Who else considers another class due to the "slow" WD de

[EismitSahne]

Hey,

Personally i really like the WD and after playing him i feel even more confident about making him my main character.
However i have one big problem with him/her.

For most of us d3 will be mostly about farming gear quick and efficient.
At some point once your gear is good enough, being able to move as fast as possible will be quiet important (finding champions or simply traveling to bosses etc.)
So, as things look right now the witchdoctor will be the only character without the ability to travel in a "tele" style. All classes got some kind of leap, teleport, extra movement speed etc. So in the end the WD will be the slowest character to cover distance and thus less efficient in farming.

Am i missing something?
Who else is considering to not make the WD his main character because of that reason?

[pcguy]

You are missing something. Several somethings, actually.

1) Spirit Walk: The tooltip does not state it, but Spirit Walk gives the player a substantial movement speed boost.

This is one of the least resource-intensive movement skills of all the classes, however, it is restricted by cooldown. Finding ways to reduce the cooldown on Spirit Walk is certainly one way to improve mobility.

Combining Spirit Walk with Spirit Vessel and Grave Injustice, as well as +Spirit Walk gear will enable a Witch Doctor to use Spirit Walk often.

2) Stalker: This Horrify rune allows the WD to move more quickly for a few seconds.

3) Big Bad Voodoo: This gives a movement speed increase, but is restricted by radius, so it will not help that much.

4) Equipment: Boots often contain movement speed increases, but other equipment slots should offer it as well.

Also, the basis for your argument is flawed. Not completely flawed, mind you, but still flawed. Efficiency does not imply that you need movement speed. If you are farming Elites, kill speed is as important as kill count. Kill speed is not determined by movement speed, but kill count is because the player has to look for the next group of elites.

If you are looking to avoid battles with non-elite monsters, you don't always have to outrun them. You can always use crowd control such as Barricade or Mass Hallucination or Grasp to shut them down while you keep moving at the same pace.

EDIT:

Example Scenario

Here are some notes I took really quick...

Stalker
20 sec cooldown
4 sec duration
20% increased movement

Jaunt
15 second cooldown
3 sec duration
Approx 20% increased movement (maybe more)

Spirit Vessel
17 sec cooldown Stalker
13 sec cooldown Jaunt

Grave Injustice
kill 17 enemies within effect radius so that GI procs = cooldowns refreshed!

Cast Jaunt and Stalker at the same time. You will be invincible and have 40% increased movement speed for 3 seconds, plus one additional second of 20% increased movement.

Add some movement gear and you are now faster than most classes as long as you kill a few enemies along the way. Congratulations.

[Jaago]

Stalker and BBV can't really be used for quickly traveling between mobs, and for Spirit Walk, it is a suboptimal use. In a sense, I agree with the OP, but really, it remains to be seen. I think only Barb (Sprint) and DH (Vault + Tactical Advantage) have potentially imbalanced movement abilities, and I do hope that they will be nerfed if they prove too strong.

Maybe Inferno mobs will actually be hard and dense enough for movement speed to not matter much, but I think that would be a tad optimistic.

[z00t]

I think that in higher difficulties, monster aggressiveness and power will be such that NO class can simply run past an elite mob, unless there is really absolutely nothing in a large area around it.

[EismitSahne]

Jaago i agree BBV and Stalker just seem quiet inferior to Teleport or Vault etc., and it's true that it remains to be seen.
I was always under the impression that blizzard tried to not introduce a skill like the D2 teleport again, wich was a must for most pve builds.
It's more of a concern i have then a true game changer and probably some nostalgia for D2.

Hey pcguy thanks for the info on spirit walk, if it's like that the skill looks far more interesting to me. Especially since i have a caster like build wit Grave Injustice in mind. It is not on par with teleport etc. but still...

Of course killing speed does matter in a farming scenario i actually thought about mentioning it in the first place.
I'm talking about a scenario where i am only looking for blue packs, yellows and bosses and i don't care for anything else.
My point is that the overall kill count per time of these mobs seems to increase (just like in d2) with a valid possibility to travel fast without sacrificing to much of your "killing speed".
Most of the options you stated are an perfect example for this since you will have to sacrifice a lot more then other classes to get some comparable movement/mobility.

[z00t]

In later difficulties, you aren't going to be using Vault to travel around, anyway :P. You'll NEED the Discipline to survive. If you waste it on travelling faster, then when you encounter a monster pack, you're just gonna need to sit there and wait for your Discipline to regenerate, which is pretty slow.

Also, Leap and Teleport both have cooldowns, so that makes them very different from the D2 teleport :P.

[emiliorf]

Also, on a note, I was playing the fastest of all classes with witch doctor due to the summons/DoTs. And we don't even have Locust Swarm yet.

Point being that, I indeed had to walk normal speed, but I was dotting everything along the way and keep running. Dogs were finishing things as needed. Of course this implies in me killing mobs instead of bypassing them, but I found the dots a quick way to keep moving while still cleaning the way. And for DoTs I believe nobody surpasses the WD.

[FizzyBubbly]

Here is something very simple to try out.

Whatever class you are not liking make a hardcore character in beta then proceed to run the beta naked with only the default main hand weapon. The game takes on a completely different feel and classes that you thought were boring or didn't do anything actually begin to surprise you. The pace becomes more methodical and calculated. You will need to use all the spells at your disposal to survive. Playing like this gives a great visceral response and feels like it would be a small glimpse into what hell/inferno could be like.

[Kitteh]

Regardless of that, if you enjoy the WD the most, why would you go for efficiency over enjoyment?

[EismitSahne]

Your right Kitteh, and i think i will still stick with the WD he is just to much fun.
It's just something that bothers me but i guess i will trade teleport etc. for the WD madness any day.

zOOt all skills do look like you won't be able to spamm them due to CD or "Energy" usage however you will be still a bit faster.