Season 3 Witchdoctor team plans/theorycraft

So this is a repost of one of my threads from my clan forums. Thought you guys might appreciate it.

Warning for those who haven't read my threads in the past. I tend to go on a bit when theorycrafting so this may get long.

First I want to point you to http://ptr.d3planner.com/. So if you are the TLDR type, that is the site I was going to mention. It allows you to build entire character layouts with gear and everything and is pretty awesome. Now on to the meat...


I've been bouncing back and forth between several team comps as the PTR progressed. Early on IK pet barbs were very appealing and that set was changed, then Nats DH was looking good and that set just got hit. The entire time I was also considering 4 WD's. I have finally decided to do the docs as my multibox team next season.

The main reasons for me finally settling on the docs is the playstyle of some of the other class options would be hard to manage I feel from past experiences and there are a few new things that make a Doc team very appealing.

The first new thing is the Homonculus mojo got updated. It now spawns a zdog every 2 seconds. With this item on only 3 WD's I can use it to keep a RG or any other mob stunlocked permanently. That is because with a full 3 person round robin the first sacs at 0 sec, then 2 sacs at .7 seconds, 3 sacs at 1.2 seconds and by the time 1 needs to sac again 2.1 seconds has passed so he has his dog replaced (in actuality the way the mojo works is the first saccers dog would spawn immediately after the sac then a 2 second timer starts until another dog will pop out as long as your entire rotation takes more than 2 seconds you will never be down a dog).

Black Blood sacrifice rune is a 3 second stun which means you only need to hit the target with a zdog sac every .9 seconds (due to min threshold and CC resistance calculations). Since the mojo allows you to sac as fast as every .7 seconds it works out with just 3 WD's using it.


The second new thing is the Zuni and Jade set changes.

Here is a link to a build for my Tiki Zuni WD for the team:
http://ptr.d3planner.com/187529503

This character's job is obviously to use Tiki to control elite pack affixes, but rather than being a pure zdps I went offensive with him. The new Zuni set pieces allows you to wear 6p zuni while still using TnT gloves and Tiki helm. Ofcourse it requires Zuni ring and a Rorg to pull off but in exchange you get to have fear lock, 275% pet damage buff on targets hit by your spenders (in this case haunt and Piranhas Wave of Multiation spread that buff). So this is a pet doc that also locks. Haunt, zdogs and piranhas all provide group damage buffs and wave of mulitation also procs strongarms for the party so it is still a solid buffer. This is the only doc a Starmetal is required on as he is the BBV Slam Dance provider for the party. (Prior to obtaining a SMK I can run BBV Slamdance on all 4 docs and round robin it, but that is not ideal).


My other three Docs will run the following build:
http://ptr.d3planner.com/780791157

Looking at the gear probably has you confused a little. I don't use a full set on these guys because of one reason. 2p Jade is amazing now. They fixed it so the Quetz helm actually buffs the damage of the 2p properly. In my testing I was getting upwards of 100 million damage crits on a WD with no Haunt% damage, not stacking a proper element and wearing total mix matched gear with a sheet dps of 363k with the FnR buffs up (which are easy to maintain with this build using Haunt for spender and Spider Queen for generator buff). Each haunt basically does 1/4 of what a Soul Harvest does with no cooldown and since dot damage is calculated by a combination of damage, ias, and crit hit and crit damage it greatly benefits from ias. So this build focuses on that. The downside is the damage is mostly single target. Currently I have witching hours listed on the belt slot but the new belt that makes haunt hit a second target would probably be better for clearing speed.

From my testing using the rune that lets haunt hit two targets, both hits trigger the 2p jade bonus dmg. Also it seems that Area damage works on the damage proc from 2p as well. Those two facts will make up somewhat for the single target nature of the builds. I can hit 70-90% area dmg pretty easily with this build without giving up much because it has virtually zero reliance on CDR and no reliance at all on RCR. So other than focusing on getting as much IAS as possible this build gears pretty much like and normal crit hit and crit damage dps build.


Xeph ammies all around to protect from lightning packs are probably the best. Hellfire ammy has little benefit to this team setup as there are only so many good WD passives.

I can't wait to see this full team in action because it's buffing potential is crazy. I've tested the poison haunt buff, piranhas buff, and the cold dogs and they all stack party wide. That means because of 4 characters that:

Haunt 80%
Piranhas 60%
Cold Zdogs 60%
Toxin gems 40%

That is a 240% constant damage modifier, If I change the Piranhas to Nado on the 3 Jade docs and round robin it for more mob herding potential that is still a constant 195% buff without factoring in those 3 docs (since they won't all be stacking it every time it would vary between 210-240% on packs, but due to creeping death it would get and stay at 240% for large single targets or sturdy packs).

