Thoughts on Haunt and rune options

[z00t]

The "Resentful spirit" rune basicly turns haunt into a primary attack. The tactic is to apply one haunt to 3 different targets and cycle them between enemies. By the time the third haunt hits, the first haunt is 'done' and needs a refresh. This means that it's basically a full time job keeping these spirits up and running, unless of course a target dies, or if you have a very fast attack speed. Then you have time to squeeze in something else from time to time if you want (recommended).

Remember that now you can have Haunt on more than one target, and that the faster your weapon attack speed, the faster you can cast Haunt, so you can actually cast like 5 or 6 Haunts over the course of 3 seconds, assuming you don't need to move.

Resentful Spirit is actually BEST against 3-5 scattered monsters. Imagine the time it would take to spam all of them down with Spirit Barrage (and remember that something like Spirit Barrage's killing power comes at the price of a high mana cost). Resentful Spirit gives you the perfect mix of single-target killing power, and damage over time. It's a little somewhere inbetween Spirit Barrage and regular Haunt in terms of application.

It may not be as mana-efficient as regular Haunt, but remember - it's not always about mana-efficiency. Sometimes, you NEED to make concessions in order to make certain enemies dead right NOW.

That said, you definitely can't rely exclusively on any of the Haunt runes for AoE damage, I think. You're gonna need Locust Swarm or something like that, and then supplement that with Haunt.

[LucianDK]

Perhaps anyone could come with a comparison of Haunt versus Locust Swarm? since they both have spreading ability and doing damage over time.

[Jaago]

Resentful Spirit is actually BEST against 3-5 scattered monsters. Imagine the time it would take to spam all of them down with Spirit Barrage (and remember that something like Spirit Barrage's killing power comes at the price of a high mana cost). Resentful Spirit gives you the perfect mix of single-target killing power, and damage over time. It's a little somewhere inbetween Spirit Barrage and regular Haunt in terms of application.

The best out of witch doctor's arsenal, maybe, though I'd still think Hungry Bats equally strong in that situation. Haunt can beat the mob in approximately 2/3 time of Spirit Barrage, but Spirit Barrage is one of WD's worst balanced skills at the moment: it hardly deals more damage than Poison Dart, at 11 times the mana cost. Compared to single-target attacks of the wizard and the demon hunter, Spirit Barrage looks really weak.

I think Resentful Spirit could easily do 360% weapon damage or, better yet, last only 2 seconds, and not be too strong. It used to be my favorite rune effect in any skill, but I don't think it is currently worth a skill slot in its rather limited application.

Then again, I might have to eat my words. It has been mentioned by some industrious forum members that Haunt is among the spells that scale their damage with APS. Should this be the case for Resentful Spirit as well come release, then it becomes quite a beast with a fast weapon and good IAS gear.

[Zaventem]

The best out of witch doctor's arsenal, maybe, though I'd still think Hungry Bats equally strong in that situation. Haunt can beat the mob in approximately 2/3 time of Spirit Barrage, but Spirit Barrage is one of WD's worst balanced skills at the moment: it hardly deals more damage than Poison Dart, at 11 times the mana cost. Compared to single-target attacks of the wizard and the demon hunter, Spirit Barrage looks really weak.

I think Resentful Spirit could easily do 360% weapon damage or, better yet, last only 2 seconds, and not be too strong. It used to be my favorite rune effect in any skill, but I don't think it is currently worth a skill slot in its rather limited application.

Then again, I might have to eat my words. It has been mentioned by some industrious forum members that Haunt is among the spells that scale their damage with APS. Should this be the case for Resentful Spirit as well come release, then it becomes quite a beast with a fast weapon and good IAS gear.

Lucky for us it DOES work that way making it beastly.Resentful Spirit is godtier in my eyes. Weapon Dmg % x Weapon APS* = Actual Damage.

So if you're using a ceremonial knive haunt with resentful will do 134.4 dmg a tick, more if you have something that increases attack speed.
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/3595370796#10

[Jaago]

I really hope it is like that. Still that Bashiok's post is not a straight confirmation, as it really only talks about channeled spells, which are quite different in function. I know the APS scaling works to some DoTs, such as Grasp of the Dead, as well, but for Resentful Spirit a scaling like that without any trade-offs seems too good to be true.

[HardRock]

EDIT: Disregard this post, I messed up. My stats are still relevant though.

I can confirm, that Haunt does use your DPS as well, just like channeled skills do.

I tested Haunt against low level zombies (to make DR a non-issue) with the following stats:

84 Intelligence
14-21 damage two-handed sword, 1.14 APS, 20 DPS
37.76 DPS on character sheet
575% weapon damage from Haunt

Haunt always did 6 damage per tick, which means that it would have done 180 damage over its full duration. This was to be expected, if it uses DPS instead of weapon damage.

So it seems that we can calculate the full damage of DoTs simply by multiplying our DPS displayed on the character screen by the DoT's damage, just like with channeled skills.

[Elfik]

I can confirm, that Haunt does use your DPS as well, just like channeled skills do.

I tested Haunt against low level zombies (to make DR a non-issue) with the following stats:

84 Intelligence
14-21 damage two-handed sword, 1.14 APS, 20 DPS
37.76 DPS on character sheet
575% weapon damage from Haunt

Haunt always did 6 damage per tick, which means that it would have done 180 damage over its full duration. This was to be expected, if it uses DPS instead of weapon damage.

So it seems that we can calculate the full damage of DoTs simply by multiplying our DPS displayed on the character screen by the DoT's damage, just like with channeled skills.

That's really neat and kind of unexpected. When it says 575% over 15s you don't really expect the damage to be higher than 575%, but it is, if your APs is higher than 1. This is good news for all DoTs.

[Jaago]

At least for all that scale with APS. You can check out this thread for all that do scale:

http://diablo.incgamers.com/forums/s...nd-Pet-Scaling

The juiciest bits are that Acid Cloud scales with APS (though I wonder whether it is the whole skill, or just the DoT component), and that Garantuan scales but Zombie Dogs do not.

37.76 DPS on character sheet
575% weapon damage from Haunt

Haunt always did 6 damage per tick, which means that it would have done 180 damage over its full duration. This was to be expected, if it uses DPS instead of weapon damage.

Wait, 37.76 * 5. 75 = 217, whereas 37.76 * 5. 75 / 1.14 = 190. Doesn't this imply the opposite if DR is insignificant?

[HardRock]

Yeah, I messed up real bad. It seems I multiplied my DPS with 4.75, instead of 5.75. I shouldn't test these things at 2AM.

It would also help to know how D3 rounds off decimals. If it simply truncates them, then the displayed damage ticks could be even 6.99 in reality, which would mean a total 209.7 damage for Haunt. I guess I'll have to use Leoric again as my test dummy.

[HardRock]

My Haunt does 185 damage to Leoric on average, which means 6.16 damage per tick.

The interesting thing is that during my testing one of my Haunts did 278 damage, which is the expected number for a crit, so DoTs can crit after all. This Haunt ticked for 9 damage constantly, but still displayed white damage numbers. I think this means, that on crit bonuses will be gained only once with DoTs, when we use them.