f13.net

I ran into a bump about level late teens somewhere. I was in the desert, and suddenly started getting one- or two- hit by mobs. I died like 4 times in 10 minutes at one point.

Then I leveled, and got a Gargantuan. It's a big Ogre type tank mob. What a difference! (oh and I upgraded some gear which helped tremendously).

I've been leveling so fast that I haven't taken the time to really explore what I'm doing because I have been playing in public games exclusively. Nevertheless, I'm very, very happy with witch doctor. Very explodey and chaotic.

Frogs and dogs and grasping hands ... slow but effective. I tend to hang back while my dogs scamper off so I rarely get my buff to work unless I plunge in for a health drop or purposely to hit the buff. The frogs are a tad chaotic and slow as shit so I pop back and forth with dire bat runed. It is nice, but murder on the mana.

My Oogabooga is crazy fun. I was pleasantly surprised.

With all my toosn I play pretty much only co-op games, and have never seen another witch doctor.

*I* keep winding up in games with two, which I sort of don't like because my god does the screen get SUPER BUSY when you have more than one hurling their shit around.

IMO pre-garg WD while solo just wasn't that fun. I tried a few times but it was so slow compared to grouping with even just a single melee character to run interference on mobs getting to you it was night and day. Things simply change drastically in the 20's.

The next big change, imo, is in the 40s if you're running a Vision Quest build. Though I'm not there yet I've seen it in action, it's sick just spamming Dire Bats :awesome_for_real:

Edit: yeah, there can be a shitload of summons/pets on screen. I'll ask if anyone's bugged by it if they're someone I know, but complete pub games I don't give a crap and find it more entertaining changing spells randomly to see who I can fool with a new summon/pet graphic

At least I don't resent said witch doctors or anything, it's just made it so I'm grateful I like the ranged classes this time around, I stand back and eat bonbons while I shoot into a giant pack of nonsense and assume something will fall over eventually.

Ingmar's been playing one and he has disgusting poison dogs right now. The way they run is creepy as hell. <3

This thread is the name of my toon.   :grin:
Anyways, I've found frogs and vamp. bats to be the most useful with a garg taking tank duty.  I use exploding frogs as a slimy wall of firey death and anything that gets close get a nice dose of bats in the face (that happen to also regen my health).  Any scarier and I hit fear.  If I need to snipe mobs I use that soul thingie, which is like an early game heat-seeking magic missile essentially.

Did I mention my frogs fuckin explode?   :grin:

That flaming skull thing is pretty evil too though.  Really the biggest issue with WD is deciding how to play it; way too much playstyle variety.

Definitely a roller coaster ride.  Every 5 levels I go from face melting destruction to getting beat down.

I think gear has a huge effect on us.  I am noticing dramatic improvement as I try to keep up the gear portion of things.

And the skills! Soooo many... currently using the snag AOE thing, fire bats, poison dogs. and spiders as my main while trying to keep harvest soul up as much as possible (just unlocked the queen spider- gonna see how she works out).  Having issues deciding which passive I want- was running the mana one but swapped last night before logging to the 20% damage reduction one.  I got squishy all of a sudden!

I now have a giant frog that eats people.   :awesome_for_real:   As a main attk no less.  Much like the smallfrogs though, it's basically a wall you hide behind.  Asploding frogs and acid could are the most fierce so far, but haunt if runed is better if you like DoTs.
As for stats and WD, it kinda sux INT isnt linked to mana and mana-regen.  That to me is our biggest issue.  And I have yet to find a gem with mana/regen in it.  All my passives are mana related.

The more I play though, the more it's apparent I should probably have a poison build. Especially with bad medicine.  If u combine that with Jungle Fortitude all your incoming dmg. is cut in half.   :awesome_for_real:

God I'm having so much fun with my WD over my Monk.  Monk was boring with just autoattack and win.

With the WD, I just hit Act 2 at level 16ish, I just crafted a +26INT axe  :awesome_for_real: :awesome_for_real: :awesome_for_real: :awesome_for_real:

My attacks are:
Leaping Spider Attack
Grasping Dead + Extra Damage
Zombie Charger
Harvest
Firedogs + Poison

Things just melt to my spiders, I don't even have to aim.   Anyone know what Spirit Walk is good for?  Getting into melee range to do shit?

Looking forward to some extra attacks, Gargantuan, spider queen, acid clouds etc. 

I could see it being useful for getting into range to fire off a harvest on maximum targets and then drop back... but I am not there yet.

Yeah.

Also, anyone find any use for Haunt?  Seems kind of shitty.

I toyed with it in a few crypts. You can fire it off quite often and it jumps around a lot - but I didn't use/test it out on huge groups to honestly give a thumbs up or down. Seems like a DoT curse that could be useful for adds and lower hp mobs since it could chain those pretty well.

In later levels (I'm currently 12) do the dogs reach a point at which they become as useful as they were 1-10? For a while they were pretty great, but even with the 20% damage reduction thingy, decent armor + a shield and aggressively seeking out health orbs, I'm finding that all 3 usually get wiped out long before the 1 minute cooldown is up. I like the idea of disposable summons, but that 60 second cooldown is a long time to wait for dogs that are a little too disposable.

I had the same problem until my Templar had a heal aura + heal skill.  I also have leech rings, but I'm not sure if they work on pets.

Anyway, you can create a exploding dog build where dogs that explode make health orbs.

Originally I'd dismissed Sacrifice since I'd prefer to keep the dogs alive as a distraction, but if they're going to die anyway they might as well be useful in death. I guess a 60 second cooldown isn't bad for 3 heat seeking missiles.

I heard that dogs supposedly get better later on or as long as your gear is top notch as they're incredibly gear related. I don't know how accurate that is, but it's worth a shot

As for haunt - I use that in a single target rotation since it is a dot. Basically, I'd hit Haunt on a mob, spame dire bats, and then sometimes use Poison Dart/Spine Dart to regain mana for more bats. So farming/ae style it sucks (imo) but great for most bosses

I am pretty sure they are gear dependent.  Biggest change for me was getting the Gargantuan (19 level skill).  He seems to attract a lot of attention and thus my green doggies chew more.

Later on you can take a passive that ups dog/gargantuan health by 20% and lets you have an extra dog out. In my experience so far this is pretty much required if you're going to be relying on the dogs - mine were dying like crazy all through early Act 2 until I got the passive.

If you are playing hardcore with a WD please remember to not run a bunch of weak aoe spam shit that clutters the screen and makes it hard for melee to see the enemy ground aoe's that do massive damage. Witch Doctor is by far the least useful class and thankfully the one I've seen die the most often (only 3 deaths but that beats everyone else!). I've yet to feel bad when a WD dies in a game I'm in.

