Whats your LVL, DMG, ACT and SKILLS/GAMEPLAY Style your running?der

[Gnome]

I've played for about 5 hours and I think the game is pure awesome!!!

My Witch Doctor is

LVL: 18,
DMG: 97
ACT : About an hour into Act 2
SKILLS: Im running..
Fire Bats with Dire Bats Rune - LMB
Grasp of the Dead - Eels Rune (more physical Dmg)- RMB
3 Yellow Zombie Dogs - slot 1
Soul Harvest - slot 2
Green Zombie (poisoin zombie that runs at the enemy) - Slot 3

SKILL / GAMEPLAY STYLE : My skill gameplay style is - grasp of the dead a pack of enemies, try and get close for soul harvest while firing my dire fire bats. Im not using the poison running zombie as the range is crap.

I dont know if the skill combo Im using is any good. I found the Spiders and Frogs to be pretty useless.

I was playing in a co-op party so was concentrating on damage output to keep up with the barbarians and demon hunters i was playing with.

One thing I noticed when playing with other hi damage dealing characters is that i levelled up slightly slower than the others :(

Can other people post there Info so we can get a feel for what's working/good with the WD and whats not.

LVL:
DMG:
ACT :
SKILLS:
SKILL / GAMEPLAY STYLE :

[free waffles]

Zoboomafu:

Level 26 - 1 Quest through Act III
Damage: 158, 1.7 casts/sec
Intel: 225
Vital: 144
Mana: 428, 20 regen (no bonus)
Life: 1580, 7 hp/sec, +2 hp/kill, +195 health globe regen
Enchantress Follower

Skills:

LMB - Poison Dart (Splinters)
RMB - Acid Cloud (Acid Rain)
#1 - Gargantuan (Humangoid)
#2 - Grasp of the Dead (Unbreakable Grasp)
#3 - Soul Harvest (Siphon)
#4 - Spirit Walk (Jaunt)

AOE Strategy:
1) Drop a Grasp as the Garg huddles the mobs up
2) Pop spirit walk, run into pack to soul harvest and run out.
3) Spam Acid Cloud until OOM
4) Finish off stragglers with Dart.

Single Target:
1) Drop Acid Cloud for dot as Garg gets aggro
2) Spam Poison Dart until Cloud dissipates
3) Rinse Repeat
4) If hp gets low, pop spirit walk and soul harvest the mob for hp regen


Thoughts on other skills

Dire Bats are excellent when you get them; however as the game progressed, I found that packs became more spread out. As a result, it took 4 Dire Bats to clear the pack as opposed to just 2 Acid Clouds. Since Acid Cloud is about 50% more mana, it was more cost efficient to use Acid Cloud (and I could take advantage of Bad Medicine to protect my Enchantress and Garg). Despite this, for single target situations, Dire Bats are amazing, and I'm considering dropping Grasp of the Dead altogether just to have them available 100% of the time.

The Gargantuan not only makes the Dogs obsolete as tanks, but is slowly making Grasp of the Dead obsolete as well. The Garg grabs aggro almost instantly on every mob in the screen (only teleport mobs ever start attacking me) meaning the snare from Grasp is all but useless. Furthermore, unlike the dogs, the garg has vitality. While the Dogs die if an elite mob sneezes on them, the gargantuan survives boss battles at 75%.


Haunt sucks, even with Unrelenting Spirit. With a 1.5 attacks/second weapon like most daggers, you cast 3 times in 2 seconds. Unrelenting spirit coincidentally has a 2 second timer, during which it does 288% damage. This equates to 864 damage if there is a pack, but only 288% if there's just one mob. Dire Bats on the other hand do 624% to a single target, and 624% X N (where N is the number of mobs it hits as it flys through the screen) in that same 2 second span. If you want non-shortened Haunt, you're looking at a mere 48% dps to a single target.


Locust Swarm is worse than Haunt. Atrocious dps and the delivery method requires that you're right on top of the pack. Not suggested.

[Xoxie]

Good posts

[ShivanAngel]

Zoboomafu:




Thoughts on other skills

Dire Bats are excellent when you get them; however as the game progressed, I found that packs became more spread out. As a result, it took 4 Dire Bats to clear the pack as opposed to just 2 Acid Clouds. Since Acid Cloud is about 50% more mana, it was more cost efficient to use Acid Cloud (and I could take advantage of Bad Medicine to protect my Enchantress and Garg). Despite this, for single target situations, Dire Bats are amazing, and I'm considering dropping Grasp of the Dead altogether just to have them available 100% of the time.

The Gargantuan not only makes the Dogs obsolete as tanks, but is slowly making Grasp of the Dead obsolete as well. The Garg grabs aggro almost instantly on every mob in the screen (only teleport mobs ever start attacking me) meaning the snare from Grasp is all but useless. Furthermore, unlike the dogs, the garg has vitality. While the Dogs die if an elite mob sneezes on them, the gargantuan survives boss battles at 75%.


