Let's theorycraft Spirit Barrage

[pcguy]

I have to correct myself here. In the open beta, Splinters seemed to be just as quick as the vanilla PD. With this knowledge, Spirit Barrage starts to seem even more redundant in my eyes, Spirit is Willing rune translates for a measly 10% weapon damage increase for over 6 times the mana cost over Splinters. Hardly worth it, IMO, and the two other rune effects don't look so hot either.

EDIT: Also makes me wonder what's the point of Flaming Dart if Splinters is so clearly superior.

You are ignoring differences in targeting and the type of damage.

Splinters versus Poison Dart:

Damage Type

Splinters is Poison damage. Flaming Dart is Fire Damage - it does a little less damage, but can vary the types of elemental damage types you do. As far as I know, that's it's main use.

Critical Hits

The two skills also react differently to gear that gives increased chance to Critically Hit. I'm not sure if you'd rather want to try to get 3 critical hits with Splinters, or take less of a chance for a single, large critical hit with Flaming Dart. Splinters has the higher payoff - if all three darts critically hit - and more opportunity to hit critically, but I think two or three darts would have to hit critically in order to compare to a single critical hit from Flaming Dart. Flaming Dart gives you a single, large critical hit when it critically hits.

Splinters versus Spirit Barrage

Versus Spirit Barrage

You are comparing a rune skill to a base skill. There is little to defend here. The only advantage vanilla Spirit Barrage has over runed Poison Dart is that it does more damage and you can target an enemy in the back of a line. Witch Doctors using Poison Dart would be forced to either mow down all the enemies in the front of the line first, or spend some time maneuvering into position so that they have line of sight of their target. Spirit Barrage acts as artillery, while Poison Dart is more of a machine gun.

All versions of Spirit Barrage work with Rush of Essence, which returns 30% of the cost of the spell over 10 seconds.

30% of 108 mana is 32.4 mana over 10 seconds.

32.4 mana over 10 seconds is 3.24 mana per second for ten seconds.

The spell is now only costing you 75.6 mana per cast.


Versus The Spirit is Willing

Splinters costs 10 mana and does 180 damage if all three darts hit. Every 1 point of mana spent gives you 18 damage.

The Spirit is Willing costs 108 mana and does 190 damage when it hits. Every 1 point of mana spent gives you 1.76 damage.

The Spirit of Willing costs 108 mana, but you get 44 mana back. It is actually only costing you 66 mana. Factor in Rush of Essence and the skill is now only costing you 31.6 mana. Every 1 point of mana spent gives you 6 damage.

Splinters is clearly superior mana to damage ratio, so we have assume that:

A) We are taking The Spirit is Willing to fill a role Splinters cannot.
- Example 1: As an artillery type skill for sniping targets behind obstructions
- Example 2: As a way to quickly deal physical damage
- Example 3: As a way to deplete excessive mana
- Example 4: As a way to take advantage of the Rush of Essence passive skill

B) We have enough mana so that the increased cost doesn't matter.
- If you have a pool of x mana (740 base) and y mana regen (20 base) at the end of the game, will the 66 mana cost even be significant? How about with passives such as Rush of Essence, or Vision Quest, or Blood Ritual, or Gruesome Feast?
+This would enable The Spirit Is Willing to be a good choice as an alternative Primary Skill, or at least worthy of consideration as a spammable seconday skill.

Versus Well of Souls

Well of Souls does a lot more damage. 280 damage total (190 + 30 + 30 + 30). 2.6 damage per mana point spent.

Versus Phlebotomize

Splinters does not normally regenerate health unless your equipment has leech.
-If you want to factor in Blood Ritual, you would be paying 16.2 life and 91.8 mana.
+You would have to do at least 540 damage with the skill to recover life lost due to Blood Ritual.
+You will probably be doing much more than 540 damage, and thus, regain a lot of life.
+You would only need 300 dps to deal 540 damage.

The WD in the video had 2,526.75 dps with sub-optimal equipment. His Phlebotomize would do 4,800 damage and recover 144 life. He has 461 vitality, so we know he has at least 4,610 life.

[Jaago]

So there is some sort of animation canceling mechanic that allows you to move after the attack finishes but before the whole animation cycle is over? I might have noticed something like that, but I'm not sure; I had only a few hours of gaming time.

