Hey there been a witch doctor main since launch. I loved the aesthetics of the skills/pets and played one every season that I played. So for the last big season of D3 I thought to myself “hey why not try all the builds you never got to try” cause I played from seasons 1-4 then 28. So experiment with all the sets and their new effects, trying munduugu for the first time it was fun. However So I started gr climbing (around 125 with Zunidarts) at 1k paragon with level 100ish gems and this is when all the bad things about witch doctor came flooding back.
Like all the terrible class design choices in terms of gameplay. “oh you want survivability you better run into the enemies and soul harvest them during spirit walk before you blow up” when literally no other class has to do something this stupid to gain survivability. In fact soul harvest being damm near priority in most builds. The game literally can’t calculate the weird obsession of WD sets trying to do dot damage but then increasing that dot damage to minute durations then executing them instantly without studdering/lagging the game (i’m looking at you jade/munduugu). The gameplay of these are also not fun. The pet A.I is atrocious and the fact there is no legendary to help with targeting/ adding a skill that makes it target is dumbfounding. Also pets not scaling with gems/item interactions is a real shame forcing you to play zunidarts because pets are useless otherwise.
Then I thought to myself you know what for this last season lets play a fun class, a class that the devs main themselves Wizard. The night and day difference in terms of gameplay, survivability, and easy to play class design is just astonishing. It was kind of disheartening to be honest.
So this is a side tangent I played druid during the beta of D4 and suddenly found myself reliving witch doctor. I found a cool pet build that was easily clearing content. Granted while leveling you wont be head to toe decked with legendaries. D4 also added skills on top the summon pet skills that target the enemy which is a great addition. I want to main druid but I don’t know if I want to put myself through something like witch doctor again where none of the devs play the class and the class is in a constant bad place compared to the classes the devs main.
Oh some clarifications
The fact that lakumbas can roll a variable between 1-3 on WD main survivability equipment for most builds is like the biggest middle finger to the class, why is this a thing why does it matter how many enemies you soul harvest.
The thing about D4 druids is that if the devs did play the class for more than 5 minutes they could have seen the obvious glaring flaws of the class but it’s obvious they didn’t so that’s why I’m hesitant of playing one.