Like most Seasons Witchdoctor got ignored in Season 28 PTR Patch notes and thats not fine!
Season 27 was a very great Season for WD in terms of viable Builds and cool new mechanics and now we just lose them all and get some generic buffs with the new season theme?
It would be very nice if we could get some WD balance changes inspired by Season 27 angelic crucible powers. For Example:
“Enemies affected by Locust Swarm are also Haunted” Keep this effect and put it on the Wormwood staff and add some Locust Swarm and Haunt multiplier to Wormwood or the Sacred Harvester. Like this Jade Harvester WD could shine again.
“Elites and Bosses stunned by Bogadile take massive damage.” This solves the insane low single target dmg for Spirit Barrage WD right now (For real Gr150 bosses take 7-8min WITH STRICKEN without this effect) Maybe we could get some DMG multiplier for the Manitou Rune from Spirit Barrage for Single Target enemies. Like 500% more DMG for Manitou if it hits 3 or less enemies on the Mundunugu 6pc set bonus.
“You summon two Gargantuans and three Zombie Dogs periodically. Gargantuans gain the effect of the Restless Giant rune. Zombie Dogs gain the effect of all runes. Enemies hit by Sacrifice are Immolated, causing them to take 100% more damage from your Pets” Just copy this whole effect and add it to the Zunimassa or Helltooth set to make Gargs viable again and even sacrifice usefull in any kind of way.
It would be so easy to let WD finally shine again.
Witch doctor is apparently so perfect it does not need season after season after season attention. Unlike, say, the actual class that is better, like… demon hunter. But not.
Yes I love the Helltooth Garg build, this crucible effect would be amazing. Personally I think they should add it to the set or my idea was to add Sacred Harvesters effect to Lakumbas along with Lakumbas existing effect since they are similar then put the crucible effect onto Sacred Harvester. And having Lakumbas and sacred harvester combined would help other builds a lot too.
It’s actually kinda sad that with the season 27 theme the Garg build is pretty much just a non season build in the sense of how strong it is. Just goes to show how far the WD has lagged behind. I’d even just be happy if the reversed the huge nerf to support WD, then at least the class is useful again.
Yes the S27 version of helltooth is still far too weak relative to the power of many other class builds, or other WD builds. The non-season version of helltooth is pretty much terrible for everything, including farming T16.
You can give helltooth 10 gargs at a time and they will still run off to africa to attack the wrong target 10 screens away, leaving you wondering where they are. Bonus points for the zombie dogs which do essentially zero damage in pushing GR’s while keeping enemies far apart from each other. 80% weapon damage on base zombie dog attack? Try 800% and tune from there.
This is of course on top of jumping through the first hoop with soul harvest maintenance, and jumping through the second hoop with locust swarm maintenace, and jumping through the third hoop with wall of death maintenance.
Soul harvest would be less of an issue if its duration were doubled or tripled. Without significant CDR the duration barely outlasts the cooldown. Accidently hitting soul harvest out of range of an enemy can be a death sentence. I’m glad they fixed lakumbas so you don’t have to stress over getting max stacks on a single RG or similar situations, but I think extending the duration could alleviate some of the many upkeeps WD has.
The soul harvest annoyance is both a range and duration issue. It should be enemies within 30-40 yards, not 18 yards. It is stupid that a class primarily designed for ranged combat (like wizard and DH) has to periodically go near melee to maintain buff, or die instantly.
It’s the direct opposite of something like halo of karini for wizards, which rewards you for keeping sufficient distance from mobs, as it should be for a ranged class.
They should remove the Locust requirements as well, make it more like the necro ring, increase zombie dog damage or bring back the buff dogs.
Or combine Wormwood with the ring of emptiness and make the tall man’s finger into something useful, like a large buff to all zombie dogs, not just one. It would solve some of the single target damage issues which could open up a gem slot for more damage or toughness.
Imagine if monk mantras were instead an ability that had to be refreshed periodically by running near monsters, and without said mantra maintenance you would die almost instantly. I’m sure monk players would be thrilled at the tedium.
I feel for WDs, easily the most neglected class in RoS. I’d be interested if somebody reviewed the last ~10 seasons to see how many times WDs were meta.
Last 10? Never. The spider buff was the closest probably in season 26 but still not really.
I played on and off so I could be incorrect on some of this, but I believe the last time it was meta was around season 7 before the huge nerf to WD support. No idea why they even did that nerf since a little while later they just gave almost as much of a support buff to DH for no reason. Also made it easier to play lol. DH didn’t need to be support, WD needed it to be useful
As much as it is annoying to keep all of the WD effects going I still wouldn’t even mind doing it if there was a reward for the work. That’s the worst part, you have to play on the ball all the time and in the end you’re still behind every other class.
