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It's a tank. That is exactly opposite to what Blizz has been telling us about the WD. They keep hammering on the fact that they don't want a Summoner. That minions should be disposable. That we should view them as transitory. What do they do? They give us a tank. They give us a skill to transform the Zombie Dogs into tanks. That is not promoting the use of minions as spell, that is creating a Summoner.
When was the last time they said that the WD was not a summoner? Last time I heard them say that was at last year’s Blizzcon. Things can change Mantis. I think back when they first said it they had a different idea of what the WD was going to be, but after some time came to the conclusion that, if they didn't make him a summoner he would just be Wizard part 2.
Another thing is, you can condemn other people's theories by saying the game isn't done (how X skill will be) and then turn around and say you think there is only one playstyle. You can’t make that statement either if you use your logic.|||DISCLAMER: This post is very long. I tried to answer everyone so there might be a lot of overlap in the answers. I separated the responses to different posters with a dashed line.
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without any WD related official statements there is no way to be sure which direction the WD is going now ... IMO don't put too much thought into this.
It's too true that we know very little about the char. But there isn't a lot of other stuff we can do when it comes to the WD so we might as well analyze what we do know.
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What if we had a viable mind control Witch Doctor that could wreak havoc using skills like Mass Confusion and Hex (whatever Hex does)? Maybe Blizzard made Mass Confusion a top-tier skill for a reason. With a third, more unorthodox (but still reasonably competitive) build like that, the Witch Doctor would feel more complete and flexible.
The idea of a Mind Control WD sounds good to me. It could lead to a very interesting playstyle. Although I am not certain that they made Mass Confusion a top-tier skill because it is so powerful. They are probably just still toying with the appropriate tier allocation.
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Mantis, you don't realize that they are still working on the game do you?
Actually I do. I'm all too aware that the game is far from finished. That is why I'm concentrating on what they have done now and have said up to this point. These things might be changed in the future. Analyzing what we know of the WD now might give some clue as to what has to change in the future, what might be changed and what could be changed.
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Do you not remember D2?? The nec had skele warriors and mages, do they overlap?
Are Mages and Skellies both melee specialists designed to be tanks? Are Mages and Skellies both ranged magic users designed to provide utility damage from a distance? No. They both have very clear roles. It would be more appropriate to compare a Clay Golem with Skellies. Or Dire Wolves with Grizzly.
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or wait he also had 4 different golems?
All with a different element, design and intended purpose. Nothing in the skill description at this point seems to allude to the Gargantuan dealing a special type of damage or having a special sort of attack. So at this point they are both physical damage dealing tanks. One is alone and tough, the others are many and weak.
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Or how bout the druid? He had 2 different kinds of wolves and a bear?? they "overlapped" didnt they?
They completely overlapped. They overlapped so much that the lowest tier of Wolf skills was useless. The choice was do I want three slightly more damaging but slightly weaker tanks. Or one slightly less damaging but stronger tank. Complete overlap and nothing more than a false choice.
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I highly doubt all of the skills in those trees will stay in that tree, they will still have to edit the trees to make them feel together as a whole.
Probably. All I said is that right now they don't feel as a complete unity appropriate for a WD. Don't get me wrong. I like the Spirit tree and what can be achieved with it. I just think that at this point in the development of the WD it doesn't feel as if it belongs.
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Oh and someone said that the witchdoctor's spirit tree doesn't fit? (sorry couldnt find to quote) thats ridculous, the witchdoctors in indian tribes were there to go into the spirtual realm and heal people, so saying that a witchdoctor using spirts doesn't fit is like a wizard not using magic.
Yes, I said the Spirit tree doesn't fit. I couldn't give a rat's *** about what WD's do in real life. Right now the Spirit tree feels off. There has been one slight mention of the Spirit realm in the lore. The rest of the char seems completely focused on zombies and jungle beasts. No mention of the spirit realm in any of the trees. It doesn't feel connected to the rest of the character. It might change when things are finalized but that is not what I am discussing here.
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Maybe zombie dogs can act as minor tanks during very very early parts of the game. This could be a balancing issue that helps WD get through until they get more active spells.
Now I like the idea of having them purely around as fodder. The problem stems from their damage being tied to their health. In order for the explosion to be worth anything they would need high health. If they have high health they make really good tanks. I wouldn't want to kill off all my tanks. Making the explosion damage dependent on something else would go a long way to making Zombie Dogs nothing more than cannon fodder.
