DiabloFans

Quote from d3maniac2012

ah but its not pure speculation. its backed up with facts about the skills and how they work. much less speculation then "zombie wall makes you LEET".

The entire premise of this thread is pure speculation. There's no way to know that pet skills will be mandatory for Inferno without having played in Inferno without them and miserably failed.

Also, I never argued that "zombie wall makes you LEET." I simply pointed out that it's a CC spell that you didn't include in your list of "Skills for surviving" in the OP. Are you really arguing that Wall of Zombies wouldn't help you survive?

The only video we've seen (that I know of) featuring Wall of Zombies is the original announcement trailer, and there's nothing there that would lead me to believe that enemies can walk through it.

Weapon speed affects casting speed. Read this.

What about the term "wall" makes you assume that enemies can just walk through it? And when did I ever mention its damage? Unfortunately for you, if you want to make this thread, you can't discount speculation in others' arguments since that's all the discussion you're going to get (not to mention that your OP is entirely speculation).

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#YkRcij!abW!cYZZYc

Quote from d3maniac2012

WD skills for surviving WITHOUT pets, yes these can be runed to make them better or have less of a cool down but not so much better to make them worth not having zombie dogs or gargantuan. not even close. pets are 10x > then these. but pets used in CONJUNCTION with these makes him super awesome.

1. mass confusion (1 min CD)
2. horrify (20 sec CD)
3. spirit walk (15 second CD)
4. grasp of the dead (8 second CD)
5. Hex (10 second CD)
6 haunt with crimson rune 45% dmg returned
7. firebats with golden rune for 20% dmg returned, but using this skill up close to hit makes u super vulnerable without pets and you will die in inferno/hell

No love for Wall of Zombies, the one skill that literally and directly prevents enemies from getting close to you? Nothing we've seen indicates that the wall can be attacked (so it's guaranteed to be up for 5 seconds), it has no cooldown, and enemies can't pass through it. Did I mention you can rune it to slow enemies or to double its width? Couple it with Grasp of the Dead and enemies will be sitting ducks ready for you to spam your damaging skills.

I agree that his survival passives are somewhat lacking, but I think he has way better Life restoration capabilities through Runes than any other class (Alabaster Grasp/Spirit Walk, Crimson Haunt/Spirit Barrage/Soul Harvest, Golden Hex/Firebats, etc.).

Don't forget also that most of his CC spells are - or can be runed to be - damaging spells as well. Overall, I think that playing without pets will be somewhat of a hindrance, but it doesn't seem as bad as you're making it out to be.

Crowd Control.

It's definitely a cool feature and has definitely been brought up amongst the staff, but...that's all there is to say about it so far. I think it would be a cool thing to add for sure!

They've said skills like Zombie Wall won't be able to be used for griefing (i.e. trapping a "teammate" in a corner with a bunch of mobs) because there's no collision for spell effects on friendly players. I'd assume the same would be true for summons.

Quote from craig_g

2) From the skill description it reads as if Alabaster runed EP had the cadaver explosion (% of HP) removed. Is that correct? If so, that would make this combination completely useless compared to Indigo runed EP, hell, even regular EP. What am I missing here?

Alabaster Rune causes the bleed effect to "jump" to all other nearby targets if the original target is killed while bleeding. With the Rank 4 Rune, the jumping bleeds do 70% weapon damage per second for 2 seconds (total 140%) and, if those targets die, the bleed can jump again and again and again. Basically, the mechanic is similar, except the damage is done over time with Alabaster instead of up front with the base skill and, unlike the base skill, it can self-propagate. Also, since Alabaster's damage is based on weapon damage instead of monster HP, it's more consistent, though, depending on the monster that gets exploded, possibly less (or more) powerful. So it's definitely not useless.

We also have all the patch notes on our Wiki. Here's Patch 1.10 to start you off.

Quote from d3maniac2012

energy shield increases your Defense by 20% which is a huge damage reduction boost. so its better for survivability and storm 4 less arcane power i dont think will be better then 25 max arcane power. so id definitely say energy armor is better overall.

as for the random pathing. it doesnt matter. you spam like 5 tornados in every direction over and over on a small screen area, basically garentees everything will get caught. the video shows the guy only casting a few and it hit almost everything, let alone 2-3x more tornado's then that. with extra arcane regen from golden familiar AND gear your regen will basically make your spam near infinite. so after thinking about it more id say crimson rune for over double damage boost will be better overall. because casting a huge tornado for 125% dmg will result in way less overall dps. because if EVERY twister was 132% dmg which is even more then the big twister. much more overall dps.

I think Energy Armor might be better situationally. Since it's a percentage-based buff, it'll obviously be more effective the more you gear for Defense (and, likewise, less effective the less you gear for it). But for the AP concern, as I look at and consider the numbers, I think you're right. Unless you have enough AP boosts from gear that the cost reduction on SA allows you to cast more Twisters than the extra AP on EA, EA will be better.

I'm not that concerned about the Twisters hitting enemies, but about them hitting each other (where Indigo rune is concerned). You have to take that video with a grain of salt, because a level 13 killing the very beginning of the game will make any skill look OP. Even in the video you can see him cast a Twister right at the last zombie on the left and it blows by him without killing him. In a more wide-open area, this problem would likely be magnified.

Quote from speedloader1

Nothing specify that we'll need to store 5 charges to release ToD, then one charge must be enough.

I'm assuming the same.

A 5-charge Obsidian Twister does more damage than a Crimson Twister, and even a 4-charge is nearly on par. With level 4 runes, a 3-charge does more than the base spell and I'd assume with level 7, even a 2-charge would do significantly more. The power in Obsidian is that you'll have the opportunity to have many more Twisters raging around (remember, unleashing the Wind Charges is done with a Signature Spell, so you're actually regenning AP when you release them), depending on how you choose to release your charges. They won't all be as powerful as Crimson Twisters, but there's strength in numbers here. You'd also have the option of saving your charges if you knew there was a big, tough enemy around the corner. I definitely still think Obsidian is worth consideration; you just have to use it a little more tactically than you would Crimson.

Agreed, I was definitely assuming we'd see a Breath of the Dying or Chains of Honor or something. <_<

This is definitely an interesting build that I hadn't considered before. One of the potential problems I see with it though is that Raging Storm will be a slave to the random pathing of the Twisters...you could conceivably drain your AP orb and never actually have two Twisters merge. That said, I might also consider the Obsidian Rune (Trail of Destruction), since you'd be guaranteed to get your big Twister then (and it's more powerful than Indigo's big Twister too), though, depending on duration and AP regen, you probably could only have one out at a time compared to several for Indigo.

I might also consider replacing WoF or (more likely) Teleport with Arcanot Familiar for another regen boost and more Twisters. I might also replace Slow Time's Golden Rune with an Indigo Rune (Miasma). Last, I wonder (there's probably a correct answer for this) if Indigo Energy Armor or Golden Storm Armor would be the superior choice?

Right, but that's also assuming you're just standing still casting non-stop for 30 seconds against a single target. That kind of napkin math isn't really that applicable to real game situations. We also don't really know that much about Meteor (falling delay and damage radius would be two pertinent points here). That being said, I'm not arguing that Meteor isn't the better skill.

Quote from Kickin_It

Obviously Meteor is still more powerful

Just that, as the Blizz team is fond of saying, AO is perfectly viable.

Quote from CRHavoc

Sorry to sound like a newb, but where do we see Binkles the Frog as an NPC in Diablo III? Am I the only one that feels lost?

His presence has been datamined. That's all we really know about him, the rest is up to you! Click on his wiki link in the OP to see him.