Haunt sucks, even with Unrelenting Spirit. With a 1.5 attacks/second weapon like most daggers, you cast 3 times in 2 seconds. Unrelenting spirit coincidentally has a 2 second timer, during which it does 288% damage. This equates to 864 damage if there is a pack, but only 288% if there's just one mob. Dire Bats on the other hand do 624% to a single target, and 624% X N (where N is the number of mobs it hits as it flys through the screen) in that same 2 second span. If you want non-shortened Haunt, you're looking at a mere 48% dps to a single target.


Locust Swarm is worse than Haunt. Atrocious dps and the delivery method requires that you're right on top of the pack. Not suggested.

I semi disagree with a lot of this.

Level 33
Act 1 NM
decent enough stuff...

First off I dont use the dogs or the giant zombie, they die to fast in nightmare.

About haunt and locust swarm...
I dont particularly care for haunt but locust swarm is one of the best skills we have imo... With pestilence it easily spreads to every single mob in about 2 seconds, and it does a lot of damage.

My personal lineup is

M1 Barbed dart (for mana regen)
M2 Locust swarm
1) (filler ability) whatever is usefull at the time, most of the time its fetishes.
2) Soul Harvest with heal rune (in NM you dont survive a soul harvest without it
3) grasp with 80% snare rune
4) Acid Cloud Acid rain

Basically its gather the mobs, drop the grasp, soul harvest if able, locusts, acid rain and dart till I can acid rain again. normally that is enough to kill most non minion mob waves. I tried bats but they just fail past Act 3

Also past actIII I have found that taking grasp off your hotbar gets you killed, and fast. Its probably one of the strongest abilities we have, and will save you more often then any other ability...

Soul Harvest with the heal rune attached is also a must have, that pretty much completely heals you if you get in a bind.

The fetish summon gives you 5 little dudes that buy you some time if you get in over your head, and do pretty decent damage.

Barbed dart is your bread and butter finish off the stragler spell, as frogs require you to get to close.

I really wanted the pet build to work... but being in some of the best gear you can be in going into nightmare (about 3k hp) your pets just get wrecked.

[Perijoli]

How du i get like grasp on "3" or fetish on "1" ? :S

[Gnome]

Go into setting then tick the box "Elective Mode" and then right click on the slots to change to any skill

[free waffles]

Barbed dart is your bread and butter finish off the stragler spell, as frogs require you to get to close.

I really wanted the pet build to work... but being in some of the best gear you can be in going into nightmare (about 3k hp) your pets just get wrecked.

3 questions shiv.

1) What are your passives? I'm already running Bad Medicine and Jungle Fort, which is obviously bumping the garg's survival, so I'm curious what yours are.


2) Have you tried widowmaker spiders over barbed dart yet? 4 Spiders X 3 hits each X 3 mana per hit would be 36 mana regen for a slightly cheaper cast than dart.

3) Have you tried Wall of Zombies over Grasp (I've been playing with Wall in Act III as a substitute)?


I just cleared the second mini boss in Act III so I'll be in NM soon and can compare my thoughts to yours.

[pcguy]

I'm in act 2 and I'm level 23.

I was able to try a spirit build as soon as I got Spirit is Willing.

LMB: Resentful Spirit
RMB: Unbreakable Grasp
Thumb: The Spirit is Willing
Wheel: Siphon
Thumb 2: Final Gift
5 key: Gragantuan

Let Gargantuan get aggro, Siphon, then cast Unbreakable Grasp. Spread around one or two Resentful Spirits in strategic locations throughout the mob. Tougher enemies will get blasted The Spirit is Willing. Use Final Gift dogs as a way to heal and proc gruesome feast often - Oddly enough, you want your dogs to die.

Spiritual Attunement + Gruesome Feast as passives.

The only AoE damage I had which was reliable was Grasp of the Dead, though Resentful Spirit tends to kill quickly enough that it will spread through two or even three trash mobs.

If you fail to contain the enemy with Grasp, you're gonna have a bad time.

I need to try this same build again using Death is Life, Rush of Essence, and Well of Souls at Level 36.

[Frenzied Muffin]

I've been finding the Frogs to be underrated by other WD's at least in normal. It feels much quicker (Act Boss aside) then going Dart or Haunt in that slot. I've been playing with friends who are all melee so I seem to be able to get into close range without much issue. Just doing the normal Siphon, shoot a few dire bats, spam frogs. At level 15 my dire bats were hitting for around 200 with 3-5 stacks of siphon and the frogs were hitting around 85-100ish. My melee counter parts were commenting on the amount of damage being output. I also felt it was high as 1 or 2 dire bats could kill a whole line of mobs. I have not died doing this yet and I'm a decent way into Act 2.

This said if I was playing normal solo or HC I would never be using frogs they put you in danger, but they seem to allow me to advance faster then the long range skills. I'm excited to use the Rain of Toads later on.

[Gnome]

Wow this thread just goes to show that the variety in the skills is definately there and that my fears that everyone would eventually end up using the same proven builds is not a fear at the moment. Well its early days and players are still figuring out what works well and what sux but its good to see that players are changing their skills as the the game progresses