Sankis is a sweet budget build that will net you some solid damage. It will eventually get outpaced by crit hit / damage gear, making a socketed weapon with some crit damage on it superior if DPS is equal.
It's really up to you, how you like to play the game, and your budget.
In general, 2H might be slightly cheaper as you're only buying that one piece, but if you do go 2H, you want to make sure you get one with crit damage and a socket on it because you're giving up roughly 5-8% crit chance by not using a mojo.
1H ceremonial knives can be pretty sweet because they have a chance to roll equal damage as other 1H weapons, but come with mana regen, which will indirectly increase your damage by letting you cast more spells. They're not mandatory by any means though, so if you find a good price on a regular 1H spear or mace it'd be fine.
One thing 1H opens you up to is a legendary mojo called "Thing of the Deep". It increases your gold / pickup radius by 20 yards, which works well for a popular speed clearing build right now that uses Grave Injustice in combination with Gruesome Feast. Having a huge pickup radius means you're constantly refilling your mana with kills and globe pickups, so the build can afford to spam Zombie Bears and kill things pretty quick.
Using acid rain I personally would lean towards a slower weapon, as a good portion of the spell is a DOT tick and if your weapon gives you fast attacks at lower damage, you're not getting much out of spamming the spell, while a 2H or slow 1H will give you more bang for your buck.
One thing to keep in mind Crateme, is that some of the set pieces almost always have "decent" rolls on them, This means that a constant supply of usable pieces is getting funneled into the AH, and the prices will steadily come down.
A good example of this is Skorn, the axe I'm using right now. Immediately after patch it was selling for probably around 50 million. Now, a few weeks after patch I was able to pick this one up for 17 mil. In another month it's going to be even less.
That and what Derwiv said is quite true. This game is more like playing the lotto than slowly earning gold / gear. Just grab good rares, farm the highest act you can efficiently, mess around with builds, gain some paragon levels - eventually you'll strike it big on some items.
You might have to get a little lucky on his targeting. I think I killed him with similar stats to yours, on the 3rd or so try.
Use Gargantuan. Use Dogs. Pop Fetish army. Use Zombie Bears / Big Bad Voodoo Rain Dance.
Hope that he targets your pets with the charge before he targets you and try to blow him up. You could even summon pets and wait a while, so you can resummon during the fight (although it might not be worth the loss of bear time).
I suppose "more deadly" will probably mean just damage, but I'll try to throw out a few flavor ideas as well. The thing is I'd like to try to maintain the flavor of what you have going on while making improvements.
First you could get a legendary for your follower that has a chance to summon something on attack.
Genzaniku is a level 12 legendary axe that can summon ghostly fallen champions. Could be pretty sweet (more ghosts), and followers don't do that much damage anyway.
Skycutter is cheap -there's one on the AH right now for ~100K, but it summons an angel, which is kind of the opposite of your sweet reaper / skeleton theme.
Maximus summons a demon, which fits your build better, but the cheapest maximus is about 4mil, which is kinda expensive for pure vanity.
The build doesn't seem to have a great way to dump mana and do a lot of damage. Spirit Barrage / Phantasm is your big spender, but that takes a while to get the full effect. I read that the skeletons also cast horrify (but with no effect), so maybe you are tied to having that on your bar, but with some shuffling you could use-
Manitou fist pumping and throwing out blue shit while you also throw out blue bombs might look kind of sweet and add to a chaotic feel. I didn't really like the idea of acid cloud coming down from above (even though the acid rain / lob blob runes are much stronger), so I went with corpse bomb as a dead body emerging from the ground and exploding seemed a little more in line with your "reaper". If you do use acid rain I think the "on hit" effects proc at a very high rate, which might mean more butcher hooks - not sure as I have no idea how that weapon functions. I noticed you have some life on hit too, so acid rain will do some work there.
As far as gear goes and getting more damage, in general it's just going to mean getting crit modifiers on pieces you don't already have. Namely bracers, amulet, belt (if the price on witching hour ever drops or you strike it rich on a drop). It looks like crit can roll on grin reaper and lidless wall too, it's just pretty rare. Scouring the AH and waiting for that to happen is an option. Maybe a socketed butcher's cleaver?-
Your boots' resistances are baller, so they might be hard to replace, but firewalkers would look pretty cool, as everywhere you walked would just light ablaze.
