http://diablo.incgamers.com/blog/com...-arena-report/
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Witch Doctor
Last but not least, the Witch Doctor. Despite his fragile appearance, the masked man was the last class standing in a majority of the rounds I saw. He did not deal the most damage, and none of his skills (aside from multiple Mongrel Sacrifices) were that damaging. I don�t think three WDs would have made a very good team. But he was very good mixed in with a Barb and a Wiz, and skilled at dishing out steady, unavoidable damage, his escape skill was awesome, and his tendency to hang back meant that he often got the health pots (including while invisible with Spirit Walk) and kept himself strong.
Witch Doctor skills
* LMB/RMB: Firebomb - Runed for bouncing hits.
* 1: Mongrel �Runed for fire damage.
* 2: Sacrifice
* 3: Horrify
* 4: Grasp of the Dead
* 5: Spirit Walk
Firebomb has been seen in numerous gameplay and panels, and it works just as it always has. Not huge damage, but you can throw them quite quickly, lobbing out a lot of them one after the other. These were runed to bounce and spread their fire damage over a longer stretch in the Blizzcon demo, and that helped a lot. It was good to aim them in the general area of the big scrum and get lots of little fire damages, or just force other players to avoid the burn zone.
Mongrel. The default cast-cast-cast at the start of every round, to get three of them up and running. The dogs were runed to add fire damage, and this made a big difference. It got them lots more damage, and seemed to spread the flame to enemies very quickly. Mongrels did not do much damage themselves, but they were always out there, landing swipes that added up. Plus they allowed the WD to�.
Sacrifice. The biggest damage skill he had, and one I made extensive use of. It was especially good late game, when hunting down the last Wizard. I�d chase with the dogs ahead of me, hurling Firebombs at, or just to cut off, the Wizard. As soon as one of the dogs got in range, even if it was just close enough to take one swipe at the running target� bang. This skill also is a great protection against Barbarians, who could maul a Witch Doctor, but would take as much or more damage from the detonated dogs.
It�s got a bit of a delay on the cast, and you don�t seem able to target a specific dog. I�d often start clicking this, wanting a boom instantly, and by the time one dog blew up, or all three in a row, the target was out of range. I was never able to figure out if there was really a delay, or if I was aiming wrong, didn�t have a direct enough line of sight, etc.
Horrify. One that I saw used seldom, but to great effect when it was. It utterly frustrated Barbarians, since just when they had the Witch Doctor lined up� they�d go running in the other direction, unable to control their character for a couple of seconds. If the WD were smart, he could actually lure in a Barb, Horrify him, tack on a Grasp of the Dead, release the hounds, and then and then blow them up. I never saw this done, but it�s fun to imagine.
Grasp of the Dead. A very powerful curse, this one greatly slowed the enemy, as well as afflicting them with a sort of worming, brown, burning graphic. It�s actively unpleasant to see this on your character; you actually feel like they�re being eaten alive. And you can�t even run from it properly, in your slow motion cursed state. Hard to hit a moving target with this one since the radius of effect was very small, but hugely useful if you managed it.
Spirit Walk. I�ve raved about this one already, but it was really an awesomely useful skill. The Witch Doctor leaves a decoy of himself behind and has several seconds to run free, invisible to everyone. Best of all he can grab health orbs in this mode. He can�t cast other spells though, so no detonating Sacrifices. Almost everyone used this to run to safety, and then recast their three Mongrels in some distant corner before returning to the battle.
The best way to play a Witch Doctor was carefully. They were great nibblers; capable of dealing constant, steady, unspectacular damage with their bouncing Firebombs and flaming Mongrels. While not a front line fighter, the WD with these skills was very useful on a team, thanks to their minions and their ability to debuff the enemy, WDs were the best late game one-on-one, as they used long range, bouncing Firebombs and quick-moving, aggressive Mongrels to hunt down the enemy.
Questions comments?|||Hi!
