The Unformed Realms Beyond - A Witch Doctor Thread

[Injera]

Any advice on Rakanoth/Hell difficulty ?

This guy is pretty anoying due to his undodgeable teleport attack. I have over 20k life, yet sometimes I am being one-shotted with full health at some point during the fight. I already dropped the zombie bears for splinters/haunt which would actually work ok, if not for said teleport attack.

What's funny is I actually really struggled on this, and then found a solution, but I forgot what it was I actually did. I ended up just eating the charges, though.

[Injera]

Also, sounds like our pets might get some love, including vit scaling:

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).

[Tredje]

Any advice on Rakanoth/Hell difficulty ?

Easiest way to beat him is to have a Barbarian or a Monk join your party.

If you prefer to solo him I think the most efficient strategy is to go all out dps with Zombie Bears and pray he doesn't teleport onto you before you can kill him.

[Tredje]

Also, sounds like our pets might get some love, including vit scaling:

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).

I've been waiting for Blizzard to make a statement about Witch Doctors in Inferno. At the moment I've placed my WD in temporary retirement while waiting for changes to be made to our skillset. It's simply too boring to spam Splinters while edging your way across the map to make sure you aggro the least number of enemies while spamming every form of CC to keep them away from you. If I wanted that kind of gameplay I would have played a DH.

While I appreciate the fact that Pets will get increased health, I'm uncertain if it will have an impact on Act3/Act4 Inferno. Remember that the monsters do approximately 50k-100k damage per hit. If a Zombie Dog or Gargantuan is going to be able to withstand that kind of punishment, they will need a lot of health, which would make them impervious to damage in the earlier Acts. I think the issue of Pets' survivability is linked with spikiness of damage in later acts of Inferno, and that a working solution will be more complex than simply buffing their health. (For instance: What Act do you balance them for? If you balance them for Act3, they will get butchered in Act 4. If you balance them for Act4, they will cruise through Act 3.)

[Gustaran]

Easiest way to beat him is to have a Barbarian or a Monk join your party.

If you prefer to solo him I think the most efficient strategy is to go all out dps with Zombie Bears and pray he doesn't teleport onto you before you can kill him.

I managed to to kill him around try 20, but it was pretty much luck, he teleported three times and dropped me to 10% health but I survived. I checked youtube because I thought he would be absolutely impossible on inferno and the only way to beat him there seems rather cheesy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-o0QIq-24Ko

[Gustaran]

I've been waiting for Blizzard to make a statement about Witch Doctors in Inferno. At the moment I've placed my WD in temporary retirement while waiting for changes to be made to our skillset. It's simply too boring to spam Splinters while edging your way across the map to make sure you aggro the least number of enemies while spamming every form of CC to keep them away from you. If I wanted that kind of gameplay I would have played a DH.

At the end of the guide I posted some people have reported success with a VQ build centered around Firebats (dropping the Zombie Bears).
I don't know how well it works since I am still in Act 1 Inferno where Bears are sufficient, but it might be worth giving it a shot:

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wi...UXV!aabaZb

This has been far far more effective. I hardly ever hit enrage with elite groups, I have far less "natural enemies" than I did with my darts spec. I can handle far more than I could with my darts build, but that's me.

Contrary to what people say about VQ builds having four throwaway skills, I completely disagree. All four of the skills I keep on CD to make VQ work, are all useful skills, every single one. The 3 and 4 slots provide ridonculous sustained damage for 20 seconds which can pretty much wipe out ANY white mob grouping of ANY size, or put serious hurt on elite groups. The right mouse button skill is self explanatory, and always always out. The 1 key is somewhat throwaway, but is kept and rotated with Spirit Walk on the 2 key in cases where I must deal with both 2 or more of the following: Vortex, TP, creatures that charge like oppressors or corrupted angels, phase beasts. Long as I have kiting room and manage your spacing, I can handle any combination of those three, or all three combined, with my VQ build, but have no chance with darts. Perhaps it comes down to my playstyle, but my effectiveness skyrocketed in inferno once I went to my VQ direbats build with a 2hander and keeping my attacks per second at 2.0+ (which I just stumbled upon because I was following a guide to keep my attacks per second at 2.0+ for darts builds, which was my original intent with the reconfiguration to 2hander). I died far less, and I could handle ever elite mob group that wasn't honestly just a plain broken mob to begin with (a fast creature with fast attribute that either TPs vortexs or mortars, soul lasher elite group of any kind, and invulnerable minion types).

