Witch Doctor Arena Report - Page 2

[:1]Sorry, did you catch MiniMonk's edit?

If not here it is:

MM watched it(the vid) one more time and noticed that buff icons appear just to the right of the health globe, and debuff icons appear just to the left of the resource globe(in this case Arcane Power). And when the blue circle appears beneath the Wiz a green hand icon appeared on the debuff side, disappeared when the Wiz teleported out of it, and some other green icon appeared when the Witch Doctor sprayed her with the brown stuff(MM still thinks that it is Locust Swarm.).|||I agree with MM. That is unmistakably Locust Swarm. The video for reference

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzD9Zf0CDY0

@0:55 the WD casts the brown spell at the Wiz. From what I can tell, it looks pretty much exactly like locust swarm aside from the coloring. And there doesn't appear to be any slowing going on there. If you pay close attention I swear it jumps to the Barb too. Edit: It jumps back and forth a few times actually.

Now there is the blue circle spell cast by the WD @ 1:18. What other spell could it be? It greatly slows down the Wiz although unlike the skill description I don't think it's damaging the Wiz at all. It could be changed or be runed to slow more and not damage at all.|||I can confirm that Locust Swarm had fire damage rune, and Sacrifice had a rune that caused all 3 dogs to explode with one cast, rather than one at a time. They also exploded at a staggered rate. I loved hearing that BOOM BOOM BOOM sound.|||Maybe the fire damage rune changed the color? Or they thought brown locusts are more realistic?

Grug, can you recall the other runes socketed in the skills?|||Ahh, but imagine intelligent use of grasp of the dead, which dramatically slows both the barb and the wizard (maybe even prevents barb from leaping?), then BAM, 9 explosions right on top of them. I agree that very skilled players could probably outmaneuver the WD's; however, with everyone on an equally inexperience plane, the WD's were way OP.|||Sorry, had to change my post to a quick reply|||This is an issue in game balance, and even Blizzard struggles w/ this one. Take the top 0.01% of all D3 PvP players. They take a specific build, and run rough-shod over everything. One build is just too overpowered and nothing else can compete. However, when you expand the pool to the top 50% (average), this build stinks. It is only good in the hands of the best of the best, but your average player can't make it work to save their lives. So how do you balance this build? Do you nerf it? Do you buff it? Which brackets do you balance the game around? The top 50%? 25%? 0.01%?|||Quote:




So how do you balance this build? Do you nerf it? Do you buff it? Which brackets do you balance the game around? The top 50%? 25%? 0.01%?




They balance builds so no single composition completely dominates every other composition for most players. This isn't an e-sport game, top-down balance is completely irrelevant here. Even in their e-sport pony of SC2, they occasionally make changes that explicitly fix something for the lower skill base of players.