hey faithful, I started playing the witch doctor again last week and Its really fun. I spent just 8-9mill on some gear and Im able to do act3 runs on mp6 without worries. Dps wise hes great but you need to get used to timing his skills right and positioning also. Im at 2 piece zunis atm but 4piece is great to start out and do your key, loot and exp farming, once you get rich you can switch to better items which have mana/sec as a stat. About pickup radius it depends on your build. I use bears so I need about 10-12 yards but I just have a thing of the deep in the offhand that gives a whooping 20 yards so I can progress through my runs fluidly because I dont have to run up to every piece of gold and hpglobe. LoH isnt so good for bears but it is good if you plan on using rain of frogs for example. For my bears I have a manajuma dagger with 2.80% lifesteal and it really lets me just sit in the middle of 100 mobs and bear them to pieces but it wont sustain through desecration or if mobs focus me entirely, thats why I got dogs with the life leech rune.
If we look at d2 say lvl1-50 could take ages if you didnt have early-midlevel items to give to your character like sigon set at start etc, and in d2 nothing good would drop for your lvl 15 character as he killed bosses and progressed. In d3 theres crafting so you can make decent gear for your level. It wont make you awesome or anything but you will be able to progress until 60 that way. All classes seem pretty balanced each can build and rune towards any situation. Some like witchdoctor and wizard start a bit late like after lvl 10 they catch up to the others in terms of damage, after that im pretty sure there all just preferance rather then number difference.
I think being with a party is better because of the fun factor that youre not just playing through the whole game for the 356th time alone.. again and people who find stuff can maybe link it in chat and that would still make me happy and encourage the team onwards.
Lets take the immortal king set from d2 as example, it isnt expensive and newcomers to the top tiers should be able to get themselves an ik set in a short time. This set will allow them to survive, deal damage, and has mf in it so not many people will make party mf lag behind or drain it for that matter, and everyone should be contributing.
All unique items and sets have been revealed if you wish to look at them, not on the official website but its in the book from the collectors edition and there is a post on this site if you wish to see it. Basically all sets have some amount of mf on them and most uniques have a mix of mf and other necessary stats and effects so in diablo 3 no character has to go out of their way to be able to get good mf in their gear. I like that theres no weapon switch also because that was just tedious and a silly mechanic; id rather make diablo choke on his last breath and smash my mace through his brain to finish him off rather then switching to dualwielding toothpicks and stabbing at his thighs piooo piooo!
indeed 110% for ww is a joke. i believe in a scenario of say you vs 1 enemy you ww for 1 second (since its channeled rather then used one time and put on cd) it will actually hit them 2 times so its a 220% aoe attack per second, BUT we will see how it is when we get more information and also attack speed could make you hit more times. i saw someone say its 110% per 0.4 seconds but whether attack speed will let you fit in more attacks per second we will see.
i must say im confident it is something like this rather then being 110% per second cause that would be retarded and this is ww were talking about here not some half assed attack added in d3 its the signature move of the barb.
whatever it is i just have to use it as my fury spender.. its heresy even considering to use something else!
boy is the beta short. i lvled all characters to 10-12, the beta ends when youre around 8 though.
I took a bunch of notes about every character and some general impressions aswell ill try to give a brief summary of it.
General Game Aspects: The second I loggen on some amazing music started to play and I was absorbed straight away. The videos on youtube do the game NO JUSTICE its sooo different when youre the one playing. The ambiance is just what youd expect from a diablo universe, theres always weird disgusting sounds coming from monsters who are nearby. They also have an interesting ai. Not every enemy behaves in the same way, zombies will just run at you to eat your brains, the skeleton summoners, kings of old will curse at you and chant sometimes while they cast spells. I found scavengers awesome, there a bit like hyenas. They prefer to hang back and let the mass of zombies and skeletons charge you and they stalk you without getting to close and attack when youre vulnerable.
