My never having played thoughts

[Roland]

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!

Given your chosen playstyle I would agree you won't miss Soul Harvest much. It is a phenomenal skill (it increases your DPS between 13% and 65%), but it's not crucial by any means. Don't take it if you don't want it, especially if you have your heart set on something else (i.e. CC via the frogs). Absolutely nothing wrong with that.

To be quite honest, Spiders are underwhelming to me - but then so is the Witch Doctor. You can control where to throw the jar - that much is true. However, you have zero control on where the spiders go, and each jar will NOT target only the monster you targeted. They also do pitiful damage with each strike, and die after approximately 2 hits. These all combine to make a relatively slow-damaging build, although it's by no means not viable. Spiders are completely spammable - your base mana regen will absolutely cover the cost of Spiders. They just take "awhile" to whittle down your opponent, as they strike about once every 1 - 1.5 seconds (rough visual estimation), and die after approximately 2-3 hits (depending on travel time). So although in theory you're looking at 19% x 4 Spiders = 76% weapon damage per cast, that damage is spread out among multiple mobs 95% of the time. Regardless of whether it's single-target or AoE Spiders are simply not a DPS skill. Compare that to even the most basic Poison Dart spell (100% plus 40% DoT over 2 seconds) and you're looking at vastly higher DPS elsewhere.

However, I can see you want to be a Pet class, and there's nothing wrong with that playstyle. I'm sure it will be very fun for you, and that is ultimately all that matters. Personally, when I get around to playing a Witch Doctor it's probably going to be my usual mix of direct-damage and utility, but we'll see. I actually prefer, "feel"-wise as you asked earlier, skills like Sentry and Hydra. Just something about them I like, whereas Zombie Dogs and Spiders just don't do it for me. I never played a Summoner Necro (although I did thoroughly enjoy Summoner Druids). He was always a Poison and/or Curses Necro. Just found it to be way more fun and engaging, which is what I enjoy - constant tactical input on a macro and micro scale (which is heavily ironic considering how piss-poor I am at both in RTS games).

I prefer more fast-paced frenetic gameplay, even if my overall playing is more plodding (full clears all the time). I'm in a hurry to kill things, but not necessarily to get there. In case you were wondering, this is probably more akin to what I would be playing as a Witch Doctor.