DiabloFans

I honestly don't use Fulminating Onslaught. I use Sudden Assault rune, as a combination teleport, brief invuln, and the ability to catch one enemy in an absolutely whithering assault if I catch them alone. Works wonders on all of those annoying runners, plus enemies like the Fallen Angels which routinely drift away from groups. Not to mention it gets you outside of movement-restricting packs and can be used to dodge sentries/mortars/etc.

Emberos, which rune of the Dogs are you using? Like I said, I'm using Leeching Beasts, but I'm considering swapping out to Burning or Plague

does anyone know where you can get a full list of proc coefficients? I can only find such a post for Wizards here, which makes planning things out for my Witch Doctor a bit of a pain.

Ah, well. Thanks for the clarification, Derwiv33. Still going to be using Leeching Beasts in the coming patch as my tanks of choice, since even in my sucky gear they'll take at least 4-5 hits each to go down. On a 45 second base cooldown, this means that I actually have semi-dependable tanks in A2 Inferno in most circumstances (and those never-to-be-sufficiently-accursed exploders won't keep randomly killing me...). It's a nice change of pace, that.

Anotherfob, you're forgetting three things. They are: Stone of Jordan, Mara's Kaleidoscope, and Skull Grasp. That's two rings and an amulet, and all of them can roll ANY skill bonus. This means that they can, in fact, each have a ZD cooldown reduction, and all are iLvl 62. They're legendaries, true, but they are present in the game and any one of them can bring your cooldown down by 7-8 seconds. It is in fact possible to zilch out the ZD cooldown without needing passives.

EDIT: Derwiv beat me to it

So, with the Paragon level system in place, players will gain 3% MF and GF every paragon level achieved. Blizz has also set a MF cap at 300%, which does not count your NV. All of this sounds good... except for one thing that is bugging me.

Blizzard hasn't said anything about a cap to GOLD find.

This is a big concern to me, since the increased drops from Paragon are already going to be extremely significant. Most people who are not bots do not usually go out and get tons of GF. However, they will have it now, which will already be greatly increasing the amount of gold in the economy at the same time that many more rares will be flooding in. This all looks to lead to some extremely sharp inflation in the coming days, which is the only problem I currently see.

Hopefully, we just haven't heard everything. There are about eight or nine possible fixes for this that I can think of, any of which could work. We do not have the official patch notes, so we'll see if Blizz actually overlooked this or if we just don't know what is going to stop the gap.

Thinking about it, the couple hundred extra base stats will be nice, but hardly a major effect. Really, getting to Paragon 100 will have almost zero net effect on playstyle... other than the MF. I like this solution.

The theoretical point of no return is probably going to be once your pets can stand up to 6-10 seconds of average abuse individually. Past this point, and you start getting into the realm of resummoning as they go down, which translates to effective immortality. Given a perfect or near-perfect gear setup, the cooldown on Zombie Dogs can literally hit ZERO post-patch before even taking passives into account (45 base -8 SoJ -8 Mara's -8 Skull Grasp -15 Homunculus -9 Chest = -3...)

Anyone know if Leeching Beasts works with Thorns? If so, then I think you have your immortality right there, as long as your thorns is double the damage cap or more. Given that I've seen damage caps go down to 1500, this is not going to be particularly difficult to achieve.

If you can get your cooldown to under 10 seconds (very possible post-patch), the build becomes viable. The key, I think, is not in summoning and instant-sacrificing in most circumstances. It is instead with timing your sacrifice for best effect. Remember that the dogs are MUCH tougher than before, and unless one is swarmed under it will likely stick around for at least a few seconds (general assumption is 3-5 hit minimum if you have some gear and Jungle Fortitude). I've seen videos of dedicated pet builds that calculated out to 12+ hits before regen (and he had Healing Journey... and tons of Thorns plus FL).

Also looking at Grave Injustice to go with Circle of Life, since you'll be wearing around +20 pickup radius for these builds anyway. Wouldn't be all that great for bosses (though bosses aren't all that tough to down in most cases), but it has potential.

So... Mara's Kaleidoscope (Amulet), Stone of Jordan (Ring), and Skull Grasp (Ring) can all roll any skill affix post-patch. This opens up a lot of very scary possibilities, especially seeing some of the more twisted ones out there. What is awesome once can be downright intimidating when it can show up four times. Reduce Firebats cost by 48? Check. How about increasing Poison Darts damage by 60%? Hounds cooldown reduced by 39 seconds before accounting for passives (that's right, SIX SECOND cooldown on these guys)? No matter what, the old builds will remain viable with the right gearing choices, and this is only considering our own.

