It's disappointing because they really took the fix in the wrong direction. They should have kept the duration (or even increased it), and then just quadrupled the damage or whatever you need to do to make the damage competitive.
As people have mentioned, haunt is going to look awkward on your bar in a game where AOE damage is so important.
Its one chance to shine would be on bosses, and with uber bosses around the corner this actually seems OK.
It would have been nice to have huge damage potential on a "fire and forget" type casting base, but six seconds is not a very long time. It sounds annoying to keep up on a target, and not really worth it for a mere 575% weapon damage. Cast splinters three times in 6 seconds (pretty easy to do) and you've done 540% weapon damage...
The idea for a good DOT is that you can cast your other damage spells while it's doing damage, giving you a much greater damage potential as you're not locked into the same spell every cast - but 6 seconds... come on.
It feels like the devs are just really out of touch with how the WD works and why we don't use certain spells. I mean - look at some of the recent changes with skills that (I assume) were tested and thought to be rebalanced-
Plague of toads - not used because of terrible pathing and range. Solution: Reduced mana cost.
Fire bats / Cloud of Bats - not used because of insanely small AOE range, but anything in it dies very quickly. Solution: Increase the rate at which damage increases.
Zombie charger / Wave of Zombies - not used because it's completely outclassed by zombie bears in damage and AOE. Solution: Increase damage to still being half of bears.
I don't mind a skill not getting any attention and still being unusable, but how can someone who gets paid to test these things bring these ideas to the table and declare - "I fixed it."
My thoughts so far-
(Profile is in my signature for gear frame of reference)
-Pile on radius is still a bit small. Maybe with practice and zero CD you could learn to use it, but I doubt it would become optimal. It's zombies doing a highropes wrestling dive, so I'm happy the skill is at least in a usable state, because the animation is still probably my favorite in the game.
-I will probably be playing at Monster Level 4 with my current gear. I switched from acid cloud to bears to make the jump to ML5 - kill speed while using bears was about the same, but if I ever ran OOM the damage felt like it came to a halt. Given - I'm not very familiar with bears so was maybe playing badly, but I think having your soul harvest / vengeful spirit doing significant damage to white mobs is a good benchmark for what ML you should play at.
-Monster health scales very hard with ML but monster damage not so much. As you can see my defensive stats are pretty terrible, but even at ML 5, where health started to become a problem in kill speed, damage was still quite manageable.
-you can see gruesome feast stacks. it basically starts a timer when the most recent stack was acquired, but stacks still fall off in order they were picked up (a new health globe doesn't refresh the timer on all) same as before.
-I don't have a fast attack speed (Skorn), but i had about 3 fetishes around me with the new fetish sycophants. Wouldn't be surprised if dagger users could pull 4-5 easy.
-Mass Confusion is fun. I'm not sure if it's really going to earn a place on the bar but we'll see. While it's great CCing a pack for 9 seconds, they don't seem to do massive damage to each other the way I hoped, and it might be better to just pack more damage yourself (Manitou or something instead).
-The new range on well of souls is kinda cool, but will still probably not be used because 1) The skill is so F-ing floaty and slow I don't know anyone who has the patience for it 2) For it's mana cost it still gets completely outclassed by other skills. If you can find a way to get rush of essence into your build you could use it as a primary, but those passive slots are pretty well spoken for currently.
-Overall CC changes are interesting. Hex is an actual eternity, although I never had much fun with that skill, even when it was good. Could possibly have some use with Uber Bosses? Addling toads duration still isn't long enough to warrant using frog pathing as a primary.
-I opened a resplendent chest while 5 stacked and got 4 rares.
-Drop rates are insane - mostly 60+ items now. If you thought the rare market was flooded already...
-Overall quality of loot seems about the same. Even at ML 5 I wouldn't say there was a "noticeable" difference, although I had way more MF than I do live in 1.04, so I'm sure I was getting some extra affixes here and there.
Probably won't spend too much more time on the PTR.
Any questions? Anything I forgot to mention or needs more testing?
No offense to your testing or anything, but I don't understand why I see Skorn vs. 1H TotD comparison threads.
You can get pickup radius in other slots. It's not very hard. Does Skorn give you more damage? Do you mind casting slower? Those are fair questions to ask. Skorn doesn't HAVE to be this massive tradeoff for pickup radius.
