Apologies if this is misspelled, incoherent, or full of typos, I'm somewhat intoxicated.
For those of you who like to mess around with experimental builds:
In short, I was wondering if anyone has found a good, inferno-viable build that utilizes the Cloud of Bats rune for the firebats skill? If you haven't tried it, play around with it; it's somewhat unique in the firebats skill family. I think it's a fun skill, and I'd like to use it. Possibly in conjunction with the Manitou rune of Spirit Barrage, which is similar.
I was dicking around with some builds for it, but I kept running in to the same old problem that being too close to enemies just kills me too quickly to down anything, especially with elite packs. I tried to combine it with Grave Injustice in the hopes of getting Spirit Walk and Mass Confusion to pop constantly (sort of like that melee wizard build that's been going around that relies on constant crits to reset frost nova, etc.), but I can't get it to proc enough to be viable. I tried adding a bunch of healing skills to my build (Life Link dogs, Ghost Trance voodoo, Consuming Spirit haunt), but they just don't seem to keep me healed enough to negate high melee damage. The only time I've gotten it to be viable past A1 is by playing with a wizard friend who was consistently popping stuns/freezes. I tried using my own stuns (really just the Mass Hysteria rune of Mass Confusion), but the truth is the WD is much more suited to slowing than stunning.
I can use it reliably in A1 w/28k dps, around 470 average resist, and 3.3 k armor. But in higher difficulties I just can't seem to hack it.
Anyone tried anything similar? Just curious to hear others' opinions and attempts. Also please link guides or videos if they exist. I don't know if it's possible to rig this into being viable, but I thought it might be fun to try. I just like to experiment with weird stuff and Cloud of Bats/Manitou seem like unique skills in the WD's lineup.
Hey all. This is my first time posting here. I don't normally post in forums, but a lot of the information/discussion/tools posted here have helped me a lot, so I thought I'd share this.
Act 2 inferno crushed me because of having such low dps (16k dps, 38k life, 3.4k armor). Basically I just made extremely poor gear choices (no crit, more vit than int, etc.). I died so much I was down to ~100k gold due to repair bills, every elite mob pack was pretty much ruining my day several times over before I could down them, if I could at all. I was using a pretty standard Vision Quest build and getting wrecked.
So I started to dick around with my build a bit to try to mitigate the suck and ended up trying a DOT-based build I'd liked on nightmare. To my surprise, within about half an hour I had five stacks of neph valor and had only died once. Huge change. I noticed in the big DPS thread that others were having a similar issue, so here's my solution:
1) Runes matter. Please check out the whole build rather than just the tooltip.
2) This build depends wholly on kiting. You need increased runspeed on your boots for it to work.
3) This is not boss viable. Great for elite farming, though.
4) Mess with the passives as you see fit. I have little mana regen, so I have to VQ. You may not need to.
5) Set up a force run key binding and use it.
6) Recommended rotation: Pop spirit walk, run into a mob group, locust swarm and siphon, then run out. Cast Grasp and Zombie Wall between you and them. If they're normal mobs, they should melt away in a few ticks. If they're elites or high health, dot each elite individually with haunt. At this point you will want to put as much distance between you and the mobs as possible. Keep kiting and applying Wall/Grasp as needed to slow. Reapply Haunt when it falls off. Reapply locust when your Spirit Walk cooldown is up by spirit walking, running up the mobs, locust (and siphon if needed), and running off.
Breakdown:
On first glance this build looks pretty gimp. And it is. If you have decent dps (above 25k), don't bother with it. However, for those of us who are struggling just to live, this build addresses a lot of common problems.
1) Mobility = Survivability: One of the main problems I was having with my standard VQ build is that when I stood still to cast stuff, I'd get murderated. The WD has notoriously long casting animations. However, haunt does not. You can essentially cast haunt over your shoulder with no IAS and still dodge stuff. It also has a massive range compared to other WD abilities and will seek out its designated target. Locust does have a long casting animation, but this is taken care of because you will be in spirit walk when you are casting it. Also, haunt only has to be refreshed occasionally, giving you more time to run like hell and less time spent in a vulnerable casting position.
2) Ranged attackers/vortex/mortar: You will be very far away from them, waiting for them to die, for the duration of the encounter. You will constantly be laying slows between you and them, and since there are no long casting animations, you can manually dodge most ranged attacks. You do have to get close for locusts, but again, you'll be invincible.
3) Fast mobs: These are why you have both zombie wall and grasp in your arsenal. The WD doesn't often get enough credit for having two extremely powerful CC moves. However, grasp slows 80% and wall does 60%. Even with the inferno 'slow reduction,' casting both of these at the same time will seriously impede movement, even of a fast elite. Also grasp has a very short cooldown, so you can have one of those between you and your enemies almost all the time.
4) Life: Runed as it is, this build includes life regen from both siphon and haunt, damage reduction from jungle fort, and an emergency cooldown in the form of spirit vessel. If you're not having mana problems, you could re-rune spirit walk to Healing Journey and gain even more health. Also, I don't know the exact mechanic, but I believe that dot spells do work with life-on-hit items to return life per tick, so if you have life-on-hit gear, you may be getting a decent amount of life by just doing damage from locust and haunt.
By the way, I know someone is going to bring this up, but I honestly have not hit an enrage timer for the duration I've been using this build. I'm just as surprised as you are.
