DiabloFans

Hey guys, I'm looking for basic WD stats per level, including the current base stats, since a lot of stuff's changed since the last time someone's posted this sort of information.

I'm really curious to know what the WD's mana pool would be at lvl 60, to gauge how much spam I can do without running into mana problems.

Also, health per level would be another really useful stat to know, since at the moment, when I hear something like healing for 4000 life, I don't know if endgame, that's 1/5th of my life, or even as small as 1/10th of my life.

Thanks!

I wasn't so lucky, but grats to the winners!

I've been waiting for this game since it was announced - what's a couple more months? >_>

While that cricket analogy is true in real life, let me expand on it a little.

That cricket player's skills are all related to cricket, just like maybe my pet-based Witch Doctor isn't any good at fighting without pets. If you ask the cricket player to suddenly go play pro basketball, he probably isn't going to be very good at it, just like how my Witch Doctor shouldn't be very good at being pet-less.

This is why most RPGs are more rigid in terms of re-speccing - they understand that it's not necessarily fun to have no respecs at all, but they also understand that part of the appeal of the RPG is that the character you create is the way they are because of the choices they made. Just like in real-life, a cricket player can't make the switch to basketball at the drop of a hat, so too should your RPG character be defined by the choices you make. In life, no one can be good at everything - if you put more training time into cricket, that's less time you have to train your basketball skills.

Fortunately, as Bashiok said, this is a videogame not real-life, and we can get to lvl 60 and then be good at whatever we want WHENEVER we want.

I do agree with what he says to a large extent - in the end, difficulty of respeccing is largely for the benefit of 'street cred', as he put it.

Quote from Molster

Guys ill post in here once keys are sent, will that work? =)

I'm anxious!

Odds are extremely unlikely that I'll get one, but....one can hope! T___T

Quote from Molster

wow.. thats... I have nothing good to say about that.

I understand the reason, I honestly do.. but I dont like it on the web calculator =(

I think it's pretty terribad either way :S.

There's nothing wrong with the rune system or anything like that - it's just the GAH interface!

I mean, it's sooo arbitrary - why is Firebats secondary, but not Zombie Charger, for example?

It just feels so WRONG not being able to see all your skills at a glance :S. Think of one of Blizzard's design goals with D3 - they didn't want the player to have the leave the game to figure out stuff (the Horadric Cube in D2 would be almost-impossible to use to its full extent without the collective knowledge of the internet), and now they don't let you see all your skills in a single shot.

There's definitely a benefit to being able to appraise all your skill options in one go. I'm really worried that while it may help newbies in the short-term, the interface will hurt them in the long run because they'll get the idea into their heads that certain skills MUST go in certain slots and it'll take a while to break that mentality.

Quote from Slayerviper

You changed the font to red and capitalized it...

He edited it.

The original post was exactly as I quoted it.

I swear, at the time of my post, I saw 4000+ mana per target on Soul Harvest - that's why I posted what I did.

I DID read your posts - since you knew what was going on and that I didn't, you should know that I was reading them under misinformation. I did spend a lot of time on the skill calc with this new patch - as soon as the updated version went live. I was just still under the impression that mana costs scaled hard and high.

In my mind, the current skill calc reflected the base mana costs of spells, not their costs later in the game. Of course, I realise now that's not correct, but you can see why it would take me a couple explanations to understand the exact nature of the changes. It wasn't until I went did a little more research and realised that your mana pool increases not by the thousands anymore, but by the dozens, that I understood what you meant. With only 'WD mana has received a tuning pass' to go by, I assumed that the costs of spells were tweaked, but that the way the system worked (scaling mana pool and spell costs) remained intact.

Try and find me front-page news on ANY D3 fansite which specifies this change to the way WD mana works.

I see now I am mistaken.

It's clear that my posts show frustration at what I perceived to be ignorance on your part, but come on - 'turdball'? Telling me to 'gtfo' of the forums? Just read your posts again - do you honestly think that's called for? Why can't you guys just try to just INFORM like I did and stick with that, without the hateful language and the image macros?

