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On June 25 2012 06:42 RaiZ wrote:Show nested quote +On June 24 2012 21:43 Heh_ wrote:On June 24 2012 21:33 trinxified wrote:On June 24 2012 21:31 Heh_ wrote:On June 24 2012 20:42 trinxified wrote:
Do WD's use shields? I picked up a nice Ivory Tower, 20% block chance, but I had no luck selling it in GAH or RMAH, so I'll keep it for my WD, currently only Level 30, but is this an item I can make use of in Inferno? Glass cannons all the way. Mojos add too much damage to give up on. Yeh I figured. Same with Wizards on sources... Though 2-handers are quite popular with Wizards, not sure with WDs. Splinters is the only reliable damage spell. Dire bats and zombie bears can work with a VQ build, but are nowhere as effective as hydra/blizzard. You can also rely on barrage. I was reluctant at first, but there are so many thing that actually make sense really : 3 importants things though : You should get Rush of Essence, Spirit barrage with willing's rune (mana) and possibly mana regen / sec. I'm using it more and more because barrage actually passes through a lot of walls and does slightly more damage than splinters. If you wan tto use PTV, you should get a lot of mana regen because it's already hard to keep attacking without it. At least it works wonderfully against elites (haven't tried act4 inferno yet, but i don't see why it wouldn't tbh).
I tried spirit barrage for a while, but kinda gave up. You get 10% more damage and a tracking missile, but it drains a ton of mana. You can compensate by taking the skills which you mentioned, but you need to spend passive skill slots and sacrifice PTV, which means that you actually deal less damage. You could try a slow 2h weapon to spam barrage, although you lose a ton of kiting power.
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310 all resists isnt much at all imo
For glass cannon WD, do you guys completely abandon resists and vit? I'm act 2 blood and sand atm 28k hp 300 resists and 25k dps
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So I've been trying to stick to Splinters builds because that's what I've been using and took some advice from what I've been reading here. This is the build I made and am currently using. Not really original, but here: http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#aZPjUX!YWV!aaZbcb
I really like the improved survivability with this build. Does anyone have any advice on how to further improve this build? I'm still in Act 1 Inferno with 25kdps (without Gruesome Feast buffs) and 24khp.
Honestly speaking, after the IAS nerf, I really feel the pain more in this build than in my previous one (had 2.5 attacks per second prepatch; 1.6 post patch). I also miss the burst DPS of bears.
I was also considering trying out a Dire Bats build as well, but I'm not sure how it fares against bosses in comparison to a Splinters build. I am currently going through Butcher runs so I'm trying to arrange a build that won't hinder me so much with general progression, but at the same time focuses mainly on elites and bosses.
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going with 300 resi 25k hp and 28kdps.(40 with totem).
Also stacking crit and critdmg now after the ias nurf.
Was Act 4 Inferno prepatch with lots of deaths,but I play mainly in group.
Standard Zombiebears build,but with Zombiewall instead of Slow.
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On June 26 2012 07:21 o3.power91 wrote:So I've been trying to stick to Splinters builds because that's what I've been using and took some advice from what I've been reading here. This is the build I made and am currently using. Not really original, but here: http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#aZPjUX!YWV!aaZbcbI really like the improved survivability with this build. Does anyone have any advice on how to further improve this build? I'm still in Act 1 Inferno with 25kdps (without Gruesome Feast buffs) and 24khp. Honestly speaking, after the IAS nerf, I really feel the pain more in this build than in my previous one (had 2.5 attacks per second prepatch; 1.6 post patch). I also miss the burst DPS of bears. I was also considering trying out a Dire Bats build as well, but I'm not sure how it fares against bosses in comparison to a Splinters build. I am currently going through Butcher runs so I'm trying to arrange a build that won't hinder me so much with general progression, but at the same time focuses mainly on elites and bosses.
Dire bats are great all around. Good at packs as well as bosses. Not as efficient as splinters for single targets, but still great. And easier to maintain. That's a big plus.
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On June 25 2012 06:27 HolyArrow wrote:
Not sure if anyone else is doing this, but I figure I'll share a great build I stumbled upon on the Blizzard's D3 forums yesterday. It's basically VQ + Dire Bats, but with a nice twist that will really make your mana regen skyrocket. I've done some of my own modifications to it and I'll discuss them a bit when I describe the build. This is intended for Inferno players, if you're not level 60 then the required abilities might not be available for you.