Thanks for your attention. Hope this helped someone. If you try this build, let me know how it goes for you. I welcome input/criticism.
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For those of you who like to mess around with experimental builds:
In short, I was wondering if anyone has found a good, inferno-viable build that utilizes the Cloud of Bats rune for the firebats skill? If you haven't tried it, play around with it; it's somewhat unique in the firebats skill family. I think it's a fun skill, and I'd like to use it. Possibly in conjunction with the Manitou rune of Spirit Barrage, which is similar.
I was dicking around with some builds for it, but I kept running in to the same old problem that being too close to enemies just kills me too quickly to down anything, especially with elite packs. I tried to combine it with Grave Injustice in the hopes of getting Spirit Walk and Mass Confusion to pop constantly (sort of like that melee wizard build that's been going around that relies on constant crits to reset frost nova, etc.), but I can't get it to proc enough to be viable. I tried adding a bunch of healing skills to my build (Life Link dogs, Ghost Trance voodoo, Consuming Spirit haunt), but they just don't seem to keep me healed enough to negate high melee damage. The only time I've gotten it to be viable past A1 is by playing with a wizard friend who was consistently popping stuns/freezes. I tried using my own stuns (really just the Mass Hysteria rune of Mass Confusion), but the truth is the WD is much more suited to slowing than stunning.
I can use it reliably in A1 w/28k dps, around 470 average resist, and 3.3 k armor. But in higher difficulties I just can't seem to hack it.
Anyone tried anything similar? Just curious to hear others' opinions and attempts. Also please link guides or videos if they exist. I don't know if it's possible to rig this into being viable, but I thought it might be fun to try. I just like to experiment with weird stuff and Cloud of Bats/Manitou seem like unique skills in the WD's lineup.
0
Act 2 inferno crushed me because of having such low dps (16k dps, 38k life, 3.4k armor). Basically I just made extremely poor gear choices (no crit, more vit than int, etc.). I died so much I was down to ~100k gold due to repair bills, every elite mob pack was pretty much ruining my day several times over before I could down them, if I could at all. I was using a pretty standard Vision Quest build and getting wrecked.
So I started to dick around with my build a bit to try to mitigate the suck and ended up trying a DOT-based build I'd liked on nightmare. To my surprise, within about half an hour I had five stacks of neph valor and had only died once. Huge change. I noticed in the big DPS thread that others were having a similar issue, so here's my solution:
Link to the build here.
Notes:
1) Runes matter. Please check out the whole build rather than just the tooltip.
2) This build depends wholly on kiting. You need increased runspeed on your boots for it to work.
3) This is not boss viable. Great for elite farming, though.
4) Mess with the passives as you see fit. I have little mana regen, so I have to VQ. You may not need to.
5) Set up a force run key binding and use it.
6) Recommended rotation: Pop spirit walk, run into a mob group, locust swarm and siphon, then run out. Cast Grasp and Zombie Wall between you and them. If they're normal mobs, they should melt away in a few ticks. If they're elites or high health, dot each elite individually with haunt. At this point you will want to put as much distance between you and the mobs as possible. Keep kiting and applying Wall/Grasp as needed to slow. Reapply Haunt when it falls off. Reapply locust when your Spirit Walk cooldown is up by spirit walking, running up the mobs, locust (and siphon if needed), and running off.
Breakdown:
On first glance this build looks pretty gimp. And it is. If you have decent dps (above 25k), don't bother with it. However, for those of us who are struggling just to live, this build addresses a lot of common problems.
1) Mobility = Survivability: One of the main problems I was having with my standard VQ build is that when I stood still to cast stuff, I'd get murderated. The WD has notoriously long casting animations. However, haunt does not. You can essentially cast haunt over your shoulder with no IAS and still dodge stuff. It also has a massive range compared to other WD abilities and will seek out its designated target. Locust does have a long casting animation, but this is taken care of because you will be in spirit walk when you are casting it. Also, haunt only has to be refreshed occasionally, giving you more time to run like hell and less time spent in a vulnerable casting position.
2) Ranged attackers/vortex/mortar: You will be very far away from them, waiting for them to die, for the duration of the encounter. You will constantly be laying slows between you and them, and since there are no long casting animations, you can manually dodge most ranged attacks. You do have to get close for locusts, but again, you'll be invincible.
3) Fast mobs: These are why you have both zombie wall and grasp in your arsenal. The WD doesn't often get enough credit for having two extremely powerful CC moves. However, grasp slows 80% and wall does 60%. Even with the inferno 'slow reduction,' casting both of these at the same time will seriously impede movement, even of a fast elite. Also grasp has a very short cooldown, so you can have one of those between you and your enemies almost all the time.
4) Life: Runed as it is, this build includes life regen from both siphon and haunt, damage reduction from jungle fort, and an emergency cooldown in the form of spirit vessel. If you're not having mana problems, you could re-rune spirit walk to Healing Journey and gain even more health. Also, I don't know the exact mechanic, but I believe that dot spells do work with life-on-hit items to return life per tick, so if you have life-on-hit gear, you may be getting a decent amount of life by just doing damage from locust and haunt.
By the way, I know someone is going to bring this up, but I honestly have not hit an enrage timer for the duration I've been using this build. I'm just as surprised as you are.
Thanks for your attention. Hope this helped someone. If you try this build, let me know how it goes for you. I welcome input/criticism.