Darts, spiders, or toads? Opinions?

[NiteFox]

You're actually running a similar build to mine, with Zombie Dogs instead of my Horrify.

Horrify is also another one of those great panic button skills, reduces the risk that you'll get flanked, and is generally great fun for making the melee players run after to hit (Sorry Crusader )

[Arethor]

I just want to correct a little bit of misinformation in one of my prior posts. The immediate burst area damage on Fetish Army is a result of the Fetish Ambush rune. Without that rune there is no immediate damage, however they still are decent interference.

[swirly]

Seeing as how the servers are down right now I guess I finally have a chance to post here. I play a summon oriented hardcore witch doctor that is currently in Nightmare. Thought I'd rundown my feelings for various skills and how they work in my build. I realize I'm not directly answering the opening question, but oh well.

Leaping Spiders: I'm loving this skill. It's pretty much my primary attack. It costs so little that I can spam it and still regen mana. I also love that I can throw them then run around and let them attack. So I can stay mobile. I don't even need to be able to see the mob. Just know a general direction. Plus there often seems some small interaction with mobs. Not that they actually fully interact, but it sometimes seems like mobs try to walk around them or something weird like that. There just seems to be something going on there.

Spirit Walk: Originally I completely dismissed this skill. Now I think it is required for hardcore play. It gets you out from jailors or frozen champions. I'd assume breaks fear (I've not tried it). Then even greater than that, you can rune it to give mana back and so use it as a dps skill. Later on you can rune it to give life back which seems like it would surely be useful. Just an all around amazing skill.

Pierce the Veil: I like this spell with Spiders, but if you use any higher casting cost spells it becomes not worth it. I generally have a secondary attack that is a more expensive stronger AOE attack and I feel the passive hurts that too much. It does tempt me towards trying a build with just low cost skills and this, but I just can't seem to justify it right now. Something like a Dart/Bomb build since both only cost 10 mana (according to the guide) might be interesting since that gives a single target and an aoe.

Wall of Zombies: I really wanted to like this skill, but the cooldown on it just seemed way too long. Maybe it is viable with a dps rune like Pile On, but as control it seems really bad.

Grasp of the Dead: This is a skill I keep trying to go without and coming back to. It is just so good that I end up feeling unsafe without it. It'll spend a bunch of play time unused, but then randomly become the difference between trouble and safety. When things go wrong this skill makes it so I can survive. I'm not exactly sure why I keep wanting to get rid of it, but I have a suspension that it will be a skill that stays with me forever.

Dire Bats: My go to big damage AOE skill. I really wanted to switch from it to Exploding Beasts, but those just don't work as well. They explode on contact, have short explosion radius, and have a horrible tendency to run into obstacles. Dire Bats on the other hand hit every mob in the path instead of just the first couple and are much better at flying their full path. This is another skill I keep wanting to find another skill to fill the role of and yet not being able to find one I like better. I'd not be surprised if I end up deciding it is simply the best at doing what I want for this slot in my skills.

Gargantuan: Originally I was going to go with Big Stinker, but I'm really loving Restless Giant. It is getting to the point where I'm not sure I would use any other form of it. Possibly the one that turns it into a cooldown just because I could put it with the 4 cooldown passive, but otherwise Restless Giant is just so good that I'll likely stick with it.

Toad of Hugeness: I was amazingly unimpressed with this skill. There just seems to be such a lack of need for it. Up close single target that is just bad. It is such a sad thing cause I really wanted to like it.

Hex: Tried this with the Hedge Magic rune. I was in a group when I tried it and we never felt the heal going off. Hex itself was decent though. It felt like it could be quite useful since it can completely remove a mob from the fight. With some champion packs that could be quite powerful. Yet for me it takes the same slot as Grasp of the Dead and it just seems weaker in the end. I do like how it has good uptime though. Stays up for 12 seconds with a 15 second cooldown. So there are only 3 seconds it is down for. So you can use it quite a bit. I'm slightly undecided on this. It has potential, but I think that you not being able to control it makes it not as good as other skills.

Fetish Army: I may not have given this a long enough trial, but the bit I used it I just felt like I didn't really feel it being active. I'd see the fetishes, but the damage wasn't noticeable to me and I already had the mobs distracted with my pets so it just seemed pointless.

Horrify: I used this and Grasp both for a while. Basically up until Spirit Walk became available to me. I think what it comes down to is that I have two slots for these types of skills. I feel like Spirit Walk is required. So it becomes Horrify or Grasp and Horrify just has too long of a cooldown to really even compete. That is even neglecting that the fear seems weaker too to me. I'd rather keep the mobs from getting close than fear them once they are. So it just loses out to other skills that seem stronger to me.

Fetish Sycophants: I really wanted this passive to be good. I figured with me spamming spiders and throwing bats that it would proc decently. I did get up to 3 of them at one point, but there just seemed to be too often I had none and I couldn't really feel the difference anyway. Another issue I had with it is that I didn't like the play style it encouraged. The fetishes last 60 seconds and so the passive encourages you to play fast to get the most use out of them when you do have some up. Playing in hardcore, I don't really want to play like that. I'm much more of the slow and steady sort. So it just ended up rubbing me wrong unfortunately.

Bad Medicine: I've liked this passive with Rabid Dogs. I feel like they live much longer with it than without. That said, it is also a passive I'm really hoping to get rid of. My hope is that Leeching Beasts will negate needing it and let me switch to something else. I do feel like it is a decent passive though even with me only using those dogs for poison. So other builds could probably make better use of it as well.

So with all that said right now I'm using Leaping Spiders, Dire Bats, Honored Guest, Unbreakable Grasp, Rabid Dogs, Restless Giant, Jungle Fortitude, Bad Medicine, and Zombie Handler.

