• 7

    posted a message on Immortal Doctor - Live Long and Prosper
    Immortal Doctor

    This is a Witch Doctor build that aim for tankiness and pet.

    With the durable and cover/distraction from pets will let you hold your ground and fight until the end of the day.
    The less time you spend on running = the more time you spend on damage dealing. And that where our DPS come from.
    This is what the skills set look like.
    http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#YchleT!SXaV!bZaZac



    Skill Explanation

    Active Skill
    Summon Zombie Dogs - Life Link
    This provide you a group of meat shield and 10% damage reduction. I apply this to left mouse button because I don't need a primary skill that much. And this will prevent the awkward moment when you try to run away from something deadly but stand still because you accidentally clicking on something along the route instead.

    Firebats - Vampire Bats
    This is your main DPS skill. One of the best Witch Doctor skill so far. Have a high DPS rate, good AoE, free to channel, and synergy well with Fetish Sycophants.

    Locust Swarm - Pestilence
    Another great AoE damage over time skill. With Creeping Death and Bad Medicine Passive this will lower the enemy damage by 20% for the rest of their life. I use Pestilence to help it spread faster but you can change the rune to anything you want, except Searing Locust because it will change damage to fire and don't apply Bad Medicine on the victims.

    Piranhas - Zombie Piranhas
    A new essential skill for Witch Doctor. Apply 15% increased damage taken buff on enemy is a huge DPS boost especially when you play with a party. The buff are last forever with Creeping Death, and Zombie Piranhas make the area effect become a screen-wide (literally). It's has a poison damage too, so it will apply Bad Medicine on their victims if they don't already have one.

    Haunt - Consuming Spirit
    Actually, this can be a free slot for anything you want to have in your arsenal. But for me, I want to have more DoT on a tough enemy like Elite or Boss. Haunt also last forever with this build and Consuming Spirit provide a lot of health per second which make you harder to kill and recover faster.

    Gargantuan - Bruiser
    How can it be a pet build if you don't have all pet on your tab? I select bruiser because an extra cc always great.

    Passive Skill
    Creeping Death
    All of your DoT skills are last forever (5 minute actually). Even Piranhas DoT stop ticking after 8 second but the damage buff still go on.

    Bad Medicine
    With eternity Locust Swarm, this buff become eternity too. All enemy deals less 20% damage are a great buff, both in team play or solo.

    Jungle Fortitude
    Reduce damage done to you and your pet for 15%. More durable are always good, but if you feel your self are durable enough, feel free to switch this to other DPS Passive skill if you want.

    Fetish Sycophants
    This skill is one of your trump card. It's synergy well with Firebats and give you a small army of Fetish that provide extra DPS and meat shield for you. See strategy section for more explanation.



    The Concept
    This build aim for a very durable Witch Doctor. With all skills sum up, it's provide 45% damage reduction.(10% from Life Link, 15% from Jungle Fortitude, and 20% from Bad Medicine.)
    And with a lot of meat shield (Gargantuan, Zombie Dogs, Fetish) that run around and pull aggro from enemy, you will take less hit from them, that's mean less damage you will get.

    With all this advantage, You can hold your ground and channel Firebats until the end of the day.
    You can even ignore some floor mechanic and keep channeling like nothing happen, Or you can be off-tank those Elite or Boss if needed.
    The longer Firebat you channel = more DPS and Fetish proc = more DPS stak up over time.

    The Damage for this build may seems low on the paper.
    But by stand and fight almost entire battle you can do more damage than some DPS spec that keep run for their life almost all the time.
    Plus, with an extra damage from Fetish Sycophants, you can do tons of damage too.

    Another good thing about this build is it good for solo and great for party.
    You have 15% increase Damage buff and 20% damage reduction buff provide for your team almost all the time.
    Plus your pets will keep the enemy busy and make your team's life a lot easier.
    Don't surprise when someone says this world is a safer place with you around :D

    Strategy
    Open the fight with Locust Swarm then drop Piranhas in the middle of the enemy group. (Or vise versa, up to enemy position)
    After that, start channel Firebats to do some damage and proc your Fetish army.
    Some people with low level gear or people with no mana bonus may can't use Firbats right after the open combo, so try to use this gap to re positioning your self for the best spot to land Firebats instead.

