Soul Harvest stacks

Witch Doctor
1

I haven’t played WD in a while but I’m getting really annoyed by the SH mechanics. It is used in many builds for toughness and/or damage boost, but it is really hard to maintain them at times.

Sure, when you are doing a GR - most of which have good monster density - it’s no problem at all. You can even get its cooldown way down to where you can spam it and not even have to consider how often you need to cast it to make sure it stays up. No problem.

But, farming becomes a headache as it seems many of the popular bounties have some sort of way of forcing you to stand still for just long enough for the stacks to expire or close to it. Even if you are really careful to make sure the last thing you did was harvest right before you have to tag a prison-cage or monster totem you still have to run immediately and find a monster to tag (if those monsters weren’t already close enough to bug you while you were channeling the bounty totem).

[Updating to add - forgot the bounties in the “realms of non-existant monsters” as an added pain]

[Updating again - argh, forgot another one - your stacks are about to expire and the Garg kills everything around you an instant before you cast SH - and somehow the souls disappear in that 16ms gap and you harvest nothing - would be nice to have a 1 second window after death to recall the souls…]

A few of the bosses must always be faced with no stacks because they just sit there and gab and revel at you until you have no more defenses before they decide it’s a fair time to start a fight. Boss Mode was much more a chore than many of the other classes (even with zippy chicken mode) because of this. I still did it first try, but it was just frustrating going into fights with no stacks all the time, and then immediately losing whatever I had to port away.

It would be great if there was an item or passive, or skill rune that would have some sort of auto-harvest mode. Or, just like the Monk’s similarly positioned Sweeping Wind skill, the ability to recast it to extend its duration. Sure, the skill is “about” harvesting souls, but the mechanics already allow you to carry up to 9 souls from cast to cast because harvesting any soul refreshes all souls.

[deep breaths] OK, rant over…

2

I get the death in RG encounter in GR. I get the having to be locked behind two items for damage reduction. But Soul Harvest doesn’t bother me much. It’s the having to use Locust Swarm for damage boost in most builds, related to RoE or FB related items, that bothers me.

If my pet can kill mobs before I can re-tap Soul Harvest, I’m ok with it, as it means I wouldn’t need the defense as much. But having to stop a brief second to use Locust Swarm every other pack in speed farm situation? Irritating. In SB build I thought it was less, but in FB build? sigh

3

Speaking of Soul Harvest…

Can anyone explain to me why it is better to cube the Sacred Harvester to get an additional 30% damage reduction instead of a unity to get 50% damage reduction? Or even an Aquila Cuirass?

I am guessing someone did the math, but it just doesn’t look right to me.

4

I’m definitely feeling the insta-squish when the 60% toughness from SH drops off. It might be less of an issue if/when I can find a Unity.

In my case, it is not a pet build, I have to get up close and personal with firebats. I look forward to finding more than 4 pieces of another set.

For farming I cube Wormwood right now, but I’m in season where I can cube both that and the (for my purposes) firebats staff. When I get Unity, though, I’ll have to make a tough choice.

5

Soul Harvest gives not only %damage reduction but also %intelligence which means more resistances and, which is more important, more damage.

1 Like
6

Outside season 20, most of the time there is no better choice to cube ( or equip ) as the combo with the lakumba is needed in every build. You can cube Aquila and unity too and go for huge toughness but you 'll likely lose big chunks of damage.

As for the OP I agree completely. Soul harvest should be reworked to instantly give you max stacks when you harvest a boss. Malthael and some other bosses easily one shot you (depending on your paragons and other gear ofc) and in high rifts if you die to a guardian you can pretty much say goodbye to your push as it can start a chain reaction when you get one shoted time after time, whenever you spawn.