The WD and Boss Fights

[:1]So from everything I've read so far about the WD I'm really excited about exploring his rather strange play style, but one thing that has me concerned is how he'll shape up against bosses as a solo class. I haven't made it to any blizzcons or seen any solo WD boss fight videos and I'd really appreciate a little insight from anybody who has.

I'm guessing the witch doctor would have a fairly low survival rating if it wasn't for all the crowd control abilities he has to choose from. Will any of his CC abilities affect bosses? Which ones? I can't imagine any of his pets standing up to the living siege engine of hell much less any of the prime evils.

The other part of my concern is from his relative lack of single target DPS skills. Compared to the other classes he definitely seems to be lacking one on one efficient damage skills. In a boss fight for causing direct damage I'm thinking firebats, zombie charger, poison dart, and firebomb. I'm not familiar with the lifespan of the WD's mana pool so maybe some of his crazier AoEs could be useful. Hopefully runes will allow some of his abilities to become more single target focused (like the magnificent giant toad!).

I wonder how effective his summoning skills will be against something like a class boss. Do the summon spiders just wander around like the toads? Will the gargantuan cause decent damage or will Diablo just turn around and squash him? Fetish army and pit of fire are wild cards at the moment.

And he's got a couple of cool DoTs. What kind of damage do these provide and how long do they last?

It's my understanding that many (all?) of the boss fights will have mobs spawning occasionally or some other way to score some health orbs. With that in mind AoE certainly has its place in a boss fight, I just hope WD boss battles don't turn into kiting matches lasting three times as long as the same boss versus a barbarian who is more geared toward one on one fighting.

Soooo....yeah. That's what I've been thinking about. |||I See where you'r going, and im thinking the same. I think for Blizzard it's really challenging to make balanced WD because he/she can't really be as good in soloing as let's say Wizard. Surely some rune skills could make him allmost as good soloer as Wiz, but with the summons, it will be too superior in my opinion. My conclusion is that it needs the combination of both. (ok, we did have bone necro who didn't need summons in d2, but it was because of enigma mainly)|||I actually think he would do better than most. He doesn't need to kite as he has summons. His mobility skill also doubles as a momentarily invulnerability skill. Poison Darts got really high praise for single target DPS.

I would be more worried as a Wizard, actually, as slows/disables might be nerfed against bosses.|||TBH all classes will have some skills that good VS masses and some that good VS powerful bosses, it just making sure you don't pick AOE + AOE +AOE etc.|||Haunt is the spell I'd have thought would be most difficult against bosses, though I don't know much about it yet.

The D2 necromancer was pretty broken against bosses - if your skeletons were strong enough you could sit back and watch with no effort or risk, and if they weren't, bosses were incredibly difficult. At least with minions that don't require corpses, the WD can resummon.|||Quote:








TBH all classes will have some skills that good VS masses and some that good VS powerful bosses, it just making sure you don't pick AOE + AOE +AOE etc.




You're probably right. I just scrolled through the class skill lists and at this point I still think the WD is lacking single target DPS. I've got faith in blizzard that this won't be the case by release, but that's what it looks like now. It would be really cool if you could target specific enemies with fetish army (and if the target dies they just attack other nearby mobs).

and @ Konfeta

You're assuming his summons can tank bosses. That would definitely make the fights a lot easier, which is why I kind of doubt it.|||Some of the semi-summon spells should be good VS bosses.

If you can cast the Corpse Spider (creates X spiders that attack, in theory its X attacks spit between all monsters in range).

Haunt should be a good single target killer that moves to a new target on death of old one.

Fetish Army should be good as well as they should all gang up on the boss.

There you go that 3 summon attack spells that should work well, then there's Poison dart which is a single target attack skill.

Then there's the old Plague of Toads which should do good damage in base march of toads vs big bosses (toad hit boss go Boom!) or you can rune for big frog which should do good damage.

Only Toad rain looks like it be not a good pick.|||Quote:




You're assuming his summons can tank bosses. That would definitely make the fights a lot easier, which is why I kind of doubt it.




He rapidly resummons them. They don't need to tank, just keep his fleshy parts away from the clawy parts.