Then BBV Slamdance from the lock doc is another 30% dmg and 20% attack speed and all 4 characters will benefit from both the IAS and the damage due to having builds that scale with the IAS.

The loc doc will also be applying a strongarm buff to anything that can be bounced up by Wave of Mutilation. This may not be worth it though so I could easily swap this out for Nem bracers to be able to spawn more elite packs in rifts and grifts. Strongarms only really work on trash and some smaller elites so I am not certain the extra 20-30% is worth it when the base damage buffs are already so high.

The three Haunt spamming Jade docs are also using the FnR ring set and keeping it up with a simple macro rotation that casts a Spider Queen followed by 5 seconds of Haunt spam works perfectly and on the lock doc I can just set up his skill bar to do Piranhas followed by Haunt spam for the same effect. (If I get the lock doc to 40% cdr Wave of Mutilation has a 4.8 sec cooldown so it would fit perfectly in that spot).

The Jade docs are also all using TnT gloves and Fetish Sycophants for extra damage and little meat shields. Pets from other characters don't seem to block now with the fade out mechanic they have for other peoples pets so this seems to work out nicely to provide some nice extra damage. Haunt procs Fetishes from the passive so fast because of its 100% coefficient so it certainly isn't an issue getting 15 out on each character. With FnR, TnT and the change to make fetishes take on the highest element you have stacked they should be almost as strong as old Mask of Jeram pet docs (FnR is 100% bonus and the elemental change makes up for no enforcer gem). So the extra damage should be noticeable and outside of Pierce the Veil is probably the only good dps passive for WD.

** Continuing from above since my original post was too long and had to be split


Unfortunately, I tried testing Solanium with Haunt spam and it just doesn't seem reliable at procing globes. I was toying with the idea of running 3 of them with it and then using Gruesome Feast for the 50% int buff, but I don't think it will work out well. It might have been my lowish crit on my doc I was testing it with though, so I will still try to grab 3 decent ones next season to test it.

With that being the case, I really don't know what weapon I will go for. Daggers are attractive because of their speed. It is easy to get over 2 aps with daggers which means you are basically doing the equivalent of a Soul harvest every 2 seconds to a single target by haunt spamming (2 targets with the new belt). Swords and Ceremonial Knives are the next best option, but few if any have useful legendary effects. SMK is only needed on the pet doc since BBV IAS doesn't stack and none of the other cknives have effects useful to the haunt spammer Gidbinn is the only effect that would be remotely useful and that is saying something. Swords are similar in that only Shard of Hate and Tfury have useful procs and Tfury is the wrong element so Shard is probably the only good option with its poison nova proc. The damage from the weapon proc is going to be so insignificant compared to the other sources of damage though. It might still be good for helping with aoe though so it is an option. *NOTE a follow up post will be reposted below*

Sunkeeper is certainly an option but it is so slow for a build that really benefits from attack speed that seems counter productive. The best option may be one of the swords/daggers (not sure if they exist) that can have 5 primary affixes. That way I could get mainstat, %damage, area damage, ias and potentially either vit, cdr, or elite damage on them.

The Tyreal chest on the 3 jade docs is for the fact that there are no good chest options for them otherwise. Since there are no good legendary shoulders for WD that means jade in that slot which leaves either Chest, pants or boots for the other jade piece. Pants have swamp land waders for poison damage so those are a given. Boots and chest are another story. I went with boots for the other jade piece because the only good options are defensive (ice climbers) or utlity from the Illusory boots, but because I can't wear those boots on the pet doc (due to 6p Zuni requirements) I didn't want to use them on the jade docs due to syncing issues that would cause. So jade boots it was.

That left the chest slot free. The only chest that had a useful bonus was Tyreal's 20% damage to demons. While not always active demons are common enough for it to be useful and everything else was kinda bland in comparison.

** This is a followup post I made after testing Shard of Hate

Okay so I found a Shard of Hate on my characters so I tested it. I feel it will be the best weapon for the three jade builds by far. IT just procs so much. Even though the damage is lowish on the proc (200-250%).

First the poison aoe seems to be about 10 or 15 meters so it is a decent range for the nova. It is about the same as frost nova from Wizard.

Secondly is the stupid proc rate. Haunt causes it to proc both on cast and then again when the haunt actually hits a target or when haunt transfers from a target that just died to a new one without haunt. With the belt that makes haunt hit two targets that is potentially 3 procs per cast if there are 2 or more targets.