The dungeons arent like diablo 2s where everything looked the same and didnt give this feeling d3 gives. Here the dungeons are alive and old sometimes youll be running through several rooms without any enemies at all, there no more then forgotten ruins where the dead decay to dust. The journals you find that relate you the story are sometimes disturbing events which the narrator is confessing. Your character also feels more alive when talking about the environment and monsters. Oh the characters, every hero feels exactly like what they are. Youre not just say, using a sorc to mf, youre playing the game as the sorc.
Theres alot of running and the games really easy when youre solo, but when you join with other players, specially when the party is full monsters become really tough and you cant wander off alone. It also feels great because you start living "situations". By that I mean hard fights where you know you need to do more then just smash though it.
Let me just also say a couple of bad things before I talk about the characters. The awesome music isnt looping in the background so sometimes youre left in complete silence and it becomes kind of boring! Im sure in the final version it wont be like this. If theres high level party members the game gets really boring because they kill everything before you can even touch it and you have to run alot aswell.
Wizard: I got very little to say about the wizz. Hes my least favorite and I might not even make a wizard in the real game. I found it to be really dull just casting damage spells that have secondary cc effects but dont really bring anything to the table. You may disagree but I just didnt have fun with it. Hes also brings nothing special to a party.
Monk: Were working my way towards the favorites. The monk is probably has the highest dps of everyone at low lvls. I was just owning everything and throughout my gameplay with him I took less damage then the barbarian. Sounds awesome right? I just didnt like his game style, I didnt feel unique or too useful other then damage. In pvp he will be awesome Im sure but pvm not my thing. His attacks get too repetative after a while and his spirit spenders dont feel awesome.
With Doctor: I was torn by how fun it is to play this. I didnt expect this guy to be so fun. I saw all the youtube videos of people just spamming toads and I though beh same thing all the time wow thats boring. But its so awesome to just spam spiders and have dozens of them on the screen dying and more coming out. Hes also the mass cc guy of the team, Im sure hell be very useful in higher lvl pvm. His pets arent really strong though dont expect them to "tank" anything, there just to create a distraction till you cc and kill off the enemies. They seriously do like 1 damage. His skill damage isnt very high eigther, I had trouble playing solo at lvl 7 I HAD TO join coop to even finish the beta. Ill probably have a WD as a secondary though hes still fun and hes all hunchbacked and weird the characters really feel like what they are.
Demon Hunter: The game is so different when you play with the dh, you start to use much different tactics. You try to kite around mobs and lead them into a grotesque to have it kill them for you, its easier to destroy walls and use those better. Its really unique, its not like a bowzon or any sort of mmo/rpg "archer" character at all, shes more like a ninja with guns :D. Really fun character, does alot of damage, has good "if you come to me I can cc you / get away" but inferno fast runners.. I dont know, gotta be really careful cant use discipline too much only 30.
Barbarian: ... Oh man. I dont care what games youve played, you have not played a true brute-warrior, the barbarian. He feels so unique, hes nothing like the monk in combat. Youre such a beast smashing in skulls with blood spilling everywhere, his combat is just amazing. I cant say anything else youll see what I mean in the game. When we got to Leoric I was dualwielding 2 clubs and using bash ofc. We had a team with a wizard, a dh, a cleave barb and a wd. Leoric has alot of health when full party so its a smashfest till he dies.. everyone is using all sorts of spells and abilities all sorts of light going everywhere and cool effects, but the one thing that has everyone mesmerized till the kings death is the rythmic BAM BAM BAM BAM of the bash. OMFG its like a cave troll banging on a door for 2 minutes straight youre literally SMASHING his bones to dust till he dies.
Cleave with the explodey-death rune is amazing vs mobs because it causes chain reactions and everything just dies but it sucks vs single target and also feels and looks bad.