Oh really?  :oh_i_see:

Ya really. They have 3 big ground aoe's that make it hard to see important shit like ice bombs, poison, molton boss pack fire, etc.

Fuck WD's, there is def a smarter way to build them than the common build of big dumb pet, dogs, aerial poison vomit and some big fire shit that clutters the screen (sometimes two big fire shits! fuck you WD!) hasn't seemed to be all that great.

So much hate. I thought WD would be the class you would always want to see join your game. my plan for HC WD is to drop a gigantic acid cloud on the pack that reduces their damage output by 20%, run the haunt that causes enemies to take a crapton of more damage for bosses/elites, and run big bad voodoo, the insane attack speed buff. Are people really running Jar of spiders/frogs as a LMB skill?

I use the queen spider. 

Toss the AOE Snag down on group, toss in a queen spider, then spam two big fire shits through mobs.  Loot.  Repeat.

If I have soul harvest on 5 it melts anything in my path- otherwise it melts almost everything in my path.  My fav. is the fire shits; sometimes I spam them in town!

I tried spiders and toads both as LMB skills and found them wanting. At level 24 the only things that have really seemed good as LMB skills, at least for how I want to play the class, are the blowgun with the triple dart rune, or the thrown fire skull. The others all involve too much randomness or too much waiting around.

Someone needs to learn to play harder.  :why_so_serious:

While they are extremely busy visually, I have come to realize that as long as I'm playing a ranged class, I really like the WD for all its sky vomit/disgusting eels/creepy fucking pets/fire bomb shit. *I* don't want to play one, but it makes it a lot easier for me to brain off -> damage on.  :why_so_serious: I would probably hate them more if I was a melee person playing hardcore for sure, though.

I'm surprised anyone would play them hardcore. They're so squishy.

I don't know, it seems to me to have a lot of ways to stay alive, really:

- Pets to run interference (especially with the 20% less damage taken and 20% more health + extra dog passive, can also rune the dogs to leave health globes behind, absorb damage, or lifelink)
- Attacks from range
- Multiple ways to snare/CC opponents (grabby zombie arms, snare rune on the dart, the hex fetish (who can also be runed to heal))

I can see it feeling squishy if you go for up-close stuff like firebats and toads and such, but I imagine all the classes have builds that are too dangerous for HC.

WD's get 20% passive damage reduction, and then a debuff of 20% from the mob if he's poisoned.  I'm only level 20 something, but if you put a poison attack in your rotation that's some decent damage reduction.

Mob does 1000 damage.  It then hits you for 800, then you get hit for 640 before armor and other mitigation takes place.  Assuming you're dropping locusts and acid clouds etc.

Right now I'm loving Gargantuan, Firebombs and Firebats with some Soul Harvesting and Grasp on the side.

Eventually you can get runes that give you fast mana regen when spirit walked. Spirit walk is basically an escape spell or useful if you want to use soul harvest where you can spirt walk in and harvest and get back out while taking less damage.

After experimenting a bit, I've given up on the demon dogs. Hopefully they'll reduce the cooldown or buff them a bit at some point. It seems like the dogs suffer a bit from a lack of design focus - am I supposed to keep them alive and use them as a distraction? If so, why is there an entire ability designed specifically to blow them up? Are they intended as exploding cannon fodder? Then why does the summon ability have a 60 second cooldown?

The other abilities the WD has are great though - at level 16 I'm finding that Zombie Charger is a bit of a mana hog, but it's great for when I get backed into a corner (or get walled in by those infuriating walling bosses!) and my usual box of tricks - Soul Harvest + Spiders + Grasp + Horrify gets overwhelmed and I need to KILL ALL THE THINGS NOW.

It's looking like Grasp of the Dead is going to have a permanent place on my hotbar, too. Runing it for 80% slow and lobbing spiders at whatever gets caught in it feels almost like cheating.

There are passives and other things that provide a % chance to spawn dogs on their death and mob deaths.

You're supposed to do whichever one of those things you feel like. That's what I'm really getting to like about the rune/passive system.

My pets are pretty kickass, but I've put a lot of resources into making them so - passive to increase pet health/number of dogs, passive to reduce damage done to me/pets, etc. The big zombie is ridiculously resilient, but the dogs are good too even though I'm using the rune to have them take hits for me. It helps if you pick your gear with an eye for stuff with a lot of vitality since that passes through to them. It helps you survive too. I'm really quite tanky at this point.

EDIT: I should note there are a couple elite types that do destroy them pretty well regardless (well not the big zombie) - molten in particular just owns the dogs.

THAT is what I'm doing wrong. I didn't realize that vitality passed through to pets - thanks!

Ditto here.  Just upped my vit by 100 and already seeing the difference!

Ingmar's WD is so fat. SO FAT.

Plague of Toads is awesome.

Hitting a Wall at 45. Can't seem to kill any blue packs or yellow mobs without dying many times first.

I wish I could pick a group to join instead of randomly being tossed in, since the difficulty of the mobs goes way up with more than 1 person. I keep finding 1groups of wizards and WDs instead of 3groups of barbs and monks.

You'd probably have some F13ers to group with if you weren't level one million.

I was too low for where I was trying to be. I got clued in by the equipment dropping, it was too high for me to use. :oh_i_see:

So I went back to the beginning of Act 4 and all is good. It's easy peasy now again.

Does anyone know how pets stats are keyed to gear?  Does our armor help them?  Does vitality?  Where did you get the info?

Loving my WD solo so far. I've hit level 45 and the manaless build is pretty amazing.  But it does seem to be pretty dependent on gear. I usually do a complete overhaul of gear every 10 levels (25/35/45) and I'm starting to feel the pain.  Time to go shopping again.

Manaless build
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#aSYdhT!ZcW!aaaYaZ

This build is really more for AE type packs but I haven't had any issues using darts on the boss for single target stuff. The best part about this build is the crazy ability to continue to kill mobs that aren't even on the screen.  There have been countless pulls where my locust swarm with pestilence will spread in the next room and kill everything there before I even enter.  So I just run in and scoop up the loot.  I love nothing more than seeing 30-40 mobs coming at me. I can kill them as fast as I can a pack of 4 and get way more loot.

The way I play it, let the pets run in and grab initial agro while also gathering them into a group.  I dip in to get max stacks of soul harvest then locust swarm and back out a few steps.  Spam fire bombs (which bounce to 6 targets) until all are dead. Fires that bounce to 6 targets also hit all the non combat pots and stuff around the walls. Which is helpful for getting more gold and not increasing my time hitting them. Also if blues take down your 3 dogs, its always available to kick out 3 more.  If you go through 6 dogs in one fight you're doing it wrong or need more gear. (Solo I use the Templar for an extra meatshield/heal)

Now as much as I love this build, I had someone jump into my game while I was farming a boss in Act 2 for some power leveling and holly crap my pets got face rolled.  This is definitely not a nightmare level multiplayer spec. Unless you're just out leveling the content.

