Having the capability to hit alot of targets for moderately high damage is often better than a super high aoe nuke that has half the radius.
Every class has aoe capacity and I really don't think it matters which class is mathematically best in this area. Even using math on these skills doesn't paint a truly accurate picture until all skills have been used in the game with the various runes and how that relates to enemies in the game.
With the zombie dogs rune Leeching Beasts and the passives jungle fortitude, zombie handler and fierce loyaly I'm guessing they will be pretty survivable. Of course you're gonna have to be lvl 45 or higher to get the full effect, but all those added together equal 50% of the damage they do heals them, they take 20% less damage, have 20% more hp and they benefit from any life regen items/gear you have.
I think they'll be pretty solid once you can fully max the beneficial passives for them.
This is a build idea focusing on zombie dogs that I think could work very well:
It's focus's less on preserving the life of the dogs and more at constantly spawning additional dogs mixed with a liberal dose of confused enemies. Confuse is one of my favorite skills in any game.
Can't say how survivable this build would be, but it wouldn't lack for fun with potentially tons of zombie dogs running around amidst bouncing yellow frogs confusing enemies that kill themselves.
Focus on in yo face melee range combat. Basically anything hits you it takes 91% weapon damage. Anything melee that hits you eats arcane orb assplosions to the face. Use diamond shards rune to blow more stuff up that's in yo face. If things get hairy and they will, and diamond skin is down if you drop below 35% hp your lil sprite will absorb 1 attack every 6 seconds and if you really redline it at 20% and below once every 60 seconds you release a big shockwave which we have no clue what it does. Maybe it's like a giant wave of energy that knocks peeps back and does alot of damage, we don't know exact details, but it sounds cool.
Imo every class looks it has plenty of viable builds that would be capable of being played in inferno provided the players has adequate skill and gear.....which is exactly what their goal is.
No class as far as I can tell has any glaring weaknesses. Each has it's strengths, but they all look viable to me.
That's actually a pretty badass pic of Bam imo. Alot of people nowadays don't even realize how crazy guarly that guy was back when he was an unknown skater showing up on videos here and there.
One small correction. A barbarian if he so chooses could stack the Passive Skills nerves of steel, tough as nails and superstition along with the impunity runed warcry for +70% armor, +100% of your vitality as armor in addition to that 70%, and if my guess is correct a total of 70% increased elemental damage resistance with that. Then you have ignore pain runed for 7 seconds of 65% damage reduction which is stronger than diamond skin if the total incoming damage surpasses what diamond skin can absorb which is very probably on inferno at some point meaning you wouldn't get the full duration of absorb out of diamond skin.
I'm really just nitpicking here.:)-
Anyhow, I don't see any reason why your build wouldn't be successfull. It has pretty much all the tools required to handle difficult scenarios.
When I made my first post I guess I hadn't fully considered the topic title.
In that respec I would say yes, Demon Hunter does "appear" to be more of a glass cannon than the wizard in the sense they have less defensive/tanky abilities than the wizard and have some skills that do more damage.
What boggles my mind is why people are so upset about this. It's not like the wizard is lacking damage.
The wizard can pull off all kinds of builds and can do both single target and aoe very well. They can also be built extremely defensive/control oriented or a combination of any of these.
Would you really rather have a class with less defensive/tanky capability that does a little more damage than the demon hunter? I'll bet dollars to donuts that the wizard class will be stronger than the demon hunter in the higher difficulties where this stuff actually matters. I'm not saying the demon hunter won't be a solid performer, but I believe the wizard will have an easier time of it.
I know what a glass cannon is all to well. I played CoH back in the day as a fire/em blaster with no mez protection or any kind of additional defense/damage mitigation and damage alone is not enough when you go up against anything moderately difficult or get put in situations where you will be surrounded and hit, or hit from range even.
I could care less if the demon hunter has more abilities "overall" than the wizard that do higher damage because the wizard still does plenty of damage and imo has the ultimate who does the mostest damage in archon form.