Frenzy is probably what id go to be well rounded. You dont have an awesome single target fury spender (no concentration =(). Frenzy falls off pretty quickly if youre not hitting mobs and has a sort of annoying feeling to charge it up at every fight just for enemies to die right then, but then again its normal so they die fast itll be better later. Frenzy looks amazing at full stack vs a boss aswell. It doesnt have a heart pounding sound like bash but it looks awesome because you attack so fast.
Contrary to my expectations left clicking is actually ok. I was planning on putting a buff or something on leftclick but you can really use lclick specially easy with melee chars, its not at all like leftclicking in d2. The game is amazing, it feels wonderful but I had alot of rubberbanding at times that really annoyed me, but im hoping at release well be fine =). No one will be dissapointed im sure by the gameplay and the atmosphere and general feeling of the game now I hope the world is as alive throughout the entire game as it is in the first levels. Theres a lot of random stuff happening around the world like townsfolk talking to eachother and I hope that persists through the other levels. Its going to be amazing guys.
I just noticed that the bnet calculator isnt displaying the skills i chose since they updated it
so heres the build with a WW aproach to it since i wanted to feel a bit more like the classic barb =) http://d3db.com/tool/calculator/barbarian/13674
I thought of something like this http://d3db.com/tool/calculator/barbarian/13455
Battlerage up - charge in - overpower & threaten - they shouldnt be doing too much damg but theyll still hit giving us plenty of revenge hits they just chop them to pieces with frenzy. Could switch Frenzy's rune with Triumph or Overpower's with Revel if more LL is needed at the expense of damg/debuff.
Le Swirling Dervish! Thanks for posting on that site I didnt know blizzard didnt update theirs, so much has changed! With Revenge+WW I think Overpower is no longer needed (and its no longer spammable) instead I opted for TShout with movement debuff which should let us whirl around without them getting too far away. I believe WW is channeled so it stops if you use other skills so wed stop to heal up with Frenzy and Vengeance to get crit higher ( changed its rune to BSCold ). Though I could switch Frenzy rune to Maniac for maximum damg since more damg will give WW more leech which follows the Frenzy anyways.
Btw I just noticed something I think is very interesting that may be viable in another build, Frenzy with Sidearm. 110%WD is pretty solid and it sais "in its path" but couldnt find any video showing how it is. If its too "thin" it may just be too random to count on but if not, couldve just found an alternative to Cleave.
btw, how does WW just hit 1 time or does it hit more I saw somewhere someone say 3 hits per sec but not sure.
I found an awesome video of some revenges on youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMAn9V07GCg
I noticed just how more awesome it is then the awesome I thought it was if that makes any sense because %5 per enemies hit. Lifeleech cant leech from skeletons while this still does (assuming its d2 rules for LL).
Frenzy for faster fury regen and works better with crit, I have enough aoe from revenge alone but also have SS in addition so no worry there. Revenge + SS + Overpower is way too much aoe IMO so I took out Overpower and put in Threatening Shout with the attack speed rune since I switched Warcry to Battle Rage.
After this theres only seeing how these build perform really.
The ancients will aid me!
I think even at 90secs cd its still too long, youd have to confront mobs without those 2 skills and youd basically be 4skills & 2passives against them. WotB needs the entire build focused to sustaining it to be of any use and even so I dont like it really (and it looses 100%dmg for the 25furyper1sec rune), just because it gives you 4 things doesnt necessarily mean its important IMO.
Also say youre bossing with this, even though youre godlike for 15 secs then youre kind of left naked, its just how I feel I prefer a sustained char. It could work maybe if you chose between one of them and changed the other and the passive.
I dont like sprint too much either theres something interesting you could try out though. Switch spring for Charge with Merciless Attack, now even if you cant run into the main group youve hit something and reduced the cooldown a bit and it adds 15 fury. Do you think youll use 2 axes or 2 mighty weapons? I think if both are the same type axe/axe - mw/mw you get 15IAS but Im not sure if just 2 1handers doesnt give you 15IAS someone correct me on this so you could mix axe/mw to get 10%crit 6fury per attack.