Your chestpiece is just so-so. I'd save for a good Tal Rashas as this is the only chest piece that I know of that rolls with a damage stat (attack speed) in addition to good int / 3 socket. The price on these will only continue to drop as almost every roll is decent, so if it's out of your range now it probably won't be in a month or two. I think this piece added about 10K damage when I bought mine (but I had quite a bit of crit at the time)
I'm gonna send you a friend request in game if that's cool - I'd like to do some runs and see this in action.
I don't think the acid pools stack. I don't know the rules for which pool overwrites which, but if I had to guess I'd say the most recent, as other calculations would get a little complex.
at first I didn't get it. Then I looked at your gear and realized you're this skeleton faced dude walking around summoning skeletons and skeleton hands and ghosts and you have a skeleton shield and a sickle.
This build looks freaking awesome and I'd love to see a vid of you rolling act 1.
Oh and you have a scary ghost and a skeleton bomb.
Against players, dedicated pet builds just won't work. This includes Sacrifice
With zero CD sacrifice you can be gaining 24K life per cast. It's less about them avoiding your blasts and more about massive on demand healing. Depending on how much damage is decreased for pvp, you can't deny this has potential.
The LOH ticks are great, I think better than any spell we currently have. With just 500 life on hit I was seeing decent sustain - basically a screen filled with mobs would shoot my life bar up to full. Only a few mobs and I would get small, but noticeable life gains.
Crit / crit damage both work. I'm not sure if a crit on the initial damage means a guaranteed crit on the dot portion. Just know that the dot portion will NOT tick in yellow numbers when it crits, it will just be ticking for a much larger number.
As you said, increased attack speed mostly means you just cast faster, although the DOT tick portion is probably calculated using your overall character damage, so you will see minor gains on the DOT tick by using IAS.
Lots of people doing the blob bomb these days, but for my money Acid Rain is still king.
I don't think grasp is going to work for pvp at all. Amost every class has spammable gap closers. If you are actually "running" anywhere you are probably losing.
Also I'm not sure why you think pets will be tanking damage for you. Do you mean stepping in front of spells occasionally? Even with their force armor they're gonna die extremely quick. We're used to fighting monsters that wander around and attack once every few seconds. When we're dealing with players hurling attacks close to 2 a second, they're not going to stay alive long.
The other classes all have skills on their bar right now that seem downright broken for pvp.
a quick example - monk overawe (~50% damage increase) into 7 sided strike (1777% damage) = 2665% damage while the monk is untargettable.
The "unfair" things I think WD have at this point are Hex / Horrify combo, and zero CD Sacrifice with the health return rune. They also both seem in danger of a nerf which is what worries me.
One thing that is pretty well agreed upon is that it's not fun losing a pvp game when you have no control over your character the entire time you are dying. I'm just not sure how blizzard is going to balance crowd control for pvp, but as the crowd control class the choice is going to make or break it.
They drop often enough if you're absolutely melting. If you're pushing 100K+ damage you won't be in one place very long.
Also you can't compare straight numbers with GF vs. PtV since pierce has a large damage drawback by increasing mana costs while GF is gaining you tons of mana with every pickup.
Beyond "This is my build, this is how it works," I think Ruppgu is saying "Eventually all late game WD farming builds will look very close to this" which I agree.
Gruesome Feast / Grave Injustice: This combo is just sick if your damage can support it (basically one shotting everything). Grave Injustice enabling so much spirit walking is just too valuable to pass up. With enough kill speed / pickup range Gruesome Feast outpaces Pierce the Veil pretty easily.
I think eventually as damage scales what you will see is people migrating away from bears and towards Acid Rain as the damage is more instant and a 24 yard range is just insane.
Like I said, the things I'm saying pertain to WD at complete top levels of gear. I saw a WD streamer the other day with near best in slot gear and he had 288K character damage without pierce the veil. At that point I couldn't imagine anything surviving your acid cloud, except maybe a few elites, but even then splinters is probably 3 shotting.
I'm confused by people saying you had mana problems with this build. Were you not killing things fast enough or were you killing things out of Grave Injustice range? With big groups around I couldn't drop below half mana if I tried.
It finally makes sense to me why Blizzard lowered the cooldown of Horrify in 1.04, while leaving Mass Confusion unchanged. They didn't want to lower the cooldown, only to have to raise it again in 1.05. 12 seconds of the monsters wailing on each other sounds busted. Can't wait to try it out.