Quote from GladHeHasBeta

Quote from ClassicWafflez

Quote from z00tGRUNT

I'm gonna repeat myself in this thread because I gotta try to raise awareness so I don't have to keep facepalming when I read a really really painful misconception:

Remember that early in the game, on Normal, your mana pool is small (your mana costs are also low), so it LOOKS like your mana regenerates very quickly. Crude example: 100 mana, regenerating at 10 mana per second. As you progress through the game, your mana pool will incrase greatly in size, and so will the cost of your spells, but the rate at which your mana regenerates will STAY THE SAME. As a result, it will go from looking like a fast-recharging resource to a really frickin slow one.

PLEASE do what you can to let other WDs know this when they post their builds, because it makes my head hurt to look at some of these builds. Jay Wilson said that they purposely did mana this way so that new players won't have to worry so much about resource management with the WD so early in the game.

Other classes have it easy - their resource costs can stay the same all game. The mana costs of the WD's spells increase dramatically over time. That's why one of Soul Siphon's runes returns about 4000 mana per enemy affected. You really think it'd return 20000+ mana if all your spells costed as much as the build calc says? Endgame, Plague of Toads (without the Toad Affinity rune) is probably going to cost a few HUNDRED mana and you WILL feel that +30% cost from Pierce the Veil.

Zomg. You're very mistaken.

After Patch 13. WD spells no longer scale with level. You're preaching to the choir.

The only thing that increases with level is your base mana.

maybe you should....

this^

its VERY VERY painful for me and wafflez to post builds after so many hours of research and have people post 5 paragraphs of nonesense about shit they know absolutely NOTHING about. like he said, ONLY mana scales with level not mana costs, plague of toads cost 21 mana at lvl 1 and lvl 13 and will continue to cost 21 until 60. look at the skill calc, those are all skills at 60 and its 21. and with the 30% increase from pierce of the veil itll be 27. like i said.

i'd say without a doubt im the lead in most knowledgeable about the WD and all of his skills and how to build him in the most ways with wafflez a close second. theres a guy named madvking and hes the most knowleagable on the barbarian and i havent spent enough time in the other 3 to know whos the main researcher on those but ya man other people may not know wtf they are talking about but we sure as hell do. no worries man. *and now you know*

Info you should know - http://us.battle.net...#bhdWRj!!bZccaZ - all the mana return skills return very LITTLE mana. 10 mana, 24 mana 4 mana 2 mana ect.

Like I said - then why does the Swallow Your Soul rune for Soul Harvest return over FOUR THOUSAND mana per enemy affected?

The mana costs HAVE to scale, otherwise why on earth would ANYONE take passives like Spiritual Attunement or Vision Quest? You'd have to work VERY HARD to run out of mana even without those passives.

I'm sorry, but there's just NO WAY that Blizzard would design the WD like that. The reason why Mana is the way it is is to give WD's two options:

1) Pace yourself and have mana for the whole fight.
2) Blow it all at once for tons of damage if you need to, but leave yourself more exposed because you have no mana.

Blizzard isn't going to let all your stuff STAY really cheap while giving you even MORE base mana in your globe.

I should also mention items that affect your base Mana Regen - the game will have those, too. Do you honestly expect your mana costs to stay so paltry even at level 60?

If you'd like, we could bookmark this for future reference when the game comes out, because I'd love to be wrong - I'd love to just take Pierce the Veil on every build and spam spells all day without worrying about running out of mana - but I don't think that's going to be the case.

This build isn't bad, but I'd consider getting rid of Sacrifice. I know it's a really awesome spell, but if it's a full Summoner build that you want (and you seem to be very keen on that, since you're going all-out with those fetishes), then the damage isn't QUITE that important. You have good single-target damage with your darts and fire-and-forget aoe with your locusts.

Besides, what do you do when Zombie Dogs comes off cooldown, you sacrifice them, then your dogs somehow die before the cooldown's back up? I personally think that Sacrifice makes more sense in a build that's not QUITE as pet-reliant, so you can use your dogs as explosives more liberally. I could be mistaken in this matter, though.

That said, I do think you should find room for one panic button. Just because you have dogs and a gargantuan doesn't mean that enemy monsters are never going to attack you until all your pets are dead. You will need some form of escape - Horrify or Spirit Walk, imo.

