Acid Rain as a replacement for Zombie Bears.

[Chaosmage]

Wasn't there something about +vit items affecting the pets? Or was that just announced with for a later date?
You are probably right I haven't seen anything in the patch log.

Honesty I am going to play my WD less and less. With Zombie bears bugged there isn't really any thing the class can do better than any other class. Prior Zombie bears was the thing the WD can do which no other class can do, now for every thing which is left some other class has a similar ability that is just straight out better, Arcane Orb or Elemental Arrow is both more spamable and has higher range with similar damage in comparison to dire bats.

Moving along :/

[sacridoc]

Yeah, they announced it for a later date. They'll probably do it in 1.1 I would think.

WDs might be the worst class right now. A lot of our offensive abilities are just bad. And with ZBs gone we don't have that ability that kind of set WDs apart, like you said. Dire Bats is just a worse version of Piercing Orb, Ball Lightning and Nether Tentacles.

Maybe you could build a really good WD if you could stack huge mana regen so that VQ wouldn't be necessary. That's probably the key at this point to using Dire Bats, but you lose other stats of course.

[Thrakhath]

The way I see it, if you want to spam instant-damage spells constantly, you are playing the wrong class. WD was never supposed to be the best at this.

What makes the WD unique is summoning and damage-over-time. Summoning is temporarily broken, but DoT spells are pretty good right now (and improved nicely in 1.03). There is no class that can do what a WD can with Haunt/Locusts.

[sacridoc]

The thing that a lot of players didn't realize about the WD initially is that it's a melee caster. In order to play this class to its full potential (in terms of damage) you have to be in melee range. Except we don't get the 30% passive damage reduction... Look at Lingering Spirit or Well of Souls for example... when I made a WD I had no idea those abilities were melee range.

There's only 2 legitimate builds as I see it... a CC heavy build using Splinters as your main attack. And the more damage oriented build using Zombie Bears. Dire Bats is useable but 95% of people don't have enough mana regen at this point to use it without VQ and it works best without VQ in my opinion.

I think what makes the WD unique atm is 1) When Bears are working correctly we can do massive damage and 2) We have a lot of CC between Hex, Grasp, ZW and Haunt and can survive where other classes can't using Spirit Walk and Spirit Vessel.

Playing a CC build can get you through Inferno and it's pretty fun. But you can't reach your full potential in terms of damage and aren't able to kill things as efficiently as other classes. You'll be able to survive better, but eventually that becomes meaningless as you'd rather do more damage than just CC enemies to death.

LS is a great ability when you're outgearing the enemies you're fighting... but other than that it's pretty bad since you have to be in melee range and the damage is low on single targets. Haunt is good for kiting elites (with Grasping Spirit) but I haven't found a good use for it otherwise.

When pets are buffed the WD should get dramatically better because then we can actually be what we're meant to be... melee casters. Right now it's difficult to do that, although it was possible with Zombie Bears because the base damage is so huge.

[Thrakhath]

Melee casters is one theme running through the witch doctor spells; it just has always seemed inferior to a wizard style of play to me due to the way mana works.

I knew I was rolling a witch doctor months before release, because I love the idea of spell rotation and having lots of different spells acting at once. To me, spell rotation is key to my witch doctor builds and spamming one just feels boring. Each to their own, I guess.

[Chaosmage]

Melee casters is one theme running through the witch doctor spells; it just has always seemed inferior to a wizard style of play to me due to the way mana works.

I knew I was rolling a witch doctor months before release, because I love the idea of spell rotation and having lots of different spells acting at once. To me, spell rotation is key to my witch doctor builds and spamming one just feels boring. Each to their own, I guess.

Well it depends if you get used to vision quest it is almost the same.

Currently I am playing this build: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#ZgUXkc!fUT!abaYZY

It can play well together with the usual 2 DH 1 WIZ party you usually encounter in pubs as well as any melee characters. I have the bats assigned to my thumb mouse button. I only can run out of mana if I forget to invoke grasp, this can be pretty hasslesome if there are many critters around but have you ever had 3x unbreakable grasp out at the same time? Awesome I tell you.

Phantasm is really useful when you get the hang of it and hungry bats does alot of damage against a single target, not as much as well positioned zombie bears used to be but it works as long as you are in range no matter where you stand and you are not constrained by obstacles.

Also hungry bats is the best way to kill those sand wasps in act2. People will thank you for that

[Thrakhath]

This actually looks like really good fun, hungry bats is awesome

[MCPWTB]

Acid Rain can be spammed with vision quest, blood ritual, and enough mana regen.
Enough mana regen to barely spam it at 1.5 attacks per second is:
145*1.5 = 219 mana per second
220 / 4 = 55 base mana regen.
So +35 mana regen will produce just enough mana to 'spam' it at 1.5 attacks per second. Barely.
You'll need to take some breathers to make sure you regen some mana to keep VQ up.
Weapon and helm can have a max of 14 each, so one will have to use an Asp.

In the center of the acid rain it returns 280% life on hit. As the radius from the center increases, it will return steps of 40% less. I'm not sure if this exact same multiple applies to chance to impair, which would be very cool.

This is true for every tick.

edit:
According to this document, one can get +14 max mana regen on helm and weapon.r. Also voodoo mask can reduce the cost of acid rain!
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/...lX0c0dVE#gid=0

edit2:
I'm also not sure about the max life on hit factor at the center. I recall that being the number. I am more sure that it comes in multiples of 40% depending on the radius from the center.

[Chaosmage]

Acid Rain can be spammed with vision quest, blood ritual, and enough mana regen.
Enough mana regen to barely spam it at 1.5 attacks per second is:
145*1.5 = 219 mana per second
220 / 4 = 55 base mana regen.
So +25 mana regen will produce just enough mana to 'spam' it at 1.5 attacks per second. Barely.
You'll need to take some breathers to make sure you regen some mana to keep VQ up.
Not 100% sure, but weapon and helm can have a max of 12 each, so one will have to use an Asp.

In the center of the acid rain it returns 280% life on hit. As the radius from the center increases, it will return steps of 40% less. I'm not sure if this exact same multiple applies to chance to impair, which would be very cool.

This is true for every tick.

edit:
According to this document, one can get +14 max mana regen on helm and weapon, so the Asp is not required with the best gear. Also voodoo mask can reduce the cost of acid rain!
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/...lX0c0dVE#gid=0

Thanks for that, with some +max mana this will be more easily archive-able.
But since you are suggesting life on hit: A ceremonial blade having all that plus decent enough damage is incredible rare, not available at the GAH atm and if it ever does it would cost a fortune...

[MCPWTB]

Yes rare, but not quite so expensive as I thought at first.
I bought one with a socket and no LoH since it was cheaper.

I have one with 11 mana regen, INT, VIT, and a socket. One can stick an amethyst in there for +300 (or even +600 with the unique jewel crafting plans). The cost of the initial jewel is high, but then you have it forever.

The other weapons I had bought with INT, VIT, LoH, and potentially mana regen were more expensive and had at least 150 less DPS.

I guess to be able to get 12~14 mana regen will be difficult.

For now I'm using rain of toads with pierce the veil. I do eventually want to use only acid rain and wall of zombies falling corpses (756% damage works really well with crit chance/damage).

I should also note I've been getting as much chance to impair as possible since it works really well with acid rain.

I think the cheapest route is some sort of tank/damage hybrid with life on hit, life regen, int, vit, armor, resists. You don't need attack speed so that helps with rings, you could probably simply get high +INT and +all resists. Mine is more expensive because I irrationally require chance to impair.