Synergising Witch Doctors Question

[Lokked]

What abilities do or do not work together? Mainly, I want to know if having 4 Helltooth sets and the exact same skills on each is valid. HT 2 pc puts Necrosis on mobs, doing 1500% wrap damage over x seconds. Does this stack between 4 toons, each independantly doing their own damage? Does 12 Firewalls (3 from each with Jeram's Bracers) stack? Does the cold ground effect from Acid Spit, frozen ground rune cause 4x damage or just 1x damage?

This is also just a general "what is the recipe for stacking, or does everything stack with everything?" type question.

Thanks!

[Devile]

They each do independent damage from what I've noticed. Firewalls stacks, same with Acid Cloud. Acid Pit? Frozen Ground? Sorry, not sure what those are. I didn't test more cause the game is unplayable for me. WD Helltooth lag is just unbearable. Sadly the lag also stacks. If 1 WD lags, 4x make it unplayable.

From what I know and have tested myself:

Stacks


All Wall of Death runes (firewall is the best, the others dont hit mobs in the center)
Acid Cloud (all runes)
Toxing Gem stacks (10% damage per party member).
Strongarm bracers (pointless for WD but may apply to other classes)
Big Bad Voodoo (different runes stack, mana rune gives no mana to the party)

Dont know / Haven't tested myself


Mass Confusion Paranoia (20% damage)
Zombie Dogs Chilled to the bone (15% damage)
Haunt Poisoned Spirit (20% damage)
Piranhas Piranhado (15% damage)
Bad Medicine (25% less damage)
Locust Swarm Cloud of Insects (25% less damage)

I really doubt all of these stack, but some may. It's a matter of testing.

[Lokked]

Thanks! I ran some simple tests on my own after posting and found similar.

I've opted to go 3 Helltooth and 1 zDPS. The Helltooths will use Jeram's Bracer so they can cast Firewall 3 times. Rotation will be Fire Wall x 3, Acid Cloud x 1 (unfortunately, none of the Ground AEs stack when laying multiple down) then Corpse Spiders till all dead. The zDPS will piranado while the others are firewalling, Big Bad Voodoo while the others are Acid Clouding, then spam Haunt while the others are Corpse Spidering, and spamming Horrify when it's up.

i can do T10 slowly (not worth it) but my zDPS is missing a lot of essential gear.

[Devile]

1 AC? U really need to retest that. It stacks, not to mention u won't benefit from the Helltooth 6 piece bonus. Check this:

https://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/18704974965


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uE2-Ox_L0n8&feature=youtu.be


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWK_vpnujQU&feature=youtu.be

and I wouldn't suggest a zDPS. I rather have all of them DPS and have round robins to take care of CC. 3 WDs with Piranhado give u all the CC u need, have the last one with Hex, SMK cubed for perma BBV and Haunt Poisoned Spirit for the additional damage. I go with something like this:

http://www.d3planner.com/785322012

The 4th will still be DPS, just not using Furnace but SMK, and no generator. Also, this build is pretty much melee. If u dont want melee and rather play safe, u can drop 1 defensive gem and use Toxin instead and change your passives for range.

Also, the sequence of skills is important. We can agree Firewall is the biggest damage dealer so u want to have all your buffs active BEFORE u cast those 3 firewalls. F&R buff, Piranhado debuff, Bain of the Trapped, Necrosis, etc. Once u are fully buffed and mobs are debuffed in to a tight spot, u drop your 3 Firewalls and start spamming Acid Cloud like there's no tomorrow. Remember the 6 piece Helltooth bonus. Your Acid Cloud will do 900% damage for 15 secs after casting Wall of Death, so u need to cast it BEFORE your Firewall to proc F&R and then AFTER as many times to benefit from the 900% damage.

So basically I cast my Corpse Spiders then Acid Cloud to proc F&R, Necrosis and BotT, and then Piranhado so they get debuffed and pulled into a tight space. Immediately I cast my 3 Firewalls and then start spamming Acid Cloud and Corpse Spiders to get mana and keep my F&R buff up. If they move, another Piranhado to get them back in place and more Firewalls if they are available already.

