While I agree WD needs help, most people forget that the class is meant to be played slowly. I’d argue that most people forget that Diablo, as a franchise, is meant as a loot acquiring game, not a speed racer, get to end game content as fast as you can game. I remember Wyatt Cheng saying that seasons are meant to be played slowly, hence the season “journey”. Yet, people tend to finish a season in about 16-24 hours of played time.
Back to the WD issues: Yes, the sets need a few buffs, and some items need adjustment or even new items are needed. As a Haunt user, the spell could use a small buff, and pets really need a lot of love (both ZDogs and Gargs). I’m hopeful for a change soon, but it won’t be this season.
Diablo as a franchise, perhaps. D4 is definitely back to being a slower game.
Diablo 3 is not a slow game by any stretch of the imagination. Spin to Win builds and their ilk are popular because the pace has gotten so ludicrous just stopping to cast is too slow (I’m not a fan of this, btw, but it is what it is).
WD are not good as a slow class. They stopped being the chill class the day the devs decided the two actual pet classes should not have damage pets. At least the Witch Doctor can to a point still play that way, the poor Necro skeletons should swap their swords for Rolexes if all they are allowed to do is control cooldowns.
Had a suspicion WDs had the short-end of the stick.
Surprised Crusaders are down so low.
Not surprised Barbs are, by most metrics, the most mandatory class in group play by a long shot. Still, it’s not the way they’d prefer to play. But that’s what happens when you give a brokenly powered mechanic to them…and then another one to top it off.
This Cheng is the same guy who became a meme for his don’t have phone stupid comment lol. He also said Diablo immortal doesn’t sell power because gems are not weapons lol.
Historically speaking, Crusaders have done very well in terms of solo play, and poorly in groups. Of course, for the past few seasons, they’ve done poorly at both.
jfc yes. People are acting like s28 is the last season in D3 and this just makes the WD situation so much worse
Worst part about this is, as always, you mention WD needs help and everyone in the thread is on about their favorite class Like it’s not just Blizz trying to shaft WD, literally everyone else has a class sob storey they have to bring up in these threads too. And we wonder why WD has been where it is for over half a decade.
As a WD only player for many many years I endorse this thread. Even though we were still achieving lower results on the LB than other classes, S17 was a big improvement over previous seasons, and made it at least fun to play. Throw us a bone even if it takes doing it a couple weeks in to the season un-tested. You can still nerf us if it’s too much, but it has NEVER been too much…
That is a key point that needs to be stressed, and it applies in other genres besides ARPGs. For example, consider the affliction warlock in World of Warcarft (WoW). An old version of that spec from many years ago juggled several damage over time (DoT) effects on a target while trying to maximize snapshot effects (DoT effects then determined their damage from the initial state of the caster, they were not updated dynamically).
The community complained at the time that affliction warlocks were broken with absurd damage and this was unfair to all other DPS specs, The affliction theorycrafting community replied with clear explanations showing how complex it is to achieve such numbers relative to most other DPS specs at the time, so the great DPS results of a properly played affliction warlock were justified.
Jumping through more hoops to attain better results than others is fine. Jumping through more hoops to attain comparable, or even worse, results than others is not fine. The WD class has clearly been the latter for most or all of D3.
Anyways, D3 is at the stage of “we barely recognize it still exists and throw it some development bones” maintenance mode at this point. We might as well wish for unicorns at this stage. More bandaids and buffs do not “fix” an unfun class. Sadly D4 is repeating a huge number of design mistakes from D3, including a horrible MMO-lite UI design that offers zero customization. Enjoy looking at tiny cooldown indicators at the bottom of your screen.
I still have some hope for D4, it’s hard to say what the game will become because D3 used to be a completely different game as well.
I’m just let down by D3 because even with blizzard running a skeleton crew for seasons and patches if they just watched some of the folks over at maxroll.gg for a few minutes a day we would have every class balanced, every set balanced, and even a lot more flexibility with LOD style builds by now.
Hell they could even be lazy for half the seasons and just take their suggestions for themes.
WD and Crusaders need some love too blizz, its wrong to not buff something for then, its still time to do the basic for the game and balance some builds again
D2 Chain Lightning Sorc and Hammerdin would like a word with you.
They were blindingly fast, you had to hope the map would keep up because you teleported across the the act faster than ticket sales for a Taylor Swift concert.
WD, even when played slow as you mentioned is a cacophony of key presses that are unintuitive, unreliable, inefficient, and low performance. It’s like throwing a 900lb Harley with a suicide shifter and chopper bars into a GP race. Sure it’ll make noise possible look pretty (not to me, puke) but it’ll be lapped before it finds 4th gear.
Except add that the increase range on Piranado on pulling in haunted mobs was also awesome. S27 is the first time I felt like I could keep up to other classes on doing speedruns. Clear entire rifts instead of only killing elites.
I am very disappointed to see zero love for witch doctors in S28. Like seriously?
Salt in the wound that was I didn’t get to play S27 much due to my computer being broken. Got back in these past couple weeks and I’m loving it. How fast it’s been to build different sets and try different builds augmented by the sanctified powers. It’s been a blast.
I played a witch doctor at release (used a really wierd mechanic where burning dogs would stack bleed damage), and played helltooth gargs after i quit and came back. I always thought helltooth gargs was just a zen way to play - balancing wall of death, soul harvest, piranhado, and spirit journey while my zombies chewed through mobs.
While i appreciate attempting to give an improvement with the ring of emptiness, what the witch doctor badly needs is some improved itemization. It’s not really a surprise to me that the first thing they do with a WD build is update the weapons. For the longest time every build essentially used the sacred harvester simply just because nothing else was even remotely worth it. Helltooth is probably in the worst shape, with bears being slightly better than gargs? I’d say or lobby for either a focus on having zombie dogs do something for helltooth, giving more bodies actually contributing which would help out considerably, or make grasp of the dead viable. Both have items already geared towards them (anasazis edge and tall man’s finger for dogs, wilkens reach and deadly rebirth for grasp) that could be updated. Grasp of the dead probably just needs the damage modifiers tweaked on its items, dogs needs some more (base skill damage, modifiers, and i’d have tall man’s finger let people keep all their dogs)
I’d actually love a wall of death based helltooth build, but we’re probably pretty far from that