Obviously the gear I'm looking for is high INT/Vitality with what ever other perks you're in to.  I think for a WD the run speed to boots is a must. Vitality didn't seem overly necessary until I got to nightmare mode.  Then a healthy amount of HP became apparent pretty fast. Keeping your weapon up to date (as with all classes) makes a huge difference. Red gems for your weapons are your friend.

I'm trying to avoid going too quickly to cookie-cutter builds, but what I've settled on for Act III so far: explosive toads, acid cloud, humongous zombie, fetish shaman, grasping hands w/the damage buff. Passives the 20%-less damage one and the mana boosting one. I have the templar as companion. Works pretty well--I use the root to stack shit up w/the zombie and templar generally bottling stuff up more at a chokepoint, drop three clouds of acid on a big group which melts them totally, toads do the cleaning up. Fetish shaman will often chicken a purple or yellow mob if I drop it, and I have it with the heal rune so it and the templar help with emergency healing.

I went into Act II with dogs and they just started to suck hard even with some of the abilities that power them up. I did find that my gear was pretty bad at that point so I bought a few things off of AH, but even with that power-up the dogs were still not impressing me that much.

Yeah, I agree and think Weapon DPS>>>> Vit > Int >>>>>> everything else imo for stats

That said, I was running around with 12k+ hit points around level 42-44 or so (think I'm around 20-22k at level 51) and just steamrolled anything in my way. Been using the same build post 40 and even using it in Hell. Unfortunately, in a Vision Quest build (which sadly seems to be what a WD is balanced around) there isn't much room for GoTD, thus making +run speed even more valuable and is a stat I won't go without. I just won't equip any boots without run speed even if it boosts every other stat, since without GoTD I need some movement besides using Spirit Walk.

Anyways, here's my build (http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#ciUdRT!YUX!aaZZaZ) that has worked wonderfully. The only change I'm considering is switching Grusome Feast for Bad Medicine to try to make up for groupmates dying in public games in Hell mode, and on certain bosses I'll switch Hex out and bring in Big Bad Voodoo, though sometimes the +hp from hex over time is better than using BBV for the dps increase and/or the full heal every 2min. It seems like it is more of an AE and group build, but even against bosses, champions, rares, etc in 4player mode I've ended up soloing packs without too much issue (I was having some bad luck in public groups lately with the exception of one monk leaving me to solo these mobs). Also, I may switch for ZomBears to try them out, but I don't like that idea since I don't like only having one type of damage for a slight dps increase of one ability.

General strategy:
-Spirit Walk+Soul Harvest+Hex to open and on cooldown there after. This locks down 1+ mobs as they're now hexed (almost all mobs can be hexed, even some minor boss-types). Every 15seconds you regain 15% mana and a lot of health (depending on how many enemies are left when you refresh SH since it isn't limited to the 5x SH stack cap, but rather how many mobs are in the area when SH is cast it seems). I also use this to kite back and forth through mobs and keep them clustered and centered around a hexed mob or back and forth across bridges. Example: kite a group to the west, then at the 15 second mark, hit my 15s cooldowns and spirit walk through mobs to the east and kite in that direction back and forth as needed in hell. This keeps them in a line instead of a circle making Bats the more viable DPS which are also more mana friendly
-Use Bats when mobs are lined up or clustered enough for bats to hit everything, otherwise Acid Cloud if they're fast movers or spread out a little bit more. Acid Cloud can drain my mana if I hold it down for about 12 seconds (if no health globes drop which refill mana thanks to Grusome Feast) but by the time that happens I have about 1-3seconds left on my cooldowns when I'll regain 15% mana instantly and it gives me a slight break, so at worst I have about 3seconds of downtime with Acid Cloud spam.
-Garg is just there to run interference, though I've noticed Barbs complaining my Garg tank better than they do (granted, my WD tanks better than some barbs since I have more hp than most people I've come across and this transfers to my pet).
-Garg is also great dps vs boss/elites with his enrage. Though if I do switch out for Bad Medicine passive, I'll also switch his rune to Big Stinker


Also - Acid Cloud may be the best Destroyer-Of-Jars-rararararararrr!!! ability I've found on any class with it's 24 yard range and instant cast time.

One thing I have noticed about witch doctor gearing, and I guess to the same extent all other classes, is that the removal of the ability to assign attribute points shifts all the focus of the character buils into the gear.  As a hardcore character if a piece of gear has no vitality it is useless to me (unless the other stats are overwhelmingly terrific).  The result is 99% of all items (including rares and uniques) are total junk, and wading through the other ones is an enourmous chore.

One thing I love about WD- I have yet to see the same build twice.  Ever.

Seriously? Its been the most predictable class BY FAR from my play experience. Every single one takes acid vomit. Every single one takes big idiot pet. Most have dogs. All have a secondary aoe (either fire bombs or the other big fire thingy). All take soul harvest.

That's so much less variety than Wizard, Monk and DH and imo a little less than Barb but that may be biased because I know all the barb abilities.

This is me at the moment:

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#hZYRkT!ZdW!aYbaaZ

I'm not sure I'm sold on the wall of zombies, but I'm giving it a chance (if I'm grouped I swap it out for Big Bad Voodoo), pretty happy with everything else as it currently stands - there's a lot I don't have access to at 35 still.

tl;dr I'm whining about my Witch Doctor.

I am a bit disappoint in my WD. Playing in a group with monks/barbs to tank it is mostly spell spam fun like with all ranged class. But alone or without a good tank things are a bit dicey. I was really hoping for Necro 2.0 but the pets just don't have near the survivability of my old skeletons, that and there are fewer of them. Granted I am in hell now, but my monk tanks like a boss in hell so why not my pets? I am told gear helps, I shall have to try and get some more.

Additionally, the available get out of jail spells just seem inferior to the Wiz/DH/etc versions. Unlike frost nova or stomp holding mobs in place to die, horrify sends them scattering all over the place to come hit you in the back later, and spirit walk is far inferior to smoke screen, given the latters immunity and spamability. Confusion is nice, but on far too long a cool down. I do like hex, and the little fetish is usually rather good about picking a target, but not always, and it sucks when you have a champion whacking on you and he hexes some random critter.

Locust Swarm almost makes up for all that by itself though. I love that spell so much!

Tried Zombie Bears last night, I'm not a fan. The damage is really good, but it's very short range. By the time you get that spell, which will be the end of NM or start of Hell modes, you don't want to be that close to champs/elites or be stationary for too long to use the bears. Additionally, when you cast them, they come out of the ground from behind you which helps to lower their range, and is not helping the situation at all.

