Darts, spiders, or toads? Opinions?

[Kevin]

Once you hit level 21, Firebomb is a BEAST. I'm continuing my attack plan of running into packs with Spirit Walk and popping Soul Harvest to stack it to 5 before running back. Spamming Firebombs with 5 stacks of SH is incredible.

My build right now looks like this. I use a Templar (I'm playing solo), Gargantuan with his Cleave, and Zombie Dogs to run interference. It works well. The dogs are still sort of squishy, but they last long enough for me to get in, pop a 5 SH, and Firebomb everything to oblivion in no time.

Yep firebombs are, well, ahem, yeah, the bomb, OK I went there.

I still don't want to get too up close and personal with stuff so I'm still foregoing soul harvest (even if I glyph it to suck life too). But I found a way to mow things down pretty safely from a distance, that I got to a chance to test in some of the earlier parts of Act III, where you have the scary bombers that hurt if you let em blow up. At first I was using it purely solo with a templar as well, but then Frag joined up and we moved along then he had some family obligations and went back to town while I kept on. So I didn't have a templar and I was facing buffed mobs in a place where there were critters that could hit me and blow and up and take off like half my life, in HC. It felt like a great test bed.

I successfully wiped out three champion packs and two rares (one of whom was a waller) when Frag got back he commented that my little AoE build was working nicely. I was 25 when I started so I didn't have the firebomb or Acid cloud glyphs but it still was essentially the same.

I would move along, somewhat carefully as soon as I saw a pack I would drop grasp, with the 80% slow that held them for an Acid drop and queen spawn and thrown a firebomb or two. At that point everything is dead unless there is a special or another pack.

If there was a champion or rare I would get a haunt or two out before I started to fall back, since grasp would still generally have them slowed some. Usually I would have enough mana to drop another Acid Cloud and at that point even most champions were dead.

If it was all small stuff I would watch the queen if she started trundling off I'd move up and throw some bombs, assess the timer on grasp and see if another acid cloud was called for. I'm not intentionally gearing for damage but I was 300+ damage from the acid clouds.

Pure solo all this damage was overkill, solo in a 2 player game I needed most of it and it worked well. With a tanky type barb in front of me it worked really well.

I will admit I missed having a better escape skill a few times and there was some haunt spamming to get the leach going to make me feel a little better. I haven't missed the dogs, even for interference the extra damage just makes it so I don't need them. The gargantuan snaps back pretty well when you run so he becomes interference at times that way, and the queen seems to force mob interaction as well, which helps on the kiting.

Gruesome feast while it doesn't display a buff does show up in the char sheet and it does go off if someone else hits the orb and it does buff you up even if you don't need healing it appears but I haven't fully tested. So I usually still had a nice damage buff from that.

Poison cloud is by far my favorite skill even if it can suck mana. Firebombs are cool as all get out and while I'm not convinced that the glyph that makes them bounce is better, it's more fun so it's sticking for a bit.

But I can fully endorse dropping dogs for something else in the mid 20's. Like you said they still aren't completely useless but I find the control other skills can give you more enjoyable. Of course this is a playstyle thing and I'm very happy that there are options. I've changed up builds a couple of times, all of them have been fun in different ways, I'm just enamored with the stick em in place and watch the massive AoE's munch em while I'm no where near the action build I've got right now. It's why I'm skirting the edge and not having spirit walk or horrify out, but I'm keeping an eye on the mobs HP and damage output and expecting that I'm going to grab one (or both) and still quite love what they do. At this point the queen is probably what would go, though she can still be useful if something straggles out of the pack and near me since she takes stuff down faster than haunt and runs a bit of interference. But I think she would be the easiest to replace because I still find haunt very handy, even if it ends up on a weaker mob, it jumps to something else and I still get most of that 575% weapon damage.


I realize I'm repeating myself at times but it's because I'm having fun with it, and when the inevitable HC death hits me I'm going to come back and remind myself of the fun I was having with him, that it was worth it and now I can try a different style for awhile since it will be a new doctor.