Also makes me think Grave Injustice will see more use. Right now many of our cooldowns are either already almost spamable, or have such a strong effect (with matching long cooldown) that using it on white monsters is not worth it. Mass Confusion is a spell that might fall nicely between those two, especially with GI in the mix.
Any guesses on how grasp will function with the diminishing returns? Possibly monsters gaining resistance over time as they walk through the area?
Finally...Addling toads? Possible? I will definitely try it.
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You can make bugs fight bugs (locust swarm)
zombies fight zombies
frogs fight frogs (those burrowing guys from act 1 kinda look like frogs)
ghosts fight ghosts
spiders fight spiders
bats fight bats
demons fight demons (garg)
suicide bombers fight suicide bombers
snakes fight snake people (snake to the face rune of splinters)
and when all else fails you can just mass confuse and make things fight each other.
What other class comes close to this?
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In general, 2H might be slightly cheaper as you're only buying that one piece, but if you do go 2H, you want to make sure you get one with crit damage and a socket on it because you're giving up roughly 5-8% crit chance by not using a mojo.
1H ceremonial knives can be pretty sweet because they have a chance to roll equal damage as other 1H weapons, but come with mana regen, which will indirectly increase your damage by letting you cast more spells. They're not mandatory by any means though, so if you find a good price on a regular 1H spear or mace it'd be fine.
One thing 1H opens you up to is a legendary mojo called "Thing of the Deep". It increases your gold / pickup radius by 20 yards, which works well for a popular speed clearing build right now that uses Grave Injustice in combination with Gruesome Feast. Having a huge pickup radius means you're constantly refilling your mana with kills and globe pickups, so the build can afford to spam Zombie Bears and kill things pretty quick.
Using acid rain I personally would lean towards a slower weapon, as a good portion of the spell is a DOT tick and if your weapon gives you fast attacks at lower damage, you're not getting much out of spamming the spell, while a 2H or slow 1H will give you more bang for your buck.
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A good example of this is Skorn, the axe I'm using right now. Immediately after patch it was selling for probably around 50 million. Now, a few weeks after patch I was able to pick this one up for 17 mil. In another month it's going to be even less.
That and what Derwiv said is quite true. This game is more like playing the lotto than slowly earning gold / gear. Just grab good rares, farm the highest act you can efficiently, mess around with builds, gain some paragon levels - eventually you'll strike it big on some items.
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Use Gargantuan. Use Dogs. Pop Fetish army. Use Zombie Bears / Big Bad Voodoo Rain Dance.
Hope that he targets your pets with the charge before he targets you and try to blow him up. You could even summon pets and wait a while, so you can resummon during the fight (although it might not be worth the loss of bear time).
That's what I did anyway.
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First you could get a legendary for your follower that has a chance to summon something on attack.
Genzaniku is a level 12 legendary axe that can summon ghostly fallen champions. Could be pretty sweet (more ghosts), and followers don't do that much damage anyway.
Skycutter is cheap -there's one on the AH right now for ~100K, but it summons an angel, which is kind of the opposite of your sweet reaper / skeleton theme.
Maximus summons a demon, which fits your build better, but the cheapest maximus is about 4mil, which is kinda expensive for pure vanity.
The build doesn't seem to have a great way to dump mana and do a lot of damage. Spirit Barrage / Phantasm is your big spender, but that takes a while to get the full effect. I read that the skeletons also cast horrify (but with no effect), so maybe you are tied to having that on your bar, but with some shuffling you could use-
http://us.battle.net...UdgR!eWU!caabcc
Manitou fist pumping and throwing out blue shit while you also throw out blue bombs might look kind of sweet and add to a chaotic feel. I didn't really like the idea of acid cloud coming down from above (even though the acid rain / lob blob runes are much stronger), so I went with corpse bomb as a dead body emerging from the ground and exploding seemed a little more in line with your "reaper". If you do use acid rain I think the "on hit" effects proc at a very high rate, which might mean more butcher hooks - not sure as I have no idea how that weapon functions. I noticed you have some life on hit too, so acid rain will do some work there.
