Oooga Booga (Witch Doctor Thread)

[Ingmar]

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.

[Maledict]

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.

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.

[Nija]

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.

[Ingmar]

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.

[Raknor]

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.

[Ingmar]

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?

[Ghambit]

I've been using this build 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.  

[Ingmar]

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.

[Ghambit]

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.

[Raknor]

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.

[Ghambit]

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

[Ingmar]

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.

[Ragnoros]

I think you'd have less hating on the WD, in general, if our zombie dogs and gargantuan didn't require fairly specific and fairly rigid gearing requirements to be viable.

Lylirra
While the intent is for witch doctors to re-summon Zombie Dogs and Gargantuan fairly often, we agree that pets aren't living long enough in higher difficulty levels. Of course, the harder difficulties are supposed to be more challenging, but we don't think it's fun gameplay to cast Zombie Dogs, watch them die almost instantly, wait for the cooldown to reset, re-cast Zombie Dogs, watch them die almost instantly...etc. And this is happening even when players are wearing pretty reasonable gear.

We're looking into ways to improve witch doctor pet survivability at later levels, but we don't have any clear plans to share just yet. One thing we're considering, though, is having pets scale with your Vitality (which they currently do not do).

[Ingmar]

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.

[Ghambit]

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.

[Ingmar]

Yeah, not sure. I'm running this 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.

[Rasix]

This 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?

[Ingmar]

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.

[Xanthippe]

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

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.

[Ingmar]

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.

[Ghambit]

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

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.

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. 
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.

[Brogarn]

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

I rune Jinx outside of bosses on Hex.

[Slayerik]

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.

[Brogarn]

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!

[Ingmar]

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.

[Xanthippe]

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.

[Ingmar]

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.

[ezrast]

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.

[Xanthippe]

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.

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.

[Ingmar]

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.)

[Ghambit]

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.     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.   

[Ingmar]

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.

[Ghambit]

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

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

[Slayerik]

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

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...

[amiable]

Level 55 HC WD currently in Act 1.

My build:

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.