Tank 1.0.4 WD Discussion

[Karth]

Currently in my theorycrafting, Zombie Handler is not as good as taking Fiere Loyalty and grabbing about 700-1k life regen. My set of passives would be Fortitude/Bad Medicine/Fierce. With the mechanics of summons, it should be relatively easy to make pets take <4000 damage from a single blow (also note they are now immune to things like Plagued, Molten, Frozen, etc.), coupled with a good life pool, inherent regen and 1k more regen from Fierce Loyalty, you should be able to tank most stuff with them. Running up to a pack of elites with rain of toads, spider queen, 3 dogs and a gargantuan should return enough life/hit to tank through everything while dealing substantial damage and proccing freeze/stun reasonably often.

4k damage/hit is about what a single player only type might manage by the very beginning of Inferno, and on anyone who uses the GAH or twinks it would be downright silly. 4k damage/hit = 2500 armor and 100 res and assuming Jungle Fortitude doesn't affect the damage/hit cap. I have a very positive outlook for zombie dog and gargantuan survivability in 1.04.

[Such Violent Storms]

Indeed, the WD changes are superb for RoT tanking!

-Burning Dogs was nerfed, so that they only "hit" once per second, but that's still fine.
-Spider Queen only damages one enemy, but her damage is massively increased.
-Gargantuan now swings for 100% weapon damage.
-RoT has its cost reduced to 12 mana! Now it can be definitely be spammed without having to get a slow 2H (though this is still viable), even with Pierce the Veil.

Looking at legendaries, it's a slew of proc effects for us to chose from.
1H:
Last Breath: Spawned with +14% plague of toads damage and massive 500 life regen. Fierce Loyalty is even better now.
Sky Splitter: no Plague of toads damage, but that juice life regen is still there,AND a chance to smite enemies. Dunno what Smite does, if it's a stun or damage or both.

[Karth]

The Burning Dogs and Spider Queen AoE changes may just be rewording of the description; I wouldn't jump the gun on that. Either way, lots of interesting things are happening in WD-land.

[Dethklok]

Without specific details on the new Zombie Dogs passive life regeneration rate, it's very hard to determine what the best passives are. Zombie Handler is actually almost definitely worth it, just to have another body. It seems like Fierce Loyalty will be pretty darn good for them, but like One With Everything it requires a gear commitment; Jungle Fortitude and Bad Medicine might be almost/equally viable without gear constraints, plus they also benefit you and not just your pets.

Also a nitpick: Two-handers only have "just as many LOH procs" as one-handers in the long term, once the mana globe has been emptied and you're relying on mana regeneration. During the initial burst when you actually have mana stored, more attack speed = faster setup = more LOH procs. Depending on how long you're expecting battles to last, travel time between battles, etc., this could mean that one-handers get significantly more LOH procs than the two-handers; it depends on what content you're running.

[Such Violent Storms]

Without specific details on the new Zombie Dogs passive life regeneration rate, it's very hard to determine what the best passives are. Zombie Handler is actually almost definitely worth it, just to have another body. It seems like Fierce Loyalty will be pretty darn good for them, but like One With Everything it requires a gear commitment; Jungle Fortitude and Bad Medicine might be almost/equally viable without gear constraints, plus they also benefit you and not just your pets.

Also a nitpick: Two-handers only have "just as many LOH procs" as one-handers in the long term, once the mana globe has been emptied and you're relying on mana regeneration. During the initial burst when you actually have mana stored, more attack speed = faster setup = more LOH procs. Depending on how long you're expecting battles to last, travel time between battles, etc., this could mean that one-handers get significantly more LOH procs than the two-handers; it depends on what content you're running.

Indeed, we don't have exact values on regeneration, but in the preview it said that pet regeneration is high. They tried it REALLY high, but when they did the whole Force Armor-esque thing they toned it down a bit. I imagine it's still quite high. Being immune to DoT like Desecrator/Plagued/etc. also helps this right along.
Pulling Fierce Loyalty along for the ride can add 1k life regen easy, that doesn't require a big investment. 2k, 3k life regen would be a large investment. The goal is to create a situation in which the average damage received over one second is less than the health regenerated in one second.

The goal with Toads is to spam it without running out of mana. This can be done seeing that toads no longer costs 34 mana per cast, and is instead only 12.

[MCPWTB]

I'm on information over load over at the WD forums.

Spiders are a lot better.
Fire pit seems kind of pointless, but whatever.
Rain of Toads, Acid Rain, and Spirit Barrage Manitou are a good combo for Chance to Impair/LoH tank/proc builds.
I love the new mana regen.
I love the new Zombie Dogs. I replaced fetish army with Zombie Dogs + Leeching Rune.
Speaking of fetishes, the Gidbinn has a chance to summon a fetish on attack (And 35% MF). Someone was using it was the passive for summoning fetishes.

Too many possibilities, too little time o_0.

Thread for the RoT, Acid Cloud, and SB build:
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/6397719789

[Such Violent Storms]

I wouldn't take RoT and acid rain. AR's mana cost is humongous and could otherwise be used to stack a bunch of RoT.

[Karth]

I wouldn't take RoT and acid rain. AR's mana cost is humongous and could otherwise be used to stack a bunch of RoT.

RoT only costs 12 mana now, though. With decent gear you should wind up having a good bit of spare mana.

[MCPWTB]

Before the patch, the combination of RoT and Acid Rain was the best life on hit per second, as tested by another, but that post is long lost on the blizzard forums. Even then, fire pit was awesome. But now that fire pit doesn't work well with LoH, pet auras either don't proc or proc for very little life on hit, you're left with rain of toads, acid rain, and maybe something I've overlooked.

Cast one acid cloud with slow burn (6s) or acid rain (3s) and cast RoT in between. Either using only mana regen from items or additionally SA or VQ, you should be able to regenerate all of your mana before casting another acid rain or slow burn.

Last night I played with a tank WD friend. Previously he obviously never used pets, used fire pit as his main attack for LoH, but now he's casting a garg, dogs leeching beasts, fierce loyalty, zombie handler, and then probably some other pet passive, and we ran all the way through act 3 no problems. He tanked az without moving. I didn't take note of how well his pets survived az, but he kept saying they are invincible.

[Doctor Clock]

Phantasm gives 25% per tick. Source. This is pre 1.0.4, but I don't see anything in the patch notes about Phantasm having its proc chance nerfed.

Personally, I find RoT and Acid Cloud to be redundant, especially considering you can have your Gargantuan and Zombie Dogs taking a lot of hits for you.