As far as gear goes and getting more damage, in general it's just going to mean getting crit modifiers on pieces you don't already have. Namely bracers, amulet, belt (if the price on witching hour ever drops or you strike it rich on a drop). It looks like crit can roll on grin reaper and lidless wall too, it's just pretty rare. Scouring the AH and waiting for that to happen is an option. Maybe a socketed butcher's cleaver?-
Your boots' resistances are baller, so they might be hard to replace, but firewalkers would look pretty cool, as everywhere you walked would just light ablaze.
Your chestpiece is just so-so. I'd save for a good Tal Rashas as this is the only chest piece that I know of that rolls with a damage stat (attack speed) in addition to good int / 3 socket. The price on these will only continue to drop as almost every roll is decent, so if it's out of your range now it probably won't be in a month or two. I think this piece added about 10K damage when I bought mine (but I had quite a bit of crit at the time)
I'm gonna send you a friend request in game if that's cool - I'd like to do some runs and see this in action.
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This build looks freaking awesome and I'd love to see a vid of you rolling act 1.
Oh and you have a scary ghost and a skeleton bomb.
SKELET-!
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With zero CD sacrifice you can be gaining 24K life per cast. It's less about them avoiding your blasts and more about massive on demand healing. Depending on how much damage is decreased for pvp, you can't deny this has potential.
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The LOH ticks are great, I think better than any spell we currently have. With just 500 life on hit I was seeing decent sustain - basically a screen filled with mobs would shoot my life bar up to full. Only a few mobs and I would get small, but noticeable life gains.
Crit / crit damage both work. I'm not sure if a crit on the initial damage means a guaranteed crit on the dot portion. Just know that the dot portion will NOT tick in yellow numbers when it crits, it will just be ticking for a much larger number.
As you said, increased attack speed mostly means you just cast faster, although the DOT tick portion is probably calculated using your overall character damage, so you will see minor gains on the DOT tick by using IAS.
Lots of people doing the blob bomb these days, but for my money Acid Rain is still king.
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Also I'm not sure why you think pets will be tanking damage for you. Do you mean stepping in front of spells occasionally? Even with their force armor they're gonna die extremely quick. We're used to fighting monsters that wander around and attack once every few seconds. When we're dealing with players hurling attacks close to 2 a second, they're not going to stay alive long.
The other classes all have skills on their bar right now that seem downright broken for pvp.
a quick example - monk overawe (~50% damage increase) into 7 sided strike (1777% damage) = 2665% damage while the monk is untargettable.
The "unfair" things I think WD have at this point are Hex / Horrify combo, and zero CD Sacrifice with the health return rune. They also both seem in danger of a nerf which is what worries me.
One thing that is pretty well agreed upon is that it's not fun losing a pvp game when you have no control over your character the entire time you are dying. I'm just not sure how blizzard is going to balance crowd control for pvp, but as the crowd control class the choice is going to make or break it.
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Also you can't compare straight numbers with GF vs. PtV since pierce has a large damage drawback by increasing mana costs while GF is gaining you tons of mana with every pickup.
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Gruesome Feast / Grave Injustice: This combo is just sick if your damage can support it (basically one shotting everything). Grave Injustice enabling so much spirit walking is just too valuable to pass up. With enough kill speed / pickup range Gruesome Feast outpaces Pierce the Veil pretty easily.
I think eventually as damage scales what you will see is people migrating away from bears and towards Acid Rain as the damage is more instant and a 24 yard range is just insane.
Like I said, the things I'm saying pertain to WD at complete top levels of gear. I saw a WD streamer the other day with near best in slot gear and he had 288K character damage without pierce the veil. At that point I couldn't imagine anything surviving your acid cloud, except maybe a few elites, but even then splinters is probably 3 shotting.
I'm confused by people saying you had mana problems with this build. Were you not killing things fast enough or were you killing things out of Grave Injustice range? With big groups around I couldn't drop below half mana if I tried.
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Not to mention 12 seconds is an eternity (I can probably kill most elites in 12 seconds).
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Also makes me think Grave Injustice will see more use. Right now many of our cooldowns are either already almost spamable, or have such a strong effect (with matching long cooldown) that using it on white monsters is not worth it. Mass Confusion is a spell that might fall nicely between those two, especially with GI in the mix.
Any guesses on how grasp will function with the diminishing returns? Possibly monsters gaining resistance over time as they walk through the area?
Finally...Addling toads? Possible? I will definitely try it.