Can someone explain the flow and timing for using zombie dogs + provoke as a WD in meta groups?

I’ve recently switched from using the sacred harvester + voodoo in meta groups to barber + coe + zombie dogs + provoke.

I just need clarification on how the flow of skills should be and their timing to play the build correctly.

Here’s an example of what I’m doing, please lmk where I’m going wrong if I am:

  1. I’m waiting for the barb to gather a bunch of trash and elites
  2. Once we are set up, I’m watching my COE rotation
  3. at 5 seconds before cold, I lay 3 spirit barrages down, with the radius of their circles barely touching, around the elite
  4. Right before I enter cold on the COE, I cast provoke 3 times to get 3 stacks
  5. I’m not popping on cold, instead, I let the spirit barrages accumulate on cold and self detonate right after cold ends

I’ve gotten some feedback from players in groups telling me I’m not dps’ing correctly, but they’re not offering any other feedback other than that so I’m coming here to see where I can improve.

My other thought was:

I place the spirit barrages down a little earlier and instead of waiting till after cold, I detonate them at the last second of having the provoke buff and during the COE cold rotation.

Any feedback/tips is appreciated

I’ve been told that Spirit Barrage snapshots the Sacrifice-buff, so you have to sacrifice before you put down the Phantasms. The way you do it right now you don’t benefit from sacrifice at all i think. For more damage you can also try to spawn an oculus before cold COE. Do you delay your explosions after cold, so the barb has time to stomp after the first one?

Ye you are partly correct, heres how you should do it :

Make sure you have 3 dogs already up and running and your sacrifice ready to press

  • 5 sec before cold start your rotation
  • sacrifice 3x
  • use summon for 2x sacrifice so youre at a total of 5
  • channel SB until a oculus spawns (before cold)
  • go out in oculus and time it so you are standing in oculus for a full cold duration
  • when SB’s have accumulated for 8ish seconds pop 1 SB
  • let the barb stomp on top of your remaining 2x SB
  • either let the 2 remaining SB run out or pop them

The reason you want to pop your sacrifice before laying down your SB’s is that they snapshots. Also important that you are standing in the middle of the group for most Pain Enhancer (PE) stacks possible.
most of your dmg comes from a combination of PE stacks and sacrifice.

Hope it helps to understand it a little better otherwise just reply to me. :slight_smile:

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Just to clarify, this is how i think the process should go now

  • @ 5 seconds before cold, I pop 3 sacrifices, pop 2 more for 5 stacks
  • channel somewhere and get an oculus to spawn
  • move to the oculus (do all of this before the cold coe hits)
  • lay 3 SB’s down around the elite
  • pop a SB after 8 seconds (this is outside of the cold coe rotation)
  • let the barb stomp and pack stuff onto the last 2 SBs
  • let the remaining SB’s detonate or pop them myself

5 seconds is a pretty small window to accomplish all of this. Thanks, I had no idea I needed to pop sacrifice before laying down the SBs

If you do this you dont have enough time to actually get the buffs from sacrifice, remember they snapshot, so you need to be inside all the mobs while maintaining both PE stacks and sacrifice stacks.

I know it sounds silly but you cant put new SB’s down when you already have your SB’s down you snapshotted earlier, then you loose all your dmg.

This thread makes me angry honestly… It’s the insane complexity of the bazooka wiz from a few months ago all over.

Well no, bazooka was a one button class with macro.
WD you actually have to think and cast skills in the right order to unlock the true potential of the class.
How is that bad?? Thats exactly what high lvl gameplay is about, if you play casually under 3k paragon or so, ye then its not so damn important but dont scrap the idea of builds that require you to think for a second.

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hi there,

So each phantasms casted after the 3rd one loose the benefice of sacrified dogs?

Or if we cast a 4 5 6 to proc oculus we just loose time and some -20% each second ?