Besides awesomeness factor of them being zombie bears (which could only be more awesome if each bear wore a top hat and a tuxedo or a cape), I just don't see what all the raving is about when not grouped with a vortex using tank. When you are grouped with a vortex user, the ability is really nice, as long as the WD has the vitality to stand in with the melee and take some damage (I haven't died yet doing this, even before using bears, but I do have quite a lot of hp and am a shield user).

I should add: I was in act 1 and outside a lot using bears, if indoors in smaller areas they will most likely be superior due to the bears being able to hit more often, when that happens the damage is almost triple of bats but usally only double at the risk of more frequent death.

Isn't soul harvest on the same tree as acid vomit?

Turn elective mode on and you can break out of the category locks.

Pet Testing


Basically:

Vitality has no effect on pet survivavability but stacking resitances and armor does!  so shop for magic rings/ammys of resist all with int or vit whenever you can and your pets will survive a LOT longer.

Physical Resist is such an odd stat, and I'm curious if there's any testing to how it stacks with armor DR in general. WDs and Wizards have a mess of it just by nature of it being tied to Int, and the difference seems really noticeable compared to say, DH's trying to take the same hits.

Does Resist All just resist all elements or also include Physical Resistance?

It includes physical resist.  On a point basis resist all is worth 10x int for damage mitigation purposes.

The more important takeaway IMO is that stacking int helps them live longer (because int raises your resistances), so as long as you err on the side of stuff with lots of int you should be OK.

EDIT: Also I'm just not sure I believe it given my experiences with vit increases.  :headscratch:

Yeah, I feel like when I've gone up in vit I see much more pet survivability. Just seems odd that the other stats should carry over to pets and not vitality.

I suppose there's also not any particular reason to believe that all stats affect all pets in the same way.

Playing solo I sort of defaulted into this mana-less build and haven't tried much else cause its so fun: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#ZaYVUd!ZdV (http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#ZaYVUd!ZdV) I use the templar with healer skills. The dogs are tough and sacrifice would be OP if not for the raise dog timer. So fun to set the snare while wading into masses of mobs to get them bunched on you and snared, soul harvest for humongous int boost and heal any initial damage, back off using spirit walk get out of jail if trapped by the mobs, then darts away to finish - detonate to hurry up in mass mob areas or strategically on bosses - sweet!

So are high damage 2h really the way to go end game? I keep reading its the damage on the weapon that makes your damage crazy. But with how hard stuff is hitting in Hell i'm scared to take my shield off.  Perhaps I need to kite more?

On the bright side I snagged an 844 dps 2h for 20k last night. What a steal.

In the late stages you will probably want a shield yeah.

The weapon damage thing can be a little tricky to find your way around. The best gauge right now is probably just the 'dps' number on your character sheet since that takes into account attack speed rather than just weapon damage and it includes the boosts from all your other gear, etc. If you are just looking at the number on the weapon itself you're not getting the whole picture.

I just find it really, really pleasing to watch the locust swarm cover giant groups of enemies in the later levels.  Wish I'd started fiddling with it sooner, instead of being hung up on extreme kiting.

Inferno Butcher 9 second kill.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzpRAUgyxaU

Official Blizz (Bashiok) forum reaction is classic.  Prepare for QQ from Wizards.
http://www.diablofans.com/blizz-tracker/topic/224787-witch-doctor-inferno-butcher-9-sec-kill/

What the fuck happened there ?

 :ye_gods:

Vision Quest combined with an ability that isn't supposed to be spammable due to the mana cost.

And ridiculous gear.

The build used to cheese bosses is useless outside of cheesing those bosses, meaning no Neph Valor buff since the build (and for some of the fast kills - even the gear) is different than normal farming setups.

Additionally, I'm not so sure Bears isn't supposed to be spammed at all, since WD have to give up A LOT to be able to spam that one ability AND all 3 bears have to hit. Having all 3 bears hit isn't always happening since sometimes you lose 1-2 bears (meaning 33-66% of the potential dps) is just lost to walls and any other geography outside of boss areas. That, and there really isn't much else to spam that costs mana. You have Zombie Charger (Bears), Dire Bats, Acid Cloud, and Spirit Barrage - those are the ONLY options the WD has that aren't damage over time spells with no cooldowns besides primaries (which outside of darts - really suck in inferno mode).


Edit: A Barbarian's response to fast WD butcher kills: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7X5oDsQ5oQ&feature=g-all-u 

 :ye_gods:

Hit Hell tonight - Snake to the Face seems nigh-required for soloing, the stun really helps with the totally crazy elite combos, since they seem to all be stunnable.

According to the tooltips armour reduces all damage, not just on physical. So the interaction will be the same with the other resists as well - physical is merely another type of element which happens to be very common.

I've been using a build like that for days now. It's really easy to get the right gear to do it. Look for +mana regen items.

You'll only want to use zombie bears for specific encounters. Everywhere else you want to use Dire bats. You can spam that infinitely as well, which is 220% weapon damage at a range of 40 yards. That you can cast infinitely if you have +40 mana regen.

So in honor of getting zombie bears... I decided ignore it to stack up a bunch of thorns/life regen and try that passive that gives your pets all your thorns and life regen. To my surprise it is actually working well in Act 2 Hell with about 1000 thorns and 300 life per sec. At least solo. I have a suspicion they will still end up getting wrecked in a 4 player game.

Starting to really feel pigeon holed into a spec in inferno.  Not sure if I'm just undergeared or what.  Most of my spells consist of cc's so i don't get smashed.  Hex (chicken), Horror (fear),  zombie wall, snare.

Not sure if I'm doing something wrong.  I have a 2hander with 941dps.  Three items with IAS but still only 20k damage according to my stat sheet.  I'm assuming I'm just low on INT items and perhaps needing a better weapon. 

I run around shooting poison darts at stuff while kiting because if anything even sneezes on me I seem to take a dirt nap (26k hp). 

For those of you in inferno is this what its supposed to feel like?  I miss my pets. I miss my locust swarm, my fire bombs.  Everything that made me feel like a witch doctor.  I feel like a ranger that rolled the wrong class. 

A thought that has occurred to me is that I'm not realizing the synergies between a spec and gearing exclusively for that spec.

Perhaps I'm just not good at games like these.  First Diablo for me.

I am not to inferno yet so I can't give much specific advice, but 20k dps should be more than enough for Act 1 from what I've read. What are you using for attacks?

I've been using this build (http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#aZPcUW!bXW!aaaaab) in NM and it seems to be working extremely well:

You'll want to stack ASp as much as you can and go for a high dps overlvled 1-hander.  If you can score an offhand poisondart bonus item then kudos.
If you can stack at least 40mana/sec you can also start spamming firebats in chokepoints but it's not necessary.

