This season gives us the opportunity to cube multiple weapons. I notice that the top witch doctors this season have The Barber equipped and MOJ in the cube. I was running the same build at first, but recently decided to cube The Barber and equip Voo’s Juicer. I have noticed a significant difference in how fast I am clearing rifts and the rift guardians in particular.
Is there any reason top witch doctors are running MOJ that I’m not aware of? Is it just leftover habit from before the change to gazing demise where Manitou had its attack speed increased?
Mask of Jeram doesn’t work with Manitou, but it does increase Phantasm damage. Phantasms will make up almost all of your damage when clearing trash at a high GR. At a lower level speed you might not notice it as much.
I do realize that MOJ works with Phantasm and not Manitou. However, with the current iteration of Gazing Demise, Manitou puts out about 3x the damage that Phantasm does against a single target. Using Voo’s Juicer gives you that extra 60% SB damage, which affects both the Manitou and Phantasm damage, giving you overall higher damage than MOJ only affecting Phantasm.
Now, I realize that Phantasm can “build up” damage on multiple enemies, but that doesn’t increase trash clear time very much at all because the Phantasm’s area of effect is smaller than the explosion from The Barber. It doesn’t matter if you build up 100% of a single target’s HP or 100% of three target’s HP, the explosion from one enemy is going to kill all of the rest - or they’re going to be so low thatL the build up from the Phantasm damage on those other enemies is already going to be enough to instantly kill them as well. On top of that, the bonus of getting The Spirit is Willing means you free up a passive slot that can boost damage by more than Rush of Essence.
Sure, with your setup the boss fight will be slightly faster. I think you’re underestimating the Phantasm damage. The damage built up within 10 yards is released to all enemies within 15 yards. It’s not uncommon to have more than 10 enemies building up this damage. The Mask of Jeram is a much bigger damage increase for Phantasm, which is doing 99% of the trash clear. I can show you a video of how big these explosions are. Perhaps you can show evidence that your setup can kill trash faster at a high level.
You have the bonus passive slot backwards. Gazing Demise gives the Phantasm rune, so you would need to use the Manitou rune. I’m using The Spirit is Willing and dropped Rushed of Essence in the video.
Maybe I thought you were pushing higher since you said you were looking at “top witch doctors”.
If you check my d3planner you can see a build called “Lazy Mani”. I believe this is what you are trying to accomplish. I use it for speeding GR100 in under 3 mins. At that level you don’t need to rely on Phantasm damage as much, since Manitou can one shot trash while running past.
Love ur detailed content @LexyuTV … need to try this variant when I get a good In-Geom … isn’t your build also dependent on higher paragon/Gems to skip the need for Sacred Harvester toughness (especially since he may be running HC)?
This setup is also working great for bounties, NRs, and low GRs and uses Moj … toughness in NRs/Bounties accomplished via Boon/Goldwrap/Lakumbas… GRs via Lakumbas/BoT meat shield
Perhaps I’m assuming Phantasm works the same way the other SB runes work with The Barber, which isn’t the case. From what you describe, Phantasm builds up on multiple enemies at the same time and blows up for a larger explosion? Hopefully you can explain a quick example to make sure I’m understanding correctly.
Let’s just say that there are three enemies in Phantasm’s AOE. Each enemy has 100 hit points. My original assumption was that Phantasm would have to build up to 100 hit points on each enemy and then it would explode. Since the Barber makes the damage explode, I assumed that if it had to build up to 100 hit points, it wouldn’t matter if it did it on one enemy or all three. From what you’ve said, it sounds like Phantasm’s damage builds up using all three enemies though. So, it would only have to build up to 33-34 damage on the three of them and then it would immediately explode to kill them all? If this is the case, I definitely understand why MOJ would be better.
Manitou explodes each hit if there are multiple enemies, due to switching targets. It only builds up damage if there is a single enemy in range.
Phantasm doesn’t explode after reaching any threshold, so you can build up as much damage possible in 10 seconds. The enemy health doesn’t limit your damage. Trash can be used for overkill damage to elites. 3 enemies is 3x damage built up.