WD impressions

[zUkUu]

But you're not doing as much damage as if you'd use 'spenders'. Acid Cloud is incredibly powerfull AoE, which stacks one on top of another. You get way more damage from casting clouds and then spamming bombs than with just bombs.

I know that there is no reason to do so in normal single player. But in coop games if your friend is taking care of something else and you have to hit the group hard, simply spamming a bomb won't be fast enough, you do need more damage

I'm playing 3-4 group exclusively.
in fact it's exactly the opposite. in normal / single player dire bats etc are decent enough because with one "mana drain nuke" every group will be dead anyway, but good look trying that in nightmare and above in a 3-4 man group. it does not work, it costs you damage in the end and potencially your life if you have no mana for spirit walk or grasp. with 1,66 APS weapon and rolling bone you get much more damage then with 6 dire bats and having to wait afterwards, without being in danger to have no mana for your utility spells. that's the sad reality and I kinda hate it , because it pigeonholes me to drop those spells and to play without having to think about mana. it's simply more effective. I hope they patch it to either make them worthwhile or slightly more mana efficient or give us a better base mana reg.

[OldDirtyNapkin]

I agree about Soul Harvest. Our dps seems entirely too dependent on it.

Its like using Fury as a Barb. Build it, stack it, expend it. It would be better if it picked up in stacks rather than re-applying every mob-pack.

[JWBS]

Yep, soul harvest, dire bats and poison darts is basically it for me. Most other stuff seems an irrelevance. Zombie charge and locust swarm are like a weak fire bats. Spider jar, firebomb and haunt are underwhelming, plague of toads is random and annoying. lvl 21.

[Instant]

I'm playing 3-4 group exclusively.
in fact it's exactly the opposite. in normal / single player dire bats etc are decent enough because with one "mana drain nuke" every group will be dead anyway, but good look trying that in nightmare and above in a 3-4 man group. it does not work, it costs you damage in the end and potencially your life if you have no mana for spirit walk or grasp. with 1,66 APS weapon and rolling bone you get much more damage then with 6 dire bats and having to wait afterwards, without being in danger to have no mana for your utility spells. that's the sad reality and I kinda hate it , because it pigeonholes me to drop those spells and to play without having to think about mana. it's simply more effective. I hope they patch it to either make them worthwhile or slightly more mana efficient or give us a better base mana reg.

I don't understand why you can't use Acid Cloud before you start spamming Firebomb? And how it can be less damage, since Acid Cloud is a DoT. I also don't understand what draining of your mana have anything to do with that.

You can empty out your mana with Acid Cloud and then start spamming Bombs. Only difference with 'just spamming' bombs is more damage. How can you say its the opposite?

Regarding mana needed for SW, im using Spirit Vessel, always. I don't need Spirit Walk on my skillbar

Im playing exclusively 2 man coop, but i don't think it will change that much with more players. Other players are killing them as well. Even more mobs have LESS HP per player than in single... so i'm really confused with what you've written :s

I don't care as much for bats as i do for Acid Cloud

[Smash]

@Smash

I think we're playing different classes then :O Every AoE is different:
- acid cloud is a zone AoE
- Locust is 'transferable' and grows rapidly in groups
- Firebomb is 'single target' with a splash AoE (bouncing )
- Zombie Wall is 'wall'ish' type of AoE (firewall?)
- Firebats is a cone shaped AoE (D2 inferno?)

And those aren't even all of them. Runes change everything (Dire Bats?)...

I'd say that WD's AoE has most variations of all classes

No, i think you are just blind like in your example Firebomb is not single target, you can cast it on ground, it is just aoe with small radius.
Look for example at Dire Bat and Zombie Charger, they are similar line damage spells.
So you aether has similar spells with overlapping roles or unique spells that are useless like this big frog or has high cooldown like zombie wall so no much fan aether.
I am getting tired and bored of my WD. (lvl 28)

[JWBS]

Me too, switched from WD 21 to barb lvl 8

[zUkUu]

I don't understand why you can't use Acid Cloud before you start spamming Firebomb? And how it can be less damage, since Acid Cloud is a DoT. I also don't understand what draining of your mana have anything to do with that.

You can empty out your mana with Acid Cloud and then start spamming Bombs. Only difference with 'just spamming' bombs is more damage. How can you say its the opposite?

Regarding mana needed for SW, im using Spirit Vessel, always. I don't need Spirit Walk on my skillbar

Im playing exclusively 2 man coop, but i don't think it will change that much with more players. Other players are killing them as well. Even more mobs have LESS HP per player than in single... so i'm really confused with what you've written :s

I don't care as much for bats as i do for Acid Cloud

Acid Cloud isn't bad, the mana (reg)-system is. You can cast what? 3-5 clouds and are oom, so you NEED firebombs as spam AoE, thus meaning you have 2 skills for the same purpose only that the first does slightly more damage and brings danger with it (oom = no mana for spirit walk / graps etc). also you need to watch for mana+ items, mp reg items, take multiple passives etc just for thos 3-5 more damaging casts.
just pick piercing veil, take utility / defense passives and spam bombs for an eternity. with rolling bombs they are very good. also, I have a cast speed of 2.01 casts per second, making them incredible strong due to the mana / damage ratio.
same for darts vs barrage vs bats. darts win because the mana system is flawed.

mobs have more hp per player. 75% on normal, 90% on NM, 100% on Hell and 110% on IF or something along those lines.