Given the choice of balanced class with tools to handle any scenario and good damage vs crazy damage with little survivability I'll take the former. You're asking for the latter and trust me glass cannon implies high damage/low survivability which SUCKS against anything that presents a real challenge.
I wouldn't even really call the demon hunter a glass cannon because it can be built extremely mobile and has tools to completely drop aggro for short periods of time AND it has slows etc. Basically it does have utility and defensive capabilities so I don't feel it can be classified under the term glass cannon.
I had an idea for a single target boss build that might interest you. How viable it would be depends on if the skills used work the same on major boss mobs vs regular trash.
Basically you pop ignore pain<furious charge in<bash<Hammer of the ancients<ancient spear knock them away with rage rune<weapon throw. Kite around for a couple seconds and repeat the process. Use axes for higher crit chance.
Nooooo idea how this would work on harder difficulties, but maybe it could work.
The wizard class looks extremely powerful to me. I've played around with a bunch of different build ideas and it's pretty hard imo to come up with a bad one.
Here's a build that shows some of the highest damage skills the wizard class has. It's not an actual build, but just the highest damaging skills imo.
The wizard does not lack in damage. Arcane torrent with death blossom deals 670% damage, but you can't control what get's damaged. So what, it's spammable huge damage.
Meteor with the meteor shower rune does potentially over 500% damage.
Storm armor with strike back does 91% weapon damage to any enemy that attacks you from range or melee. That's a constant free damage source.
Disintegrate with volatility has a 35% chance when killing a mob to cause them to explode for 395% damage in an 8yd radius.
Archon form is the ultimate nuke damage skill from what I can see. My favorite class the barbarian has Wrath of the berserker that can be runed to double your damage. I don't know how damage buffs work, but archon has 2 attacks as far as I know that do 1000% weapon damage and the improved archon rune boosts archon damage by 25% which might bring those attacks up to 1250% damage.
I don't see a lack of damage whatsoever with the class.
Add on top of that having probably the strongest overall combination of soft cc, manueverability and utility in one class and I fail to see what the problem is.
0
0
"To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women."
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/barbarian#aQZcRk!beT!cYZcYY
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/monk#UbVfRh!eUT!cacaYa
0
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#cdklhZ!!bcbYYa
Having the capability to hit alot of targets for moderately high damage is often better than a super high aoe nuke that has half the radius.
Every class has aoe capacity and I really don't think it matters which class is mathematically best in this area. Even using math on these skills doesn't paint a truly accurate picture until all skills have been used in the game with the various runes and how that relates to enemies in the game.
0
I think they'll be pretty solid once you can fully max the beneficial passives for them.
This is a build idea focusing on zombie dogs that I think could work very well:
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#YfWjXQ!adT!cYYZac
It's focus's less on preserving the life of the dogs and more at constantly spawning additional dogs mixed with a liberal dose of confused enemies. Confuse is one of my favorite skills in any game.
Can't say how survivable this build would be, but it wouldn't lack for fun with potentially tons of zombie dogs running around amidst bouncing yellow frogs confusing enemies that kill themselves.
0
1. Bish please
http://us.battle.net...TSjX!afh!aZbZbc
Focus on in yo face melee range combat. Basically anything hits you it takes 91% weapon damage. Anything melee that hits you eats arcane orb assplosions to the face. Use diamond shards rune to blow more stuff up that's in yo face. If things get hairy and they will, and diamond skin is down if you drop below 35% hp your lil sprite will absorb 1 attack every 6 seconds and if you really redline it at 20% and below once every 60 seconds you release a big shockwave which we have no clue what it does. Maybe it's like a giant wave of energy that knocks peeps back and does alot of damage, we don't know exact details, but it sounds cool.
Chance of success in inferno.....questionable.
1
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#aZiOPm!bXT!bZbbcb
I think this build provides maximum laser uptime without straying from the theme of spraying lasers every where.