Now the thing is that you dont have a fury spender so getting the Berserker Rage passive seems awesome but what to change... Lets just think of Animosity a bit, you have 10% fury bonus so say you hit 10 times with frenzy 30fury --> 33 fury during which you could furious charge two times 30 --> 33 again and 3furyperhit from 1 Mighty Weapon again 30 --> 33 fury. So it gave us 9 fury in about 11 seconds.
I think you should get Momentum rune in Overpower for maximum effectiveness of Animosity. If youre crit is high enough 10% shouldnt matter but will Overpowers critbuff stack with itself? If so its a bit of a choice here. Id rather have it generate a lot of fury if I plan to keep WotB up longer then 20 seconds.
I dont think Animosity contributes too much when you look at the math (mine is just an estimate we should check game to see for real and my math assumed 1 attack per sec even though its frenzy but the real shouldnt be more then the double of fury so 18 in 11 secs). 25 Fury for 1 second pretty much needs 20fury generating combo per sec to sustain. You could switch Animosity for Berserkers Rage and just go beast.
Im not sure I dont like WotB much anyways sorry if I rambled too much =) tell me what you think.
Say it came down to 2 axes vs 2 mighty weapons which would you go for?
I dont like Weaponthrow too much since it kind of puts you in the "spam till i get 100% fury" mindset which I dont like. It does awesome damage but you would also need to build around it a little bit to generate more fury then normal so you can use it more. If you have an average fury generation you might aswell just get another skill. Runing other skills for fury would decrease the more useful and situational abilities they may provide.
No one is going to be tanking for you so its up to you to get out of the way or slow/stun the mobs, whatever.
I think it comes down to HotA vs SS. I opted for SS in my build because it gives me knockback so I can delay some mobs that I dont want to engage me right at that moment. I dont think youll be spamming the spenders too much so it comes down to choice do you want some awesome damg now and then or do you want control when needed.
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Lets take the immortal king set from d2 as example, it isnt expensive and newcomers to the top tiers should be able to get themselves an ik set in a short time. This set will allow them to survive, deal damage, and has mf in it so not many people will make party mf lag behind or drain it for that matter, and everyone should be contributing.
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i must say im confident it is something like this rather then being 110% per second cause that would be retarded and this is ww were talking about here not some half assed attack added in d3 its the signature move of the barb.
whatever it is i just have to use it as my fury spender.. its heresy even considering to use something else!
0
boy is the beta short. i lvled all characters to 10-12, the beta ends when youre around 8 though.
I took a bunch of notes about every character and some general impressions aswell ill try to give a brief summary of it.
General Game Aspects: The second I loggen on some amazing music started to play and I was absorbed straight away. The videos on youtube do the game NO JUSTICE its sooo different when youre the one playing. The ambiance is just what youd expect from a diablo universe, theres always weird disgusting sounds coming from monsters who are nearby. They also have an interesting ai. Not every enemy behaves in the same way, zombies will just run at you to eat your brains, the skeleton summoners, kings of old will curse at you and chant sometimes while they cast spells. I found scavengers awesome, there a bit like hyenas. They prefer to hang back and let the mass of zombies and skeletons charge you and they stalk you without getting to close and attack when youre vulnerable.
The dungeons arent like diablo 2s where everything looked the same and didnt give this feeling d3 gives. Here the dungeons are alive and old sometimes youll be running through several rooms without any enemies at all, there no more then forgotten ruins where the dead decay to dust. The journals you find that relate you the story are sometimes disturbing events which the narrator is confessing. Your character also feels more alive when talking about the environment and monsters. Oh the characters, every hero feels exactly like what they are. Youre not just say, using a sorc to mf, youre playing the game as the sorc.
Theres alot of running and the games really easy when youre solo, but when you join with other players, specially when the party is full monsters become really tough and you cant wander off alone. It also feels great because you start living "situations". By that I mean hard fights where you know you need to do more then just smash though it.
