Witch Doctor thread!

[PizzaSHARK]

A thread for Witch Doctor stuff! I'm planning on making my Witch Doctor, who will have an as yet undecided but cheerfully racist name, based around zombie dogs and poison. Because venomancers in D2 were always fun, and because dogs are great. He'll be a softy, so death isn't really a concern. I'll be leveling him with my brother, who said he wants to make a wizard.

The current plan for skills are Poison Dart+Splinters, just a bread and butter nuke tool and to proc the Bad Medicine (all enemies you poison do 20% less damage for 3 sec) passive skill. Gonna be taking Locust Swarm+Cloud of Insects as a basic AOE poison tool. Third skill is predictably going to be Summon Zombie Dogs, with Final Gift; I plan on using the Gruesome Feast (when you're healed by a health orb, you recover 10% mana and gain 10% INT for 10 sec, stacking up to 5 times), so my dogs having a decent chance to drop a health orb when they die will largely alleviate my mana concerns as well as helping everyone stay topped off when combined with normal health orb drops.

Taking Sacrifice+Next of Kin since dogs are a major focus of my build; it allows me to nuke my pups for extra damage, with a chance of one of my nuked pups coming back on its own. Assuming using Sacrifice can proc Final Gift, this also gives us an option of trying to force a health orb if we're hurting; three pups at a 15% chance per pup, 45% chance that we'll get at least one orb, not to mention the damage all the pups will do.

I'm taking Acid Cloud+Acid Rain as my next skill, mostly to synergize with Bad Medicine; with a huge AOE, it'll be guaranteed to make entire groups of enemies weaker while also causing some damage at the same time.

Lastly, I'm grabbing Big Bad Voodoo+Boogie Man as my final skill, to provide everyone with a sizable damage buff, as well as offering yet another option for producing pups. With a 50% chance to produce a pup any time an enemy in the area of effect dies, it'll be a great way of turning a wave of adds on a boss fight (like Leoric's periodically summoned skeletons) into extra damage for the boss itself, as well as potential health orbs.

The last passive skill I'm taking is Circle of Life, again because pups are a core part of the build. It's possible that it might be better to swap it out for, say, Jungle Fortitude by time we hit Hell, though. I'm not terribly concerned with Inferno because I don't think it's really going to be possible to be successful in Inferno without a melee character on the team to soak up the initial hits for us.

[Siluz]

a nice build but no CC or slows?

[Nasok1986]

People. I have small question. Can i respec if needed if i am going wrong skill route. Or the game has another mechanic. I did not want to be spoiled so did not read even small thing about the game, just purchased So.. is going my own talents route is unforgiven the same as in Diablo 2?

[PizzaSHARK]

a nice build but no CC or slows?

I can always add them if necessary. It doesn't seem like they'll be necessary until at least late Hell, or Inferno. Poison Dart can be set for slow, and I believe Locust Swarm can slow as well.

[whill4]

People. I have small question. Can i respec if needed if i am going wrong skill route. Or the game has another mechanic. I did not want to be spoiled so did not read even small thing about the game, just purchased So.. is going my own talents route is unforgiven the same as in Diablo 2?

No you can change pretty much at anytime. But there is a bonus where you get better gear the longer you go without respeccing. Otherwise you can do it whenever you want.


And the Witch Docta is going to be sick. It seems like such a flexible class and I think it will be a beast in PvP and PvE.

[PizzaSHARK]

No you can change pretty much at anytime. But there is a bonus where you get better gear the longer you go without respeccing. Otherwise you can do it whenever you want.


And the Witch Docta is going to be sick. It seems like such a flexible class and I think it will be a beast in PvP and PvE.

I'm pretty sure the innate MF bonus will only apply to level 60 characters. That's what I read.

[PizzaSHARK]

Chiming to say that Circle of Life is either not functioning, or has an incredibly tiny radius. My WD has +4 yd to gold pickup, yet I have yet to see a single monster death result in a dog popping up.

Does it only work if you have fewer than 3 dogs out? Does it only work on certain monster types? Do the dogs themselves have to get the kill for it to count, or is it ANY monster death?

[Luko]

Chiming to say that Circle of Life is either not functioning, or has an incredibly tiny radius. My WD has +4 yd to gold pickup, yet I have yet to see a single monster death result in a dog popping up.

Does it only work if you have fewer than 3 dogs out? Does it only work on certain monster types? Do the dogs themselves have to get the kill for it to count, or is it ANY monster death?