Where it gets really crazy is with Spider Queen though. It seems to proc every time the big spider hits a mob. The more mobs it is hitting the more procs you get. It is pretty crazy.

So just because of the sheer amount of times it procs it should be usefull. I was getting over 1 million damage procs with the FnR buffs up with only 268k sheet damage (my shard was dex so I lost a chunk of damage) and 50% CHD. I could see the procs being 10 million or more with full elemental damage gearing, actual full int gear, and higher sheet dps. With the number of times it procs it should really add up.

Finding 3 good Shards of Hate is the real problem. Since the weapons options aren't great I will probably just go for the first 3 good ancient 1 hand swords or daggers I come across, until I can snag the ideal. Ancient SoH with maintstat, IAS, 10% dmg would probably be the best. Getting those stats to roll plus good damage and high roll on the legendary affix would be like winning the lottery while getting struck by lightning though. So we will see.

Awesome, thank you!

Question: how you're going to manage zDPS WD, technically?

I assume following setup (1 - ZDPS, 2-4 - DD):
1. When "1" (dog) is pressed, it is sent as-is to 1 and as round-robin between 2-4 with 0.7 delay in ISBoxer
2. When "2" (fetishes on 1, sacrifice on others) is pressed, it is sent as-is to 2 and as round-robin between 2-4 to explode dogs. Also with 0.7 delay in ISBoxer
3. "3" (spirit walk) - just straight broadcast
4. "4" (BBV/piranhado) - straight to 1, round-robin 2-4? To get 100% uptime on piranhado, need at least 25% CDR.
5. Left MB - Corpse Spiders on 2-4, piranhas with wave of mutilation on 1
6. Right MB - Haunt, broadcast

Only problem that I'm seeing with this setup - amount of keypresses necessary. Two keys every 0.7 seconds is going to hurt :-\

@Yelgis, Nice work. U have spend quite some time thinking on this. Thanks for sharing it with us.

I'm not much of a theorycrafter. I rather test directly ingame and try different things depending on the results ... I find it more fun that way. From your 3 docs build, I suggest to go with Aughild's Shoulders, Chest and Bracers. Assuming damage is not an issue of course. A little more survivability and elite damage looks nicer than 20% poison and 7% attack speed, specially for higher GR, not to mention u loose armor from pants with the Swamp Land Waders. Jade Pants and Boots. Also, not fully convinced with Bastions of Will yet and the whole spender/generator thing ... is it multiplicative or additive damage? Is it really worth losing SoJ and RoRG?

It really isn't that complicated. I will use a few simple macros.

Ignore the positions on the bars in that planner.

Macro 1 will be my spam macro that manages casting haunt/spider queen on the jades and haunt/wave of mutilation on my lock doc.
So for spider queen and wave of mutilation we only want to cast those every 5 seconds (for the FnR buff for the jades and because Wave has a 4.8 sec cooldown with 40% cdr on the lock doc). So we put them in the same slot across all characters for instance we will put them in slot 3 (I use a razer orbweaver and my keybinds means slot 3 is easily reachable for me to use frequently). Then Haunt on all characters will be on the RMB slot (RMB because it won't cause characters to move or interact with objects).

Now it is a simple macro in Isboxer. Setup a keymap that has two steps. The first step will send 3 to all clients to cast queen/wave. This step automatically advances to the next step. Then the second step sends RMB to all clients, but this step you set the option at top to only advance to the next step after 5 seconds (do not set trigger only once). This means you can spam the macro and it will cast the first step once and recast the second step over and over again until 5 seconds has elapsed and it will reset back to step 1. Perfect timing for spamming those abilities.

Then I combine Isboxer's keymaps with the macro capability on my Razer gamepad. I setup a simple macro that repeats whatever I set the keybind to in Isboxer ever .1 seconds. Set it to repeat the macro as long as I press the key and all I have to do is hold the button down when I want to cycle through my rotation.


Macro 2 is for Horrify for the lock doc. This is a simple keymap in Isboxer that will take a keybind and when pressed send the key to activate Horrify on the lock doc only. Only sending to that key to the lock doc means I can set up sacrifice in that corresponding slot on the other 3 characters. Say for instance Horrify is on slot 2 for the loc doc. Then I setup a keybind on my razer that repeats every half second that gets intercepted by Isboxer which maps to the keymap that sends the key to cast horrify on only the lock doc. I set it to toggle repeat and only have to press it once to turn horrify spam on then hit it again to turn it off and since I have plenty of places to bind it on my gamepad it can be out of the way where I don't always rest my hand since it only needs to be turned on an off occasionally.

