Can we start a specific skill discussion thread?

[DeeBye]

I want to start with Spirit Walk.

Cost: 49 Mana

Cooldown: 15 seconds

Leave your physical body and enter the spirit realm for 2 seconds. While in the spirit realm, your movement is unhindered.Your link to the spirit realm will end if your physical body sustains 50% of your maximum Life in damage.

I just can't imagine playing a WD without it. It just has so many offensive and defensive uses. The defensive ones are obvious - it breaks snares and lets you run the hell away from trouble like a frightened child - but I also love it for offense to jump into the middle of a giant pack and pop off a 5-stack Soul Harvest. In fact, Spirit Walking into giant pack when really low on health can save your ass if you use it to pop Soul Harvest with the Siphon Rune for heath recovery. It's both offense, and defense, and sometimes both at once. Such incredible utility. More than a few times I've found myself overwhelmed and in a bad state of low health, low mana, and surrounded by angry mobs and totally turned the tables by Spirit Walking (with Honoured Guest) into a pack of mobs and using Soul Harvest (with Siphon) to put myself back into battle shape and throw around a few angry Zombie Bears.

This leads me to Spirit Vessel, because I can't talk about Spirit Walk without also talking about Spirit Vessel.

Reduces the cooldown of your Horrify, Spirit Walk, and Soul Harvest spells by 2 seconds. In addition, the next time you receive fatal damage, you automatically enter the spirit realm for 3 seconds and heal to 10% of your maximum Life. This effect cannot occur more than once every 90 seconds.

I talked above about the Spirit Walk/Soul Harvest synergy, and how I use/abuse them for both offense and defense. It's interesting to note that both Spirit Walk and Soul Harvest have a 15s cooldown. I'm sure that's no accident, judging by the way that I've learned to use both in sequence. Spirit Vessel lowers that cooldown by an additional 2 seconds, and in my mind that would be enough to use this Passive.

But wait there's more! Spirit Vessel also gives you a "get out of death free!" card. Spirit Walking into giant angry packs of mobs like I do can sometimes be risky, so Spirit Vessel is here to save your bacon. If you mess up and take deadly damage, you instantly go into Spirit Walk form and can run away like a frightened child to safety again and pretend it never happened. It gives you a 90s debuff during which Spirit Vessel can no longer save you from death, but that 90 seconds is enough time for you to stop and think about how dumb you were for almost-dying in the first place.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pla...tY0#t=106s

Edit: I couldn't get the video-linker to display the above properly, so just click on it and pretend I did.

[Magicbag]

I want to start with Spirit Walk.

I agree it's a must have in non-trivial difficulty. Using it correctly in later difficulties can be tricky though as it basically creates a dummy you that your spirit travels from. If the dummy takes 50% damage, it breaks the walk. This happens a lot if you are traveling out of a really hot situation. It's ideal for dodging one shot attacks or things that would normally trap you. As well as setting up positioning by running through a pack.

I also like it because I'm really lazy and it lets me run fast for 2 seconds of every 15 if I want to!

Most often it's runed with life gain (7%/sec) or mana gain (15%/sec).

[Kevin]

So I've been changing my builds a lot since I got to Act IV NM / Act I Hell and been soloing more than grouping on my currently L52 hardcore doctor. It isn't because a build I had wasn't working, I just want to try skills on tougher things. I still keep a few escape skills of course, but I want to talk about a skill that I don't think a lot of folks have used, that being spirit barrage. The base skill isn't all that great, you'll do as much damage with splinter darts and it's single target as well. Well of souls gives you a bit of AoE on it but there are better ways to go. Phlebotomize helps some, 3% life steal, but that only comes into it's own when your base damage gets high enough. At my base 2000 - 2500 or so base damage it smacks for 3500 - 4500, and gets me about 110 - 130 or so health back. Even at 12K or so DPS you'll probably only get 600 - 700 back per hit. I get several hundred a second running Blood Ritual as a passive right now (and get more use out of my mana pool).