My hope is to replace Rabid with Leeching Beasts and then Bad Medicine with something else. I'm really not sure what though. Looking at the passives the choice for me seems to be Spiritual Attunement (for more Dire Bats), Spirit Vessel (for life saving in hardcore), Grave Injustice (for regaining life/mana as mobs die), or Tribal Rights (if I were to decide to swap Grasp out for Hex or Ghost Trance). I think I'm leaning toward Spirit Vessel currently.

So that is my experience with skills so far. Obviously there are a lot I've not really touched on since they don't fit with how I'm playing my char.

[Zedd]

No love for Spirit Barrage?

Personally, I've been running with Spirit Barrage as my single/few target DPS spell, and Locust Swarm for my sorta-AoE. I load up with a few moderate-cooldown spells (Spirit Walk, Big Bad Voodoo, Soul Harvest, Horrify), run near a pack, Swarm->Soul Harvest->Swarm (swarm can double-apply if you change your INT)->Horrify->Spirit Walk out, then spam the hell out of barrage. I have Vision Quest, Pierce the Veil to crank that spam up, along with Spirit Vessel for the inevitable crap I get into. Spirit Barrage can really crank out damage with those passives, and the Locust Swarms give me some nice passive damage for when I need to kite.

[Kevin]

No love for Spirit Barrage?

Personally, I've been running with Spirit Barrage as my single/few target DPS spell, and Locust Swarm for my sorta-AoE. I load up with a few moderate-cooldown spells (Spirit Walk, Big Bad Voodoo, Soul Harvest, Horrify), run near a pack, Swarm->Soul Harvest->Swarm (swarm can double-apply if you change your INT)->Horrify->Spirit Walk out, then spam the hell out of barrage. I have Vision Quest, Pierce the Veil to crank that spam up, along with Spirit Vessel for the inevitable crap I get into. Spirit Barrage can really crank out damage with those passives, and the Locust Swarms give me some nice passive damage for when I need to kite.

I'm still swapping and testing as I go, I've had some very nice build with spirit barrage. I think it may not have been mentioned because it's one of those skills that gets better as you progress. The damage/mana ratio gets a lot better as you gear up.

Playing mostly hardcore I feel I've really only got one passive that I can swap around as the 20% damage reduction and the "get out of jail free" passives (the cooldown reduction on spirit walk is nice too) are too valuable to me. So I actually run the builds around the other passive and where my gear is at for the mobs I'm facing. Of course fun plays too.

I'm currently running with a build that is using the three bounce firebomb (since each bounce does AoE) and medusa spiders with pierce the veil for the passive. The extra mana cost doesn't matter for those two and you get AoE from the skulls, CC and single target from the spiders. I also still use haunt with lifesteal as a bit of a spammable that still lets me move and apply damage.

My new favorite skill is mass confusion runed to up damage by 20% to all affected targets. It works well solo and it's amazing in nightmare difficulty if you are playing with a barb that has earthquake. Champion and rare/minion packs can just melt so fast with some of them smacking each other and the earthquake ramping up the damage even more. In groups I've wondered about getting the fetish that ups attack speed and damage since the champs and rares are generally the real issue. I'd probably have to give up my gargantuan for it and he can be very handy at times still (and stinker adds a nice little AoE damage at all times). I'm trying to keep the builds usable in groups and solo.

I'm 52 now I think (might still just be 51) and there is some stuff still locked that I want to try, but I'm still usually OK soloing in a 2 player game in Act III NM with most of the builds I've tried. I know if I were SC I'd like be in Hell somewhere at that level but I play it safe.

[swirly]

Last night I decided to try out Medusa Spiders mainly from seeing GG use them in an early game. They have convinced me to abandon Leeping Spiders for them. They seem to work really well and finally make me feel like I can dump Grasp of the Dead. That freed up a slot for me which I also stole from GG and ran with Mass Confusion though I ran with the cooldown reduction instead of the damage boost.

[Arethor]

This was my flavor of the night build last night.

Blazing spiders do a solid amount of damage which I was pleased with. Because of their ability to swarm it felt like it was more damage than the darts I had been using.

Zombie Bears are oh so awesome. Mana intensive, but launching a full globe worth of zombie bears can absolutely devestate champs/elites/bosses. A little difficult to aim at times but the benefits outweighed these two issues. Bears also run through targets, hitting multiple enemies.

Healing Journey is pretty standard. Get out of a tight spot, heal up some hp on a fairly short cooldown, or even close gaps on a running treasure goblin.

Tiki Torchers are the skill I was most unsure of using in this build. I still like the distraction and damage that they provide, and with 2 extra Fetish who do additional damage in a cone I figure it was worth giving a shot. Looking forward to giving the Head Hunters a try when i unlock them at 60.

Corspe Bomb does a nice amount of ranged AE damage. Now in the later stages of Act 2 Hell, it feels nice to have some strong up-front damage rather than relying on any sort of DoTs.

Bruiser is a bit hard to gauge for me so far with my current build. I like the Gargantuan for soloing still and this rune seems like it should be good. I didn't get to play much after unlocking it though, so I didn't get a good feel for the activation rate. I didn't really notice the stun though, so I'll have to pay more attention to that to determine if it's the best way to go or not.

Jungle Fortitude is an obvious choice. Damage reduction all around.

Spiritual Attunement is mostly picked up for more Bear spam because of how strong it is.

Spirit Vessel because my reaction with Spirit Walk is slow at times and because I tend to go a bit Rambo sometimes getting myself in bad spots.

I had been using the Slam Dance rune on Big Bad Voodoo before I unlocked Corpse Bomb and that also seemed to do a solid job of boosting damage output.