One ridiculously nice thing about this is that post patch 1.0.3, there are probably tons of people who did Splinters build who are now feeling like they need a new build. I was one of this people, and this build is great because if you were geared for a Splinters build, then you'll be perfectly fine doing this build with that exact same gear. There are Tank Doctor builds out there that I hear are very effective, but that requires a bunch of new gear.
My Stats:
39k HP
~310 on All Resists
37.5k Damage
With these stats + this build, Act I is a complete cakewalk and Act 2 is overall pretty easy. I haven't really tried Act 3 yet since I just found out this build yesterday, but I'll report back once I do.
Skills:
Spirit Barrage - Well of Souls
Firebats - Dire Bats
Soul Harvest - Siphon
Horrify - Frightening Aspect
Spirit Walk - Healing Journey
Hex - Jinx
Vision Quest
Spirit Vessel
Rush of Essence
The key here is Spirit Barrage + Rush of Essence + VQ. Without RoE and Spirit Barrage, VQ alone simply does not give you enough mana regen to spam Dire Bats to your heart's content. Dire Bats is 122 mana per cast, and with VQ + my base mana regen, I only get 60 mana per second - nowhere close to enough. However, with RoE and Soul Harvest+Horrify+Spirit Walk popped, that mana regen goes up to 97. However, this still isn't enough to spam Dire Bats constantly, and that's where Spirit Barrage comes in. The beauty of Spirit Barrage is that every time you cast it with VQ and RoE+Soul Harvest+Horrify+Spirit Walk's mana regen bonuses all stacking, you get 13 more mana regen. So, with a few casts of Spirit Barrage, I get my mana regen up to a nice comfy 150-ish with only 4 casts of Spirit Barrage. If I spam Spirit Barrage as much as I can, I can get my mana regen up to 280, which, needless to say, is way more than enough to spam Dire Bats all day.
Now, explanation of runes chosen, and possible variations.
Firebats + Dire Bats: self-explanatory. One key point is that you're supposed to kite those pesky elite mobs, and it works out such that the Dire Bats often hit multiple elites if you're kiting away since they're chasing you and tend to line up sometimes.
Spirit Barrage + Well of Souls: This comes down to which rune you think is most effective at dealing additional damage if you want damage, or you could use the rune that heals you for 3% of the damage Spirit Barrage does. If I'm spamming Spirit Barrage then Well of Souls seems like the best rune for more damage. The healing rune looks very appealing to me and I might try it out sometime, because by my calculations, it'll heal you for 800-3600 HP per cast (if your damage is similar to mine, of course), which is great since this build encourages you to spam it. Post 1.0.3, enemies don't really 1-shot you anymore so incorporating healing should be a lot more viable. The mana regen rune doesn't seem necessary since this build stacks VQ and RoE to give you ridiculous mana regen anyway. One thing about Spirit Barrage is that it goes through walls that Waller elites make, which is an awesome way to continue doing damage to them if the walls are blocking you from using Dire Bats.
Soul Harvest + Siphon: I basically opted for more healing, but I can rationalize why any rune besides the mana regen rune (again, you already get enough mana regen as it is) could be useful. The slowing rune would be useful for making kiting more effective, but healing is very nice too. And, to state the obvious, it's also a nice way to give a hefty damage boost to your Dire Bat spamming. Experiment!
Horrify + Frightening Aspect: The cool thing about this is that I did some calculations, and doubling my armor for 8 seconds gives me roughly the same damage reduction as if I had 600 all resists. Thus, I can effectively have damage reduction equivalent to 600 all resist for a significant amount of time in my battles, without investing ridiculous sums of gold to get equipment with tons of all resist. All the other runes look useful as well except for the mana regen rune for the same reasons as before. Face of Death can be very nice for periodic CC, and since this build emphasizes kiting, Stalker could also be very useful since movement speed is always awesome for kiting.
Spirit Walk + Healing Journey: Just decided to opt for more healing since this build doesn't give me any passive health regen. Jaunt can also be very useful for obvious reasons - you can run further away before it wears off, which can be invaluable when kiting. Other runes don't seem that great since they just add on a meager amount of damage or give you mana regen which you clearly don't need more of.
