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I"m currently farming Act II with it. It's pretty effective, i can do belial runs (killing 5 packs for the buff) without dying once. It's the only build 've played with i feel like i can use on HC (cause you need 0% dying rate, fuck graveyard zerg). Also, im' not using item from places i can't farm (thats cheating imo).

Skills

• Splitters: undisputted WD primary attack.
• Dire Bats: it has great burst damage AoE and very good damage/mana cost ratio. It is also Fire damage (so you have fire/poison damage to avoid resistances);
• Final Gift Dogs: dogs only have weak runes. This one at least has good synergy with Sacrifice and Gruesome Feast.
• Next of Kin Sacrice: undisputted sacrifice rune. With luck and a good two handed weapon you can one shot packs.
• Bruiser Gargantua: very important for several reasons. It helps keeping your dogs alive, tank packs for you. It is also extra DPS on bosses while yo'ure kiting (some sort of Hydra). The stum is awesome, save my dogs and my live a billion times.
• Spirit Walk: must have skill. Mana regen is good, allows you to avoid getting mana regen items and passives.
• Jungle Fort: important for survivability (you and pets).
• Zombie Handler: pet's survivability pluss one more dog to blow up.
• Gruesome Feast: you're goin to be picking up globes to heal your pets anyway. Better recover you mana and get some spiky damage in the process.

The idea is use pets to tank and bats to kill. One thing you should be doing is protecting your dogs by killing enemies fast and picking health globes when they got hitted. If you manage to find pack with 4 dogs and the summoning skill out of cooldown you can cast sacrifice with 4 dogs twice. Add NoK to the equation and you might one shot the pack if you have a good weapon.

Item tips to make this work:

• Damage is more important then DPS in this build. Need to make most out of sacrifice pluss you need really burst damage in order to keep your pets alive and tanking stuff for you. INT and +dmg > ias even if the DPS entry shows otherwise.
• You need an two-handed axe/hammer. Thats the only weapon choice for this build. Spiky damage is half of your build. Also, using a two-handed covers alot of the damage you need, allowing you to stack some defensive stats on your gear.
• You need high Armor and Physical Resistance. Pets gotta survive and thats how they scale survivability.
• Vitality is also important but you will getting less then an tanky guy normaly would cause vitality doesn't improve your pet. Around 19k is what i had when i started Act 2.
• You need around 15 or 20 yards pickup radius. No more nor less. Health Globes is important to keep dogs alive, recover your mana and get you damage buffs. Once i traded 5 pickup radius for 2k DPs and i felt singficantly weaker.
• If you have enough damage you won't need mana regen at all. I'm not mana starving using Dire Bats and Favored Guest.
• % chance to freeze / stum on hit helps alot. If you don't have 10% freeze on hit and 5% stum on hit you better use Hex instead of Gargantua.

Item Thrashholds
The minimun value is what you need to progress, but taking risks. The second value is what you need to farm and to progress using an hardcore character.

• Act I: HP 10~18k. Armor 2~3k. All Resistances 250~400. DPS 10~15k.
• Act II: HP 25k~30k. Armor 3~4k. All Resistances 500~800. DPS 15k~20k.
• Act III: ?
• Act IV: ?

Current Situation

I"m farming Act 2 by now. My gear is really crappy (4k armor, 700 physical resistance, 23k HP, 21k DPS). I don't know if this build make past Act 2, one with better items then me may try.

I"ve info (from an not so secure source) that Blizz tested the skills and runes by creating level 60 character and giving him "dream gear" (best gear they wanted). They did not tested the whole process of farming obtaining gear with each build (this would take years of test). They just tested different skills and build using absolutly perfect gear.

In case this info is truth, the vast majority of builds in D3 are actually viable, but some are freakly gear dependent. So if you have rolls in all slots you can make anything work. I mean, if you play Act II with full lvl61 gear with high rolls of phys res, int, vit, armor and thorns affixes you might make it work.

Take this info as grant of salt through. It might be that some strategies in the game are undoable. I tend to believe this info cause with right gear i can use dogs on Act 2 (info through they are not execly tanking).

Quote from Nivrax

But do try to get to Act III, if you manage to make pet works decent enough there (before 1.03), I will admit I may be wrong about complete worthlessness of them.

I will problably need some epic farming.
Also, i'm not using the AH to buy items i don't have access. I allways play attention to item's icon and allways buy stuff with the same icon i drop (i feel like buying act III and Iv gear is like cheating the game and i don't want to cheat !).

Not trying to antagonize you or prove you wrong. Im' just saying, the vast majority of WD pick a glass cannon build and throw a summon there, while summons depends on armor, physical resistance and health globes to be of any use.

Monk pet is about on par with Gargantuan (and dies just as much in Inferno), yet he can work without cooldown.