    Always aim Firebats to the crowd or try to hit at least two enemy with it, because Damage of this build is a bit below average, so you need to squeeze every drop of their damage potential to fill the different.
    Almost all of your skill is a DoT type, so thing may seems a bit slow because you didn't quickly kill an enemy one by one like DPS spec. But with all skill you have is a powerful AoE skill and two of them can cover the whole room, so in term of overall DPS or clearing speed it won't fall behind the DPS spec that much. If you can make the most of your skill potential. (Firebats in this case)

    Fetish Sycophants is the real star of this build.
    By continues channeling Firebats like no tomorrow will result to a lot of proc of this skill and provide you a free Fetish Army.
    You will have 4-6 Fetish follow and fight for you all the time.(Some times you may have more than 10 Fetish, up to your luck)
    And this give you a huge boost in both DPS and survivability.

    Each of these hobbit zombie do 180% of your weapon damage per attack and has the same attack per second as yours.
    If you have 5 Fetish, that's 900% weapon damage bonus per second floating around. Multiply this for each extra Fetish you have.
    And they can hold aggro from your enemy like Zombie Dogs, so with more Fetish around = less damage you will take.

    Our little problem is, like any other pets, these guys will run around and randomly attack every enemy on the screen.
    By spread out and attack a different target make them work like another DoT you have. And that's not the most effective way to kill something.

    To fix this. You need to lower the possible target for them by try to kill small adds first.
    Aim your Firebats to the weakest or lowest HP enemy, clear those small flies from the field as fast as you can.
    This will limit the number of target for your Fetish. They will gather and focus on the same target, become a Nuke instead of some sort of DoT and kill the target faster.



    Paragon Point For Paragon Point I recommend

    Core > Move Speed > INT
    Offense > Attack Speed > Crit Chance or Crit Damage
    Defense> Life Regeneration > Life %
    Utility > Area Damage or Resource cost reduction > Area damage (If you reach 200+ Paragon level)

    You should keep your bonus move speed close to maximum move speed bonus (25%) at all time.
    If you have some gear that provide move speed bonus for you, you can distribute the extra point to DPS stat like INT.

    But I recommend to get all 25% extra move speed from Paragon Point.
    Because move speed from Item can reforge to another useful stat like +% damage or +% Attack speed or etc.
    Which is worth more than 250 INT from Paragon point.

    For Defense.
    Extra Health just make you a big sack of meat, and bonus armor won't give you much, unless you have 8k+ of armor.
    All resist doesn't scale very well after you have more than 1k resist too.
    So, I think Life Regeneration give the best bonus per paragon point.
    I put 40 point on it and it give me 6k Life regen per second. Which is nice.

    For Utility category. Area Damage can improve your damage a little.
    It not much, but I think it's the most useful stats compare to the rest.
    Resource cost reduction doesn't make much different even at full level, and can easily replace by bonus mana regeneration.
    Life on Hit proc only once for DoT and channeling spell. And I think pet can't proc any on hit effect.
    Gold find... No, thanks.

    Gearing

    I prefer a fast weapon for the attack speed.
    More attack speed made Firebats tick faster, lead to more DPS and more proc for Fetish Sycophants. (And those Fetish will attack faster too.)

    Even this build focus on durability, you don't need to go all out about defensive stat. Just have at least one defensive stat on each piece of equipment is ok. But I prefer to have Int on very piece too. So any Item with Int and another defensive stat (Vit, Armor, Resist) are fine.

    If you feel your self durable enough and want more DPS, feel free to drop durability from some piece for extra DPS as you want.

    There is a plenty of Legendary bonus that can improve this build.
    Some may improve the build directly and some can alternate the build to a new strategy.

    Quetzalcoatl (Double Locust Swarm and Haunt damage) and Mask of Jeram (+75% Pet damage) is a perfect addition for this build.
    They will improve the damage directly to the build, simple enough.