Iirc, you can only have a max of 3 (4 with the passive) out at a time. I found that focusing on the pets in general is a pretty bad idea. As another poster stated in another thread, they're basically "speedbumps" at best.

[Krowz]

Iirc, you can only have a max of 3 (4 with the passive) out at a time. I found that focusing on the pets in general is a pretty bad idea. As another poster stated in another thread, they're basically "speedbumps" at best.

The dogs are awful. Terrible AI, abysmal damage, and don't take reduced aoe damage like in wow. So if a enemy leaves a ground effect or cleaves AT ALL, all 3/4 dogs die in a matter of seconds.

The gargantuan has proven to be solid for me however. His cleave is nice, and he can hold his own as a tank.

[Neinhalt]

I'm currently in Nightmare Act II (level 40) and I've been messing with a few different builds. I'm currently running Firebomb in primary with Flash Fire rune, Soul Harvest in secondary with Siphon Rune. On my active skills I'm using Zombie Dogs (Burning Dogs Rune), Gargantuan (Restless Giant), Spirit Walk (Umbral Shock), and my fourth skill is Plague of Toads atm which i've been swapping out for other stuff trying to get a feel for what I want there. Passive Skills are Pierce the Veil/Spiritual Attunement/Spirit Vessel. I like these because it increases my damage, mana is increased, and soul harvest/spirit walk cooldowns are reduced and I come back to life once per 90 seconds in spirit walk, so if shit hits the fan I can run out of the aoe and stay alive.

I was watching a feed earlier of another witchdoctor going through Nightmare Mode and he was using corpse spiders religiously and it seemed to be working out really well to keep enemies at bay and off of him along with the garg/hounds. He also shared the sentiment that hounds are worthless but I haven't found a replacement that I'm happy with yet that fits into my build.

My biggest issue right now is when I'm playing solo, especially now that I'm in Nightmare mode, I have a hard time keeping things off me and even with the increased spirit walk cooldown its just not enough, and my spiders aren't keeping aggro on creeps anything like the guy i was watching the stream of earlier, so I ended up switching to Firebomb with the first rune and the damage is pretty nice.

I'm also trying to figure out the whole stat thing. I know INT is our primary stat but I've noticed that stacking INT and VIT that my garg lives a lot longer so I assume this means that the pets feed off of our stat pool to some extent but I haven't seen anything that says how much, so I'm confused as to how stock to put into these.

Sorry for the wall, hopefully someone can answer something about stats :P

[Dizzarai]

Does our damage scale with weapon damage like it does for wizards?

[Neinhalt]

Not sure exactly what you're referring to but spells are based on weapon damage, so higher dps weapons means more damage over all.

[CaptRik]

The dogs are awful. Terrible AI, abysmal damage, and don't take reduced aoe damage like in wow. So if a enemy leaves a ground effect or cleaves AT ALL, all 3/4 dogs die in a matter of seconds.

The gargantuan has proven to be solid for me however. His cleave is nice, and he can hold his own as a tank.

Agreed, sadly. By act 4 normal the dogs were dying on every single fight so I've ditched the skill entirely. It's a shame as I was hoping all skills would be viable at any time.

[Deleted]

The dogs are in no way supposed to tank anything or be anything beyond cannon fodder.

[Dandel96]

Guys, anyone got any tips for beating The Butcher as a Witch Doctor? Im level 14, and in normal mode xD But my lag is hindering me from dodging hooks properly.

I can wait for my friends to log on to help, but as of now, I`ve failed 5 times o_o

[Wigglesworth]

Im trying this build http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculato...TcP!ZfW!YZccZZ

[Synbaby]

So I'm leveling with a wizard and a demon hunter right now. We are level 31, and I noticed last night that my damage in my character interface is lower than the other 2 classes. Now is this because of the pets? We even compared gear and my gear is very similar to their's, and I don't feel like my damage is low either. Just something I noticed, and was wondering what you all thought about it.

[Krowz]

So I'm leveling with a wizard and a demon hunter right now. We are level 31, and I noticed last night that my damage in my character interface is lower than the other 2 classes. Now is this because of the pets? We even compared gear and my gear is very similar to their's, and I don't feel like my damage is low either. Just something I noticed, and was wondering what you all thought about it.

Soul Harvest. I'm starting to feel like WD is designed around it. It's harder to maintain at nightmare/hell but combined with spirit walk, its amazing. A 5 stack to soul harvest is easily a 250-300% damage increase for the duration. Try that out, with me and a group of 2 friends our play style is revolving around just keeping me alive because my damage is so insane with Dire Bat and Soul Harvest.