TL;DR Acid Cloud / Direbats are not worth it due to the unbalanced mana system.

[Instant]

No, i think you are just blind like in your example Firebomb is not single target, you can cast it on ground, it is just aoe with small radius.
Look for example at Dire Bat and Zombie Charger, they are similar line damage spells.
So you aether has similar spells with overlapping roles or unique spells that are useless like this big frog or has high cooldown like zombie wall so no much fan aether.
I am getting tired and bored of my WD. (lvl 28)

Unless you mean that 'AoE is all the same' i have to strongly disaggre with you.

Obviously those spells are meant to do same thing (damage more than one mob) but each and every one of them is doing it differently. How can you compare bats to zombie charger? You can't put both spells in a same bag, just cause they have 'short range'. I mentioned 5 spells, from which two are ranged (Acid Cloud and Firebomb) and two are 'melee' (Bats and Zombie Charger). To be honest i don't remember how Wall of Zombie works, cause i only used it a couple of times.

And to be clear, obviously Firebomb is not single target spell, but when i wrote it i thought it best describes how it works. I can't think of any other spell which is similiar to Firebomb. It's radius is also very, very small. But it is one of the best AoE spells in game.

I never mentioned Frogs, i dislike the spell and all the rune variations i tried so far.

@zUkUu

I think we have a different definition of what is valid (and fun on top of that). Standing in one place, spamming firebomb all day long, making sure that my mana doesn't dip JUST in case i have to use some defensive move is definitely not my playstyle.

I also never said it's not good/valid/doesn't work/can't kill anything with it. I do believe however that you can do more damage with different setup/build. Fact that 'your' build works so well is the real issue here, given how easy it is to perform, won't you agree?

And I do argree with you that mana regen system is, well... maybe not bad but definitely handicapped :S Some spells cost to much mana for what they do (Zombie Charger, Spirit Barrage), and other to little (Firebomb). I hope they will adjust it in time.

[Smash]

Unless you mean that 'AoE is all the same' i have to strongly disaggre with you.

Obviously those spells are meant to do same thing (damage more than one mob) but each and every one of them is doing it differently. How can you compare bats to zombie charger? You can't put both spells in a same bag, just cause they have 'short range'. I mentioned 5 spells, from which two are ranged (Acid Cloud and Firebomb) and two are 'melee' (Bats and Zombie Charger). To be honest i don't remember how Wall of Zombie works, cause i only used it a couple of times.

And to be clear, obviously Firebomb is not single target spell, but when i wrote it i thought it best describes how it works. I can't think of any other spell which is similiar to Firebomb. It's radius is also very, very small. But it is one of the best AoE spells in game.

So you do not see nothing wrong in skills overlapping roles? I wrote Dire Bat, how you find them melee is beyond me.
How many circle aoe spells you need? One, maybe two is one of them is dot to raise damage.
Look for example at necro bone spells tab, every his spell is unique and has different role but is only one of each kind because frankly you do not need more of same things.

It is same as you do RTS game, every unit should has unique role or they will overlap each other and in the end people will pick the better one.

[vileguy]

I have to agree with people saying there is too much overlap. We have a few unique spells but mostly it's just varying templates and numbers on aoes, and too many weak ground-patch effects. Zombie charger is the worst because it doesn't really provide anything unique. The damage is about equal to dire bats depending on runes and only bears and wave really provide something different - a slightly different template (which is probably worse, not just different). Undeath seems pointless because you probably want to cast it much more than when you land a killing blow with it, and it even has the cap on its effect to prevent situations where it would be cool.

Phantasm and pyrogeist seem pretty similar, though I haven't had a chance to see manitou yet. How many spells are there that leave behind a ~15% weapon damage cloud? Zombie charger, firebomb, locust swarm, acid cloud, spirit barrage, and perhaps others. Also things like dogs and gargantuan with their cloud of damage. It's very redundant.

One of the biggest trials is to pick a single target spell. Corpse spiders are only single target if there's no more than 1 monster in range, same with toad of hugeness. The true single target skills are poison dart, haunt, hex, and spirit barrage. You could lump in zombie charger, firebats and zombie wall - pile on because they have pretty small aoe and decent damage, but their mana cost or cooldown is super high. Darts are blocked easily by targets and pretty weak, though still decent single target. Haunt isn't spammable because it's a dot and Hex may not even work on bosses - I haven't confirmed if it is even cast on things that don't get turned into chickens when no better target exists. Thus, we basically have poison dart and spirit barrage to choose from, which are both okay choices honestly.

Last issue I has is zombie dogs. They're so worthless versus anything hard. They die fast and then you get to look at the pretty 1 minute cooldown. I have to think sacrifice is to blame for the long cooldown. They would be good damage on a boss if they didn't all die in the same cleaving hit a few seconds after they start attacking, or sitting in an aoe, etc.

None of these problems are game breaking. I love the WD and will be 60 and trying inferno soon, but I may eventually favor my DH or Barb instead after they level up.