nerfed than what the numbers might suggest (they would be casting or shooting much less frequently)
I think you are right, if you play in 4 player (2 tank setup), then this is less of an issue. For I normally do 3 player with me being the only tank, i found that the situation above is what wipes us most of the time.
Regarding the paragon points, yeah I didn't put anything in there because I expected people to watch the video as all the details and explanations are in there, they are very close to what you've mentioned above (with the exception of Defense, where i priortised on %Life), for Utility I have LoH and Cost reduction (needing to spam haunt).
Yeah the secondaries stats is something which I continue wanting to improve on, it's definitely hard, most of the time i find myself having to reroll for primary :(.
Interesting point on the Asheara's four set, something i would like to experiment with in the future once i have them.
The reason for that much CDR was because I wanted to be able to spam spirit walk more often to increase my survivability, however like yousaid, maybe with grave injustice that'll compensate for it, again i'd like to experiment with your suggestions.
1. Why are you not using mass confusion? That spell is nuts, awesome CC and 20% dmg buff to the monster, that is insane and huge. Big waste to not use it. Haunt is NOT worth using over mass confusion.
2. Why no grave injustice, that's a must imo. You will be able to apply piranhados and mass confusion more often. zDPS delievers dps by buffing the dpses dps.
3. Gear wise, why are you not recommending stormshield? It basically does whatever ivory shield but with higher numbers. Also if you are so into CC why are you not considering using a 4P ashearas, with followers out 50% of the time, equipping them with overwhelmding desire for cc and 20% dmg boost, and wyrdward + oculus ring and azurewraths?
4. If i'd choose id remove fetish army, chose another weapon like last breath and add mass confusion. If i'd make your build more viable and swap jungle fortitude for grave injustice.
Hi thanks, the reason for not using mass confusion is due to its limited range like I mentioned in the video. Grave injustice not viable when you are at higher levels of greater rfits (mobs don't die quickly enough), this build is primarily aimed for progressing in greater rifts. Regarding point 3, again if you find a good stormshield by all means use it, it's not mandatory. The 4P ashearas is not as good as Blackthorne in greater rifts in my opinion
hi guys, thanks. I'm aware of the fact that there are classes who are faster. I'd like to re-clarify that this build is for witch doctor, if you happen to want to farm bounty on your witch doctor, you might find this useful. witch doctor as a class overall doesn't have a whole lot of spammable mobility or instant teleportation.
I also started the same thread on the official forum, there's actually quite a lot of responses and people testing and suggesting for improvements. I figured you guys might find some of the comments over there useful
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Managed to spent sometime trying the new PTR 2.1.2 which just came out a few days ago, I think so far the changes in the next patch are very positive (at least to me), it was a little disappointing to only see one witch doctor change so far (I expected a bit more). I've recorded a short video of myself giving my a few cents on the Greater Rift changes and also showing the first greater rift I did with my demon hunter friend (it was at level 39), but you will be able to have an idea of what the mob density is like now. Later on we went on to clear level 49 and got ranked at 170 (at the time), all thanks to the consistent mob density really.
So overall i've been impressed with the improvements on greater rifts, the different pylons are actually quite useful now, for example speed pylon allows you to run through mobs and knock them up in the air therefore proccing strongarm. The shield pylon (OMG.!!!), I use to hate reflect damage mobs, now it's time for them to taste their own medicine
I'll be trying different things on PTR in the next wee while and will keep you guys updated.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrZGdnwNW7o
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0
With your previous feedback and suggestions, I've been improving my gameplay and managed to down 43 with my friend (progressing slowly but surely). I started using Ring of Larceny now because of the speed buff it gives, it really allows me to sprint ahead my friend without having to use spirit walk, so that I can save my spirit walk for when engaging deadly elites, therefore dying less.
If you have any feedback and suggestions on how I could improve my gameplay, I would really appreciate it, please either post your comments here or on my youtube video.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvB8dmjwxh4&list=PLxJfYAWw-sEhIZn78SUEDVldJcJeFRJbI
Many thanks guys
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This video is purely for entertainment purposes, if you've had a hard day, I hope this video can help you feel happier and relaxed :). After many hours of trying, we managed to improve our best time by 3 seconds so it was still very tight.
Apologies ahead for the excessive swearing and trolling in the video.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHu9aHmqw6s#t=565
Thanks
0
Thing of the Deep is there to increase the proc rate of your Grave Injustice, this means you can cast skills more often, this is especially useful for mass confusion later, as you'll be able to have mass confusion ready for every wave.
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I came up with this build specifically for helping me and my friends to obtain high level greater rift keystones during trials. We typically get level 44 and 45 (3 man). It's not a very long video and so I definitely recommend watching through it, hopefully you are going to find it helpful.
If you have any feedback, please do not hesitate to post it here or on my youtube video.
Thanks and enjoy.
Link to my video:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=9N2pCti4ars
Link to my profile:
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Mcjiangle-2861/hero/3420463
0
This was my first time clearing 42 with a DH friend, and we literally finished it with 0 seconds left lol! Sharing this video mostly for entertainment and feedback purposes as it was so tight! It also shows how when you suddenly get a good map it just changes everything. Also hoping you guys can hear what we are saying when playing. Enjoy, any feedback or comments will be welcomed.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3qcVto9KcM
Thanks
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Do you guys have any suggestions on how I should handle those situations?
I think in most standard situations, paranoia is still the best choice.
Nice guide btw Bagstone
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Like you mentioned the freeze proc from haunt is unpredictable, only a % of time (in my case roughly 52% proc rate every second), the idea is that the elites (far away from me) or Guardian would also proportionally reduce the number of times they can drop their affixes as result (due to the % freeze proc), therefore on average reducing things to avoid. Another benefit of the freeze which I've observed at least on the ranged mobs is that, it seems to also reset the cast sequence of the ranged mobs (spear, archer, mages etc) , as long as the projectile hasn't appeared yet, due to this effect, the ranged mobs would be significantly more nerfed than what the numbers might suggest (they would be casting or shooting much less frequently)
I think you are right, if you play in 4 player (2 tank setup), then this is less of an issue. For I normally do 3 player with me being the only tank, i found that the situation above is what wipes us most of the time.
Regarding the paragon points, yeah I didn't put anything in there because I expected people to watch the video as all the details and explanations are in there, they are very close to what you've mentioned above (with the exception of Defense, where i priortised on %Life), for Utility I have LoH and Cost reduction (needing to spam haunt).
Yeah the secondaries stats is something which I continue wanting to improve on, it's definitely hard, most of the time i find myself having to reroll for primary :(.
Interesting point on the Asheara's four set, something i would like to experiment with in the future once i have them.
The reason for that much CDR was because I wanted to be able to spam spirit walk more often to increase my survivability, however like yousaid, maybe with grave injustice that'll compensate for it, again i'd like to experiment with your suggestions.
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http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/15006381183