I do go to a darts build for most bosses, except for certain ones of course, but I've with my particular VQ build I've been able to handle every single elite group I've come across except most invulnerable minion types, and soul lasher elites. For some types I need to split them apart to make it easier, such as groups with TP and Vortex, or Phase Beast or Corrupted Angel/Corruptor elites, but those are super easy to do so since the abilities which make them dangerous also make them get separated from their buddies. Personally, I find that splinters builds are too limited in that you are relegated to stutter stepping and requiring huge amounts of coordination against mobs such with abilities like Mortars. All the more power to people who have the hand-eye coordination and skills to pull that off successfully, but I must say that my VQ build has been far more powerful for me than my needle build ever was outside of pure boss fights.

I have been following your inferno guide since I hit inferno act 2 and started having trouble. Overall I feel like you've been really helpful along the way. But I disagree that needles is the easiest way to go through inferno honestly. I have played both, and have had really good gear sets for both types (awesome 1h/mojo for darts, kickass 2h for VQ bats with high haste), and in my opinion bats just destroys darts for dungeon crawling. Doesn't even come close...at all. I applaud you for having gone through the content the way you have; just seems torture to me after having experienced both at the high end.

[Injera]

I've been waiting for Blizzard to make a statement about Witch Doctors in Inferno. At the moment I've placed my WD in temporary retirement while waiting for changes to be made to our skillset. It's simply too boring to spam Splinters while edging your way across the map to make sure you aggro the least number of enemies while spamming every form of CC to keep them away from you. If I wanted that kind of gameplay I would have played a DH.

Yeah, this is sort of where I'm at having struggled through most of Act 2 now. It seems that WD's "fun" abilities are pets, cc, and some oddball dps abilities that just aren't viable in Inferno A2+. You can't get in range of enemies because if they have vortex/teleport/jalier your only escape is Spirit Walk, and their cd is less than your's, so you'll die. You end up with two options- keep them at the edge and dart them, or say, "screw it" and just try to burn them with 6 seconds of bears thanks to Jaunt/Spirit Vessel. Or try a bats hybrid.

Fundamentally, though, there's not really gear around to make those fun abilities viable. Barbarians and Monks also struggle, but they can at least look forward to a point where they will out gear it, thanks to their incredible scaling with defensive stats, whereas there's not really that point there for WD's. Imagine a boot, stutter-stepping away from a demon- forever.

So yeah, I think my WD is retired, except to do runs to support my other characters.

[Tredje]

Thanks Gustaran for linking to that post. Dire Bats was my go-to skill all the way while levelling up (outperforming everything else by a large margin), but post Act 1 Inferno I switched to Poison Darts since I was doing so much kiting. Perhaps I shouldn't have forgotten my old friend so quickly. I'll give the Dire Bats build you posted a go in Act 3 and see if I have any luck with it. It'll give me a chance to use the 1150 dps 2-hander I found a couple of days ago.

[Sirian]

It's simply too boring to spam Splinters while edging your way across the map to make sure you aggro the least number of enemies while spamming every form of CC to keep them away from you. If I wanted that kind of gameplay I would have played a DH.

Inferno reduces the game down to "avoid getting hit by anything at all available costs"? Sounds even more tedious than my Ember run in D2, which was only worth engaging as a "can I do it" challenge in Hardcore. This isn't as well designed, in terms of a "can I do it" challenge: it's just a painful-sounding grind.

I don't want that kind of gameplay even from a DH. I would have more fun per hour running more toons through Skyrim, Mount and Blade, or even World of Warcraft.

The AH is the better answer to overcoming gaps in your gear for Hell Difficulty due to intentionally bad drop rates (as compared to farming, because of said drop rates), but the AH is overtuned for using Hell difficulty as an end game mode. So it would take a lot of discipline to use the AH "only a little bit", so you don't end up overgeared for Hell.


We still don't get to skip Normal difficulty on new toons, so if one's answer to the late game mess is to avoid it by rolling lots of new toons, there is a ton of unavoidable tedium down that path, as well.


I'm not impressed.

I don't regret buying this game, but I do regret getting my hopes up for it. The potential for replay seems even worse than I imagined it could be. I don't see myself using this game for anything other than casual group play with friends and family on an intermittent basis.

To anybody I lured in to buying this thing based on my favorable first impression: I'm sorry.


- Sirian

[KingOfPain]

To anybody I lured in to buying this thing based on my favorable first impression: I'm sorry

Hehe, I was pushing this game to everyone I know, before I got to hell. Now I keep quiet. There might still be hope since the devs acknowledge "it doesn't feel right" and consider it a "major" priority.

Me think they had a cute idea that was worth exploring, and got carried away, maybe under the pressure making it very "challenging" to market the new inferno mode. Basically, they just turned the table around and let monsters play like us and limit the players skills and abilities.