Being able to snipe the targets at the back is the only relevant advantage to SB, but not large enough IMO to dismiss my assessment that the skill needs a serious damage boost. And there are skills that do this and a whole lot more, which are most often better options than SB.

Damage type is largely irrelevant, as other skills offer choices for differentiation, and we do not even know the roles resistances will play in the game.

The problem with SB for me is that its damage to mana cost doesn't justify a skill slot when your primary attack can hurt almost as much for almost no cost; I'd rather use the precious mana for main nukes such as Firebats, Acid Cloud, or Zombie Charger, which do as much or more damage for slightly higher mana cost and have AoE. The only place I could imagine using SB is a Pague of Toads + Zombie Charger build that desperately needs long-range options, though even the I'd probably take Resentful Spirit.

B) We have enough mana so that the increased cost doesn't matter.
- If you have a pool of x mana (740 base) and y mana regen (20 base) at the end of the game, will the 66 mana cost even be significant? How about with passives such as Rush of Essence, or Vision Quest, or Blood Ritual, or Gruesome Feast?
+This would enable The Spirit Is Willing to be a good choice as an alternative Primary Skill, or at least worthy of consideration as a spammable seconday skill.

It really hurts your mana regeneration and takes away casts from other high mana cost spells. Only with Vision Quest I could imagine it as an alternative to a primary attack. But I think VQ builds will not need a single-target attack at all.

[Thrakhath]

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#gedUXj!fWV!ZccccZ

Here is my attempt at a build using Spirit Barrage as a primary attack, with the Well of Souls rune. With Pierce the Veil and Soul Harvest, it will deal a decent amount of damage (336% even before Soul Harvest), while with Haunt and Horrify both generating more mana than they cost, regenerating mana should be easy.

Using all six Rush of Essence skills will be a great deal of fun, as it will give the feel of mana regenerating very fast.

[pcguy]

Being able to snipe the targets at the back is the only relevant advantage to SB, but not large enough IMO to dismiss my assessment that the skill needs a serious damage boost. And there are skills that do this and a whole lot more, which are most often better options than SB.

The problem with SB for me is that its damage to mana cost doesn't justify a skill slot when your primary attack can hurt almost as much for almost no cost; I'd rather use the precious mana for main nukes such as Firebats, Acid Cloud, or Zombie Charger, which do as much or more damage for slightly higher mana cost and have AoE.

Jaago, would you care to comment on Well of Souls and it's possibility for AoE damage?

Take some time thinking about how it will work, how many targets it is going to hit, and how much damage it will be doing overall.

Compare it to some of the other skills you mentioned.

[Thrakhath]

The problem with SB for me is that its damage to mana cost doesn't justify a skill slot when your primary attack can hurt almost as much for almost no cost; I'd rather use the precious mana for main nukes such as Firebats, Acid Cloud, or Zombie Charger, which do as much or more damage for slightly higher mana cost and have AoE.

Firebats and Zombie Charger are so different in function and range from Spirit Barrage that they are hard to compare. The most relevant comparison would be with Acid Cloud. Here is how the Spirit Barrage + Well of Souls I was planning on using compares to Acid Cloud + Corpse Bomb (the version of Acid Cloud without DoT). Using Pierce the Veil and Rush of Essence:

Spirit Barrage: Well of Souls
Main target damage: 190% weapon damage + 38% from Pierce the Veil = 228% weapon damage.
Damage to 3 secondary targets: 30% each + 6% from Pierce the Veil each = 36% weapon damage x 3
Mana Cost: 1.3 x 108 mana = 140.4 (PtV), effectively reduced to 98.28 mana with Rush of Essence.

Acid Cloud: Corpse Bomb
All targets in the area take 200% weapon damage, + 40% from PtV = 240% weapon damage.
Mana Cost: 172 x 1.3 = 223.6 mana


Acid Cloud is clearly a more powerful skill, but the mana cost is not just 'slightly higher' but actually more than double for any build involving Rush of Essence. With the 'Spirit is Willing' rune, it would be even lower. I honestly think that Spirit Barrage is viable as a primary, basic attack, backed up with other mana-generating and damage-over-time spells.

The main issue people seem to have with it is that it is a medium-damage, medium-cost skill. People are comparing it to low-damage-low-cost skills and calling it expensive, or to high-damage-high-cost skills and saying it is not powerful enough. Surely there is a niche for Spirit Barrage inbetween the two?