Yo'ure problably comparing a monk's pet with 10k armor, 35% dodge and 800 all resist with your gargantua (less then half of each of those stats problably).

Quote from Nivrax

You might also didn't met 'right' elites. Wasps will kill them with projectiles, Fallen Overlords will smash them, Desert Golems will laught at them, male catman, axeman skeletons etc. They shouldn't last full minute, but if I can't take down at least half hp of elite before they die, I'm better with Fear.

If my pet can tank a pack for half of their HP pets would be pretty OP cause i can easilly recast then for the other half HP and could kill the entiry elite pack w/o kiting at all. Not a single class plays this game w/o struggling against packs.
If pets allows me to kill one minion/champion (around 25% of the damage i gotta do to kill then all) in the pack they are more then excelent skill. Ressummoning means i can problably kill another one or even more (each monster you kill in the pack reduces their overall damage, making my summons more able to tank then). If pets allows me to take care of worst half of the pack (the first half) they are already worthy imho. The other half i can take care myself and as soon as their cooldown reset i can recast then and kill the rest.

This is more or less how my pets are working on right now. Ususally i don't recats then if there are 4 champsion or all the minions, as the group of mobs kill then fast. The summons i'm using allows me to quickly kill one enemy and i struggle a little until i kill another one. Then i use my packs, in this case they last longer and allows me to safely and easily kill the rest of the pack.

On top of that, act III damage also skyrocket. I shelved WD for now for DH (day after I dinged him I'm already progressing in Act III, skipped maybe 3 packs out of 50 I encountered), and small (white/normal) Fallen grunts are hitting me for 50k per swing.

So does Act II in relation to Act I.
The monsters gets stronger but my gear gets stronger too. The progression from Act II, Act III and Act IV are more or less linear. You need gear and alot of farming to progress, unlike Act I were you can rape it with hell gear easilly (only Bucther requires some real lvl 61 gear). I just feel that if i can progress in Act II i will be able to progress in the rest of the game. I know you play Splitters build and thats why you problably disagree with me. Kiters do not need the right gear to progress (you can do Act II with lvl60 or less item, you don't need a full set of min/maxed lvl61 pieces for exemple). You start to get one shotted by everything, but thats because your play style (undergeared).

My brother have a melee wizard and he can pretty much tank everything in Act III, even in multiplayer. I'm the only WD whos doing Act II on inferno using both dogs and gangantua i guess =/

I'm sad they'll nerf Inferno. They should buff your ability to gear up and nerf kiters capacity to avoid damage like tards (maybe improve the beneficts of defensive items too).

D3 has no ladder, no massively high lvl cap and no need for rerolling characters to try different builds. The only longevity the game has is force players to farm for few dozen hours in order to get enough gear and progress. We're only 3 weeks from release and theres a good portion of the community running Act 1 and Act 2. In a few months people would easilly kill diablo even if inferno kept been retardly hard. Any smoothness will only make farm less needed, reducing the already small longevity of the game.

I don't know about you guys but i'm pretty sure by now making this game online based and adding an AH just made the item hunt too easy thus making the progression also pretty easy and frustrating at the same time (cause you're farming gold, not items, most of the time).

I hope PvP is amazing or else this game will have a very little life cycle.

Quote from Nivrax

Well, Barb and Monks needs serious defensive gear to stand chance in Inferno. Wizzards also needs some so their Force Armor work after the nerf fix. If they made WD pets tankish enough when you load some hp and resist yourself, it could, in theory, allow to more bearable Inferno play for them. That would leave DH as only class that stacking vit/res is 100% pointless.

Although myself, I don't really see dogs working even after vit scaling. Sure, you can kill trash packs in less tedious way, but they will still get one shotted by elites that you have to kite for next 5 minutes, just this time with one less skill on your bar.

My dogs (w/o vit scaling) are not getting one shotted by elites (act 2 inferno).
They are not intended to last 1 minute, specially in an non tanky gear (imagine how ridicoulsy overpowered that would be).

The only thing i might add about Pickup Radius is that it has "ideal" values, unlike other mods were the most you can get, the better. There are optimal values for each kind of skill you use mostly (this value helps you to quickly grabs globe but do not disturb your globe saving tatics). Imo:

Melee characters i usually keep something between 7~10 yards.
Mid range character (Bear WD for exemple) i try to have something like 15 at least but 20 is my preferred number.
In long range classes something like 40 will almost allways be good.

If you have skill that interact with pickup radius you might stack it as well. Power Hungry (wiz), Vegeance (DH), Circle of Life, Greusome Feast and Grave Injustice (WD) are the ones.

Quote from WitchieDemon

I tried the glass cannon route, it doesn't work. I can take a couple hits in A2 and you really need those if you plan on kiting anything.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

+2 words

Grousome Feast. And healing pets. And healing party mates. Pick up radius is the one of the few things blizz did right in this game (in terms of items). Awesomely cool new affix.