That leaves slot 2 for sacrifice on the other 3 characters that use a simple round robin keymap to send the sacrifice command to the jade docs in sucession. This can be done in two ways. You can do simple round robin keymap and then set a macro on the razer gamepad to repeat the macro every .7 seconds. This will cycle through the characters casting sac every .7 seconds. The other way is to do a keymap in isboxer with 3 steps and each step sends to a different jade character and then set the steps to not advance until .7 seconds have passed. They both functionally do the same thing, but the second option allows me to set a macro on my razer that sends the keybind every .1 seconds again like in macro 1, but this time it is controlling the round robin.

The advantage to second option (and the reason I use .5 seconds instead of the 8 second duration of horrify in the macro 2 scenario) is that it works better with the way Razer macro system works. Delays in the razer software execute no mater what. So if I have a macro that casts skill 1 and then has an 8 second delay (say horrify macro) then I set it to constantly repeat on a toggle, the macro will cast skill 1 and then wait 8 seconds, but the second press of it has already been sent. So even if press the macro on then immediately turn it off 8 seconds later the gamepad will send the keybind again and skill 1 will fire again. With shorter delays on the macro gamepad the more responsive they are to turning on and off. So having the gamepad sending the keybinds over and over again and having Isboxer filter them in essence by not advancing steps until your timings are met works out smoother imo.


So Zdogs can go on LMB that is where they will end up. Also Haunt and Queen/Wave take up RMB and an action slot and can be controlled by only 1 macro. 1 macro is controlling Horrify on the lock doc and 1 macro for the sacrifice rotation on the jades. That puts us up to 3 keys needed so far, but the horrify macro doesn't have to be hit much so it doesn't have to be easily accessible. That leaves casting BBV, Fetish Army on the loc dock, and Spirit walk on all of them. Spirit Walk is easy because it is a simple broadcast to all 4 characters and it can be in the same slot on all.

Fetish army is similar to the Horrify situation. Setup a simple keymap in Isboxer that only sends it to the lock doc and since it only needs pressed once and a while it doesn't have to be easily reached all the time. The only difference is you won't use a razer macro to spam it like I do with Horrify.

BBV can be done the same as fetish army with the exception that it can take a key on my gamepad closer to where I will be able to use it frequently. BBV could also be baked into the round robin macro for sacrifice by having each step send BBV key to the lock doc. This would make BBV go off anytime you are spamming your sac macro (which you will be doing anytime you are standing still dpsing down a pack or RG, which is when you would want BBV anyway)

So that puts me up to 3 keys (only 2 if rolling BBV in sac round robin macro) I need to use frequently and 2 that are used less frequently (for Horrify and Fetishes on the lock doc). Dogs are casted rarely from the LMB across all 4 WD's using shift + click. Creative use of ISboxer macros and my gamepad make controlling the differing skills manageable. It helps that the Jade docs really only have their spam macro, sacrifice macro and haunt to use frequently. Means they only take 3 keys. The lock doc has BBV, SW, spam macro, Horrify macro, and Fetishes to use so he has 5 keys. Luckily the spam macro lines up with the Jades, horrify only has to be turned on an off occasionally, fetish army only needs casted occasionally. Which leaves only BBV over the number of keys Jade uses and it can be rolled into the sac macro. Making it 3 keybinds used frequently between all classes and 2 extra keybinds for controlling separate abilities on the Lock Doc.

Should be easily playable.

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Originally Posted by Devile

@Yelgis, Nice work. U have spend quite some time thinking on this. Thanks for sharing it with us.

I'm not much of a theorycrafter. I rather test directly ingame and try different things depending on the results ... I find it more fun that way. From your 3 docs build, I suggest to go with Aughild's Shoulders, Chest and Bracers. Assuming damage is not an issue of course. A little more survivability and elite damage looks nicer than 20% poison and 7% attack speed, specially for higher GR, not to mention u loose armor from pants with the Swamp Land Waders. Jade Pants and Boots. Also, not fully convinced with Bastions of Will yet and the whole spender/generator thing ... is it multiplicative or additive damage? Is it really worth losing SoJ and RoRG?

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FnR is defintely worth it. I do theorycraft devile, but I do test on the ptr as well. FnR buff is why I am running spider queen on the jade docs in this setup. I was testing with a WD that had only 363k sheet damage and less than 200% CHD. My Haunts were hitting for about 40-50 million with the posion one. With the FnR buff up they were hitting for double like you would expect. It does seem to be multiplicative. Everyone on PTR that can use them in their builds say they are best in slot for damage.

