Problem: Soul Harvest requires players to get closer to enemies to activate an ability they use for defense.
Solution: Increase radius from 18 to 30 yards
Problem: Ring of emptiness forces builds to use Locust Swarm or Haunt on builds that would never use it otherwise.
Solution: Ring of emptiness increases damage by 300% after USING a Secondary or Decay Skill, and lasts 30 seconds.
On a side note, change Wormwood Staff to : Locust Swarm gains every rune.
Yes there a boat load of other changes you can make but I felt these were the easiest to code in at the last minute, especially Soul Harvest.
7 Likes
Good start. Hopefully more WD fans will add their ideas.
1 Like
Still say reverse the patch that killed support doc too
Soul Harvest should just be an aura that auto-casts every 3-6 seconds, with the right equipment or it could just be a rune change.
Zombie bears need to have passability so they can move through a tuft of grass.
The Grin Reaper should be awesome and so should Firebats.
Wormwood gains the effects of ring of emptiness.
This opens up a ring slot.
Tall man’s finger now summons giant zombie dogs equal to the number of zombie dogs your max limit is. Each zombie dog is equal to the max limit of dogs you can summon.
That could be interesting
Grin reaper now stacks buff’s and debuffs again.
Problem: WD is considered like a range class
Solution: WD is a melee class. +30% damage reduction.
→ WD can have more offensive than defensive items/skills
What about helltooth and ring of emptiness buff melee fetish as well?
In my opinion, based on limited playtime experience, I feel that the underlining issue with the WD is it’s complete reliance on 2 items. And with those 2 item based on skills that feel more like a chore than fun, it effects all builds, or the majority of builds. A WD expert would have to comment here. Maybe making them an aura is a solution or rework items/sets to not include or benefit from those 2 items?
2 Likes
Helltooth could have been effective if there was a way to target a… target.
Instead, you have 3 gargs knocking all over the place and not effective.
I have a ton of playtime on WD and season 27 I have rank 31 LoD with like 4 hours of playtime lol(and I didn’t use dart fetish).
Ring of emptiness 2 fixes come to mind, change it to something like slow like necro ring or increase the skills that trigger it by a lot. Or remove the ring completely and buff all the sets damage by a ton(or the skills the sets use for damage)
Soul harvest super easy fix, increase the duration. It’s super easy to get the count up with spirit walk (almost always on your skill bar), it just times out too fast. Again take a page from necro this time bone armor. Solved.
1 Like
I like what you are saying. My only concern is the developers might feel it’s losing its class identity although, that is not how I feel since it is only 2 items being copied and not skills being copied. I am a Sader main, but I still feel the WD pain. I’m all for making both better. 
At the end of the day any ideas are good since they will stir up more ideas!
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4 out of 5 sets/builds require:
- Ring of Emptiness (Item)
- Lakumba (Item)
- Soul Harvest / Languish (Active skill)
- Spirit Walk / Jaunt (Active skill)
- Locust Swarm / Pestilence (Active skill)
To be effective.
Only Zunimassa don’t need Ring of emptiness and Lakumba…
4 Likes
And by “need” we really mean they didn’t want to rebalance fetish damage so they simply disabled the ring’s effect.
I’d also add horrify to the list. The class really needs the toughness, some builds just eschew it for more damage or to slot in more piano keys.
Fetish don’t really need more damage.
Zunimassa/LoD Poison darts* are really powerful.
Squishy but powerful.
And I’m happy to play Zunimassa build, without to think about locust.
* the only pets/range builds
It would be silly if they call those the class identity. Sure soul harvest is but all we are doing is making it so we don’t have to hit it 1000 times per rift to not die.
As for Locust swarm and ring of emptiness, that’s definitely not the WD, it’s a bandage they put on to try and help the class without changing much. It kinda worked but at a huge cost for too small of a reward.
I like the op’s change ideas but for clairfication
It’s not “AND” it’s been changed to “OR”…
But the point still stands that using either one for the sole purpose of getting extra damage and not because it’s part of the normal build is actually a problem on many builds in many classes, and a problem on many sets in general.
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True.
On the WD, specifically, it’s because the class has an over abundance of damage skills and too few utility/buff skills. The solution, like it almost always is in this game, was to create an item rather than alter a skill.
OP has good ideas. Increasing range and duration on Soul Harvest will help, especially Jade if they decide to buff it. I also like the idea of RoE giving a buff when a secondary or decay skill is cast rather than from casting a debuff on every single mob before being able to do damage.
Can I just say I have tears welling in mah eyeballs over all the WD love and support (even from non-WD players.) 
3 Likes
Except they used to have all the skill buff’s in the world. WD was meta support till season 7. Here is the huge nerf WD got for no explainable reason.
Witch Doctor
+Active Skills
•Big Bad Voodoo
The attack speed bonus has been reduced from 20% to 15%
Skill Rune-Slam Dance
•The damage bonus provided to allies has been decreased from
30% to 15%
Haunt
Skill Rune-Poisoned Spirit
•The damage increase provided to your allies has been removed. The skill will now benefit your own damage and your
pets’ damage
Hex
•No longer increases the damage taken by the target
.Skill Rune-Jinx
• The damage bonus to the target has been reduced from 30% to
15%
•Skill Rune-Toad of Hugeness
The damage bonus to the target has been reduced from 25% to
15%
•Mass Confusion
.Skill Rune-Paranoia
*Can no longer stack with casts from other sources
Piranhas
Can no longer stack with casts from other sources
+Spirit Barrage
Skill Rune-Phantasm
• Damage increased from 675% over 5 seconds to 750% over 5
seconds
•Summon Zombie Dogs
Skill Rune-Chilled to the Bone
•No longer increases damage done to targets by 15%
1 Like