    Carnevil (Your Fetish shoot a Poison Dart every time you do) will improve your single target damage greatly.
    (I suggest to replace Haunt to Poison Dart for this build, but keep Firebats because it's a great AoE skill and have the best proc rate for Fetish)

    The Grin Reaper (It's like free 2 Mirror Image when you cast spell) is one of the best helmet for Witch Doctor in my opinion.
    It's proc rate are very good and those mimic will cast Firebats almost all the time (and they can move around, cast other spell while Firebats still active!)
    If you get this, replace Huant with Zombie Charger - Zombie Bear and you will get free Zombie Bear every couple second!
    I have a level 60 version of this and it's very awesome. Try to get the level 70 version by farming and throwing all of my Bloody Shard to helmet gamble but still no luck yet. <_<

    For Mojos
    Uhkapian Serpent (redirect 25-30% of damage taken to your Zombie Dogs) sound interesting with that huge damage reduction.
    This may make you Immortal. Literally.

    Homunculus (Spawn free Zombie Dogs every 4-6 second) is my current Mojo.
    Even if you don't have Zombie Dogs equipped, It's still spawn a basic Zombie Dogs (Dogs without runes) for you.
    The only thing you lose is 10% damage reduction from Life Link (which is not that much). But you gain a skill slot to equip with any thing you want.
    I prefer a skill that cost you with cooldown only like Spirit Walk, Hex, Big Bad Voodoo, etc. Because they will not mess with your mana management.

    Play with what you have, and get along with it. :lol:


    Fetish Maximization

    After the latest patch, there's a huge buff on pet, which is Critical damage bonus that can effect pets too.

    This can raise pet's critical damage to any number you want (It's capped at 150% critical damage in the past).
    And it's become a huge boost on pets DPS.
    This change Improve this build a lot, because we have a group of Fetish follow us around all the times.

    So I suggest to aim for this stat if you want to make this build to more Damage-dealing-type.

    1.8 or more attack per second.
    This attack speed help you proc Fetish Sycophants easier, more Fetish = more DPS.
    While this stat doesn't increase Fetish attack speed, It still increase bonus damage to Fetish by percentage.
    33% or more Critical Chance
    +250% or more Critical Damage

    Physical Damage bonus can effect Fetish damage directly. Aim for this bonus if you want to go pure pet build.

    With 600k damage, 1.9 attack per second, and +330% critical damage. My Fetish can crit for 2.7-3.5m without Piranhas buff.
    Now I can solo clear T2 Rift within 10 min, which is not a bad speed for a tanky build like this.
    So, in the end, you can be tanky and deadly in the same time, with a proper stat.
    Posted in: Witch Doctor: The Mbwiru Eikura
  • 1

    posted a message on Immortal Doctor - Live Long and Prosper
    Quote from SwalaZaJioni

    I'm trying the build and I have seen 2 problems

    How do you play against Frozen enemies without Spirit Walk? Once you are frozen in place... you are dead



    And with what do you regen mana without Spirit Walk (Honored Guest)? Pestilence+Piranha+Haunt are 100% of my mana pool.
    Pay attention on the Frozen Bomb effect and move before it explode.
    I put all my Paragon attribute to bonus Move Speed, so It's not hard to move away before it explode if you notice it fast enough.
    Try to keep your distance from the crowd by hiding behind your pets too, it's easier to notice your surrounding and even you get freeze, you won't hurt much by the upcoming attack.

    The skill rotation consume almost 100% of my mana pool too, but with Firebat are free to channel, I keep channel it until my mana replenish to some point.
    Normally, Locust swarm and Piranhas can cover all enemy in one cast, so you don't need to recast it that often.

    But if you feel your self in need of Spirit Walk for extra survivability or mana regen, You can replace Haunt with Spirit Walk if you want.
    It's free slot for modification by the way :D
    Posted in: Witch Doctor: The Mbwiru Eikura
  • 1

    posted a message on Immortal Doctor - Live Long and Prosper
    Thanks Titanhammer :lol:

    There is a plenty of Legendary bonus that can improve this build.
    Some may improve the build directly and some can alternate the build to a new strategy.

    Quetzalcoatl(Double Locust Swarm and Haunt damage) and Mask of Jeram (+75% Pet damage) is a perfect addition for this build.
    They will improve the damage directly to the build, simple enough.