So I've not been super high on it. But then I tried Phantasm and realized that it's better damage than I though. It's around 500 a tick at my 2K base damage, and I get about 10 ticks of that per mob, yes it seems to tick every half second for 5 seconds so if a mob is there for the full 5 seconds you'll put about 5000 damage into it with a 2K base damage and it hits everything in 10 yards. Not a big range, but it's spammable.

That means you can set up a blender. Sure, sure, it's not the best damage in the world, but just about any grasp will keep an Act 1 hell mob in the range for the full duration and you can easily afford to cast 2 or 3 on top of the grasp and cackle as the blue swirls spin round and round cutting up the poor zombies, or bats, or skellies. It worked wonders on that immune minion molten frozen I ran into (a bat) since the minions didn't get in the way of the damage. It even chewed the plagued fast fire chainers which surprised me, though there was some mass confusion help on them. I've also chewed up a couple other packs (arcane waller desecrate) and (vortex lightning arcane) that was on the big guys that explode and release snakes or pygmy dudes or whatever.

I know I've played higher DPS builds, but I'm playing for fun and I was surprised at the fun of phantasm. I hadn't had grasp on my bar for awhile either, but it just seemed like such a fun pairing and it's viable in early Hell too. I had big stinker, mass confuse, spirit walk and darts or skulls (changed em around a few times) for the other skills, passives were spirit vessel, jungle fort, and blood ritual but I was generally using phantasm and grasp to kill most stuff. I wasn't trying to max the utility of it, just having fun. I believe it leaches pretty well with on hit life so there are some other options for it.

Just thought I would share. I've monkeyed with Zombie Wall - Pile On (and had fun seeing 15K hits) too and was glad to have the bouncing skull targeting experience that works pretty well with it too. But I wasn't getting quite as much fun out of it, and there was a waller desecrator don't remember pack that really made things tough on me with it because the walls blocked casts or damage, I ended up drinking two pots with them. Even with extra slowing grasp I had issues with positioning them. I think it would be a blast in a group though even with the knockback (that I rarely saw since most things just died to it)

[DeeBye]

I agree it's a must have in non-trivial difficulty. Using it correctly in later difficulties can be tricky though as it basically creates a dummy you that your spirit travels from. If the dummy takes 50% damage, it breaks the walk. This happens a lot if you are traveling out of a really hot situation. It's ideal for dodging one shot attacks or things that would normally trap you. As well as setting up positioning by running through a pack.

I had a pretty fun time with a Vampiric/Vortex/Plagued boss pack composed of those Succubi things in Act 4 Hell(the ones that fly away when you get into melee range AKA Zombie Bear range) tonight. The fight literally took more than 10 minutes, with me using Spirit Walk/Soul Harvest on every cooldown. It was absolute madness, with them having me below 25% health for most of the entire fight. I couldn't stand still long enough to launch a Splinters barrage for more than a cast of two, lest I be Vortexed into green stuff or having them focus-fire me with red balls of death. My Templar and Gargantuan didn't help much, because they just fueled their Vampiric and caused them to fly away and not group up for any sort of Bear attack. So I had to Splinters them down, and I'm pretty sure Plagued means they take substantially less Poison Damage. It was a really long battle.

Anyways - long story short - I won; they lost. It was the Spirit Walk/Soul Harvest/Spirit Vessel triumvirate that eventually won it for me.

The reason I am saying this is because not once during the entire fight did I ever feel like Spirit Walk failed me because my spirit dummy took damage and popped me out of Spirit Walk. The first half-second or so of Spirit Walk is the most important.

[Magicbag]

Anyways - long story short - I won; they lost. It was the Spirit Walk/Soul Harvest/Spirit Vessel triumvirate that eventually won it for me.

The reason I am saying this is because not once during the entire fight did I ever feel like Spirit Walk failed me because my spirit dummy took damage and popped me out of Spirit Walk. The first half-second or so of Spirit Walk is the most important.