The routine is GoD and then spam RoT (which stacks up to 5 times) on the pack. Pick off singletons with PD and chokepointed packs with firebats (only if ur good on mana and perhaps get poison resisted mobs).  Get into trouble?  Hit fetish army (draws agg) and ghost out.  Anything in the area will melt.  Kite away if your SW is on cooldown.

Gearwise if you cant find vit gear you can think about getting % or  + life/hit instead.  Then +Int or mana/sec.

If you get bored with the build after a while you can grab the 15sec Gargantuan that woops arse (instead of FA) or work on a firebat build with confusion or zombie walls (which will bunch mobs) instead of PD if you've got the mana.

Obviously this isnt as great of a grp build but if you've got whiny melee mates like Hoax then they'll enjoy you not barfing aoe all over the map.  More supportive version would likely have pot-dropping dogs or BBV instead of FA.  At l8tr lvls I'd definitely consider BBV with slam dance.  Rain Dance if I'm firebatting.   :eat:

I don't see a lot of reason to use anything other than bouncing fire skulls as the left-click through nightmare, honestly. It will get you through a lot faster than splinters, you can switch to splinters for boss fights.

If you get to 2aps with splinters you can get 6 darts in the target in 1sec.  That's 360%dmg/sec + 40% dot over 2secs per dart stackable.  Before calculating PtV.
If you get loose mobs you cant control then yah, maybe skulls is better but for those instances you should have grasp ready to go.  Then RoT away at 5 stacks/sec.  If you've got FA up they'll take care of anything not controlled.  And if you dont have LoS you use bats.

I was a skull-lover (i'm lazy) for a while there but I was finding I wasn't able to clear packs as quick as this build.  Could be wrong though.  A lot of it has to do with boredom with skullz I think.

Yeah, I rocked nightmare like it was nothing but inferno seems like quite a different monster.  I can get through elite packs in act 1.  But the butcher just rocks my world.  I can't seem to do enough damage to him before he enrages even if i stay alive.  Too many defensive moves maybe?  Hate to switch them and lose my stacks of find awesome loot.

It's been said by inferno you shouldn't be gimping yourself with magicfind unless you're on loot runs.

I think he meant Nephalem Valor, which you lose your stacks of if you change your spec out.

You might want to try changing specs until you find one you can beat the Butcher with, then see if you can adapt that for all the other stuff.

That would be huge. They hang in there OK with the life regen passive and int stacked up pretty high but it would really be nice to have their hp pools actually able to go up.

I wonder if the people whining about pet death are using Jungle Fortitude, Bad Medicine (in a poison build), and/or Fierce Loyalty.  Otherwise, dogs are really nothing more than bombs that drop health pots, take initial aggro, and occasionally respawn.  Tweaking it too much would be bad imo.

Yeah, not sure. I'm running this (http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#hZYRkT!Zdg!aYcYbY) right now in Hell (I go back and forth with bouncing skulls and splinters/snake to face), with gear that's OK for the thorns/life thing but could surely be tweaked more, and they're surviving pretty well. With vitality scaling on top of that I am pretty sure they'd hardly ever die, since I'm sitting at 22k hp myself at level 55? Who knows really though.

Thing is, jungle fortitude works for you too, so I have to imagine just about everyone runs it anyway.

This (http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#aSYdTP!ZdW!aYYYYb) is what I've run for a while (lvl 50 now).  I switch out Soul Harvest for boss fights (replace with Spirit Walk) since it's not practical to try and keep with only 1 target.  Zombie dogs rarely live though anything.  One shot by most bosses.  Constantly have to be resummoned.  Garg does OK, but Diablo just waved him aside.

With this build, I have some mana issues and could possibly address them with Soul Harvest or Locust Swarm Runes.  Locus Swarm eats mana bad, but doesn't need to be spammed.  If you do clear fast enough, you will run out of mana a lot.

Is Soul Harvest worth keeping in higher difficulties or will getting that close be too difficult/risky?

It really depends on what else you are running. If you're doing the popular zombie bears thing you have to be pretty close anyway. I definitely have seen Inferno builds on the official forums that include soul harvest.

EDIT: Your mana issues probably have a lot to do with Pierce the Veil. You could help solve it by getting mana regen on your hat/knife/mojo.

After a break (leveling a monk to 60), I went back to my 53 WD. Upgraded her gear, and now am running this spec in Hell:
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#cZdUQP!ZbU!aaZaba (http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#cZdUQP!ZbU!aaZaba)

Once I got used to regenning mana by making sure I had 4 cooldowns, it's a real breeze. Very different from my spec (largely using Gargantuan and toads) in NM - more fun.

Oh on pets, I should add that pickup radius helps rather a lot with keeping them alive - they heal with globes but often its not really safe to run in and grab them, if you have a lot of pickup radius you can snag them from afar and heal your pets safely.

That's the vanilla firebat spam build.  Most powerful Deeps in the class really (before DoT stacks).  I was gonna post it but you beat me to it.  :oh_i_see:
I'd use mana runes for walk and harvest so you're not so reliant on the voodoo.  With voodoo on CD and just SH and SW popped you can spam bosses easy.

Nothing exciting, but this is my Witch Doctor build I'm running in hardcore. Just started Act II Nightmare:

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#aZUdSR!bZc!aaZZaa (http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#aZUdSR!bZc!aaZZaa)

I rune Jinx outside of bosses on Hex.

Very similar to my build as a 30 HC WD. I love my dire bats, though.

I usually go Acid, Locusts, Dire bats, splinters to clean up... loot loot loot.


I also like the one that uses 15% health to get the 1% life regen going. With 4k HP at level 30, it regens faster than you can cast.

I was using acid for a bit, but found that most things died with a buffed (from Siphon) Locust/Pestilence. I loved that spell.

My routine for packs of mobs (and why it got me killed when I got sloppy):

See pack of mobs, run AT pack of mobs, snare them, siphon them, locusts, spirit walk away, drop hex when I dropped out of spirit walk if there was an elite in the pack, clean up with splinters. Worked every time except one!

Siphon seems too risky on HC to me, but if you made it to 44 doing that it can't be as bad as I thought.

Once I got to Inferno Act I, I changed the Dire Bats to Zombie Bears. It's hilarious to roll over elite packs.

I'm stuck at Spider Queen though now. I get her down half way and she kills me. I suppose it's time to buy gear now.

If I get hit by anything I die (kinda like my monk in Act II). Wondering if I can merely add int and forget vit and resists and just kite crap like I've been doing - but my int's not high enough.

You can probably kite stuff, but I don't know if you can kite stuff with zombie bears. The short range on that is pretty risky.