Let me just also say a couple of bad things before I talk about the characters. The awesome music isnt looping in the background so sometimes youre left in complete silence and it becomes kind of boring! Im sure in the final version it wont be like this. If theres high level party members the game gets really boring because they kill everything before you can even touch it and you have to run alot aswell.
Wizard: I got very little to say about the wizz. Hes my least favorite and I might not even make a wizard in the real game. I found it to be really dull just casting damage spells that have secondary cc effects but dont really bring anything to the table. You may disagree but I just didnt have fun with it. Hes also brings nothing special to a party.
Monk: Were working my way towards the favorites. The monk is probably has the highest dps of everyone at low lvls. I was just owning everything and throughout my gameplay with him I took less damage then the barbarian. Sounds awesome right? I just didnt like his game style, I didnt feel unique or too useful other then damage. In pvp he will be awesome Im sure but pvm not my thing. His attacks get too repetative after a while and his spirit spenders dont feel awesome.
With Doctor: I was torn by how fun it is to play this. I didnt expect this guy to be so fun. I saw all the youtube videos of people just spamming toads and I though beh same thing all the time wow thats boring. But its so awesome to just spam spiders and have dozens of them on the screen dying and more coming out. Hes also the mass cc guy of the team, Im sure hell be very useful in higher lvl pvm. His pets arent really strong though dont expect them to "tank" anything, there just to create a distraction till you cc and kill off the enemies. They seriously do like 1 damage. His skill damage isnt very high eigther, I had trouble playing solo at lvl 7 I HAD TO join coop to even finish the beta. Ill probably have a WD as a secondary though hes still fun and hes all hunchbacked and weird the characters really feel like what they are.
Demon Hunter: The game is so different when you play with the dh, you start to use much different tactics. You try to kite around mobs and lead them into a grotesque to have it kill them for you, its easier to destroy walls and use those better. Its really unique, its not like a bowzon or any sort of mmo/rpg "archer" character at all, shes more like a ninja with guns :D. Really fun character, does alot of damage, has good "if you come to me I can cc you / get away" but inferno fast runners.. I dont know, gotta be really careful cant use discipline too much only 30.
Barbarian: ... Oh man. I dont care what games youve played, you have not played a true brute-warrior, the barbarian. He feels so unique, hes nothing like the monk in combat. Youre such a beast smashing in skulls with blood spilling everywhere, his combat is just amazing. I cant say anything else youll see what I mean in the game. When we got to Leoric I was dualwielding 2 clubs and using bash ofc. We had a team with a wizard, a dh, a cleave barb and a wd. Leoric has alot of health when full party so its a smashfest till he dies.. everyone is using all sorts of spells and abilities all sorts of light going everywhere and cool effects, but the one thing that has everyone mesmerized till the kings death is the rythmic BAM BAM BAM BAM of the bash. OMFG its like a cave troll banging on a door for 2 minutes straight youre literally SMASHING his bones to dust till he dies.
Cleave with the explodey-death rune is amazing vs mobs because it causes chain reactions and everything just dies but it sucks vs single target and also feels and looks bad.
Frenzy is probably what id go to be well rounded. You dont have an awesome single target fury spender (no concentration =(). Frenzy falls off pretty quickly if youre not hitting mobs and has a sort of annoying feeling to charge it up at every fight just for enemies to die right then, but then again its normal so they die fast itll be better later. Frenzy looks amazing at full stack vs a boss aswell. It doesnt have a heart pounding sound like bash but it looks awesome because you attack so fast.
Contrary to my expectations left clicking is actually ok. I was planning on putting a buff or something on leftclick but you can really use lclick specially easy with melee chars, its not at all like leftclicking in d2. The game is amazing, it feels wonderful but I had alot of rubberbanding at times that really annoyed me, but im hoping at release well be fine =). No one will be dissapointed im sure by the gameplay and the atmosphere and general feeling of the game now I hope the world is as alive throughout the entire game as it is in the first levels. Theres a lot of random stuff happening around the world like townsfolk talking to eachother and I hope that persists through the other levels. Its going to be amazing guys.
