Is helltooth bears worth it?

[BigBoss-2916]

Has anyone tried this build with decent gear? Is it fun/decent?

[BlessedWrath-1585]

I didn’t like it, but I didn’t exactly go to the extreme when testing it. I might give it another shot, but early indications were that it fell short of almost every other build I’ve tried.

[Morgan-12891]

Tried it on the PTR. It was an exercise in frustration for me, the bears getting ‘caught’ on stairs and other parts of the environment drove me up the wall. It doesn’t really excel at anything - Chicken is faster for rifts/bounties/speed farming (and more fun!), Helltooth Gargs is more reliable, Jade is more interesting and involved to play, Mundunugu’s does considerably more damage, etc. - so it’s kind of existing in this awkward limbo of “theoretically” being viable but falling short of what our other WD builds can do.

[MCP-1477]

I like the bears game play, but the damage and damage reduction aren’t good enough compared to other builds.

It’s peak GR level is lower than other builds.

It’s slower than other builds at speed related tasks.

It can be frustrating to deal with bears colliding with map objects, which makes GR map fishing even harder.

PTR feedback:

PTR Feedback

For example, Baskenator, a long time expert at D3 and bears, posted feedback:

Detailed WD Feedback 2.0

Hello Here is my WD Feedback after the lastest PTR patch. Helltooth Zombie Charger: Problems: Still our GREATEST PROBLEM in this build the Zombie Bear collision. Like in my last Feedback post. (Zombie Bears Collision: If you stay too close to walls, cliffs or any kind of object with collision it often causes the bears to spawn stuck inside the wall and makes them unable to hit enemies. This makes the Build unplayable on a lot of maps especially caves, bastion’s keep or ruins of corvus.) Gri…

As for the TL;DR:
Maximum Grift: 130
Paragon: 7300

That’s about as high as anyone should expect to go.

I’m not quite sure what happens with PTR feedback.

They’ve consistently ignored the WD damage reduction problems for 5+ years.

It seems like the team that is making these patches doesn’t understand how to balance builds based on max GRs, even after 5+ years of doing this and even stating that as a major goal.

[DarkNiven-2838]

diablo3 witch doctor 115gr zombie bears (Patch 2.6.10)

[Yukos-21571]

I tried it the other day on nonseasonal character i.e. without the 4th cube. I just created whatever items with the 3rd cube recipe and put them on. The playstyle I love. The build is below average though. There is a guy called bluddshed that made a video some time ago. Basically he is saying the exact same thing. I see 3-4 wd builds that are way better right now, not even in the same sentence with zombie bears. However, if history repeats itself, we could be seeing this becoming a very strong build in the next season hopefully.