Hex + Jinx: Very useful for just giving you an opportunity to unload on an opponent. Spamming Dire Bats on a Hexed target with Jinx can be pretty powerful. The only other rune that looks somewhat useful is Hedge Magic, but I tried it and didn't really like how it worked.
I'd like to add that with this build, you're maxing out the efficacy of Spirit Vessel since it affects the cooldowns of Soul Harvest, Spirit Walk, and Horrify, all of which are abilities you're using!
In conclusion, I hope this helps some people and I would love to hear suggested improvements/alternatives to my version of this build. [/b]
You could get a weapon, mojo and helm with mana regen and even a helm with -firebats mana cost for a total of 30+ mana regen per second. With all that you can get rid of spirit barrage and rush of essence and switch to PtV and welcomed guest. You can then use more powerful direbats for pretty much the entire time.
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+ Show Spoiler +On June 25 2012 06:27 HolyArrow wrote:
Not sure if anyone else is doing this, but I figure I'll share a great build I stumbled upon on the Blizzard's D3 forums yesterday. It's basically VQ + Dire Bats, but with a nice twist that will really make your mana regen skyrocket. I've done some of my own modifications to it and I'll discuss them a bit when I describe the build. This is intended for Inferno players, if you're not level 60 then the required abilities might not be available for you.
One ridiculously nice thing about this is that post patch 1.0.3, there are probably tons of people who did Splinters build who are now feeling like they need a new build. I was one of this people, and this build is great because if you were geared for a Splinters build, then you'll be perfectly fine doing this build with that exact same gear. There are Tank Doctor builds out there that I hear are very effective, but that requires a bunch of new gear.
My Stats:
39k HP
~310 on All Resists
37.5k Damage
With these stats + this build, Act I is a complete cakewalk and Act 2 is overall pretty easy. I haven't really tried Act 3 yet since I just found out this build yesterday, but I'll report back once I do.
Skills:
Spirit Barrage - Well of Souls
Firebats - Dire Bats
Soul Harvest - Siphon
Horrify - Frightening Aspect
Spirit Walk - Healing Journey
Hex - Jinx
Vision Quest
Spirit Vessel
Rush of Essence
The key here is Spirit Barrage + Rush of Essence + VQ. Without RoE and Spirit Barrage, VQ alone simply does not give you enough mana regen to spam Dire Bats to your heart's content. Dire Bats is 122 mana per cast, and with VQ + my base mana regen, I only get 60 mana per second - nowhere close to enough. However, with RoE and Soul Harvest+Horrify+Spirit Walk popped, that mana regen goes up to 97. However, this still isn't enough to spam Dire Bats constantly, and that's where Spirit Barrage comes in. The beauty of Spirit Barrage is that every time you cast it with VQ and RoE+Soul Harvest+Horrify+Spirit Walk's mana regen bonuses all stacking, you get 13 more mana regen. So, with a few casts of Spirit Barrage, I get my mana regen up to a nice comfy 150-ish with only 4 casts of Spirit Barrage. If I spam Spirit Barrage as much as I can, I can get my mana regen up to 280, which, needless to say, is way more than enough to spam Dire Bats all day.
Now, explanation of runes chosen, and possible variations.
Firebats + Dire Bats: self-explanatory. One key point is that you're supposed to kite those pesky elite mobs, and it works out such that the Dire Bats often hit multiple elites if you're kiting away since they're chasing you and tend to line up sometimes.
Spirit Barrage + Well of Souls: This comes down to which rune you think is most effective at dealing additional damage if you want damage, or you could use the rune that heals you for 3% of the damage Spirit Barrage does. If I'm spamming Spirit Barrage then Well of Souls seems like the best rune for more damage. The healing rune looks very appealing to me and I might try it out sometime, because by my calculations, it'll heal you for 800-3600 HP per cast (if your damage is similar to mine, of course), which is great since this build encourages you to spam it. Post 1.0.3, enemies don't really 1-shot you anymore so incorporating healing should be a lot more viable. The mana regen rune doesn't seem necessary since this build stacks VQ and RoE to give you ridiculous mana regen anyway. One thing about Spirit Barrage is that it goes through walls that Waller elites make, which is an awesome way to continue doing damage to them if the walls are blocking you from using Dire Bats.