    Carnevil (Your Fetish shoot a Poison Dart every time you do) will improve your single target damage greatly.
    (I suggest to replace Haunt to Poison Dart for this build, but keep Firebats because it's a great AoE skill and have the best proc rate for Fetish)

    The Grin Reaper (It's like free 2 Mirror Image when you cast spell) is one of the best helmet for Witch Doctor in my opinion.
    It's proc rate are very good and those mimic will cast Firebats almost all the time (and they can move around, cast other spell while Firebats still active!)
    If you get this, replace Huant with Zombie Charger - Zombie Bear and you will get free Zombie Bear every couple second!
    I have a level 60 version of this and it's very awesome. Try to get the level 70 version by farming and throwing all of my Bloody Shard to helmet gamble but still no luck yet.<_<

    For Mojos
    Uhkapian Serpent (redirect 25-30% of damage taken to your Zombie Dogs) sound interesting with that huge damage reduction.
    This may make you Immortal. Literally.

    Homunculus (Spawn free Zombie Dogs every 4-6 second) is my current Mojo.
    If you don't have Zombie Dogs equipped, It's still spawn a basic Zombie Dogs (Dogs without runes) for you.
    The only thing you lose is 10% damage reduction from Life Link which is not that much. But you gain a skill slot to equip with any thing you want.
    I prefer a skill that cost you with cooldown only like Spirit Walk, Hex, Big Bad Voodoo, etc. Because they will not mess with your mana management.

    Play with what you have, and get along with it. :lol:
    Posted in: Witch Doctor: The Mbwiru Eikura
  • 1

    posted a message on Immortal Doctor - Live Long and Prosper
    Guide update: Strategy and Gearing added.

    Tanks for all feedback. :D
    Posted in: Witch Doctor: The Mbwiru Eikura
  • 1

    posted a message on Immortal Doctor - Live Long and Prosper
    Quote from halvlitern
    Quote from YoyoTanya

    That's the point of this build.
    Just think it backward, some times you don't need to have a huge DPS number to make tons of damage.
    Instead, a small DPS with longer up time can do tons of damage too.
    This is why I am gonna try this build on my HC, my only concern is if there is an enrage timer on new bosses?
    and btw, what do you think of The Tall Mans Finger? It should work even better on single targets?
    The purpose of Zombie Dogs in this build is to provide a meat shield and damage reduction.

    Even you don't need that 10% damage reduction, Three dogs as a meat shield still very useful distraction.
    By reduce the dog number to one, It's not much effective as a distraction, and more monster can reach you easier.

    It's up to your comfortable that you want to have three dogs around or just one. ^_^
    Posted in: Witch Doctor: The Mbwiru Eikura
  • 1

    posted a message on Immortal Doctor - Live Long and Prosper
    Quote from Henno

    Stacking damage reduction results into not dying? Thats ingenious!
    Not dying is just a first step to everything.

    With more durability, you can ignore many Elites Affix like Plague, Molten,Electrified, Desecrator,or even Arcane Sentry.

    By ignore all of those effect, you can spend your time to channel Firebats as long as you want.
    That result in more DPS, more Fetish procs, and lead to even more DPS.

    Many people try to stack as much DPS as they can to make a "Kill before get killed" build.
    You can make a 500k+ DPS character by that, but if you need to run every couple second to avoid those Elites Affix, that will drop your DPS a lot.
    If you can stand and shoot only 5 in 10 sec, that's 50% DPS drop for you. But some Elites Affix force you to run more than that, or even kill you, make you lose even more DPS.

    That's the point of this build.
    Just think it backward, some times you don't need to have a huge DPS number to make tons of damage.
    Instead, a small DPS with longer up time can do tons of damage too.
    Posted in: Witch Doctor: The Mbwiru Eikura
  • 1

    posted a message on Immortal Doctor - Live Long and Prosper
    Quote from mrgamer

    This is quite interesting, i've made a couple modifications myself and will try it tonight... the main issue i see there: I cannot break the pots!!!

    Seriously, it's annoying for me :(



    PS: fork of this build
    I know that feel :)

    Normally, I use Piranhas or Firebats to clear those destructible.

    A bit over kill but very effective :D
    Posted in: Witch Doctor: The Mbwiru Eikura
  • To post a comment, please or register a new account.