I tried to give this skill another chance a few days ago, and was completely amazed at the damage. It hits about as fast as my direbats, but gives close to twice the attacks per second I would guess.
You're going to run into two problems trying to make the skill viable-
1. The mana (Witch doctor staple with any cool build)
2. Survivability
The only way to fix the mana is Vision Quest, but vision quest causes your survivability issues to be magnified, as you are basically face tanking the monsters with no cooldowns. I tried running the 5 cooldowns / no primary to hopefully smooth this out, but not having a single ranged attack can be pretty painful against certain monster types.
Combine this with the fact that certain mechanics are just not meant to be tanked (Fire chains / desacrator / even big windup melee attacks), and I ended up shelving the build.
I know there are a lot of LOH builds out there, so if someone with that gear wants to test it out it could be interesting. The only way I could see it work is with an absurd amount of damage - enough to drop packs in the span of spirit walk / spirit vessel, but at that point, well, just about anything is probably viable.
Poison Dart + Splinters with tons of Attack Speed and Crit/Crit damage will do more damage. Each Poison Dart will crit for about 50k or so. If you get your attacks up to 3.0, well, you see where this is going.
This build sounds really cool. However it basically makes you a shitty version of a Demon Hunter. WHo has a very similar ability that crits for 250k easily.
assuming equal gear, 180% single target cannot do more damage than 220% piercing. I understand with a fast attack you can't cast many bats, but I don't think you're giving piercing enough credit. Even a non-crit bat for me does 40K. If this travels through 5 enemies, that's 200K for one cast. A noncrit dart hits for what, 10K? You'd have to cast splinters aprox. six times to reach that kind of damage.
Also, add soul harvest and better gear than I have and I'm sure you'll be hitting 250K. You could say it's a shittier demon hunter, but you're also comparing your class to probably the most OP damage dealing class. And if 250K piercing makes me a shitty demon hunter, what is a kiting fast attack splinters build equivalent to?
I'm not saying spinters spam fast attack is a bad build, or that mine is better, but I think it's important to talk out new strategies and not have everyone sheep the same build that might not be optimal.
Hullo all- thought I'd share a build I've been having moderate success with in inferno. And best of all, gearing for it falls on the cheaper side of things, so it's great for those fresh to inferno.
Nothing special with the build really, standard dire bats stuff. I like the 3 CC / Spirit walk combo for elite packs, as it basically lets me take on anything. Rotating those four cooldowns, things should rarely get to you.
Where this build stands out is using an incredibly slow 2Hander, ignoring attack speed, and stacking crit chance and crit damage. With what I consider mid tier gear (26K player damage / 30% crit chance / 240% crit damage) my dire bats are smashing groups, critting between 130 and 150K damage - no soul harvest. I also get 40K splinter crits on a single dart. I find this type of burst to be somewhat game changing when taking on packs of elites.
Some things to note-
It will feel like you are casting incredibly slow, and that's because you are, but don't give up until you try it on a few packs. Nothing beats the feeling of launching off a few bats, starting to kite, and then realizing nothing is chasing you because you strung together a few crits.
The idea that attack speed increases your mobility is somewhat true, but not as much as you think. A higher attack speed build will finish it's cast animations quicker, but it will also have to turn around and stop to cast more often since the damage per cast is lower. This build can afford to take a few more steps and still drop groups in about the same amount of time.
The mana is one of my favorite aspects of having a slow attack speed. I cast fewer dire bats because they have a greater impact when I do cast them. It feels like the mana resource blizzard intended for the class originally, as I don't go oom spamming my primary ability that is supposed to allow me to regen. A healthy mix of darts and bats will keep you pretty comfortable, without the need for vision quest (really dislike having my abilities on cooldown in inferno).
My other favorite thing is that the build is relatively cheap to gear for. If you can afford the attack speed, more power to you, I'm sure the build will only increase in power, but every class is currently obsessed with attack speed on gear, and the AH prices are getting pretty outrageous.
I tried the build with 1H/OH weapons thinking the 8% crit on an offhand would be too good to pass up, but I found myself out of mana and with direbats that didn't really hit hard enough to have the kind of impact I was looking for. There is a real sweet spot in damage for our class, involving killing things in a certain number of casts (mana) and a certain number of seconds (the intertwining of spirit walk / spirit vessel) and I think this build falls into that spot quite nicely. I realize people have been ignoring the mana issue by going only splinters dart build but I just can't seem to bring myself to take on the minions of hell only armed with a spit ball.