Vomica, that actually looks really cool. As much as people are complaining about how far away from D2 this game is going, your post has just indicated the opposite. Most high-end D2 builds were ABSOLUTELY dependent on having a particular gear setup, many beyond the simple "add an extra level or two to your main skill). I am perfectly fine seeing this continue on, rewarding someone who makes the effort to acquire a highly specialized gear set to make their build work.

Heck, I'm trying to go for a Speed 2.0 Bats build focused around SA if I can manage it. Helmet with Bats bonus and + Max Mana, SoJ with Bats bonus, weapon and OH with Mana on them... it seems doable. If I can get past a certain longevity (that is, when it takes roughly 15 seconds to blow half of my mana pool), then it becomes effectively infinite once you account for non-Bat actions taken in combat. Further gains would allow me to either shift to other runes on some skills (like getting Jaunt or Healing Journey instead of Honored Guest), or grab Pierve the Veil (in a BATS BUILD).

I think beyond allowing such things to happen, the best part about the new legendary possibilities is that getting one for yourself becomes a build-inspiring drop (as opposed to a gear-inspiring build, like today). Finding a Stone of Jordan with an unusual but possibly strong skill bonus might prompt someone to try something new. Same goes for several of the other unique effects and set bonuses that I've seen. In all, I think Blizz ended up doing a surprisingly good job with this

Ruppgu, I don't remember if I posted it in THIS thread, but (yep, it was on the previous page) Bats is not going away. If anything, it's getting better overall, due to being able to actually use cooldowns as needed instead of blowing them for regen. The build kites a lot more than bears, so the increased base regen is a HUGE help, plus dropping a Rain Dance while actually being able to have defenders out will top you off while simultaneously upping your damage by 20% for 20 seconds.

The only difference is that, if you want to use VQ, you replace at least one of your cooldowns with Spider Queen (cast every 15-19 seconds) or Pyrogeist (cast every 4-8 seconds). Part of the Blog was that cast animations are getting quicker for us, as well. Heck, I'm not even going to be using VQ, instead shifting to some Max Mana gear and Spiritual Attunement.

I like what they did overall. To be honest, I'll still be using VQ in most builds, but it's not as overwhelmingly needed as before. Considering going for mana pool gear and Attunement instead, which I'd actually prefer.

In any case, the change means that competitive builds can actually KEEP COOLDOWNS OPEN and use them as needed against enemies, instead of just spamming them for mana. I have just about zero objections to this, and the changes also make leveling a WD much smoother before you get to the point where regen gear gets decent.

Looking at something like http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#kcUjYP!bae!YaZbcb

With 1H and Fetish the breakpoint is at 1100 mana before Attunement. With a 2H it's around 900. Above this and it works out better than VQ for sustained damage on Bats, and conveniently doesn't require that I stop and cast every few seconds (especially against fast or Shielding mobs, that may be hard to tag) In a group I swap some of my stuff out for poison and drop Fortitude for Medicine to benefit everyone else.

What I like is that I'm actually messing with builds now. Previously there was only negligible differences among the primary builds and a notable lack of progress among anything that wasn't Splinters, Bats, or Bears. Now, even though I still use the Bats as my main striker, the build is VASTLY different than the current models yet still looking both effective and achievable. Good times

Quote from Kblavkalash

Holy...... So they completely nerfed WD's to the ground. Everyone who was using zombie bears of bats as main attack gonna start using some crappy skill as splinters and that means overall dps output will be much lower.

I can't believe this sh*t..

Here's the thing, though, I vastly prefer tossing a Spider Queen every 30 seconds (or a non-Splinter Dart every 10-ish) than keeping 4 of my 6 skills on cooldown at all times. It means that I can actually use my main cooldowns, and perhaps play with other spammables, instead of having to keep them all locked down.

I am REALLY a fan of this, if it wasn't obvious. I can go back to my hounds, back to my Slam Dance, back to having two attacks instead of just one offensive... perhaps even back to the Horde of Doom (Hounds-Garg-Army-Handler-Fortitude). I'll just have to play with it for a while to see how it runs.

To answer the topic question, the five-cooldown builds are gone for good. Good riddance.

Sentry was a nice try, but it unfortunately just won't be enough to get it to be used. Just not worth dropping the Discipline for anything not survival-related.