02-06-2013, 07:04 PM
(This post was last modified: 02-06-2013, 08:59 PM by Aahzmadius.)
Well, since MonTy asked for updates:
So just for something different I decided to try a new farming build for my witch doctor. The passive skill Circle of Life grants a 30% chance to summon a zombie dog when a monster dies within a 12-yard radius-which can be extended with items that boost your gold pickup radius. With my mojo and its 20-foot radius…Wait! There’s a joke in there. If I were single, I could say “Hey, ladies. Check out the huge radius on my Thing of the Deep!” What a pickup line that would have been! But anyway, I thought I would go back to the Sacrifice skill that I used for most of normal difficulty. Skills swapped out:
Spirit Barrage, Grasp of the Dead, Mass Confusion, Gruesome Feast, Blood Ritual
For:
Firebomb/Ghost Bomb
Acid Cloud/Acid Rain (my helm grants a boost to crit chance on this skill)
Sacrifice/Provoke the Pack
Circle of Life, Zombie Handler
Firebomb is just a nice area of effect skill when you are out of mana (OOM). Sacrifice allows you to blow up your zombie dogs for over 200% weapon damage. Provoke the pack boosts your damage for 30 seconds by 5% per dog sacrificed. (Unfortunately Blizzard did not add a skill bar graphic to let you know when this damage buff is in effect. Sloppy and annoying.) Zombie Handler grants the ability to summon a fourth dog-MOAR DAMAGE!
I basically used this build while I was at paragon 57, and it worked OK but it was a little slower than my previous build. Plus there were times when I was OOM and had no zombie dogs available to sacrifice (usually Extra Health elite packs). So, a fun change of pace but I switched back to my preferred farming build with Spirit Barrage/Well of Souls.
Speaking of which, I found a couple of upgrades this week. One was a minor armor upgrade for my WD: a little more vitality and a little more magic find. The big one I mentioned on the Shiny Prizes thread: a really nice Chantodo’s wand that went to my wizard. Now this triggered my desire to upgrade the wizard even more since I was lacking some attack speed-and I had just read a post about how Energy Twister procs more often with more IAS. At the same time, I want to save up 30MM for a DH glove upgrade, and I knew I was getting close to an amulet replacement for my WD (since I could drop the current one with magic find and change to something else due to paragon bonuses). I had recently shopped for WD amulets and found what I was looking for listed at 10MM; so I assumed a similar one for the wizard would cost about the same. But should I even spend that gold? For one, I’m trying to save for the gloves. And further complicating things is there will be new crafting recipes available once 1.07 goes live. But I would have to find the Amulet of Intelligence plan, so there’s no telling how long it might take. And when I want upgrades, I want them NOW. And then I thought “it’s too bad I don’t have an amulet like the one my DH uses for my wizard and witch doctor.”
Hang on a minute…amulets are not class specific. I can only play one character at a time. Diablo 3 has a shared stash. I DO have great amulets for my WD and Wiz-it’s just the same one currently on my DH! (And I should have thought of this long ago since Sfounder [guildmate] stashes his Hellfire ring to use across his different characters.) And since I just hit paragon 59 and my WD is ready for that amulet upgrade, I could let him “borrow” it from my DH. How much did that help his damage? Took it up 20k to around 75k DPS. MOAR FARMING SPEED! I haven’t checked it on my wizard yet, but it should bump him up as well (not as much since his current amulet is better than the old WD one). Needless to say, I’m excited about the change.
Last night I tried the WD on MP5 for the first time, in an Act 2 key run with Sfounder’s barb. I had about 3 deaths, partly due to an unfamiliar build. I brought my old Skorn out of retirement for a DPS boost, put in a +500 life on hit amethyst in it, and went with the following build:
Plague of Toads/Rain of Toads
Acid Cloud/Lob Blob Bomb
Hex/Jinx
Spirit Walk/Healing Journey
Zombie Dogs/Rabid Dogs
Soul Harvest/Soul to Waste
Jungle Fortitude/Bad Medicine/Fetish Sycophants
This is a pet build, designed to spew forth plenty of targets to distract the monsters from attacking you. Actually the forum post called for Gargantuan, but I prefer Hex due to its crowd control advantages. The Acid Cloud rune drops blobs (like Ghom’s acid slime) that do some damage as well as distract. PoT/RoT casts very quickly, maximizing the amount of fetishes that spawn with the Sycophants passive. Rabid Dogs do poison damage to take advantage of the Bad Medicine skill, and Jungle Fortitude mitigates the damage you and your pets absorb.
It worked OK, but there were a couple of notable deficiencies. Skorn is a sub-optimal weapon for this build because it does not have a fast attack speed. A few million (which I don’t currently have) spent on the AH could correct this. Also, Reflect Damage still hurts, which means I need to add Life on Hit to my equipment. Sounds like a crafting project for 1.07. Still, if I do further key farming runs with the WD, I expect this is the build I will use.
With my recent DPS boost I’m thinking about a different farming build that will attempt to cut down the time it takes for a farming run-but it will require discipline on my part to avoid distractions while playing. We’ll see how it goes.