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so heres the build with a WW aproach to it since i wanted to feel a bit more like the classic barb =)
http://d3db.com/tool/calculator/barbarian/13674
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Battlerage up - charge in - overpower & threaten - they shouldnt be doing too much damg but theyll still hit giving us plenty of revenge hits they just chop them to pieces with frenzy. Could switch Frenzy's rune with Triumph or Overpower's with Revel if more LL is needed at the expense of damg/debuff.
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Btw I just noticed something I think is very interesting that may be viable in another build, Frenzy with Sidearm. 110%WD is pretty solid and it sais "in its path" but couldnt find any video showing how it is. If its too "thin" it may just be too random to count on but if not, couldve just found an alternative to Cleave.
btw, how does WW just hit 1 time or does it hit more I saw somewhere someone say 3 hits per sec but not sure.
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I noticed just how more awesome it is then the awesome I thought it was if that makes any sense because %5 per enemies hit. Lifeleech cant leech from skeletons while this still does (assuming its d2 rules for LL).
thats a good idea Denka, updated the build to: http://us.battle.net...RdYe!YZe!ZZccbY
Frenzy for faster fury regen and works better with crit, I have enough aoe from revenge alone but also have SS in addition so no worry there. Revenge + SS + Overpower is way too much aoe IMO so I took out Overpower and put in Threatening Shout with the attack speed rune since I switched Warcry to Battle Rage.
After this theres only seeing how these build perform really.
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btw you forgot females.... grows more muscular and hairy "come here give i you a hug and take to cave!"
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I think even at 90secs cd its still too long, youd have to confront mobs without those 2 skills and youd basically be 4skills & 2passives against them. WotB needs the entire build focused to sustaining it to be of any use and even so I dont like it really (and it looses 100%dmg for the 25furyper1sec rune), just because it gives you 4 things doesnt necessarily mean its important IMO.
Also say youre bossing with this, even though youre godlike for 15 secs then youre kind of left naked, its just how I feel I prefer a sustained char. It could work maybe if you chose between one of them and changed the other and the passive.
0
Now the thing is that you dont have a fury spender so getting the Berserker Rage passive seems awesome but what to change... Lets just think of Animosity a bit, you have 10% fury bonus so say you hit 10 times with frenzy 30fury --> 33 fury during which you could furious charge two times 30 --> 33 again and 3furyperhit from 1 Mighty Weapon again 30 --> 33 fury. So it gave us 9 fury in about 11 seconds.
I think you should get Momentum rune in Overpower for maximum effectiveness of Animosity. If youre crit is high enough 10% shouldnt matter but will Overpowers critbuff stack with itself? If so its a bit of a choice here. Id rather have it generate a lot of fury if I plan to keep WotB up longer then 20 seconds.
I dont think Animosity contributes too much when you look at the math (mine is just an estimate we should check game to see for real and my math assumed 1 attack per sec even though its frenzy but the real shouldnt be more then the double of fury so 18 in 11 secs). 25 Fury for 1 second pretty much needs 20fury generating combo per sec to sustain. You could switch Animosity for Berserkers Rage and just go beast.
Im not sure I dont like WotB much anyways sorry if I rambled too much =) tell me what you think.
Say it came down to 2 axes vs 2 mighty weapons which would you go for?
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No one is going to be tanking for you so its up to you to get out of the way or slow/stun the mobs, whatever.
I think it comes down to HotA vs SS. I opted for SS in my build because it gives me knockback so I can delay some mobs that I dont want to engage me right at that moment. I dont think youll be spamming the spenders too much so it comes down to choice do you want some awesome damg now and then or do you want control when needed.