My never having played thoughts

[swirly]

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.

You said each spider hits twice right? So that would be 76% weapon damage per hit which then would be 152% per cast. Spread over some time, but better than the 140% you quoted for the basic Poison Dart. Another thing that I hear Devs mention is animation time. I'm really not sure how that factors into things with all these sort of numbers. If you have to wait for a full animation then that is something else to consider with every spell. No clue what spell that would favor. I also recall somebody in a conversation with Treesh (can't recall if it was on the forums or on the podcast) saying something about that depending on if you have the skill on the mouse or on the action bar. So there are other variables in play to consider for calculating dps. Still, just knowing that each spider hits twice already makes their damage more respectable.

I never had a problem with the killing speed of the spiders. I just didn't like the sound and it tended to lag my machine if I was throwing out spiders.

I watched a gameplay video from some guy that goes by the name Force a week or so ago. In it he used various skills as he leveled and they became available. When he picked up spiders he commented that in a previous patch's playthrough he found them rather week. Then he went on to play with them and started commenting on how they seemed much stronger than they were previously. I have no clue if it was because of drop luck or a patch change or what, but it does make me question some of what I have read about them. Without any knowledge of how recently somebody has tested a skill it is very hard to know if they are even basing things on the most current version. Add in all the possible unknowns like I spoke of earlier in this post and I really do think your not having a problem with their killing speed is going to be more accurate than some who have said they are overly bad. Of course you and I both tend to be more tolerating of killing speed too. Judging from knowledge of some of our antics in WoW. So that could have something to do with it as well.