So just for something different I decided to try a new farming build for my witch doctor. The passive skill Circle of Life grants a 30% chance to summon a zombie dog when a monster dies within a 12-yard radius-which can be extended with items that boost your gold pickup radius. With my mojo and its 20-foot radius…Wait! There’s a joke in there. If I were single, I could say “Hey, ladies. Check out the huge radius on my Thing of the Deep!” What a pickup line that would have been! But anyway, I thought I would go back to the Sacrifice skill that I used for most of normal difficulty. Skills swapped out:
Spirit Barrage, Grasp of the Dead, Mass Confusion, Gruesome Feast, Blood Ritual
For:
Firebomb/Ghost Bomb
Acid Cloud/Acid Rain (my helm grants a boost to crit chance on this skill)
Sacrifice/Provoke the Pack
Circle of Life, Zombie Handler
Firebomb is just a nice area of effect skill when you are out of mana (OOM). Sacrifice allows you to blow up your zombie dogs for over 200% weapon damage. Provoke the pack boosts your damage for 30 seconds by 5% per dog sacrificed. (Unfortunately Blizzard did not add a skill bar graphic to let you know when this damage buff is in effect. Sloppy and annoying.) Zombie Handler grants the ability to summon a fourth dog-MOAR DAMAGE!
I basically used this build while I was at paragon 57, and it worked OK but it was a little slower than my previous build. Plus there were times when I was OOM and had no zombie dogs available to sacrifice (usually Extra Health elite packs). So, a fun change of pace but I switched back to my preferred farming build with Spirit Barrage/Well of Souls.
Speaking of which, I found a couple of upgrades this week. One was a minor armor upgrade for my WD: a little more vitality and a little more magic find. The big one I mentioned on the Shiny Prizes thread: a really nice Chantodo’s wand that went to my wizard. Now this triggered my desire to upgrade the wizard even more since I was lacking some attack speed-and I had just read a post about how Energy Twister procs more often with more IAS. At the same time, I want to save up 30MM for a DH glove upgrade, and I knew I was getting close to an amulet replacement for my WD (since I could drop the current one with magic find and change to something else due to paragon bonuses). I had recently shopped for WD amulets and found what I was looking for listed at 10MM; so I assumed a similar one for the wizard would cost about the same. But should I even spend that gold? For one, I’m trying to save for the gloves. And further complicating things is there will be new crafting recipes available once 1.07 goes live. But I would have to find the Amulet of Intelligence plan, so there’s no telling how long it might take. And when I want upgrades, I want them NOW. And then I thought “it’s too bad I don’t have an amulet like the one my DH uses for my wizard and witch doctor.”
Hang on a minute…amulets are not class specific. I can only play one character at a time. Diablo 3 has a shared stash. I DO have great amulets for my WD and Wiz-it’s just the same one currently on my DH! (And I should have thought of this long ago since Sfounder [guildmate] stashes his Hellfire ring to use across his different characters.) And since I just hit paragon 59 and my WD is ready for that amulet upgrade, I could let him “borrow” it from my DH. How much did that help his damage? Took it up 20k to around 75k DPS. MOAR FARMING SPEED! I haven’t checked it on my wizard yet, but it should bump him up as well (not as much since his current amulet is better than the old WD one). Needless to say, I’m excited about the change.
Last night I tried the WD on MP5 for the first time, in an Act 2 key run with Sfounder’s barb. I had about 3 deaths, partly due to an unfamiliar build. I brought my old Skorn out of retirement for a DPS boost, put in a +500 life on hit amethyst in it, and went with the following build:
Plague of Toads/Rain of Toads
Acid Cloud/Lob Blob Bomb
Hex/Jinx
Spirit Walk/Healing Journey
Zombie Dogs/Rabid Dogs
Soul Harvest/Soul to Waste
Jungle Fortitude/Bad Medicine/Fetish Sycophants
This is a pet build, designed to spew forth plenty of targets to distract the monsters from attacking you. Actually the forum post called for Gargantuan, but I prefer Hex due to its crowd control advantages. The Acid Cloud rune drops blobs (like Ghom’s acid slime) that do some damage as well as distract. PoT/RoT casts very quickly, maximizing the amount of fetishes that spawn with the Sycophants passive. Rabid Dogs do poison damage to take advantage of the Bad Medicine skill, and Jungle Fortitude mitigates the damage you and your pets absorb.
It worked OK, but there were a couple of notable deficiencies. Skorn is a sub-optimal weapon for this build because it does not have a fast attack speed. A few million (which I don’t currently have) spent on the AH could correct this. Also, Reflect Damage still hurts, which means I need to add Life on Hit to my equipment. Sounds like a crafting project for 1.07. Still, if I do further key farming runs with the WD, I expect this is the build I will use.
With my recent DPS boost I’m thinking about a different farming build that will attempt to cut down the time it takes for a farming run-but it will require discipline on my part to avoid distractions while playing. We’ll see how it goes.