If u go with BBV on the 4th WD, u might wanna change belts for the other 3 because too many fetishes will hurt your BBV uptime. Also if u go fully ranged, u might wanna replace Soul Harvest with something else. I've played a glass cannon spec with all damage gems and it worked very good. Everything melts and pretty much kill stuff at the border of your screen very safe. That spec was using WormWood + Hwoj Wrap + Locust Swarm Pestilence + Bad Medicine pasive. It's CRAZY good cause it SLOWS the whole screen and beyond, things rarely attack u and u can CC them with Piranhado if needed. Bane of the Trapped + Zei + Toxin when killing off screen do INSANE damage, but it's a very squishy build. The slow from the belt + Necrosis just makes everything so damn easy.

Keep and eye on Area Damage. It does VERY good damage on WDs but it fucks up the lag BADLY. Removing it completely from gear and paragon helps a little with the lag, but doesn't solve the problem and u will notice the damage loss. It's pretty bad.

I havent used Stricken much cause I was never able to push GRs. Lag makes it completely pointless. U freeze for 20+ secs and all 4 chars are dead, and it doesn't need to be a high density map.

[Lokked]

Thanks for the ideas, Deville. I will try this for gearing. I'm only a week and a half at 70, don't have F/R on all chars, don't have Ancient weapons on all chars (I want to get Ancient SuWong Diviners. Only have 1 Ancient and 1 normal), and few ancient armors/jewelry. I was only casting AC once because I'd read that multiple Frost Pools (I went with Slow Burn rune) do NOT stack on the same character. I'd read that it had worked with initial 2.3, but was patched out to counter the lag with Helltooth WDs. I'll take your videos as proof. Thanks! I can't find the post now, so maybe I was making it up. I have just been finding it difficult to test.

Do you run any pets, or just sychophants/Belt of Trancendance? Or no pets at all?

I went with the idea of zDPS so I could use the 4th account with Demon Hunters or Wizards for protection (perma-fear) and just for fun. The first 3 are far more geared than the 4th, so I can just syphon all gear to that account to build both ways, I guess.

[NetQvist]

Too help with the lag and doing higher GRs you really need to get a healink monk as your zdps so i recommend trying that. You could also do as me for optimal xp gain and use two zdps (barb and monk). I've improved a lot since I made the two videos in the season 4 thread where you can also find the builds.

[Devile]

Problem is, Helltooth lag will render that zDPS completely useless. If u freeze for 20+ secs when there are like 30 mobs, nothing will save u :/ And the last hotfix, actually made it worse :)

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/19072537301

[Lokked]

I just read that thread, Deville. It sound depressing. Currently, I do lag whenever there are more then 6 or 7 mobs getting AEd, but only for a few seconds. My pets cover for me during that time, for the most part. I will reroll all the Area Damage on my gear and see what happens. Doesn't sound like it will help much anymore, but it's worth a shot.

[Devile]

Not feeling like recording my lag experience since its TOO ANNOYING but this is pretty much what I get:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GX3oxSDJ4FA

maybe a little worse than that :) So there's no heal monk on earth that can keep alive my party with such stupid lag. And it doesn't need to be a lot of density. It happens a LOT and in high GR u just die nonstop without elites ... whites kill u every time there's a little density. Full party wipes over and over.

Anyway ... dont care ... this made my day!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNhcTqKweiE

FINALLY!

[NetQvist]

Well yeah a healing monk won't save you from everything but against some things it might save you since the healing still works even with lag.

[Devile]

Sadly it doesn't and the video clearly shows it cause even the heal monk which is usually a tank, died in a GR59 only ... been there, done that. If u dont believe me, try it and feel the pain by yourself. Helltooth lag is insane and 3x - 4x WDs make it a lot worse. At least for me and a bunch of ppl, so multiboxing them is a NO NO for now. I dont have the best internet on earth, but this didn't happen before and I see a LOT of reports about the same and not just Helltooth WDs. Even removing all area damage from gear and drastically gimping your party DPS, u will lag out badly.

