What the WD SHOULD look like IMO

[LaZeR]

The openning of the Fan Class section on Wiki and the mention of last year's BlizzCon ticket contest, has reminded me of an entry in that same contest.
Before Blizzcon, Kaeros improved the WD as seen only in the first trailer, and made a whole tree.

Now, this is the most amazing tree I've seen IMO. Although this isn't very D3-like as we know by now- few Passive and wrong skills arangement- the concept of this Tree is so great, I must say if this is was the WD in D3 I would be overjoyed.

Here it is:

Originally Posted by Kaeros

This completed skillset is for what could theoretically be the Witch Doctor's Summoning Tree. There are 16 skills in the tree, broken up into levels and pre-requisites*, a la Diablo II. The rows are broken down as follows:

First row: Level 1, start-up skills
Second row: Level 7
Third row: Level 12
Fourth row: Level 18
Fifth row: Level 25
Sixth row: Level 30
Seventh row: Level 50

All skill descriptions are mine – some of the icons are taken from larger public domain images, others are taken from texture libraries, and a few others are pretty familiar, I think! If you notice, there are two other tabs at the top of the list for the other two trees I didn't create: An Alchemy Tab, and a Voodoo Tab. The Alchemy tab is where you'd find the enchanting skills necessary for setting Mongrels up with locusts or fire, explaining my lack of those skills here.

The direction I was going for with the skills was to have a lot of fun, meaty summons that don’t necessarily stick around very long. As you can see, almost everything you can create you can destroy as well. The zombie is the exception here, and the functionality I gave him was as sort of a tank, or like an offensive linemen in football. He’ll grapple and gnaw at creatures just long enough to give you some time to retreat and wing some firebombs or send some mongrels in. All of the zombie spells, in fact, including Ancestors’ Reach, provide this support.

The pygmies are the Fetish from Diablo II, and for some reason, I just saw their inclusion as the perfect, slightly humorous fit for the WD. Ring a bell, and a flock of them come in to help you for X seconds. Even better, you can blow them up if you wish, causing massive damage and enacting your revenge after all those years.

Finally, the Flesh Monstrosity is supposed to be a more long-term, lumbering pet that you keep with you and keep happy with corpses. However, if you want to make a trade-off and get rid of him after you’ve spent all the time feeding him to max growth, you can click Boom and he’ll explode, shaving off a healthy % portion of all the monsters in the room. Meaty, fleshy, visceral.

I hope you have some fun reading the skills and looking at all the little details in the screenshot. I enjoyed it!

- Kaeros.

So, what do you think?
Is this a build you would be happy to see in D3?

[Mad Mantis]

There are some interesting spells in there. I'd like to see more ways to expand a single skill. Most of them have but a single upgrade. It would be interesting to see more upgrades for a single skills. This would allow you to modify a skill to suit your play style in addition to any benefits that runes might bring.

[ManBearPig]

To the OP great stuff man that looks like a fun class and how the witch doctor should be imo.

Originally Posted by Mad Mantis

There are some interesting spells in there. I'd like to see more ways to expand a single skill. Most of them have but a single upgrade. It would be interesting to see more upgrades for a single skills. This would allow you to modify a skill to suit your play style in addition to any benefits that runes might bring.

I like that idea too. For instance, say you have a multi-elemental spell that uses fire and ice and you could have the ability to choose higher cold damage or fire damage within the already increased damage of upgrading the spell. This would allow the skill to be either Cold or fire biased based on your build.

[TheWhetherMan]

I agree with Mantis. This tree has a few too many active skills and not enough passives. Mongrel and Wall of Zombies are confirmed, and I'd be happy if they added one more summon skill. Ideally it would be a single, durable dude with an aura or group buff ability that players can improve and customize with passives. Something similar to Smell of Brains would be fantastic. It could even share passives with the third summon spell, possibly reducing the defenses of the target, increasing the damage of attacks made against the target, slowing the target, etc. I hope a summoner WD is viable.

[sreda]

Wow excellent work. This is exactly the kind of concept I was hoping for with the Witch Doctor. A very ghoulish class, I really love the Rigomortis passive. It's very voodoo-like, it brings thoughts of stricken limbs, moving in a diabolic way, much like a mannequin being reanimated.

I like the thought you put into this, and I agree the WD should be like this.