(05-09-2012, 12:57 PM)Roland Wrote: You don't have Soul Harvest. This, IMHO, is a big mistake. Running into a pack of 5+ monsters and casting this nets you a HUGE bonus to Intelligence - which translates to a HUGE increase in DPS. Remember that Intelligence directly increases the Witch Doctor's damage output. This skill is incredibly useful for dealing with summoning Bosses, as well as Elites / Champions. It's just an absolutely awesome skill, and frankly I'm surprised it hasn't been nerfed yet.
To me it comes down to a style of play consideration. In the build I would slot Soul Harvest up against my Toad of Hugeness spot. In which case it is DPS verse CC in my mind. I'm expecting to play a slower more controlled style of play and so the added CC wins for me currently. Of course I'm also suspecting that people are undervaluing spiders right now. I realize they are doing it based off of their experience with them in Beta and by looking at the numbers and how much smaller they are, but I just suspect that Blizzard will have them tuned right such that between the speed you can throw them, the cost of doing so, and the damage each individual does that it will be more decent than people are giving it credit for. I understand I'm possibly placing foolish hopes there, but placing my wager on it anyway till I get to try it in the live game and see.
I just feel like Soul Harvest is for a style of play where you want to wade into a group of mobs and destroy them whereas I'm expecting to stand back from a group of mobs, control them with my dogs/walls/etc, and then kill them at a more moderate pace. Different strokes for different folks as they say.
I also do wonder if it isn't slightly over-hyped. I know it is great for killing huge numbers of mobs where you can get the buff large and I even agree it could be nerfed for those situations. I just also expect there to be big solitary bosses we have to kill where you aren't going to want to get close enough to the boss to activate it. Especially with it only having the one mob to hit and so getting a smaller buff too. So it feels to me like a WoW build built to maximize damage on trash pulls that does less than others on bosses. Of course my build likely will be bad at bosses too since, like you said, they will destroy my pets. So I'm a little hypocritical for downplaying Soul Harvest for something I have in common with it. I just suspect people are being overawed by it's power against masses and not weighing it in those other situation. Again though, I've not even played the beta so I could be completely, utterly, terribly wrong. I am quite looking forward to finding out though!