Not trying to diminish it at all, just point out a piece of the mechanic that others might not be familiar with. I think this is probably the most used (and rightfully so) WD solo skill.

@GG - I think it's time I gave it a whirl. I just unlocked the pewpew bolt guy rune for it (Manitou).

[RTM]

...Spirit Barrage...

Just wanted to thank you for this write-up. I unlocked the Phantasm rune on my little Witch Doctor last night and gave it a shot because of your post, and it's pretty danged fun! I happened to be in the jail area of Act 1 and it worked wonders being able to plop a few inside the locked jail cells full of enemies. I runed Grasp for the 80% snare which really helps things. I'm hoping I can find a way to make it viable in Act 2 (and later difficulties) with the faster-moving enemies.

[NiteFox]

There's nothing really that sells Mass Confusion to me except for an achievement. It's really a poor man's Horrify except you get it 14 levels later. It's too haphazard, even more limited on what can be Confused compared to Horrified (Pretty much anything except certain bosses can be scared), and is exceptionally risky to use if you bear in mind that "causing some of them to fight for you" doesn't necessarily mean "ignore my meatshield(s) and start attacking enemies" but can also mean "ignore my meatshield(s) and start attacking me". Nearly bit it a few times because of this.

On the other hand, Horrify itself is absolutely golden. Great base skill for getting room to work with, and pretty much all the runes have their place.

[Kevin]

There's nothing really that sells Mass Confusion to me except for an achievement.

It's group vs solo. In groups confusion is better because you can rune it for mobs to take more damage and they don't just disappear from the range of the melee folks (now in Inferno you might want them too, but Normal through Hell generally not). That's the big difference.

[swirly]

in Inferno

Mass Confuse with the damage rune works pretty well in Inferno too. The mobs hit so hard that making them hit each other (and for the additional damage to boot) can be strong. I've seen champ packs where one will go from half life to dead just from the others hitting it.

[DeeBye]

Mass Confuse with the damage rune works pretty well in Inferno too. The mobs hit so hard that making them hit each other (and for the additional damage to boot) can be strong. I've seen champ packs where one will go from half life to dead just from the others hitting it.

Wait - Mass Confuse works against champ packs? I always assumed it didn't so I never tried it.

[Kevin]

Mass Confuse with the damage rune works pretty well in Inferno too. The mobs hit so hard that making them hit each other (and for the additional damage to boot) can be strong. I've seen champ packs where one will go from half life to dead just from the others hitting it.

Wait - Mass Confuse works against champ packs? I always assumed it didn't so I never tried it.

Yes, champs and uniques. It's the biggest reason to have it. Actually I haven't found a mob it doesn't work on. I've confused many of the scripted bosses as well (haven't tried it on all of them). Sure that doesn't do much good (unless they have adds) other than increasing the damage they take with the rune, but yeah, it works on everything I've tried. Runed confusion + slam dance equals one huge short term DPS boost and makes great group synergy.

[NiteFox]

Yes, champs and uniques. It's the biggest reason to have it. Actually I haven't found a mob it doesn't work on. I've confused many of the scripted bosses as well (haven't tried it on all of them). Sure that doesn't do much good (unless they have adds) other than increasing the damage they take with the rune, but yeah, it works on everything I've tried. Runed confusion + slam dance equals one huge short term DPS boost and makes great group synergy.

I've found quite a few instances where Mass Confusion doesn't work; possibly the worst offender I met was a Unique Mortar/Horde dervish with Mortar minions. It specifically cited "Immune" whenever I attempted to use it on that pack.

Shielded champs/uniques can also be immune to MC when they're shielded as well, no such restriction applies for Horrify.

Which is why I prefer Horrify. Okay, you sometimes have to chase down fleeing mobs and there are a few random outdoors events where scaring everything away makes things harder, but it works. You can guarantee that everything in a 12-24 yard radius isn't going to be attacking you, which is what you want most of the time.