So grab yourself a 2 hander (crit damage with an empty socket is a must) and let me know how it works for you.
2
As people have mentioned, haunt is going to look awkward on your bar in a game where AOE damage is so important.
Its one chance to shine would be on bosses, and with uber bosses around the corner this actually seems OK.
It would have been nice to have huge damage potential on a "fire and forget" type casting base, but six seconds is not a very long time. It sounds annoying to keep up on a target, and not really worth it for a mere 575% weapon damage. Cast splinters three times in 6 seconds (pretty easy to do) and you've done 540% weapon damage...
The idea for a good DOT is that you can cast your other damage spells while it's doing damage, giving you a much greater damage potential as you're not locked into the same spell every cast - but 6 seconds... come on.
It feels like the devs are just really out of touch with how the WD works and why we don't use certain spells. I mean - look at some of the recent changes with skills that (I assume) were tested and thought to be rebalanced-
Plague of toads - not used because of terrible pathing and range. Solution: Reduced mana cost.
Fire bats / Cloud of Bats - not used because of insanely small AOE range, but anything in it dies very quickly. Solution: Increase the rate at which damage increases.
Zombie charger / Wave of Zombies - not used because it's completely outclassed by zombie bears in damage and AOE. Solution: Increase damage to still being half of bears.
I don't mind a skill not getting any attention and still being unusable, but how can someone who gets paid to test these things bring these ideas to the table and declare - "I fixed it."
2
(Profile is in my signature for gear frame of reference)
-Pile on radius is still a bit small. Maybe with practice and zero CD you could learn to use it, but I doubt it would become optimal. It's zombies doing a highropes wrestling dive, so I'm happy the skill is at least in a usable state, because the animation is still probably my favorite in the game.
-I will probably be playing at Monster Level 4 with my current gear. I switched from acid cloud to bears to make the jump to ML5 - kill speed while using bears was about the same, but if I ever ran OOM the damage felt like it came to a halt. Given - I'm not very familiar with bears so was maybe playing badly, but I think having your soul harvest / vengeful spirit doing significant damage to white mobs is a good benchmark for what ML you should play at.
-Monster health scales very hard with ML but monster damage not so much. As you can see my defensive stats are pretty terrible, but even at ML 5, where health started to become a problem in kill speed, damage was still quite manageable.
-you can see gruesome feast stacks. it basically starts a timer when the most recent stack was acquired, but stacks still fall off in order they were picked up (a new health globe doesn't refresh the timer on all) same as before.
-I don't have a fast attack speed (Skorn), but i had about 3 fetishes around me with the new fetish sycophants. Wouldn't be surprised if dagger users could pull 4-5 easy.
-Mass Confusion is fun. I'm not sure if it's really going to earn a place on the bar but we'll see. While it's great CCing a pack for 9 seconds, they don't seem to do massive damage to each other the way I hoped, and it might be better to just pack more damage yourself (Manitou or something instead).
-The new range on well of souls is kinda cool, but will still probably not be used because 1) The skill is so F-ing floaty and slow I don't know anyone who has the patience for it 2) For it's mana cost it still gets completely outclassed by other skills. If you can find a way to get rush of essence into your build you could use it as a primary, but those passive slots are pretty well spoken for currently.
-Overall CC changes are interesting. Hex is an actual eternity, although I never had much fun with that skill, even when it was good. Could possibly have some use with Uber Bosses? Addling toads duration still isn't long enough to warrant using frog pathing as a primary.
-I opened a resplendent chest while 5 stacked and got 4 rares.
-Drop rates are insane - mostly 60+ items now. If you thought the rare market was flooded already...
-Overall quality of loot seems about the same. Even at ML 5 I wouldn't say there was a "noticeable" difference, although I had way more MF than I do live in 1.04, so I'm sure I was getting some extra affixes here and there.
Probably won't spend too much more time on the PTR.
Any questions? Anything I forgot to mention or needs more testing?
1
You can get pickup radius in other slots. It's not very hard. Does Skorn give you more damage? Do you mind casting slower? Those are fair questions to ask. Skorn doesn't HAVE to be this massive tradeoff for pickup radius.