Soul Harvest + Siphon: I basically opted for more healing, but I can rationalize why any rune besides the mana regen rune (again, you already get enough mana regen as it is) could be useful. The slowing rune would be useful for making kiting more effective, but healing is very nice too. And, to state the obvious, it's also a nice way to give a hefty damage boost to your Dire Bat spamming. Experiment!
Horrify + Frightening Aspect: The cool thing about this is that I did some calculations, and doubling my armor for 8 seconds gives me roughly the same damage reduction as if I had 600 all resists. Thus, I can effectively have damage reduction equivalent to 600 all resist for a significant amount of time in my battles, without investing ridiculous sums of gold to get equipment with tons of all resist. All the other runes look useful as well except for the mana regen rune for the same reasons as before. Face of Death can be very nice for periodic CC, and since this build emphasizes kiting, Stalker could also be very useful since movement speed is always awesome for kiting.
Spirit Walk + Healing Journey: Just decided to opt for more healing since this build doesn't give me any passive health regen. Jaunt can also be very useful for obvious reasons - you can run further away before it wears off, which can be invaluable when kiting. Other runes don't seem that great since they just add on a meager amount of damage or give you mana regen which you clearly don't need more of.
Hex + Jinx: Very useful for just giving you an opportunity to unload on an opponent. Spamming Dire Bats on a Hexed target with Jinx can be pretty powerful. The only other rune that looks somewhat useful is Hedge Magic, but I tried it and didn't really like how it worked.
I'd like to add that with this build, you're maxing out the efficacy of Spirit Vessel since it affects the cooldowns of Soul Harvest, Spirit Walk, and Horrify, all of which are abilities you're using!
In conclusion, I hope this helps some people and I would love to hear suggested improvements/alternatives to my version of this build.
I just wanna say... thank you dude, for that very well written out guide. I was having a lot of trouble in inferno running a dire bats build I got from reddit (for some reason, I can't even find the link now). I was ALWAYS and CONSTANTLY running out of mana. I still am a bit with this build, and at times I feel a little less safe because there's no grasp of the dead for easier kiting, but this build is much better in the patched inferno where life/healing actually makes a slight difference.
There's a couple weak points, such as Horrify not being all that useful in general and being kind of dead weight when it comes to kill final bosses themselves (Hex doesn't work, Horrify doesn't work) . I'm kind of playing around with it, but this is definitely the most promising out of anything I've tried (especially since I'm not decked out at all, and can barely do butcher runs with any sort of competence). Thanks again!
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On June 27 2012 08:28 TangyOrange wrote:Show nested quote +On June 26 2012 07:21 o3.power91 wrote:So I've been trying to stick to Splinters builds because that's what I've been using and took some advice from what I've been reading here. This is the build I made and am currently using. Not really original, but here: http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#aZPjUX!YWV!aaZbcbI really like the improved survivability with this build. Does anyone have any advice on how to further improve this build? I'm still in Act 1 Inferno with 25kdps (without Gruesome Feast buffs) and 24khp. Honestly speaking, after the IAS nerf, I really feel the pain more in this build than in my previous one (had 2.5 attacks per second prepatch; 1.6 post patch). I also miss the burst DPS of bears. I was also considering trying out a Dire Bats build as well, but I'm not sure how it fares against bosses in comparison to a Splinters build. I am currently going through Butcher runs so I'm trying to arrange a build that won't hinder me so much with general progression, but at the same time focuses mainly on elites and bosses. Dire bats are great all around. Good at packs as well as bosses. Not as efficient as splinters for single targets, but still great. And easier to maintain. That's a big plus.
The problem I've been having with dire bats is the mana regen.
I've tried using the Spirit Barrage/RoE/VQ build HolyArrow posted here and quoted multiple times just above me. With VQ active, the mana regen is just crazy good. My main problem with that build though is managing my cooldowns to keep consistent Dire Bats flowing. And when I do have VQ active, I don't have any "get out of jail free" card like Spirit Walk or Horrify when I need them (against teleport or vortex elites). I still have SV but I'm not ready to rely on that alone.
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What a lot of people are doing these days is 5CD VQ Dire Bats. This lets you keep one skill off cooldown at all times and can easily get you near 100% uptime on VQ. If you're running Dire Bats its such a versatile and useful skill that it covers all your damage needs, AoE, single target, long ass range, so 5 defensive CDs is viable.
