That's very useful information. Appreciate that guys.
My limited experience with the dogs is that if I rune with the 5% chance passive and get a dog or two or three, the instant I cast the summon dog skill, the 5% chance acquired ones dissipate. So you cannot get more than 3 or 4 if you're using zombie handler no matter what source they come from. The non skill acquired dogs did in fact explode when used with Sacrifice.
What I'm confused about is why even take the summon dog skill if the runes and passives can give you enough dog to blow up. This would be even more important if I'm right and you cannot have summon skill dogs out and other sources of dogs out at the same time. In the beta this is the way it works and it makes sense it will stay that way. Otherwise you'd have ten dogs out.
The reasons are control and rune effects.Originally Posted by Musashi
You can't get dogs at will any other way and if you don't have the summon skill with you, your raised dogs will be standard ones, with no rune effects.
I was very interested in finding a pack of dogs that really went boom! I mean a zombie dog nuke right? The fun would be in trying to position them together, use a rune that adds damage at the cost of mana but.......to use a summon skill just to get a runed version of something you get using passives and one rune effect seems too expensive. My point was that you would have to do one or the other. You EITHER take summon skill or you generate dogs with passive and mass confusion rune. There is no point in doing both since the summon skill will kill the other dogs and you're limited to four dogs anyway.
I really wanted to like this but I just can't get on board now, at least with the information we have. The main way I could see doing this still would be to choose the passive and run dog generation method and alternate two basic build goals....use Mass Confusion. The one minute cool down time can be used to then herd your dogs that it generated, plus the passive dog or dogs to blow something up....then when Mass Confusion is back up rinse and repeat.
The problem for me is that with a LOT of other skill choices why cripple yourself by waiting for these timers to be successful? There are so many build variations it just doesn't seem worth it. If the dogs exploded for more damage or you could get more than 4 dogs I could see it. I'd like to see a build where you could choose summon skill AND the passive and run affects and have like 12 dogs running around. I find the overall explosion the way the beta is built not sufficent for the timing, skill and passive choices that are required to produce that level of damage.
Adressing Musashi's comments I see that sacrifice can not be regarded as the sole reason for the build. But as a very good tool in the bag. I believe that 800% AoE damage that is "Mana Free" is nothing to ignore.
The way I see this build playing, and I even have another thread on this, is that dogs are not meant to get exploded in the first second of battle. They shall be sacrificed in the moment the first one is on risk of dying, due to damage. The tools to keep dogs coming back are all nice aditions to keep the build going, but most of all, they are good on their own.
Big Bad Voodoo and Mass confusion are already nice. With Grave injustice adjusting their cooldown, plus the cooldown on summon dogs, that's the second sacrifice valve. As you time your cooldowns, you can use the sacrifice to speed up clean through packs nicely, again, without hindering your mana.
Now, my concerns for this playstyle are :
- I still think that it might have issues against single target, where the respawn of mass confusion and big bad voodoo fails. If the single target is able to wipe the dogs rather quick, which kills our control, then the build will be in a tough situation.
- Dog durability. If at inferno the dogs do poor at staying alive, this build will likely not work, as to survive you'll need to put slot in flee mechanisms like horrify or spirit walk.
Anyway, that's the same playstyle i'll try first when may 15th arrives
Look at the build I posted, if you didn't already. Final Gift isn't a bad choice for a Sacrifice build, especially if one of your passives is Gruesome Feast.
Yes, Emiliorf...that was more my point. I like theme builds or "extreme builds" if you'd prefer which go all out in one direction. I love that you can go All poison Hero with WD. You can go All spirit...in fact I'm inclined to go with an all spirit build....but that's another story....
You can theoretically go all pet, if not summons...if you consider Toad of Hugeness and Spider Queen a pet anyway.
But you can't really focus on dogs that go boom. Well, I suppose you can, but of these theme builds, I do expect to get to inferno with them. So there's that caveat. To make Dogs that go boom strong enough takes too many resources and there are heavy game restrictions.
Essentially what I want to do it put a square peg in a round hole with the zombie dogs. My beef with dogs that go boom is if I can't go all out with it, I need to spend two skills slots to just make them blow up at all. One to summon then and sacrifice. I could use the passives and runes, but for the damage the dogs do after all that trickery, I could have just applied some direct attacks.
Also, speaking of spirit spells. I think Horrify is super and with some runes to increase duration or range, it's an excellent oh chit skill. It helps your whole party theoretically, but spirit walk only helps you. Again depends on how much you plan on being in a group.
Zombie Charger with Explosive Beast rune summons Zombie Dog instead of Zombie Charger but I don't know if the sacrifice of this Zombie Dog counts for a chance of respawn since that Zombie Dog sacrifices itself.
I think Explosive Beast's zombie dog will be basically a projectile, just like the zombie is in the base skill.
Last edited by HardRock; 27-03-2012 at 21:08.
I understand that a build that uses sacrifice may be considered extreme, yet that's why my build, the original build posted in this thread seen here : http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculato...VjT!adZ!aacZZY , is meant as a cohesive series of spells.
The main issue i see with many people trying to use sacrifice is the builds rely heavily on the dogs being able to practically 1 shot everything. My build uses the dogs as a large nuke yet does not sacrifice the utility of the pet build.
In reality this IS a pet build that incorporates sacrifice in a way that doesn't hinder your forward progression through an area. This build also revolves around having a very consistent dmg curve utilizing the poison dmg from the gargantuan, locusts, and darts.
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