HC isn't about investing time to have a powerful character, it is about investing time to become the perfect player. Loosing a level 60 character is just part of the journey =)

And if you're dying so fast and so many times in the same pack you're doing it wrong. Gearing 100% for glass cannon have it's consequencies, like having no chance to kill a soul lasher and having very low chances against vortexes/mortars.

Quote from Ruppgu

Quote from maka

Hey italofoca, I'm in Act 2 Hell as well. Slow but steady, I say. But I abandoned the dogs at the start of NM, and I just abandoned the Garg, at Act 2 Hell. He just keeps dying in like 10 seconds of fighting, and the 60sec CD timer prevents spamming him. I thought he just wasn't worth the slot anymore. Sad to see him go.

I wish he lasted 10 seconds in Inferno. I found him helpful all the way through Hell. Yeah, he'd die, but he'd still buy me enough time to kill most things.

It seens my situation is quite different in Hell Act 4. My Gargantua only dies in pack fights and only once (and in several cases he survives the whole fight). I'm with my garg 100% uptime, gladly.
The dogs dies pretty quickly but they are still useful. I'm allways recasting then and while they are active the pack fights feels a billion times easier even through they survive like 5~10 seconds. Sometimes i find myself with zero dogs and the skill on cooldown but one or two thrash mobs fights and i can recast then. I can say my dogs are something like 70% uptime.

My strategy: Zombie Handler + Jungle Fortitude + Gruesome Feast passives. I've 3k armor (buffed by enchantress), 250 physical resistance, 17k HP and 8k DPS (i never bought anything overleveled from the AH !).
I'm constantly using the Health Globes to heal my dogs so they can survive most fights. For that i've 20 pick up radius bonus. Greusome feast allows me to maintain my mana and even burst my DPS for few seconds too.

I feel like this build is working, for hell at least. I've played through the start of Act 3 to 50% of Act 4 today and died only twice. I can easily kill 90% of the packs w/o dying once. I've also cleaned normal and nm using this build w/o dying once (first time played!).

I've no WD inferno experience but i can tell both summons are 100% useful in Hell (all 4 acts). I just tryed to play w/o my dogs and felt i was signifcantly weaker. Looking forward for Inferno difficulty to test out my build there.

Spirit Barrage is the lamest skill ever. All non-bear zombie chargers too. Their animation is so slow, how are you suppose to avoid those deadly fire balls/acid pools/mortars/etc... ?

Hex is good but i think it's annoying to use. Soul Harvest too. If it wasn't for summon i would not touch the WD. Gladly dogs will get the buff their deserve !

It's like you said. Ignoring the variance issue an +x% damage on critical increase your damage by +x*y% where y is your critical hit chance.

WD doesn't have alot of critical mechanics like the other 4 classes (i mean skills that does special stuff when you crit). Still it's a good way to increase your damage as soon as you get all the attack speed, int and +dmg you can get.

Another thing i notice is that in slow attack speed builds (VQ with bears) critical (both the damage and the chance) is better in improving your damage then +dmg.

Quote from Theungry

I don't see how you could verify anyone's claim if they said yes.

That said, I think avoiding the AH is the kind of self-imposed limitation that people create to make the game more challenging and fun. I'm sure someone will "finish" the game without the AH at some point. Similarly, someone will finish the game as a Wizard without ever spending a point of AP. There's always someone willing to go to extremes for a novel sense of accomplishment. I call that "awesome".

Yeah but once you self impose this limitations don't expect the "beatability" of anything.

I agree you shouldn't need Act 3 gear to progress in Act 2 though. But you don't. My brother is farming Act 2 inferno right now using an melee wizard. His not buying Act 3 gear (lol his not enough gold farmer to do that). In few hundred magda runs he find a piece that is worth selling for 200k~1kk and he gets something around the same price. Step by step his upgrading his gear and reaching hardest dungeons.

It's how the game suppose to be played. You need to farm an few doze hours in each place in order to have enough stats to beat the next (i dunno, maybe 20 hours or more). In inferno you gotta progress step by step.

Of course getting items from further places is easier sometimes if you got the money. But it's not the only place.

Im on the 3rd quest of act 3 and I havent brought an item on the AH since i was on act 1. I spend about 600k a bit after I finished Hell on resistance gear (and got a few pieces from friends, but nothing too fancy, just standard str + resist or str+vit). The last item i got was a 40 all resist + 70 vit ring (yes, its really lame but i didnt want to spend so much on the ah and my previous ring was even worse)

I farmed 5stack butcher about 6-7 times alone and about 4-5 times belial with some friend.

I guess i got my gear from those runs, i dont really recall. I only recall getting a few pieces (boots, wep, shield, helm, legs, neck) but I dont really recall where I got the rest of it.


Idk, I may had a bit of luck, but there is no need to go to the AH to go past act 2.

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