Playing WD, at least at low levels, makes me sad I can't use multiple runes for the same ability. I just want my entire hotbar to be Firebats.

Even dire bats are kinda close.

Maybe I should switch over to some sort of darts thing. I haven't used darts since the beginning of Normal mode when I first got them.

I'm horribly bad about changing specs. I somehow forget I have other skills not on my skill bars.

Darts (usually with splinters, but you need a lot of attack speed to make the animation end faster since it is a little slower than other darts attacks apparently) + grasp + wall is the core of the popular kiting build, I believe. I still love my bouncing skulls too much (and I'm not in Inferno anyway.)

I'm still using darts and have even picked up some %darts gear to supplement.  It's by far my strongest dmg. (btw if you dont have mana problems you can go for 'fetish sycophants' and have free daggerwielders all the time pretty much.)  Then I switched to stun/charm confusion which is pretty much imba.  Although, the 20% dmg. version has me contemplating. I mean, in reality it's better than voodoo even... half the cooldown and effects everything in the radius w/o having to stand around.
Essentially nothing survives --  ghost walk, confuse, pop fetish army (which pulls agg), run out, grasp, then RoT.  Anything left gets darted.   :drill:  This can be done every 45 seconds.

Gearwise I had great luck with an off-hand shield as opposed to mojo.  For some reason with the latter my survivability vs dmg. just isnt seeming worth it, even with a legendary.  It's becoming pretty apparent it's designed for grp play.  Solo... gotta have a shield (with a high % to block) or an asston of vit and regen.  Otherwise waste a passive on vision quest.  This is all assuming you dont kite your way to victory though.   :oh_i_see:

Or don't use pets, they prevent a lot of kiting by clogging things up, especially with the templar healing them. I've moved to using him instead of the enchantress, it seems to work better in Hell.

I wonder if voodoo stacks with paranoia.  Would be good for some kind of close-in manabomb build, perhaps with an aoe bat ability, ghost bomb, or flaming toads.  Must experiment some more.  A shield and ghost walk would be pretty much required though.

something like this maybe:
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#acUjQP!UTW!aYaYba (http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#acUjQP!UTW!aYaYba)

Note: grave injustice has a nice synergy with this build.  May replace VQ with SV if no mana problems.

Vision Quest is amazing (if you can manage cooldowns well).

Here is my current (51) Hardcore build.

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#cPYQTU!UZV!abYbZa (http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#cPYQTU!UZV!abYbZa)

Basically, pets tank and are revived every 60 sec. Once every 120 you get a fetish army and big bad voodoo buff. Spam the shit outta dire bats and watch everything die. Spirit walk as an 'oh shit' button. Spirit vessel as an auto 'oh shit' button.

Have fun, I am.


Just got to hell, guessing I may have to revamp this some...

Level 55 HC WD currently in Act 1.

My build:

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#a.ZUTY!ZgX!a.acYY (http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#a.ZUTY!ZgX!a.acYY)

With a shield and stacking armor/resistances and the regen from blood ritual my pets stay alive very well (except any AoE elite kills them pretty quick, but literally nothing I can do about that).  Also fire dogs and the big stinker aura will proc CC effects from your equipment which is a total godsend.

I'm still experimenting a bit with one of my abilities, I have been trying AoE's, I tried rain of toads and Spirit barrage:phantasm but found that they drained my mana too quickly.  I've been using firebomb-firepit because it has several nice advantages, including the ability to lob over enemies and a dot that can also proc my CC abilities.

I will probably take on the butcher tonight or tommorrow and see if I can make it into act 2.

I leveled my WD up to Hell with a dogs/gargantuan build, ending up with this I think:
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#bZYdiT!Zdg!aZccaZ

Unfortunately even lots of armour and life regen (pets get no benefit from vitality it seems) they simply weren't viable in Hell Act 2 and beyond. Every single champ/elite pack and boss pretty much 1-shotted them, leaving me defenceless and alone!

So I swapped to a Zombie Bears/VQ build:
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#afUdQP!WVU!accZbY

That got me through Hell, just, but it's a risky playstyle and I'd never try it in HC. You have to get in close to regularly heal with Soul Harvest, I hate the delay when casting Zombie Bears and having to keep FOUR skills on cooldown for VQ means I often found myself waiting around for Big Bad Voodoo & Fetish Army to be available before taking out a champ/elite/boss pack.

If I ever get a pile of gold to buy some decent gear I'll go back and play with builds and see if I can find something Inferno-capable that's as much fun as the 1-55 spec was, but until then I think my WD is shelved in favour of more enjoyable Inferno chars.

You aren't running Spirit vessel in HC? I call you fuckin' nuts, it's a get outta jail free card.

Sorry, I was unclear with my wording there - my WD is *not* a HC char!

That Zombie bears build seems like it would be hard to keep em cooled down. I don't even run a primary skill like dart, I run a long cooldown gargantuan in it's place. Then Dire bats all day. So fun.

I would much rather have the survivability passives that operate all the time. (although the reduced cooldown on spirit walk is pretty nice).  To make a pet build work you really need all your passives and then some.

Edit:  Also in my build if I am not literally half to a full screen away from the mobs I running/retreating.  WD are one of the few classes that can escape fast mobs with judicious use of grasping hands.

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#cQkUTP!ZUV!abZaYY (http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#cQkUTP!ZUV!abZaYY)

I have my 20% damage reduction, I have a garg distraction, I have a lag spike get outta jail free card, massive burst, and Dire Bats as fast as I can click.

I know Vision Quest isn't for everybody, but once I tried it I felt so much more powerful. Having all the buffed pets as meat shields works as it's own form of CC, I get that. I will probably work in Grasp as I progress, but boy that will make it a bitch to keep all cooldowns poppin'.


My buddy runs a heavy CC version of poison darts... Hex/Wall/Grasp/Spirit Walk/Something else , and is soloing a 60 HC WD in Act I inferno.

I once took Diamond skin off my lowbie HC guy cause of how well things were going, more DEEPS. I learned that it only takes one lapse/lag/fuck up to ruin your day. I can deal without any of the other passives, and even though I have never used the Spirit vessel life saver it is really nice to have that safety net. Too much time into the character to not run it, IMO. But hey, to each is own. Let's roll out sometime so I can drive you nuts with the sound of Dire bats :)

Keeping the cooldowns managed is really easy I find, but it means that my timing for hitting Big Bad Voodoo and Fetish Army is dictated by my need for mana to continue spamming bearz. Spirit Walk and Soul Harvest have such short cooldowns that they're easy to manage more usefully.

I find myself comparing the WD with my barbarian build which uses the Wrath of the Berserker and Earthquake combo (or "angry father christmas piss" as my friend and I call it) which gets saved up for any pack of mobs that needs a good ol' melting. The barb build is a LOT more fun.

