Minion-based soloing builds are useless in Hell difficulty

[RTM]

...pet thoughts...

Wall of text inc!

The necromancer was my favorite class in D2 and the most fun I had was with a skeleton-based build, so I got it stuck in my craw to make an attempt at doing the same with the Witch Doctor. To that end I assembled a gearset focused on armor, all resists, chance to cast stun/freeze/blind, and thorns, all of which is dirt cheap on the AH. I don't think I paid over 100k for a single item except for my weapon, often much less. I am currently at 8800dps, ~475 all resists, ~63% DR, and 13500 thorns damage. My max health is only at 17k but honestly I don't get hit much, and if I do I regen it back in a second or two if I have some pets around doing damage. This will become a problem though, no question. The build I'm using is here.

I've now made it a decent amount into Act 2 Inferno and am just now seeing the end of the road for my minion-based build. The problems you mention have been surmountable so far, but the monsters in Act 2 just do too much damage. Even white mobs will whittle down my pack of dogs. I did run into 1 pack of elites in Act 1 that I couldn't handle- a 3-pack of those thorny hulk guys in the dungeon leading up to the Butcher. It didn't matter what mods they had, my dogs pretty much instantly splatted upon being hit.

I tried to think about what would make the build work past A2:

1. Better gear (duh). Finding appropriate gear is actually pretty tough- the list of mods you want is so long (+armor, +thorns, +all resists, +stun/freeze, optimally +int & +vit) that the AH interface fights you. High thorns damage is tough to search for also- 999 is the highest you can enter into the search box and some pieces can have up to 2500. I am not convinced of the long-term viability of a thorns build, however. The maximum amount of thorns you can get is close to 20k (from here) and with the big increase in health pools in later acts, I don't think the pets will stay alive long enough for thorns to be effective unless I start rocking some seriously top-tier armor & resists. Finding gear like that along with high thorns damage is going to be both expensive and difficult, which is the same boat everyone is in post A2 Inferno.

I've considered dropping the whole thorns thing and go life regen, but I think I'll run into a similar problem where incoming damage will outscale the regen. Honestly thorns + chance to stun/freeze/blind kind of fight against each other, and if I stop focusing on thorns then I can swap out the Fierce Loyalty passive for something more damage-focused, or maybe Bad Medicine to reduce damage. Considering the fact that the whole build is more or less based on the pet auras proccing various effects, I think I will wait to rejigger my whole gearset until I see if that is a bug or a feature.

2. Reducing the cooldown on pet summon skills. 1 minute is a loooooong time. Tie it in to the Zombie Handler passive, makes perfect sense.

3. Give pets immunity/great resistance to AoE ala WoW, as MMAgCh mentioned. Straight-up vitality scaling would be helpful too. I would also like one million dollars.

4. A way of controlling the pets. I imagine a pet bar like WoW's would go beyond the scope of what they want to do with D3, but a 'recall minions' button that ports all your pets to you would be tanfastic. Tie it in to Zombie Handler, makes perfect sense.


Despite all of the above, I think the build is great fun. It is an incredibly effective single-target build (stunlocking bosses is pretty hilarious) and works well in many Act 1 areas. I may just leave him in Act 1 to farm for now while I focus on other characters.