I'm gonna repeat myself in this thread because I gotta try to raise awareness so I don't have to keep facepalming when I read a really really painful misconception:

Remember that early in the game, on Normal, your mana pool is small (your mana costs are also low), so it LOOKS like your mana regenerates very quickly. Crude example: 100 mana, regenerating at 10 mana per second. As you progress through the game, your mana pool will incrase greatly in size, and so will the cost of your spells, but the rate at which your mana regenerates will STAY THE SAME. As a result, it will go from looking like a fast-recharging resource to a really frickin slow one.

PLEASE do what you can to let other WDs know this when they post their builds, because it makes my head hurt to look at some of these builds. Jay Wilson said that they purposely did mana this way so that new players won't have to worry so much about resource management with the WD so early in the game.

Other classes have it easy - their resource costs can stay the same all game. The mana costs of the WD's spells increase dramatically over time. That's why one of Soul Siphon's runes returns about 4000 mana per enemy affected. You really think it'd return 20000+ mana if all your spells costed as much as the build calc says? Endgame, Plague of Toads (without the Toad Affinity rune) is probably going to cost a few HUNDRED mana and you WILL feel that +30% cost from Pierce the Veil.

I hate to say this, but I'm a VERY strong proponent of WD builds needing at LEAST one panic button, even with pets. TWO panic buttons at least, if you're playing a petless Witch Doctor.

I think that too many players are a little too optimistic. They have this preconception that just because they have dogs, they're gonna be k. This'll be fine for Normal, but if you're looking at an endgame build here, I guarantee you will need Horrify and/or Spirit Walk.

You're also being very optimistic thinking that you're not going to run into mana problems just because you have Swallow Your Soul for Soul Harvest and Devouring Swarm for Locust Swarm. The former is on a cooldown and requires you to put yourself in danger to use it (something which won't always be a good idea), and the latter doesn't refund the full cost (it's a nice supplement for the right build, but not in this one, I feel).

Your whole build is based around the spamming of your spells and with that +30% mana cost from Pierce the Veil, you are going to be running out of mana SO FAST.

My advice is to swap out Fetish Sycophants with something else - there's no real synergy with your build. I'd grab Spiritual Attunement to at least PARTIALLY offset your mana costs. Remember that early in the game, on Normal, your mana pool is small (your mana costs are also low), so it LOOKS like your mana regenerates very quickly. As you progress through the game, your mana pool will increase greatly in size, and so will the cost of your spells, but the rate at which your mana regenerates will STAY THE SAME. As a result, it will go from looking like a fast-recharging resource to a really frickin slow one.

I'd also ditch Firebomb for Spirit Walk. You have to stand still to cast Firebomb, even if its for a moment, and you may as well use that time to cast Rain of Toads, or more Locusts.

When talking about Hardcore, at least one Blizzard guy said that players THINK that they can build Glass Cannon: "I don't need to build defence if I get more damage, because monsters won't get close enough to hurt me." I think it was Jay Wilson himself who said that, and he said that those gamers are flat-out wrong. You are going to NEED survivability on harder difficulty levels.

I think that option #2 would definitely win out all the time. #1 is useful when you're already facestomping and want to stomp even harder, but #2 gives you the option of having a panic button.

Although Monks have really good dodge (when built right), and some pretty impressive healing power, keep in mind that they're a melee class. In many ways, they're far more risky to take into Hardcore....at least, that's the way it looks to me. The Barbarian can survive because they're just straight-up tougher than Monks, but Blizzard said not-too-long-ago that Barbarians were struggling at higher difficulties and that's why they were recently buffed in various ways.

The Monk needs such good survivability skills because Monks aren't as tough as Barbarians - they're gonna need all the fancy evasive skills they can get. That said yeah, Monks DO sound pretty good in HC...but I'd always be a little nervous having to dive face-first into the enemy to kill enemies in Hardcore :P.

I don't even think it may be people making multiple accounts - I think this contest is just more popular than the other ones that Diablofans are hosting. The twitter/facebook one is very fiddly - it's so easy to not get a key by being a couple seconds too slow. The regular forum-posting one is too much of a commitment for some people, which just leaves the Build-Creation lottery.

It's purely luck-based, since the news post mentioned that the 50 winners are selected RANDOMLY, so I figure that a lot of people created accounts just for this.