Something like
LC:GotD
RC:Bats
1:WoZ
2:Horrify
3:Soul Harvest
4:Spirit Walk
P1:VQ
P2:Spirit Vessel
P3:Blood Ritual
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Bears is fixed so I'm back to bears. Long live bears. Fetish devoted following, zombie wall barricade, hex jinx, sw jaunt, soul harvest siphon and bears. With VQ, fort and vessel.
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Is the DPS reduction of wearing a shield worth it?
If I care mostly about DPS, would a 2hander be a better option vs the 1h+asp combo? (Assuming I follow the crit stack trend)
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On June 28 2012 23:52 lorkac wrote:
Is the DPS reduction of wearing a shield worth it?
If I care mostly about DPS, would a 2hander be a better option vs the 1h+asp combo? (Assuming I follow the crit stack trend)
Unless you're already stacking a ton of resists/armor/vit to be able to tank more than a few shots. You could get the passives to reduce damage by 40%, and you MIGHT try to play a close-range build using zombie bears, soul harvest and such.
2h weapons tend to be useless for WDs because the primary damage spell requires a ton of kiting, and slow weapons are suicide.
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A good mojo is typically super cheap. I bought one with 8.5% bonus crit, 100-333 damage, and 9% bonus poison dart damage for 500k. 1-hand ceremonial knives give good attack speed and more importantly, mana regen. Although the 900+ DPS WD daggers still cost an arm and a leg, if you settle for 850DPS with crit damage it's still around 500k or less. There's really no reason to go 2h.
For farming act 1 and part of act 2 I generally use the following setup:
- Splinter Dart
- Grasp (80%)
- Spirit Walk (3s)
- Horrify (bonus armor)
- Voodoo (bonus damage to allies)
- Fetish Army (Ambush)
Passives: Spirit Vessel, Pierce the Veil, Tribal Rites (25% less CD on voodoo and fetish army)
First 4 skill is enough to never be touched by any trash mobs. Vs elites kite them a bit and as soon as they catch you spirit walk into them and unload voodoo + fetish army and then use horrify to create an escape route.
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On June 27 2012 11:58 Greggle wrote:Show nested quote +On June 25 2012 06:27 HolyArrow wrote:
Not sure if anyone else is doing this, but I figure I'll share a great build I stumbled upon on the Blizzard's D3 forums yesterday. It's basically VQ + Dire Bats, but with a nice twist that will really make your mana regen skyrocket. I've done some of my own modifications to it and I'll discuss them a bit when I describe the build. This is intended for Inferno players, if you're not level 60 then the required abilities might not be available for you.
One ridiculously nice thing about this is that post patch 1.0.3, there are probably tons of people who did Splinters build who are now feeling like they need a new build. I was one of this people, and this build is great because if you were geared for a Splinters build, then you'll be perfectly fine doing this build with that exact same gear. There are Tank Doctor builds out there that I hear are very effective, but that requires a bunch of new gear.
My Stats:
39k HP
~310 on All Resists
37.5k Damage
With these stats + this build, Act I is a complete cakewalk and Act 2 is overall pretty easy. I haven't really tried Act 3 yet since I just found out this build yesterday, but I'll report back once I do.
Skills:
Spirit Barrage - Well of Souls
Firebats - Dire Bats
Soul Harvest - Siphon
Horrify - Frightening Aspect
Spirit Walk - Healing Journey
Hex - Jinx
Vision Quest
Spirit Vessel
Rush of Essence
The key here is Spirit Barrage + Rush of Essence + VQ. Without RoE and Spirit Barrage, VQ alone simply does not give you enough mana regen to spam Dire Bats to your heart's content. Dire Bats is 122 mana per cast, and with VQ + my base mana regen, I only get 60 mana per second - nowhere close to enough. However, with RoE and Soul Harvest+Horrify+Spirit Walk popped, that mana regen goes up to 97. However, this still isn't enough to spam Dire Bats constantly, and that's where Spirit Barrage comes in. The beauty of Spirit Barrage is that every time you cast it with VQ and RoE+Soul Harvest+Horrify+Spirit Walk's mana regen bonuses all stacking, you get 13 more mana regen. So, with a few casts of Spirit Barrage, I get my mana regen up to a nice comfy 150-ish with only 4 casts of Spirit Barrage. If I spam Spirit Barrage as much as I can, I can get my mana regen up to 280, which, needless to say, is way more than enough to spam Dire Bats all day.