1
If you venture into act 2+ here are my predictions:
"Why am I always out of mana?"
"Why are my cast times so long?"
"What is up with all these cooldowns?"
"Why does direbats / toads / spiders / spirit barrage / bears have such erratic movement?"
To not sound too negative, act 1 can be very fun with WD. We have a lot of unique skills and it will feel different from your wizard.
1
You're going to run into two problems trying to make the skill viable-
1. The mana (Witch doctor staple with any cool build)
2. Survivability
The only way to fix the mana is Vision Quest, but vision quest causes your survivability issues to be magnified, as you are basically face tanking the monsters with no cooldowns. I tried running the 5 cooldowns / no primary to hopefully smooth this out, but not having a single ranged attack can be pretty painful against certain monster types.
Combine this with the fact that certain mechanics are just not meant to be tanked (Fire chains / desacrator / even big windup melee attacks), and I ended up shelving the build.
I know there are a lot of LOH builds out there, so if someone with that gear wants to test it out it could be interesting. The only way I could see it work is with an absurd amount of damage - enough to drop packs in the span of spirit walk / spirit vessel, but at that point, well, just about anything is probably viable.
2
assuming equal gear, 180% single target cannot do more damage than 220% piercing. I understand with a fast attack you can't cast many bats, but I don't think you're giving piercing enough credit. Even a non-crit bat for me does 40K. If this travels through 5 enemies, that's 200K for one cast. A noncrit dart hits for what, 10K? You'd have to cast splinters aprox. six times to reach that kind of damage.
Also, add soul harvest and better gear than I have and I'm sure you'll be hitting 250K. You could say it's a shittier demon hunter, but you're also comparing your class to probably the most OP damage dealing class. And if 250K piercing makes me a shitty demon hunter, what is a kiting fast attack splinters build equivalent to?
I'm not saying spinters spam fast attack is a bad build, or that mine is better, but I think it's important to talk out new strategies and not have everyone sheep the same build that might not be optimal.
1
The build - http://us.battle.net...URXk!VWb!aaZZbb
Nothing special with the build really, standard dire bats stuff. I like the 3 CC / Spirit walk combo for elite packs, as it basically lets me take on anything. Rotating those four cooldowns, things should rarely get to you.
Where this build stands out is using an incredibly slow 2Hander, ignoring attack speed, and stacking crit chance and crit damage. With what I consider mid tier gear (26K player damage / 30% crit chance / 240% crit damage) my dire bats are smashing groups, critting between 130 and 150K damage - no soul harvest. I also get 40K splinter crits on a single dart. I find this type of burst to be somewhat game changing when taking on packs of elites.
Some things to note-
It will feel like you are casting incredibly slow, and that's because you are, but don't give up until you try it on a few packs. Nothing beats the feeling of launching off a few bats, starting to kite, and then realizing nothing is chasing you because you strung together a few crits.
The idea that attack speed increases your mobility is somewhat true, but not as much as you think. A higher attack speed build will finish it's cast animations quicker, but it will also have to turn around and stop to cast more often since the damage per cast is lower. This build can afford to take a few more steps and still drop groups in about the same amount of time.
The mana is one of my favorite aspects of having a slow attack speed. I cast fewer dire bats because they have a greater impact when I do cast them. It feels like the mana resource blizzard intended for the class originally, as I don't go oom spamming my primary ability that is supposed to allow me to regen. A healthy mix of darts and bats will keep you pretty comfortable, without the need for vision quest (really dislike having my abilities on cooldown in inferno).
My other favorite thing is that the build is relatively cheap to gear for. If you can afford the attack speed, more power to you, I'm sure the build will only increase in power, but every class is currently obsessed with attack speed on gear, and the AH prices are getting pretty outrageous.
I tried the build with 1H/OH weapons thinking the 8% crit on an offhand would be too good to pass up, but I found myself out of mana and with direbats that didn't really hit hard enough to have the kind of impact I was looking for. There is a real sweet spot in damage for our class, involving killing things in a certain number of casts (mana) and a certain number of seconds (the intertwining of spirit walk / spirit vessel) and I think this build falls into that spot quite nicely. I realize people have been ignoring the mana issue by going only splinters dart build but I just can't seem to bring myself to take on the minions of hell only armed with a spit ball.
So grab yourself a 2 hander (crit damage with an empty socket is a must) and let me know how it works for you.