Minor lag, random lag spikes, etc. a heal monk will work for sure. Extreme lag with 20+ secs frozen in a high GR, u simply die, PERIOD. The only thing that works is doing lower GR where mobs don't hit u that hard and u can survive with just passive life regen and decent damage reduction. Besides they die FAST, meaning density won't last long, u wont stay frozen for long and will get hit a LOT less. But in a high GR trash takes a while to kill and before u know it, u get frozen, u start punching your keyboard and just wanna throw your PC out the window :D

A heal monk needs to cast skills and if he is not able to send skills to the server cause its lagged, the party wont get healed in time. By the time the server processes all the monk commands, everyone is dead. Mobs don't lag and they keep hitting regardless of server/network lag.

[NetQvist]

Ye..... No thanks trying 4x rend barbs really did it in for me, the game stopped for over a minute. Sticking to mix parties with two support seems to cause a very favorable lag situation as well, no problems at 70 still.

[Devile]

I see ppl doing 80+ with 2 DPS Carnevil WDs + health glove barb + heal monk. At least for Season, Stricken + Darts seem to melt mobs faster than HotA barbs. Eventually I'll give it a try, but not playing that much lately. Non season ppl are also using this combo. Obviously, paragon 1200+.

[NetQvist]

I see ppl doing 80+ with 2 DPS Carnevil WDs + health glove barb + heal monk. At least for Season, Stricken + Darts seem to melt mobs faster than HotA barbs. Eventually I'll give it a try, but not playing that much lately. Non season ppl are also using this combo. Obviously, paragon 1200+.

I have carnevils and they are pretty hard to keep alive and it's somewhat hard to do dps with them in multibox party. Problem is that the monk is pulling stuff onto the WDs instead of into a group by the side.

[Devile]

I know and that was exactly my point. They are actually surviving that way, right where everyone is, not fighting ranged.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGfvVktwPe8

Rank #1 in EU uses just 1, but again, they are in the middle of the fight:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6ZJ6TLwlss

Don't think u can multibox this easily tho. WDs rely on Swampland Attunement to survive, staying in the middle of big packs so they have a ton of toughness, but moving between packs of mobs, where there's no density, u can easily get 1 shot. Besides that passive doesnt give u Arcane nor Lightning res.

[AnNiMosSiTY99]

I know and that was exactly my point. They are actually surviving that way, right where everyone is, not fighting ranged.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGfvVktwPe8

Rank #1 in EU uses just 1, but again, they are in the middle of the fight:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6ZJ6TLwlss

Don't think u can multibox this easily tho. WDs rely on Swampland Attunement to survive, staying in the middle of big packs so they have a ton of toughness, but moving between packs of mobs, where there's no density, u can easily get 1 shot. Besides that passive doesnt give u Arcane nor Lightning res.


God they fucking melt that Rift Guardian.

[NetQvist]

God they fucking melt that Rift Guardian.

I actually ran 4 carnevils for a both with shitty gear but the correct items, it was pretty fun to see RGs blow up in a second or two. Couldn't do very high with them due to toughness but that fetish army size was worth seeing =P

[AnNiMosSiTY99]

I actually ran 4 carnevils for a both with shitty gear but the correct items, it was pretty fun to see RGs blow up in a second or two. Couldn't do very high with them due to toughness but that fetish army size was worth seeing =P


I was speed farming shares on my x4 barbs to gamble carnevil setups for my WD's The dagger feels like its super rare cause I havent gotten it on any of them?

How high were you able to get up to with them? I thought with the huge armies they would be able to tank in higher difficulties. I am working on gearing my 4th slot for a healing monk that I could throw in any of my groups to test.

[NetQvist]

I was speed farming shares on my x4 barbs to gamble carnevil setups for my WD's The dagger feels like its super rare cause I havent gotten it on any of them?

How high were you able to get up to with them? I thought with the huge armies they would be able to tank in higher difficulties. I am working on gearing my 4th slot for a healing monk that I could throw in any of my groups to test.

Don't think I did higher than 50 or something with 4 carnevils, the problem was mainly dying to elite affixes and stuff like frozen screwing you over. I'm pretty sure support barb, support monk with 2 carnevils would do much better than 4 carnevils. Try cubing rares for the dagger, that's how I got all of mine anyways.

[Devile]

Proof of 2 common questions:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pg3YQFsKIoI


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOp20u4uBvI