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The skills don't do the opposite, they make them better sacrifices like i said above .. and make the Gargantuan (who they never mentioned as a disposable minion) a better attacker and tank .. there is no problem here at all.
Yes, it makes them better sacrifices, but surely you can see that increasing health and damage will also make them vastly better tanks?
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Again, they only said they wanted the WD to be able to sacrifice his Zombie Dogs when they have outdone their usefulness, not all his minions, the difference is obvious, go watch the D3 debut video again.
He only had a handful of skills back then and only one of them was a minion. Of course only Zombie Dogs were mentioned as being disposable. They said that Zombie Dogs would be the first of his minions and that they would be expendable and not tanks. That means all of the minions.
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Why is that !!!, theme wise it fits perfectly, entering the spiritual world and dealing with spirits is something Witch Doctors in all cultures and lore do (in which they also deal with the undead, curses and poison) .. it fits 100%.
It might fit the concept, but right now it doesn't tie in with the character. The tree has a different vibe to it than the others. There is no allusion to the spirit realm in any of the other trees. It doesn't come across as a coherent hole. I'm not disputing that the spirit tree can work for the character, right now I'm saying it doesn't feel connected to the WD as a whole.
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Sorry but that's totally incorrect, they are nothing alike.
They are both melee tanks that deal physical damage. One skill has greater numbers but low damage and life and the other has a single strong minion and high damage. On average this should lead to almost the same result when tanking. Especially if you take into account the skills that resurrect Zombie Dogs when they die. So now you have a front of weak minions that constantly get replaced or a front of a single strong minion that is just hard to kill. How are they not alike?
The only real gameplay difference between the skills is whether or not you can explode them. And Blizz's intent seems to be to differentiate their roles by making the Zombie Dogs only suitable as Sacrifice. However they are going about it the wrong way. They tied damage to health. In order for the damage to be worth anything they really need high health. High health makes them good tanks. They should tie the Sacrifice damage to something else. That would make the Zombie Dogs only suitable for Sacrifice and reduce or remove the overlap between the skills.
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Zombie dogs getting more HP and ATK only make them better distractions and sacrifices, but not tanks.
Why would getting more life and damage not make them better tanks? Don't all tanks require more life to tank better? There is even a skill to automatically (and at no cost) resurrect them when they die. Yes, this makes them better sacrifices as you can get your ammo back. But you must understand that this also makes your tanking front better since the tank will return when it is killed.
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As to why sacrifice them, that's the only logical thing to do with them
Keeping them around and lobbing nukes is even more logical.
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The Gargantuan will do a better job holding off enemies and damaging them directly, you don't have to babysit it, unlike the Zombie dogs
Unrelenting Assault could take a lot of the babysitting out of the Zombie Dogs.
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Not to mention using this cycle you can increase you spell damage using the skill that increases you spell damage depending on how many Z.Dogs you have
Another reason to keep as many around as possible. The more you have ALIVE the more you'll be able to kill mobs while the Zombie Dogs tank. Killing off your Zombie Dogs will decrease your DPS. Unless killing off a single Zombie Dog does far more damage than a good nuke spell. For that to be true they need really high life, which would make them very good tanks.
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When was the last time they said that the WD was not a summoner?
The interviews after the BlizzCon mentioned it a few times.
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I think back when they first said it they had a different idea of what the WD was going to be, but after some time came to the conclusion that, if they didn't make him a summoner he would just be Wizard part 2.
Any chance of you remembering which interview this was? I can't recall reading it. Should shed some light on what the WD will become.
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Another thing is, you can condemn other people's theories by saying the game isn't done (how X skill will be) and then turn around and say you think there is only one playstyle.
Fair enough.|||To Mad Mantis.
Poisonmancer has different play style than Bonemancer just because how poison nova work and how bone spells plus playing your poisonmancer you spend only 60 point for poison tree rest of points you can spend for example for mages as they prospect from same curse and for even more fluff you can wear full set to change yourself into vampire and cast few fire spells here and there.
Completely different playstyle than wall yourself and snipe things with spear and ghost. That is my opinion.
