Witch Doctor Pet build - relaxing

So sometimes you just want to have a beer, and relax. This is that build.

Main build, http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculato...QP!WRTV!aYabbb

The only change between each character is the Mass Confusion slot. Set two with mass confusion, 1 with Hex - Jinx, and 1 with Pirahnas - Nado. On the nado class swap a passive out for Creeping death, and have all of these abilities cast whenever they are up.

Always cast Garg whenever it is up, if your kill speed is decent it has a 80-90% uptime due to Grave Injustice.
There are 3 different Voodoos that stack together, Slam Dance / Mana Regen / Health Regen, I have one set to cast whenever it is up and then these 3 combined with Fetish Army for Elites/Bosses. It basically doubles your DPS if not more and shreds/melts whatever you are fighting on the screen, it's bananas :)

Skip using the Dogs, they clutter up the screen and barely do any damage.

Spirit Walk is up most of the time, great for traveling around and getting out of sticky situations. Overall the damage is great and I can handle T3 quite well, with further gear T6 should definitely be doable, it scales very well and the Gargs/ Fetishes do a large amount of damage.

As I said initially it's a relaxing build and has a low amount of deaths.

So does it require superb gear or does it work with Ghetto equipment?

[edit] On second thought, if you adjust the difficulty, I suppose you could make it work with any gear?

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Originally Posted by Ughmahedhurtz

So does it require superb gear or does it work with Ghetto equipment?

[edit] On second thought, if you adjust the difficulty, I suppose you could make it work with any gear?

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Short answer is yes. Some builds have a bit of a glass ceiling though; even with gear. But probably any arbitrary build could do T1 after some work. Turn the difficulty back to Normal and run rifts till you can do torment 1, and then slowly turn it up as your gear improves. Probably in the process you will get some plans, and maybe make some set items. (Aughilds, Captain's, Bran's, Azshera's). They seem to help, at least in my experience. The materials aren't that hard to farm.

When I first tried this build as a fresh 70 I played it on Expert.. mostly because I thought the higher difficulties would scale up to be much harder. When I finally changed it to Torment 1 it was a lot easier and ended up tuning it higher and only switched back briefly because the kill speed was so fast.
This build allows you to handle higher torments because your pets are soaking up the damage.

I've been using a similar build for a while but got bored because I hit a wall and can't scale more. I switched to Crusaders now to see if I can finally farm T5-T6 efficiently. My 4 WDs have Mask of Jeram and 3 have Tasker and Theo. Sadly, I've been very unlucky and none have the Zuni sets. without the Zuni set, scaling is very difficult. T4 is the max I can go without falling asleep because of how slow things are and how frustrated I can get.

Even on T1, this build is "slow" because u lack one crucial element other builds/classes have and that is CONTROL. Control of what u kill, because u are not the one killing, your pets are. I hate to stack an element that is not gonna benefit all my skills, including my main attack or worse use a skill just to spawn Fetishes and not do real damage. Explosive Toads is a good skill for procing Fetishes and any weapon that has a proc effect, but it's Fire and Fetishes benefit from Physical damage (from Fetish Army and Fetish Sycophants). Sure u can always change the Fetish Army rune to the Fire one, but again, without the Zuni set, u will be left only with the Fetishes spawned by your passive, going back to the same problem of not stacking the same element and not being fully efficient.

Gargantuan is just RETARDED. They really need to fix the AI of that thing. 60% of the time runs around chasing a white mob instead of the elite or Rift Guarding RIGHT IN FRONT of it. 30% of the time just stands still doing absolutely nothing, prolly cause it has huge hitboxes and all the fetishes swarming the boss don't let it do anything which is stupid. Maybe only 10% of the time hits exactly what I need it to hit. And to make it worse, Wrathful Protector is FIRE so we go back to the "not stacking the same element" problem.

All my WDs have around 1.2m sheet DPS with 50% Physical damage and around 30% Fetish Army damage, but without the Zuni set bonus it's very hard at higher torment levels. Don't get me wrong, the build works and u can play relaxed, but the fact u can't really control what your pets attack and that your main attack does no damage compared to your pets, its a deal breaker for me. Hope they improve the AI of all pets so u can get a little more control over them instead of them running wildly all over the place and u waiting for them to kill stuff.

A tip, get a Rhen'Ho Flayer on one of your WDs and use the Addling Toads rune instead. It will make a HUGE difference. Make sure that WD has high attack speed (around 2 APS) and enjoy the show. I got to the point that it's pretty much the only CC I use besides Piranhas. That's how good Rhen'Ho Flayer + Addling Toads combo is. I only use Toads on the WD that uses the Rhen'Ho Flayer and instead use Firebats Vampire Bats on the other WDs because it procs a lot more the Fetish Sycophants and u can have that army of Fetishes a lot faster. It might not seem important but at higher torment, Fetishes die fast and a petdoctor without pets is a dead doctor.