I had thought of using Aughilds. Like you said it is a trade off of 20% poison damage and 7% IAS for 15% elite damage and some extra toughness. I feel the jade spam spec greatly benefits from IAS though so I am not sure 15% elite damage would make up for 7% IAS when you also factor in 20% poison damage. I will only be getting posion damage from bracers on other gear slots due to wanting xeph ammies on all characters (where CHC, CHD, and socket would be the best rolls possible), so going from 20% to 40% is a big jump when you consider the FnR buff isn't part of that buff category so it doesn't dilute it. You also can't overlook the potential 20% extra damage to demons from the Tyreal chest. It won't always apply, but many enemies are demon type and I think several RG's are as well.

If survive-ability is an issue, Aughild's is certainly an option that I will consider. Using Rorg really doesn't benefit the jade 2p setup very much at all. The only thing you gain is being able to get aughild's easier. So you could do Aug chest and bracer while still wearing jade shoulder and boots and still get Swamp land waders. But the 20% and 15% elite damage you can by using Rorg is far overshadowed by the 100% buff from FnR ring set.

The synergy of the 2p jade build is just crazy. Toxin gem will scale with poison damage form the spec all the skills are poison based and the poison proc from Shard of Hate goes off a ton with spider queen and haunt and since they are all posion they get full advantage of the build as well. To top it all off area damage works with the 2p Jade bonus which means the aoe capability of the build should be decent enough to clear with.

The biggest downfall of this WD setup is WD's are slow. They don't move nearly as fast as the other classes and unlike Tempest Rush, Condem, Whirlwind, and some other builds they have to stand still to dps. This might make the team slower to play, but they have the best CC imagineable. Fear doc locking down elite affixes and Black Blood sacrifice round robin to make RG's statues is just crazy good. Should be interesting to play.

I dont like PTR cause it changes drastically every 2-3 weeks and I dont really have much time to play now a days. That's why I rather spend the little time I have, trying things in LIVE servers only. All sounds promising. Let's see how it actually works in a few days.

Yea I don't play much on the PTRs either Deville. I jump on to use my Non season stuff to test any ideas I have. This time around I luckily had enough of the items to do the testing I needed even if they didn't have the right mainstats and such. This ofcourse means I haven't been able to test the setup in a full set of appropriately rolled gear, but I was able to test out and work with the base mechanics behind everything, so it should translate well with appropriate gear.

Welp, I didn't like Razer Nostromo (I prefer low-profile keyboards and currently use full-size Apple keyboard), so I'll have to figure out software solution and would like to avoid AHK if possible.

Any reason for avoiding AHK? I've authored some AHK scripts for D3 in the past and it is a pretty easy and straight forward tool to use.

Could play the 4 of them without macros outside of Isboxer at all though. You would need to possibly mash a lot of keys tho.

Only because I heard rumours that AHK might get you banned. Some people were banned using it and speculate that warden (anti-cheat) checks presence of AHK process in the memory. Others said that no one cares as long as you're not "botting". Anyway - grey area.

I've used AHK in the past and even wrote WASD movement scripts for D3. AHK is used for many things beyond macroing in games so to flag it as bannable in warden would lead to a lot of false positives. If you wrote a fully automated bot in AHK then I could see getting banned for that (and I am sure it is possible with enough coding knowledge). I doubt you would get banned for running AHK though as long as you are just using it for repeating macros and such. It would basically be doing exactly what my Razer Orbweaver does and they are both software implementations. The only difference is the Razer product comes with a piece of hardware and isn't as customizeable.

Very interesting post Yelgis. Got me thinking to playing the 4 WD again instead of the barbs in S3. Since i have not experimented much with macros and AHK in the past do you think that this setup is promising without macros? Or should i try to figure things out a bit more?

Blizzard has not made any mention of banning based on a specific program in a long, long time. People who claim to have been banned for the use of a program are often more likely banned for using said program to violate the rules of the game. In other words, it's not the program, it's the way people use it. AHK just happens to be a program people like to use to do such things.

Like - using the mouse to autocast X every Y seconds as long as the key is held as mentioned in this thread already. That is automation - there is nothing at all wrong with the mouse, but using it to automate gameplay IS a bannable offense. Thread locked.

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/5795159954#11

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Omrakos
Support Forum Agent
Posts: 35,118
It does't matter what device or program is used. If it performs a task that automates portions of the game, it could be in violation of the Terms of Use/End User License Agreement and result in an account closure, if detected. I can not give you permission to use any such device or application. If you choose to use it, you do it at your own risk.

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http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/10319928

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