Now, explanation of runes chosen, and possible variations.
Firebats + Dire Bats: self-explanatory. One key point is that you're supposed to kite those pesky elite mobs, and it works out such that the Dire Bats often hit multiple elites if you're kiting away since they're chasing you and tend to line up sometimes.
Spirit Barrage + Well of Souls: This comes down to which rune you think is most effective at dealing additional damage if you want damage, or you could use the rune that heals you for 3% of the damage Spirit Barrage does. If I'm spamming Spirit Barrage then Well of Souls seems like the best rune for more damage. The healing rune looks very appealing to me and I might try it out sometime, because by my calculations, it'll heal you for 800-3600 HP per cast (if your damage is similar to mine, of course), which is great since this build encourages you to spam it. Post 1.0.3, enemies don't really 1-shot you anymore so incorporating healing should be a lot more viable. The mana regen rune doesn't seem necessary since this build stacks VQ and RoE to give you ridiculous mana regen anyway. One thing about Spirit Barrage is that it goes through walls that Waller elites make, which is an awesome way to continue doing damage to them if the walls are blocking you from using Dire Bats.
Soul Harvest + Siphon: I basically opted for more healing, but I can rationalize why any rune besides the mana regen rune (again, you already get enough mana regen as it is) could be useful. The slowing rune would be useful for making kiting more effective, but healing is very nice too. And, to state the obvious, it's also a nice way to give a hefty damage boost to your Dire Bat spamming. Experiment!
Horrify + Frightening Aspect: The cool thing about this is that I did some calculations, and doubling my armor for 8 seconds gives me roughly the same damage reduction as if I had 600 all resists. Thus, I can effectively have damage reduction equivalent to 600 all resist for a significant amount of time in my battles, without investing ridiculous sums of gold to get equipment with tons of all resist. All the other runes look useful as well except for the mana regen rune for the same reasons as before. Face of Death can be very nice for periodic CC, and since this build emphasizes kiting, Stalker could also be very useful since movement speed is always awesome for kiting.
Spirit Walk + Healing Journey: Just decided to opt for more healing since this build doesn't give me any passive health regen. Jaunt can also be very useful for obvious reasons - you can run further away before it wears off, which can be invaluable when kiting. Other runes don't seem that great since they just add on a meager amount of damage or give you mana regen which you clearly don't need more of.
Hex + Jinx: Very useful for just giving you an opportunity to unload on an opponent. Spamming Dire Bats on a Hexed target with Jinx can be pretty powerful. The only other rune that looks somewhat useful is Hedge Magic, but I tried it and didn't really like how it worked.
I'd like to add that with this build, you're maxing out the efficacy of Spirit Vessel since it affects the cooldowns of Soul Harvest, Spirit Walk, and Horrify, all of which are abilities you're using!
In conclusion, I hope this helps some people and I would love to hear suggested improvements/alternatives to my version of this build. You could get a weapon, mojo and helm with mana regen and even a helm with -firebats mana cost for a total of 30+ mana regen per second. With all that you can get rid of spirit barrage and rush of essence and switch to PtV and welcomed guest. You can then use more powerful direbats for pretty much the entire time. [/b]
Interesting. My weapon and mojo are each worth around 10-15 million so I'm reluctant to find new ones, but I suppose I could sell them and use that money to try to buy new stuff that's roughly just as good. PtV definitely is a very, very nice damage booster so it could be worth it. Thanks for the advice.
What would you recommend replacing Spirit Barrage with?
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On June 26 2012 07:21 o3.power91 wrote:So I've been trying to stick to Splinters builds because that's what I've been using and took some advice from what I've been reading here. This is the build I made and am currently using. Not really original, but here: http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#aZPjUX!YWV!aaZbcbI really like the improved survivability with this build. Does anyone have any advice on how to further improve this build? I'm still in Act 1 Inferno with 25kdps (without Gruesome Feast buffs) and 24khp. Honestly speaking, after the IAS nerf, I really feel the pain more in this build than in my previous one (had 2.5 attacks per second prepatch; 1.6 post patch). I also miss the burst DPS of bears. I was also considering trying out a Dire Bats build as well, but I'm not sure how it fares against bosses in comparison to a Splinters build. I am currently going through Butcher runs so I'm trying to arrange a build that won't hinder me so much with general progression, but at the same time focuses mainly on elites and bosses.