I don't use Midnight Feast unless I use dogs. Even with Grave Injustice and some CDR, Gargantuan is not up too often and even if it is, is not that useful because of the AI issues, so its a passive wasted IMO. I rather go with Gruesome Feast and have 1 WD with a Thing of the Deep. That alone can give me a 20%+ damage boost for the whole party in most encounters. And if I use Gargantuan, I have it in a 2 group round robin so I cut the cooldown in half, having only 2 up for each fight. No point on having all 4 standing still doing nothing :P

For higher torment, you really need the Zuni set or a Starmetal Kukri to scale, otherwise it's just too damn slow and boring. I thought getting more and more DPS will just be enough, but it isn't. U hit a wall because Fetishes die too fast and elites have a lot of health. Without a way to have that huge army up all the time, it simply doesn't work. Grave Injustice is amazing, but when u face elites back to back, even multiple packs at the same time, is not enough.

I even tried to throw a monk in the mix to improve things a little bit, but it doesnt work. The minute u face Electric or Firechains elites, u are fucked. Pull that on top of your WDs and they will die instantly. T1-T4 sure, T5-T6? Bottom line is, this build will not scale to higher torments just by improving DPS and toughness.

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Originally Posted by Devile

I've been using a similar build for a while but got bored because I hit a wall and can't scale more. I switched to Crusaders now to see if I can finally farm T5-T6 efficiently.

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What build are you using for your crusaders? just kept dying to the huge rift guardian that slams - can't tank it with my current gear in T1.

Good info on the WD's as well. Doing T4 right now with them and it's decent - die on some elite combos.

It may need another thread but I am quite interested in the monk / 3x crusader combo.

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Originally Posted by dancook

What build are you using for your crusaders? just kept dying to the huge rift guardian that slams - can't tank it with my current gear in T1.

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Lets not hijack this thread :)

http://www.dual-boxing.com/threads/5...xing-Crusaders

Wit the 2.0.5 patch the build has changed somewhat. I'm still trying to figure out what it the optimal setup if anyone wants to tune in.

The problem or benefit maybe is that fetish sycophants the passive generates a crazy amount of fetishes now. So Fetish Army and even the other pets are possibly not needed for a pet build because your screen in a big fight can have 50+ fetishes running around, meaning they aren't doing damage if something is blocking them.

I thought about Carnevil being an option then since they will all do damage but.. it's still up in the air and open for suggestions.

Maybe mix 2 Carnevils and 2 Masks of Jeram, which is what I plan to do but need 1 more Rhen'Ho Flayer so 2 spam poison darts and 2 spam toads for CC. Also was watching a streamer use "The talls man's finger" ring. The dog was doing decent damage and tanking pretty good. Need to test it tho.

I have (2) of the Tall Man's Finger and with the leeching beasts rune, it increases survivability by a lot - but ultimately wasn't thrilled with it.

You'd think having a bazillion pets on the screen would make it more enjoyable but I still scratch my head, something is just not right with the build.

I imagine this build has gotten much better as of 2.1.1, since they vastly increased pet/fetish survivability.

Still has some issues, per Dev. YMMV.

Eh, survivability may be up, but they still don't all attack and with no real AoE they are no good for GRifts

The biggest issue i ran into with WD's is damage reflect. The whole point is to pump out damage on your main via froggies so you can get the sycophants running around. As soon as a damage reflect pack comes into the screen I can't just stop the frogs from running around, they are delayed and my characters usually explode at that point.
It's hilarious but somewhat sad when Wizards get their dot rolling and reflect doesn't hurt them, DH's have their sentries, which doesn't flect on them. Monks using the Sunwoko set - the explosion for 3500% weapon damage doesn't go back to them.

They are much better than pre 2.1 but the bar has shifted from that point. If everyone else stayed the same and only WD got a buff last patch this would be a different story.

It's still relaxing if you do mid tier torments, but any class at this point is the same.

I dont mind about RD cause there's always ways to avoid or mitigate it. Pets being dumb is the biggest issue for me. I see no point on playing petdoc with pets that don't attack. For T6, it doesn't really matter cause its so easy right now, u dont need all your pets hitting the target. Everything dies decently fast regardless. But if u wanna scale, u cant afford having more than half of your damage not being applied to mobs in many situations.

I rather go with Jade build instead of petdoc. With a tiki WD, it's relaxing and far more efficient.

Pets can be helpful...even if dumb. I like to use one petdoc as a shield. With 30 things running around I find that they block things up nicely for ranged classes. 3dh's and one pet doc...run the grifts nicely.