To Knight_Wolf
One minion will not help you with tanking. Just look at first movie where Barbarian was attack by tons of ghouls from all directions, but if Skellymancer would enter this situation his 15 skeletons and 15 skeletons mages would cover all directions without a problem.
Now the most important thing we do not know how ai will work in D3.
At least i do not know, maybe somebody who played WD at this blizzcon could light me up.
Where is problem. In Diablo 2 made by Blizzard North monsters just attacked nearest enemy and they didn't change or ignore target making this way summoner life easy.
In Titan Quest player is high on priority list so when monster fight your minion and you attack him, he would ignore your minion and go after you (even casting debuff was enough) making life for summoner pain in the ***.
In WoW Blizzard add threat meter, monster would by default attack attack nearest target but skip it if other target would generate more threat and go after it.
That's why Succubs, felhunter or imp are useless for tanking (not because of heatha s you see) and voidwalker is the best. This was making summoner life a constant checking threat meter instead of enjoy a fight but there is no true summoner in WoW, but still system stay.
So how is in Diablo 3 can someone enlighten me? How monsters react?
P.S. should i start new thread in WD forum about it?|||Hi!
Mad Mantis you are missing a huge point. You say over and over again (been saying for many posts) that why would you want to sacriface your z-dogs as they can tank and you can lob some love skulls to the enemies?
One of the reasons i can make up from the top of my head is that you hit 2 enemies with parasite. Then you use a z-dog to explode and result in gaining 2 z-dogs and that leavels you having one more. The key is to have sacriface do more / different kind of damage than the skills you can use. Also gaining 1 from losing 1 is a good thing if you end up dealing alot of damage to many other enemies at the same time. In some situations you could parasite 5 enemies and blow up 5 z-dogs and the last explosion kills them all and results you gaining 5 more z-dogs.
What i see as a problem is that in end-game the z-dogs sacriface will do alot less damage than you can do with spells tus the z-dogs hp or damage done by exploding should increase by the WD stats. If the summons have no kind of scaling with gear they will end up being just a meat wall that follows you around or they will be OP compared to other builds/classes.
IMHO too little is know from garganthuan to make references to z-dogs but he seems like the golem as z-dogs are the skellies. It's to be seen how much mana is his casting going to take and if the skill has a long CD. (1 minute being a long CD in an ARPG) Truth is that he can't tank everything and you most likely need z-dogs with him as wide spread of enemies come running at you he can only keep few on himself from the start if he doesen't have some kind of aoe taunt or the enemies magically all target him.|||Quote:
Now I like the idea of having them purely around as fodder. The problem stems from their damage being tied to their health. In order for the explosion to be worth anything they would need high health. If they have high health they make really good tanks. I wouldn't want to kill off all my tanks. Making the explosion damage dependent on something else would go a long way to making Zombie Dogs nothing more than cannon fodder.
Yes, it makes them better sacrifices, but surely you can see that increasing health and damage will also make them vastly better tanks?
I see the connection between having more health and being a better tank (really its quite obvious) however, just because the zdogs have more health does not mean they will be tanks. I see the problem with needing the dogs to have high health for damage. One way they can deal with this though would be to give them low defense and low resists. Just think of a naked character with battle orders. Sure they have a decent amount of health, but that doesn't mean they won't die in a few hits. Just look at the naked ubers runs. They all pumped vit and had TONS of hp, but they were still very fragile and none of them could tank anything.
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They are both melee tanks that deal physical damage. One skill has greater numbers but low damage and life and the other has a single strong minion and high damage. On average this should lead to almost the same result when tanking. Especially if you take into account the skills that resurrect Zombie Dogs when they die. So now you have a front of weak minions that constantly get replaced or a front of a single strong minion that is just hard to kill. How are they not alike?
I agree. I don't see how people are saying they are extremely different. My guess would be that right now they aren't. This is probably why we have yet to see the gargantuan. He is most likely a work in progress at this point.
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Another reason to keep as many around as possible. The more you have ALIVE the more you'll be able to kill mobs while the Zombie Dogs tank. Killing off your Zombie Dogs will decrease your DPS. Unless killing off a single Zombie Dog does far more damage than a good nuke spell. For that to be true they need really high life, which would make them very good tanks.
Great point.... it indeed sounds quite contradictory to have summons that increase dps, yet their signature move destroys them. It's not like they are useful sacrifices at low health either...|||Quote:
So how is in Diablo 3 can someone enlighten me? How monsters react?
