The new patch does the following:
Witch Doctor
The periodic attacks from Spirit Barrage Phantasm are now twice as slow, but twice as powerful
Gazing Demise
- Spirit Barrage gains the Phantasm rune. Each active Phantasm lasts twice as long, increases the damage of Spirit Barrage… and also increases the attack rate from Manitou spectres.
- PTR CHANGE: The attack rate granted to Manitou specters has been slightly reduced.
It seems this will help server performance, that’s a good thing. The downside is, it might affect the performance of Voo’s Juicer.
Voo’s Juicer gives Spirit Barrage the effects of the Phlebotomize and The Spirit is Willing runes. Phlebotomize provides 6k life per hit, while The Spirit is Willing gives 12 mana per hit. Since this update patch will mean fewer SB hits, Phlebotomize and The Spirit is Willing will be less effective. How much I don’t know.
I have a 104 clear using Juicer, I’ll try the game later to see if that changes under the new patch. And no, the build I use does not employ RoE.
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Valid point. Most of the sets Regen comes from the voos legendary effect and it’s essentially been halfed…
When pushing this will be obvious in a set that needed more defense.
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I would like to add some of my test experience:
A puzzling question is what does that “0.135” means from the data of d3planner:
Script Formula 32: 0.135
ITEM: Manitou Speed Per Stack
and in the first version of patch this number was “0.15”.
I guess this might imply the information of the speed of Manitou.
I and my friends tested and get the following conclusion:
As the Phantasm grows in number (from 0 to 3), attack speed of Manitou will be 30f/21f/11f/2f in the first patch, and will be 30f/21f/12f/5f in the new patch.
Although the change of attack speed of Mantiou will really reduce the load of server, but the damage of Mantiou, especially on the single enemy (e.g. Boss of GR), will also be reduced much more than before.
Compared to the previous patch, since the Phlebotomize rune will improve the resilience for WD (though not too much), the willingness to choose Mantiou rune will drop a lot.
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In situations where people don’t use the Juicer, and can choose between
Phlebotomize and Manitou, maybe that will happen. We’ll see.
But here’s the thing I want to stress. Phlebotomize gives you a paltry 6.4k LPH. That’s almost nothing. Phlebotomize is valuable because SB is able to hit so many targets at once when Manitou and Phantasm are both active. Before this patch update, SB (appeared to) hit 10+ plus targets at a time in areas with large density.
If you take away Manitou and lessen the attack rate of Phantasm, Phlebotomize becomes less valuable. As you progress up higher GRs, hitting maybe just 5 or 6 targets at a time is less and less useful.
There is zero reason to use Voo’s Juicer over Sacred Harvester.
The LoH is minimal, you can trade a single bracer roll for 13k+ LoH and the mana regen isn’t mana per second so it’s worthless.
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Voo’s has 60% spirit barrage damage.
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Correct, Juicer needs an upgrade to be competitive with Sacred Harvester.
Regarding the Wizard, Blizzard said this in the 2.6.8 update:
Developer’s Note: We did consider adding another skill into The Typhon’s Veil, but we believe there’s more work to do first on Wizard Legendary options to make choices outside of the Etched Sigil | Deathwish | Mantle of Channeling combo more appealing.
It would be nice if they did some work to make choices outside of the Sacred Harvester |Lukumba’s Ornament combo more appealing. It hasn’t happened yet.