Was the mana ever low or could you just spam out the spells as you pleased? How was the regen? I haven't seen any max amounts anywhere so i can't really understand how much is 20 mana for Horrify for example. Not really only considering PvP, but still would be nice to know.
|||Were most of the WD skills not runed or did you just not have a chance to write down?|||the WD was never at all low on mana in the arena. Neither was the Wiz low on AP, when I played her. The Barb needed to power up Fury at the start, but that only took a few hits and was never low again. I think they had the resources set to faster regen, or faster fill, in the PvP to allow non-ceasing spells.All the arena chars skills were lvl 5 and runed. I didn't note them all for the WD, probably as a consequence of the WD's survivability in the Arena. with the Barb and Wiz I often wound up dead with time to look over my eq and traits and skills while the round continued on.
Mongrels had fire damage added, and Firebomb was bouncing from a rune. Dunno what spirit walk or GotD or Terrify had; nothing that changed/modified their essential nature, so probably they had lowers cost or increases duration runes.|||Question: Are you sure that Grasp of the Dead had that weird brown graphic?
MiniMonk has been watching the footage and just a few seconds before the 17 minute mark some sort of blue circle appears beneath the Wiz and slows her down, it is kind of hard to see, but it does slow her down. Then she teleports out of it and the Witch Doctor sprays the brown stuff over her, yet it doesn't slow her down.
The only thing that MM can think of is that the blue circle is Grasp of the Dead and the brown stuff is Locust Swarm. It also would then make the Witch Doctor have the same number of skills compared to the Baba or Wiz.
Edit: MM watched it 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.).|||Thanks for the writeup, Flux!
You make Mongrels sound absolutely essential for the WD. I was kinda hoping that while they are one of his signature spells, that it'd be possible to build an equally viable WD without them.
Do you think that it's possible to build a PvP Witch Doctor without Mongrels that's just as viable as one which uses them?|||He has a metric ton of damage over time spells. I don't see why not.|||"I don't think three WDs would have made a very good team". LOL. I played two games of PvP arena at Blizzcon, both times using the WD. The first time both of my other teammates used him as well and we literally won 10 rounds in a row before the other team was forced to change their characters to WDs just to compete (9 exploding dogs was way too much for them). Playing with 6 WDs in the arena was actually the most fun I had all weekend. My teammates and I were grinning ear to ear the whole time, and the staff guy was totally enthralled by the WD madness, commenting that it was the most fun set of games he'd seen so far.|||Quote:
Question: Are you sure that Grasp of the Dead had that weird brown graphic?
MiniMonk has been watching the footage and just a few seconds before the 17 minute mark some sort of blue circle appears beneath the Wiz and slows her down, it is kind of hard to see, but it does slow her down. Then she teleports out of it and the Witch Doctor sprays the brown stuff over her, yet it doesn't slow her down.
The only thing that MM can think of is that the blue circle is Grasp of the Dead and the brown stuff is Locust Swarm. It also would then make the Witch Doctor have the same number of skills compared to the Baba or Wiz.
AFAIK, the chars in the demos were identical to the chars in the gameplay movies. PvM and PvP. And there was no Swarm of Locusts. Also, those have been seen a fair amount and they were always green, previously.
I saw GotD on my chars a few times in the demo, and it was creepy and brown wormy. It looked a bit more reddish brown, in my memory, but it was like your char was disintegrating like a zombie in a high wind, with brown dust flying away from you constantly.
Casting it in the demo was done by a very small radius target circle. I don't know when/how the brown worm/dust got there, since it was always too busy to check that, in the demo.|||I'd think 3 barbs playing with smart teamwork could beat 3 WDs. Mongrels roamed out prety far, and a smart barb squad would lure them out, then 2 barbs leap over and go after one WD. Obviously it would take a lot of work to track down the WDs while they spirit walked, and the barbs would need to be very careful dodging in and out against the mongrels and using Sprint and Leap Attack, but a barb locked onto a fleeing WD without any spirit walk could do more damage with Frenzy than a single WD could do with exploding Mongrels.
That assumes the barbs were very organized and smart, which is not something I saw in any arena games.
I'd also think 3 wizards could beat 3 WDs. 3 wizards at once concentrating their Disintegrates would be devastating, disintegrate had more range and faster and easier to hit with than Firebomb, and with some scattered hydras they'd be constantly nibbling on the WDs and slicing through the dogs.
It would come down to strategy; if the WDs were smart about staying in cover and they occupied the strategic middle they could get the health orbs and leave not enough space for the wizards to do their strategic attacks from a distance out of mongrel sacrifice range.
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