I don't think that anyone knows at this point in time. In D2 the PC's, minions and mercs all had their own threat value. That is why a CG gets attacked more often than Skellies. Presumably something like this will also be in D3, but we probably need the game files to find that out or a lot more time with the game.
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One of the reasons i can make up from the top of my head is that you hit 2 enemies with parasite. Then you use a z-dog to explode and result in gaining 2 z-dogs and that leavels you having one more.
What troubles me about Sacrifice is why would I want to kill off this one Zombie Dog and loose a tank when I can just cast a Skull of Flame and have three Zombie Dogs? The way I see it your scenario only really works if Zombie Dogs do a lot of damage when you explode them. A lot more than a cast or two of Skull of Flame.
I'd really only Sacrifice Zombie Dogs if they were almost dead anyway and Sacrifice would work based on their max health.
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The key is to have sacriface do more / different kind of damage than the skills you can use.
This is a pretty good idea to get around high resistances. But right now the WD has Spirit, Poison and Flame damage. I really hope that Blizz isn't going to introduce monsters with almost three immunities.
Having Sacrifice do more damage means that the life of Zombie Dogs needs to go up creating better tanks. They need to sever the connection between the life of Zombie Dogs and the damage of Sacrifice.
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What i see as a problem is that in end-game the z-dogs sacriface will do alot less damage than you can do with spells tus the z-dogs hp or damage done by exploding should increase by the WD stats.
That's something that I thought about as well. I'm just thinking that the damage output from Sacrifice will be eclipsed by nuke spells rather quickly.
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One way they can deal with this though would be to give them low defense and low resists.
That's a pretty good idea. At least it would void their role as tank and make them more useful as walking bombs. The only snag I see is with the Leader of the Pack skill. If Zombie Dogs die too fast it would make that skill useless.
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It's not like they are useful sacrifices at low health either...
They could be if Sacrifice damage was based on the max health of Zombie Dogs instead of their current health. I don't know if we have information that confirms either mechanic.|||Quote:
This is a pretty good idea to get around high resistances. But right now the WD has Spirit, Poison and Flame damage. I really hope that Blizz isn't going to introduce monsters with almost three immunities.
Spirit isn't an element as far as i know .. it should do direct damage .. and its vaule will be based on your spell damage bonus.
That makes Spirit attacks quite interesting and unique.
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Having Sacrifice do more damage means that the life of Zombie Dogs needs to go up creating better tanks. They need to sever the connection between the life of Zombie Dogs and the damage of Sacrifice.
No, this doesn't lead to that.
There are many ways to make sacrifice more effective without making Z.dogs good tanks.
1-Making sacrifice damage based on Z.dogs max health.
2-Make sacrifice do damage by a 300% (or more) of remaining Z.dog health.
3-Give Z.dogs (zero) armor and (zero) resistance.
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The only snag I see is with the Leader of the Pack skill. If Zombie Dogs die too fast it would make that skill useless.
No, it is still useful and encourages tactical skilled play .. specially that i demonstrated above you don't need raise their HP too high to make sacrifice effective.
Actually by using the (parasite, sacrifice) combo when you sacrifice one zombie dog you will be getting a new one or even more .. so sacrificing them will only decrease your DPS for 1 or 2 sec .. but if you are a bad player and can't use (parasite, sacrifice) combo effectively you will be losing the chance to have high DPS for much longer period (i.e if you spam sacrifice mindlessly)
It's all about the player skill at sacrificing the Z.dogs at the right time (to damage as many enemies as possible while gaining new Z.dogs instantly (thus not affecting your DPS at all)
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They could be if Sacrifice damage was based on the max health of Zombie Dogs instead of their current health. I don't know if we have information that confirms either mechanic.
I think we already agree on this .. this is one possible way to keep sacrifice effective without giving Z.Dogs too much HP and making them tanks.
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Now that we mention that .. the Gargantuan could also have a very high armor and resistance value and the zombie dogs don't.
As for the comment comparing the Gargantuan to the Necro Golems .. well .. skill runes exist for a reason .. and one of their results is making base skill a little more bland so when runes are added they can change how the skill works in interesting ways .. if the skill is too complex or too interesting as a base it will be very hard to make any interesting rune adjustments to it.