Mass Confusion on the other hand can make something that wasn't attacking you in the first place (Because it was occupied with a meatshield) attack you instead out of spite. This is why I rate MC as a huge pile of crap compared to the solid reliability of Horrify. There's enough randomness in the difficulty of the game, I really don't want to be relying on a skill that's basically comparable to playing Russian Roulette with who gets hit when there's already something else that does a similar CC job but better.

[Frag]

...Spirit Barrage...

Just wanted to thank you for this write-up. I unlocked the Phantasm rune on my little Witch Doctor last night and gave it a shot because of your post, and it's pretty danged fun! I happened to be in the jail area of Act 1 and it worked wonders being able to plop a few inside the locked jail cells full of enemies. I runed Grasp for the 80% snare which really helps things. I'm hoping I can find a way to make it viable in Act 2 (and later difficulties) with the faster-moving enemies.

Just unlocked it myself, have been using it to great effect as well, and thought I might as well share my theorycrafting so far as I was kinda shocked at the numbers I was seeing with it.

Code:

Phantasm Theorycrafting for my WD with 1.75as
Seconds          Result
0.0              First Cast
0.5              45% Tick
0.57143          Second Cast
1.0              90% Tick
1.14286          Third Cast
1.5              135% Tick
1.71429          Fourth Cast
2.0              180% Tick
2.28572          Fifth Cast
2.5              225% Tick
2.85715          Sixth Cast
3.0              270% Tick
3.42858          Seventh Cast
3.5              315% Tick
4.0              315% Tick
4.00001          Eighth Cast
4.5              360% Tick
4.57144          Ninth Cast
5.0              405% Tick*

*(It appears, though from a small sample size, that the cast from 0s does a final tick that lines up with the rolling stack, meaning from this point forward you can keep rolling between 360% and 405% every half second)

Needless to say, 810% dps, plus anything from your pets, previous dots, followers or friends leads to very lethal damage output and is perfectly sustainable using Rain Dance, Vision Quest or the like.

[Kevin]

I've found quite a few instances where Mass Confusion doesn't work; possibly the worst offender I met was a Unique Mortar/Horde dervish with Mortar minions. It specifically cited "Immune" whenever I attempted to use it on that pack.

Shielded champs/uniques can also be immune to MC when they're shielded as well, no such restriction applies for Horrify.

I've seen immune with horrify when the shields are up. I also think you are right in that the duplicates that horde creates are immune, but the "originals" aren't.

Though again my argument was mainly from a multiplayer stand point as I mentioned, and a lot of it had to do with the rune for making the mobs take extra damage. In single player horrify is more reliable as an "oh crap" button. Mass Confusion is a not an oh crap button, it's a preemptive button, you move up to the pack, cast it, then fall back and hit them with your AoE/whatever. Horrify can be used offensively as well, but I think of it more as a defensive skill and Mass Confuse as and offensive skill.

In multiplayer I don't tend to need as many defensive skills because I simply won't have the attention of as many mobs, this makes confusion more valuable in those situations for me.

Yes, when I was soling a lot I too would often drop Mass Confusion for Horrify as well, but the idea that confusion is a poor mans horrify makes me think that you aren't using mass confusion in as many ways as you can. Certainly if you only want it for "oh crap" or defensive purpose then yes it's clearly worse. But it provides offense that horrify can't even dream of.

[NuurAbSaal]

I enjoyed Mass Confusion quite a bit while I was running with lots of minions at the end of Normal and the start of Nightmare. Hireling + Gargantuan + 4 Zombie Dogs + assorted Fetishes already makes a huge mess, especially in areas with tons of weak mobs like the latter parts of Act 3 or if you get Skeleton hordes in Bastion's Keep. Spiritwalking into the melee and firing off Mass Confusion has to be among the more hilarious things to do in Diablo 3. Now, I know that it's probably not the most efficient way to clear groups (duh), but I had so much fun! Cackling like a madman every few minutes, was I!

Concerning Horrify: a "cower in fear, frozen in place" Rune would make sense, I feel. Wasn't that a Glyph for WoW Priests' fear?

take care
Tarabulus