There are other factors that have not even been considered here. For example, I am pretty sure I saw a video where poison darts were being blocked by skeletons with shields. Can Spirit Barrage be blocked, as it comes from above? Which skills can, and which cannot be blocked? How does it actually compare regarding casting time? Can Spirit Barrage miss?

[Jaago]

Well of Souls changes the function of SB most from the 3 rune effects considered in this thread, and is probably the one I have most difficulty to put my finger on. It helps when you're sniping that one summoner in the back by also damaging the front-row chargers, and it has a decent overall damage. However, it depends a lot on the behavior of the extra bolts and the density of monsters in packs. If the three extra bolts can hit the same target and/or end-game monsters will be generally rather far away from each other, I'd call it a good skill. It would still need the synergy from RoE, though, which reduces your other passive choices.

On the other hand, if the bolts diverge, or monster packs are usually dense, an AoE spell would work better, and I'd rather take extra utility or Soul Harvest, if it's not yet included, for the slot. Overall, I'd still say around 230% weapon damage for the base skill would not be unreasonable.

I'm definitely not claiming I'm definitely right, anyways. A lot of my assessments come from gut feelings and are based on how I imagine end-game of D3 will shape up, and are probably affected by previous design states of the skills, and even comparable skill advantages of D2.

There are other factors that have not even been considered here. For example, I am pretty sure I saw a video where poison darts were being blocked by skeletons with shields. Can Spirit Barrage be blocked, as it comes from above? Which skills can, and which cannot be blocked? How does it actually compare regarding casting time? Can Spirit Barrage miss?

As far as I was able to see, any skill could be blocked by the shielded skeletons two or three times (maybe Wave of Force and Ground Stomp excluded?). If you're casting a skill by holding the respective button down, most, if not all, attacks should have the same speed, but maybe some allow you to move in between casts and still cast almost as quickly. (z00t seems to have a better understanding.) I don't Think Spirit Barrage can miss unless the targeted monster dies before the missile reaches it.

[Zoltar]

I think haunt and spirit barrage will work well in concert for a defensive build. I'm seriously considering the grasping spirit rune. The snare is only 30%, but you can spam haunt on a group of enemies and do 575% weapon damage per cast AND snare them. I think that will be very useful compared to grasp of the dead because GotD is limited by it's area of effect and cooldown. Once you get them dotted up, then you can use Spirit Barrage as your nuke. Pair those up with skills like wall of zombies, grasp of the dead, and mass confusion. Maybe toss in a gargantuan. The nice thing is, all of those defensive skills also have offensive components (MC has a 20% damage taken debuff). So while you might not have an AOE with the oomph of something like acid rain, your defensive skills will let you keep pummeling mobs with SB while haunt's dot keeps ticking.

[itstheMZez]

could something like this work? http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#WgYjTX!ZWU!cYYacb

there should be enough mana here to spirit blast a good amount of time since your aoe dps has no mana cost, and your enjoying 400% more mana regen for a good amount of time, so i runed it to give back % life since it should be quite spammable.

[Karpalo]

There is also the rune flaming spiders which makes corpse spiders deal 21% damage per hit and each spider hits twice so that's 21 x 8 = 168% damage. Then there is the affix from gear which gives max 15% more damage to corpse spiders so that's 193% per cast.

Non existent mana cost and doesn't need any passives apart from that affix to make it viable. I just don't see how spirit barrage could be any useful maybe apart from Manitou rune.

[z00t]

Corpse Spiders aren't so effective against moving targets (even the ones which aren't particularly fast) unless runed with Leaping Spiders.

Even when your target is stationary, Corpse Spiders are still very unreliable as a single-target killer because they will attack enemies all around them, meaning that if there are other enemies around your intended target, then your target only going to be taking a fraction of that 193% weapon damage.

What Spirit Barrage offers, even unruned, is reliable, long-ranged 190% weapon damage straight-up with a really good cast animation (barely locks down your character compared to casting something like Corpse Spiders which has to play out a longer cast animation before you can move again), and which you can count on to always hit the target you need it to (even Poison Dart with Splinters isn't completely reliable since you need a 'clear shot', and can't have other monsters inbetween you and your target).