In other words (Simple Garguntain + Skill runes = many interesting Gargantuan variations) each made for a differernt purpose and goal .. exactly like having four Golem skills .. except you have to pick one that fits your build and playstyle .. same for the Z.dogs .. this reduces the overlap possible (i.e like in the case of the druid having tow overlapping wolf types)|||Okay there is way to much stuff for me to quote for and say my part so im just skippin to the important things.
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Keeping them around and lobbing nukes is even more logical.
i agree completely. the more zdogs the more distractions, the less you get attacked, and when you have 5-7 other skills to choose from that do good damage i dont see the point in destroying your distractions, yes there would be good times to sacrifice them but in the middle of the game i highly doubt i want to get rid of my distractions.
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As for the comment comparing the Gargantuan to the Necro Golems .. well .. skill runes exist for a reason .. and one of their results is making base skill a little more bland so when runes are added they can change how the skill works in interesting ways .. if the skill is too complex or too interesting as a base it will be very hard to make any interesting rune adjustments to it.
In other words (Simple Garguntain + Skill runes = many interesting Gargantuan variations) each made for a differernt purpose and goal .. exactly like having four Golem skills .. except you have to pick one that fits your build and playstyle .. same for the Z.dogs .. this reduces the overlap possible (i.e like in the case of the druid having tow overlapping wolf types)
i forgot about that and it makes complete since and that will be the main differences, thank you for reminding me of that. Also blizzard said that when they took away the fire/poison add-ons to the zdogs they did it cause it was kinda pointless, well ya id guess so since everyone is saying they just want to sacrfice them, im not sure thats completely the point, but then they said they would probably use those idea and put them to the runes where they add the damage, so that proves right there that runes will change the way you use your zdogs.|||Quote:
1-Making sacrifice damage based on Z.dogs max health.
2-Make sacrifice do damage by a 300% (or more) of remaining Z.dog health.
3-Give Z.dogs (zero) armor and (zero) resistance.
We have no idea about whether 1 is true or not. I really hope that they make Sacrifice dependent on max health instead of current health. Current health would pretty much kill the idea without some overly powerful rune in the skill.
The skill description is vague on point 2. From the initial rank it does 20% of the ZD's life. While it might scale to over 100% it seems a bit unlikely. I think that this is the best option of increasing the usefulness of Sacrifice while keeping the ZD's as bad tanks. This would also make Sacrifice a viable alternative to a high powered nuke spell.
While point 3 is a good way to keep them down as tanks you'd have to be careful not to make them too weak later in the game or they won't even be around long enough to explode.
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In other words (Simple Garguntain + Skill runes = many interesting Gargantuan variations) each made for a differernt purpose and goal .. exactly like having four Golem skills .. except you have to pick one that fits your build and playstyle .. same for the Z.dogs .. this reduces the overlap possible (i.e like in the case of the druid having tow overlapping wolf types)
While I agree that the rune mechanic could be used to further differentiate potentially overlapping skills I have to say that I find it to be a bit of a cheap way out for Blizz. The way it is used in Bashiok's comments it sounds almost as if the runes are used to fix poor skill design.
I'd really like it if skills were different and interesting enough on their own. I understand that they want to push the mechanic and use of runes as much as possible, but unless those runes are incredibly common a new char is going to spend a lot of time without runes. I'd rather have them make the base skill interesting enough.|||Hi!
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The skill description is vague on point 2. From the initial rank it does 20% of the ZD's life. While it might scale to over 100% it seems a bit unlikely. I think that this is the best option of increasing the usefulness of Sacrifice while keeping the ZD's as bad tanks. This would also make Sacrifice a viable alternative to a high powered nuke spell.
How you think it will scale then? I'm pretty sure it's going to be 20% per level so if you can go to 15 skillpoints it could be 300%. I also was thinking that it might have larger radius than the other aoe nukes. :/ Tho this would mean every point invested in the skill would scale pretty well.
The problem i see with this is that the use of the skill is situational at best. This is true atleast if the damage is tied to the current HP. Also 15 points sounds alot for a skill that you will be using now and then and could be done with other skills that are more well rounded.
And about the runes... there could be insane things like make zdogs scale with WD vitality and then you have all out vitality build with the corresponding vitality skills... I'm pretty afraid about every skill that will be made to scale with vitality for WD as he has good vit skills that scale up by level and items really well.
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