Problem for me is I don't want to have Spirit walk on cooldown. Maybe it's more of a HC concern, but if I need to GTFO, I need to be able to GTFO.

I agree. It's absolutely not a suitable build for HC. It's not suitable for Inferno either without some ridiculous gear.

Which is one of the reasons I'm not playing the WD any more - neither of the two builds I ran were any use past Hell.

By Act2 Inferno you realize you're borked if you dont have movement speed and a heavy dose of Spirit Walk and Vessel... no matter what your build is aside from that.

Has anyone linked these life on hit coefficients (http://blackrabbit2999.blogspot.com/2012/06/diablo-3-witch-doctor-life-leech-per.html) for the Witch Doctor? They're completely arbitrary and counterintuitive and anyone running any life on hit should check them out. The incredible return on Acid Rain (plus Vision Quest) just made the last couple levels of hell trivial for my level 58 WD (sans one Shielding corrupted angel with something like 90% mitigation who almost killed me via enrage timer after we tanked each other for 10 minutes). Zombie Bears has okay life returns and is better damage especially on single targets; I actually switched to it mid-fight on Diablo and then switched back for the better survivability of Acid Rain for the last phase. That's with only 321 life on hit. I'd be very surprised if the build doesn't work through at least act 1 inferno.

Now to farm Iskatu another 80 times or so so I can buy some decent gear and try it.

Similarly freeze on hit and similar abilities have very unpredictable actual rates of firing. They go off like *crazy* from the poison aura on the gargantuan and the burning aura on dogs, at least compared to regular attacks. I've been meaning to buy a suit with  a crapload of freeze on hit and see what happens with them.

I made a thread for Legendary/Set items because I have a shitload of money. I want to outfit my witch doctor. Someone post what I should buy there.

Did you end up selling that item on GAH?

Yes.

Fun.

I flipped a few legendaries yesterday by putting some bids in on the AH right when the Server Maintenance message started counting down from 15 mins.

Almost got my WD to 60.  Goal is to try out a pet build and see what happens- gonna focus heavily on Vit/Thorn gear.

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Cheddar-1540/hero/1718611

Anyone else try one out yet?

This is me: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Ray-1555/hero/784356 Your basic Pets + No mana pierce build. (Ignore fetish army, I generally use Manitou)

Pets are totally viable now. Honestly I would skip the thorns items as I just can't see 3-5k on hit being significant when my garg hits for like 40k and I hit for like 50k. Also I believe the way the calculations work res/armor is more valuable for your pets than vit, in general. However I may be mistaken.

Finished Inferno Act 1 on the WD last night and actually had fun. My pets are fine, rares were raining from the sky, I got lots of 61-62 drops and a few 63s, life is good in Inferno now.

My theory is, since there is a "damage" cap on hits, I am better taking as MUCH vit as possible along with thorns (theory, would love to find this false and trade off for another ability).  The fetish one is also purely rad.  I tried out change it up for the skill that summons them, but have found 2-4 constant fetishes way better then the temporary mass a 2 minute summon has.

In nightmare, at least, I have pretty much dominated.  Of course this will change somewhat in Inferno.

Downside is I am a squishy mess in certain AOE scenerios- though I do have the 3 second "oh shit" button on 15 second cooldown that helps me to run off.

Actually, FWIW the new pets damage resistance shield thing is a bit buggy. While my dogs should be able to withstand 11.56 hits minimum before death, things like Belial's fist smash and the charging bull things from act one can kill them in 1-2 hits. So I guess YMMV? Do what works.

I can only speak for end nightmare at the moment- but my pets are pretty much wrecking havok with mid 50 gear.  I am probably going to bum rush to Inferno tomorrow as I am now 59 and have some gear sitting in the docking bay.

I'm not seeing that happen with the charging bull guys, hmm.

The changes finally got me through Inferno Ghom with my piddly 32k health/37k dps; now I'm stuck on Rakanoth in act IV.  The initial wave of pets and the resummons all die at about 10% of his health left, and then he squashes me.

How is your resist/Armor?  Does anyone know if life on hit impacts pets?

Armor 3184 (51.49%), resists are between 528-643.  Character profile doesn't seem to give out resist percentages, and I can't look them up in-game right now.

Almost 50k life, 7k thorn, 11kish DPS now and gonna see how things roll.  Hit 60  while gathering whimseyville items, gonna finish getting to inferno tomorrow and go from there.

Going to be interesting.

Theory fail.  My pets were nice and tough- but took forever to kill.

So swapped to a ton of int/vit and will slowly integrate some resistance gear as I go along.  I am now face melting Inferno Act I.

Wee bit squishy on AOE bosses but this will change as I get some resist.

Soloed Inferno Diablo finally. I tried different specs, which had seemed to work fine through Inferno, but Diablo kept one shotting me, and I wasn't quick enough to keep out of her way. 

I even decided to try public games - boy was that a mistake, those are filled with people who don't belong in Inferno at all, apparently. 3 games I tried and went back to solo.

So I switched out my gear to gear with int/vit/life regen/thorns, and specced for thorns (many pets and that skill that gives pets my thorns and regen bonuses) and BOOM easy peasy dead Diablo.

Now I'm trying MP 1 on the WD - seems easy with this spec, except when I'm too slow to jump out of the way of something pounding me.

I'm working towards beating Inferno Diablo on my WD as well.  I'm currently on Act 3 with mine.  I've been using a Firebats based build, which deals absurd damage but I am a bit squishy sometimes.  Maybe I'll try out a pet build.

The life regen part was the part that was useful, not thorns, most likely. I run that same spec and I haven't been able to get thorns to a point where it's very relevant at the end of Inferno.

Maybe.  Here's my WD:
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Xanthippe-1829/hero/3777709

thorns: 8367 damage per hit
life regen: 1071 life per second

spammed haunt for life and darts for mana

I didn't hit Diablo all that much but my pets were on her the whole time.

I did it using bouncing skulls, plus grasping hands (extra damage) and zombie wall (extra crawling zombies) for damage over time. Zero mana build basically. The life regen going to the pets is really good now with the damage reduction thing they have.

That sounds like an interesting spec. Do you have a link to it?

Did they take out the enormous wall of NO between Act 1 and 2 of Inferno? I haven't played in soooo long.

That has been gone for a long time, and difficulty in inferno is more of a self serve sort of thing now using the monster power system. If you just want to see the content you do inferno with no monster power, if you want to stab yourself in the dick repeatedly while licking battery acid and electrifying your titties, then you choose MP10 Inferno.