With the build I posted earlier, I managed to beat Belial with a monk friend who barely does any damage (meaning I had to make up for all the DPS he was supposed to have). We beat him literally right when the enrage timer activated. So, I'd say that Dire Bats are perfectly good against bosses.
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I've been doing some butcher runs to practice my dire bats/mf build and for me personally the butcher is definitely a little harder (coming from splinters) BUT everything else is much easier, at least as far as mfing is concerned. (~340mf, no swap)
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On June 29 2012 14:26 HolyArrow wrote:Show nested quote +On June 26 2012 07:21 o3.power91 wrote:So I've been trying to stick to Splinters builds because that's what I've been using and took some advice from what I've been reading here. This is the build I made and am currently using. Not really original, but here: http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#aZPjUX!YWV!aaZbcbI really like the improved survivability with this build. Does anyone have any advice on how to further improve this build? I'm still in Act 1 Inferno with 25kdps (without Gruesome Feast buffs) and 24khp. Honestly speaking, after the IAS nerf, I really feel the pain more in this build than in my previous one (had 2.5 attacks per second prepatch; 1.6 post patch). I also miss the burst DPS of bears. I was also considering trying out a Dire Bats build as well, but I'm not sure how it fares against bosses in comparison to a Splinters build. I am currently going through Butcher runs so I'm trying to arrange a build that won't hinder me so much with general progression, but at the same time focuses mainly on elites and bosses. With the build I posted earlier, I managed to beat Belial with a monk friend who barely does any damage (meaning I had to make up for all the DPS he was supposed to have). We beat him literally right when the enrage timer activated. So, I'd say that Dire Bats are perfectly good against bosses.
I had trouble managing cooldowns with your build. When I get in a sticky situation with Spirit Walk on cd, I'm pretty much dead. I'm gonna try your build again maybe when I get better hp + resistances and dps. Currently just on 26khp and 25kdps with around 260-310 on all my resists.
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On June 29 2012 15:23 o3.power91 wrote:Show nested quote +On June 29 2012 14:26 HolyArrow wrote:On June 26 2012 07:21 o3.power91 wrote:So I've been trying to stick to Splinters builds because that's what I've been using and took some advice from what I've been reading here. This is the build I made and am currently using. Not really original, but here: http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#aZPjUX!YWV!aaZbcbI really like the improved survivability with this build. Does anyone have any advice on how to further improve this build? I'm still in Act 1 Inferno with 25kdps (without Gruesome Feast buffs) and 24khp. Honestly speaking, after the IAS nerf, I really feel the pain more in this build than in my previous one (had 2.5 attacks per second prepatch; 1.6 post patch). I also miss the burst DPS of bears. I was also considering trying out a Dire Bats build as well, but I'm not sure how it fares against bosses in comparison to a Splinters build. I am currently going through Butcher runs so I'm trying to arrange a build that won't hinder me so much with general progression, but at the same time focuses mainly on elites and bosses. With the build I posted earlier, I managed to beat Belial with a monk friend who barely does any damage (meaning I had to make up for all the DPS he was supposed to have). We beat him literally right when the enrage timer activated. So, I'd say that Dire Bats are perfectly good against bosses. I had trouble managing cooldowns with your build. When I get in a sticky situation with Spirit Walk on cd, I'm pretty much dead. I'm gonna try your build again maybe when I get better hp + resistances and dps. Currently just on 26khp and 25kdps with around 260-310 on all my resists.
Yeah I'm not sure how well the build I'm using works with your stats. What I do with the cooldowns is that I just constantly spam 123412341234 while kiting, don't even really use Spirit Walk strategically. I do die occasionally on Act 2, and die pretty often on Act 3.
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What are the reasons Witch Doctors prefer Splinters over Spirit Barrage or Rain of Toads. Also these two abilities have really loud sound effects.
I'm starting Hell on my Witch Doctor. Going Spirit Barrage/Well of Souls, grasp of the dead, spirit walk, soul harvest, horrify and fetish. With Rush of Essence, Blood Ritual and Spirit Vessel. Aside from Fetish everything works with Rush of the Essence so I get refund on every spell I cast so even though Spirit Barrage does cost a lot of mana I can still spam it for a while and use other abilities.
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Spirit barrage costs 108 mana per cast for barely any extra damage.
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EPT