Can't say how effective it would be, but hey it's got frickin laser beams!
0
No class as far as I can tell has any glaring weaknesses. Each has it's strengths, but they all look viable to me.
0
One small correction. A barbarian if he so chooses could stack the Passive Skills nerves of steel, tough as nails and superstition along with the impunity runed warcry for +70% armor, +100% of your vitality as armor in addition to that 70%, and if my guess is correct a total of 70% increased elemental damage resistance with that. Then you have ignore pain runed for 7 seconds of 65% damage reduction which is stronger than diamond skin if the total incoming damage surpasses what diamond skin can absorb which is very probably on inferno at some point meaning you wouldn't get the full duration of absorb out of diamond skin.
I'm really just nitpicking here.:)-
Anyhow, I don't see any reason why your build wouldn't be successfull. It has pretty much all the tools required to handle difficult scenarios.
0
In that respec I would say yes, Demon Hunter does "appear" to be more of a glass cannon than the wizard in the sense they have less defensive/tanky abilities than the wizard and have some skills that do more damage.
What boggles my mind is why people are so upset about this. It's not like the wizard is lacking damage.
The wizard can pull off all kinds of builds and can do both single target and aoe very well. They can also be built extremely defensive/control oriented or a combination of any of these.
Would you really rather have a class with less defensive/tanky capability that does a little more damage than the demon hunter? I'll bet dollars to donuts that the wizard class will be stronger than the demon hunter in the higher difficulties where this stuff actually matters. I'm not saying the demon hunter won't be a solid performer, but I believe the wizard will have an easier time of it.
I know what a glass cannon is all to well. I played CoH back in the day as a fire/em blaster with no mez protection or any kind of additional defense/damage mitigation and damage alone is not enough when you go up against anything moderately difficult or get put in situations where you will be surrounded and hit, or hit from range even.
I could care less if the demon hunter has more abilities "overall" than the wizard that do higher damage because the wizard still does plenty of damage and imo has the ultimate who does the mostest damage in archon form.
Given the choice of balanced class with tools to handle any scenario and good damage vs crazy damage with little survivability I'll take the former. You're asking for the latter and trust me glass cannon implies high damage/low survivability which SUCKS against anything that presents a real challenge.
I wouldn't even really call the demon hunter a glass cannon because it can be built extremely mobile and has tools to completely drop aggro for short periods of time AND it has slows etc. Basically it does have utility and defensive capabilities so I don't feel it can be classified under the term glass cannon.
0
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/barbarian#aSdZfR!ZYf!ZacZac
Basically you pop ignore pain<furious charge in<bash<Hammer of the ancients<ancient spear knock them away with rage rune<weapon throw. Kite around for a couple seconds and repeat the process. Use axes for higher crit chance.
Nooooo idea how this would work on harder difficulties, but maybe it could work.
0
Here's a build that shows some of the highest damage skills the wizard class has. It's not an actual build, but just the highest damaging skills imo.
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#aekTim!YUT!bZbbbc
The wizard does not lack in damage. Arcane torrent with death blossom deals 670% damage, but you can't control what get's damaged. So what, it's spammable huge damage.
Meteor with the meteor shower rune does potentially over 500% damage.
Storm armor with strike back does 91% weapon damage to any enemy that attacks you from range or melee. That's a constant free damage source.
Disintegrate with volatility has a 35% chance when killing a mob to cause them to explode for 395% damage in an 8yd radius.
Archon form is the ultimate nuke damage skill from what I can see. My favorite class the barbarian has Wrath of the berserker that can be runed to double your damage. I don't know how damage buffs work, but archon has 2 attacks as far as I know that do 1000% weapon damage and the improved archon rune boosts archon damage by 25% which might bring those attacks up to 1250% damage.
I don't see a lack of damage whatsoever with the class.
Add on top of that having probably the strongest overall combination of soft cc, manueverability and utility in one class and I fail to see what the problem is.