Monster Power 1 is still pretty easy but it regulates loot much better, it makes sure you are getting ilevel 60 or higher most of the time i think or something like that. The varying levels of monster power also come with exp bonuses, magic and gold find bonuses as well as increasing or decreasing the monster difficulty.

I play monster power 2 while leveling up, it increases the challenge of leveling nicely.

Thanks for the info. I lost interest about the time I was trying Act 2 on my Barbie. Now I may have to jump back into it and finish out the inferno on her and my DH.

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Thorgrim-1313/hero/589774

I backed off on the thorns some when I realized it wasn't helping that much but I've still got 4700 or so, life regen is like 1100ish. I've got acid cloud there but I don't spam it, and I forgot I had changed grasp of the dead to the corpse rain thing. The dogs and zombies are on their damage over time auras as well, the basic idea is I could just pile everything onto Diablo and he'd take lots of damage over time from the wall/grasp/acid cloud/pet auras while I run around dodging his bullshit. The bouncing skulls are more for dealing with everything on the way to him, I don't really spend a lot of time left clicking in that fight outside of the shadow clone guy.

EDIT: I was actually using slow burn with acid cloud when I did Diablo, not corpse bomb.

I've been levelling on MP10 and I find it much, much more enjoyable.

Is that wrong ?  The whole thing's still easy as fuck, so I'm a little confused here.

The only heads up I think you need is to be prepared for inflation. 1 to 10 million gold should get you just good enough gear to farm monster power 2 maybe 3. However there is a weird tipping point where other than an occasionally good deal most serious upgrades to get into the mp5 + are in the hundreds of millions of gold per piece sort of deal.  However in the last couple of days I have been lucky enough to loot some stuff that sold for 600 million gold. So its not hopeless. Also public games are where its at. Do not solo farm, its a complete waste of time. Public games get very nice bonuses to exp and magic and gold find, this stacks with the stacking boss kill buff that also grants exp, magic and gold find bonuses.

That's not wrong. At least you have the option to make it as enjoyable as possible, instead of the way it used to be.

Well shit - since I haven't played in what, almost a year? I doubt my gear is even close to working on either of my 60s.

I'm in the same boat, but honestly it is easier to get some gold when you first get back in game by running Act 3, Act 4, or Vault of the Arcane on MP0. My WD was stripped down basically, I spent about 100k on minor upgrades and ran mp0 Acts 1-3 without issue and almost all of Act 4. All of Act 2 and Act 3 solo gained a couple 100k just vendoring anything which sold for over 2k gold and salvaging everything under 2k gold for crafting mats. While it's not much, it is enough to get a few pieces of upgrades and I probably would have been better off just public grouping for more coin and better loot.

So don't worry too much

Last look, I had decent gear for back then and I have about 400k in gold. I might start screwing around once a week on this. Thanks for the advice.

Build link?

Um, if you're interested in my shitty levelling, sure.

http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Ironwood-2511/hero/6085426 (http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Ironwood-2511/hero/6085426)

 :why_so_serious:

There is an awful lot of gear at 60 that a returning 60 from a year ago would find to be far better than what they had, and cheap. I think I spent less than 200k on much better gear to get through inferno (until I changed my spec for Diablo and bought different gear). I started with 1.5mil gold and ended with 27mil after a couple of weeks, in which I got my 58 wiz to 60, leveled my 19 barbarian to 60, and took my 60 WD to paragon 3 or 4 to inferno Diablo.

Most of the gold was made flipping leveling items that I bought for a song for my characters to level with. An awful lot of people toss stuff up on the AH without a buyout, and an awful lot of people will pay hundreds of thousands or a million or two for something with a buyout, that cost 5k or 10k. This is not Paelos level auction housing, but just regular items/stuff.

Most of my flipping started in that range. Here's a good flipping tactic for making hundreds of thousands off basically a minimal outlay.

There are bots or idiots that post things on the AH for vendor value. I like to sort by time, find those things with any decent sets of stats on them, and buy them up en masse. The reason being, there's no downside. If it doesn't sell or it sucks, you vendor it for a 100% return on your money. If it's worth anything, I usually found a comparable item, posted that flipped item for 50% of listed value so it would sell almost immediately, and then repeated. It was about the volume play.

The reason people stop doing that is because you're making 1-2M a day doing that. At a stage when you're moving 150M in gold flipped for 500M, it's not worth doing anymore. However, it can build your gold supply up so you can move to the next mid-tier play, which is usually jewelry trading.

Heh.  Zombie Bears.

Finally got a Mask of Jeram, a Grin Reaper, and a Quetzocotl (or however it's spelled). Haven't used the last one yet, but I'm wearing the Mask of Jeram, using the cube power for Grin Reaper, and got one of those rings that changes immunities every few seconds. Switched from Zuni's set to Helltooth, changed up my build to a pet heavy build, and WHAM - now I can solo  Grift 36 (was maxed at Grift 26 with Zuni build).

Maybe I can grift higher if I'm careful and/or tweak my build.

Wow. Synergy is right. What a blast.

I also have the other two sets but haven't tried them yet. My weapon is the Rhen-something, with an ancient mojo.

The Helltooth build with Grin reaper, jeram's bracers and the weapon that gives your acid cloud the lob whatever rune is a nice combo.  Also, focus and restraint are big time.

The Helltooth/zombie bear WD is insanely good.

That being said, Xanthippe, you will want to switch your weapon to a Skrimshaw and then ideally an good Thing of the Deep or Henri's for your mojo.

I have solo'd a 54 and I think I could push a 55/56 with the right layout. I feel like t10 is a good level for casual farming now.  I'm just trying to upgrade my focus/restraint and once I do that I think I can start looking at GRIFT 60's

You can see my build here: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/stinkfist-1403/hero/65273089

*Note, Skrimshaw is easy to get. Just craft a yellow spear (sovereign disemboweler) and then upgrade in the cube and you will have a 50/50 chance at a Skrimshaw.  

Oh, that is awesome, thank you.

Nice build/gear - that is helpful. Nice kitten!

This is what I have as of right now.  http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Xanthippe-1829/hero/66734974 (http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Xanthippe-1829/hero/66734974)

Once you get the gear for a build (or, even now), remember to visit the Mystic and re-roll the useless abilities of each piece of armor to get better abilities.  If you hover the mouse over each of his pieces, you'll notice that Stewie's re-rolled each of his armor pieces to either be better (increased vitality) or have a useful ability (crit chance / crit damage instead of "chance to deal 14% area damage on hit").

Oh, good idea, I forget to do that sometimes.

So I miss having +1 Death Breaths from the Sage's set, so I looked on Curse and found this. It's hilarious for bounty running. So fast with the angry chicken!

http://www.diablofans.com/builds/58546-deaths-breath-farming-with-manajumas-helltooth-and