Acid Rain as a replacement for Zombie Bears.

**Chaosmage** · 21-06-2012, 20:29

Now that the Bears were crapped on do you think Acid Rain is a valuable replacement?

Crit damage is supposed to work on the DoT part the area is similar and it requires no positioning prior casting to hit effective. I use it in conjuction with Well of Souls which compensates for the lack of high +% single target the bears could be used with casting them from against a wall.

It is spamable if you turbo charge your mana generation with Rush of Essence and Vision Quest. It is even more expensive than bears though. But 10 seconds of turbocharged mana is alot, not enough to kill of champs but almost any normal enemy I encountered.

**flint** · 22-06-2012, 03:43

Dire bats seem like a more natural replacement until the issues with the bears are sorted out

**TangyOrange** · 22-06-2012, 04:01

Problem is, I find dire bats unreliable in hitting targets when I want them to. And it's a problem especially in hardcore when I can't even hit the mob in my face killing me.

**Boqu** · 22-06-2012, 12:12

Acid Rain cost 172 mana for 100% weapon dmg + 75%weapon dmg over 3 seconds. it is not exactly rapid spamable because the OTD dmg doesn't stack, you ended up with just 172 mana for weapon dmg plus a little bit.

mana/dmg ratio is rather low compare with rain of toads or Spirit phantasm. .

**Chaosmage** · 22-06-2012, 18:44

Originally Posted by Boqu

Acid Rain cost 172 mana for 100% weapon dmg + 75%weapon dmg over 3 seconds. it is not exactly rapid spamable because the OTD dmg doesn't stack, you ended up with just 172 mana for weapon dmg plus a little bit.

mana/dmg ratio is rather low compare with rain of toads or Spirit phantasm. .

I got the impression that the DOT part does stack, but I need more testing.

Mana effectiveness is less of an issue if you end up with something like 300 mana/sec with VQ and RoE

**Boqu** · 22-06-2012, 20:09

Originally Posted by Chaosmage

I got the impression that the DOT part does stack, but I need more testing.

Mana effectiveness is less of an issue if you end up with something like 300 mana/sec with VQ and RoE

mmm, Zombie bear cost 140 mana for multiple bears each deal 236%weapon dmg. these bears can attack same object if they are big enough size.

acid rain only one hit target. regardless of if poison DOT stack or not, when dealing with hard pack it is still sub-bar for dmg output.

i used acid rain as my main attack through hell to infernal act 1 then i decided spirit phantasm or rain of frog has better killing efficiency. i would love to have someone prove that acid rain is a superior choice over the two because I actually love the skill.

**Chaosmage** · 22-06-2012, 22:29

Well I really like phantasm, but it is only really useful if you play together with some melee character or have some other means of not being forced to kite. I haven't tried the improved pets yet, might be worth a shot. Still Acid cloud pretty much needs some Spirit Barrage Rune anyway since it is the only way to supercharge your mana to this level. Again efficiency does not matter, just try it out: Use vision quest + rush of essence cast spirit barrage till you are at max mana again and spam acid cloud. That is alot of time you have to do it and situations where you can stay in place longer than that are rare.

Where did you get the impression that it only hits a single target? Yes you are forced to cast it ontop of something but it still is fully AoE regardless. I am also under the impression that the damage is somehow more than 175% total because when finishing off the butcher I can do it much faster than with spirit barrage (IDK maybe he has more physical and less poison resistance).
Again this only becomes noticeable once you have enough mana regeneration to spam it for a while. It doesn't hit as hard as the bears but it feels very close.

**sacridoc** · 23-06-2012, 19:35

Pretty sure the dot doesn't stack, at least it didn't seem to when I tested it.

Acid cloud is a pretty terrible ability overall. The problem with several of the WD abilities is that they're most efficient when used as part of a rotation. Which means they aren't good for spamming. For example, you can get gotd + acid cloud: slow burn + rain of toads and just rotate those 3 abilities over a pretty wide area with low mana cost. It's too difficult to keep the enemies in the AoE though and it's not much fun to rotate spells. Maybe it'd be OK with CC gear though. I think Rain of Toads might stack actually... but not totally sure.

The only ability on par with Zombie Bears is Dire Bats. Honestly, there's not much reason to use anything besides Zombie Bears / Dire Bats / Poison Dart. Those 3 abilities are far better than everything else. Explosive Beast is alright but the AoE is too small truthfully.

Acid cloud is more of a supplemental ability that you could use with poison dart for example, which a lot of people actually do in Inferno. But I don't think it's great as a main attack.

**jamesL** · 24-06-2012, 02:58

Originally Posted by Chaosmage

... I haven't tried the improved pets yet...

they improved pets ?

**sacridoc** · 24-06-2012, 03:11

They didn't improve pets, they just nerfed the difficulty of Inferno.

Keep in mind that there's a good chance that when they buff pets that they'll also nerf CC items. Pets will never be anything more than tanks though so a full summon build is pointless, they're just added CC.