So I built myself a Sprit Barrage Mundungunududoodoo Witch Doctor. Here is what I have figured out:
-Soul Harvest is really important to survive, but it only has a cast range of approximately 3 centimeters (in game, not on screen).
-There is a blue dude that sits on your head and farts blue clouds at monsters. I think he is on my team, cannot tell.
-Big Bad Voodoo is sometimes active.
What I haven’t figured out is…everything else. Why is this build sometimes destroying the screen and sometimes getting me killed asap? Is my gear utterly wrong? I have never been this confused about play mechanics, and the guides on YouTube are all terribly dated (most of the casters still talk about stacking mana regen from pre-PTR).
haven’t played it, tried to set up a NS char to test, but after 10k bloodshards and 3k DBs and still not a full set of gear, I said screw it. It seems that Blizzard has made all of these new sets deliberately very difficult to get. I base this on my observations for the new cru set, barb set, wizard set and the WD set - all of them were very difficult to get the full 6 piece set. Sure, some will argue “you’re just unlucky”, but on 4 different sets, across months? Nope, sorry, occam’s razor thank you - drop rates made more difficult by design from the devs.
Bluddshed has a vid on the build and his videos are usually very good imho, have you checked it out?
Oh. It was done at the end of PTR for 2.6.8, so I’d expect it to be still valid? I think Rax has a video of it too if memory serves me. I had a look at the icy veins skills rundown:
SB playstyle is currently very strong but WD in general is hard to gear for defence.
If you find yourself performing inconsistently try building in some more defence.
Unity is always good; serpent mojo is a viable option for season 20; sacred harvestor + lakumba is your strongest defence option but do take up more slots. Locust swarm has a 25% defence rune; some of WD’s passive skills are pretty good defence too.
You click where you want your pet to be, this works kind of like a little turret, and actually it deals damage it self. You can place 3 of these. I usually put them on top of the monsters.
Now when you place one, another one appears over your head and starts shooting everything close by. You can’t see it, but it is possible to have 3 over your head aswell, which is one for every one you placed. It just means it fires 3 times instead of one.
Lastly the Soul Harvest, you’d want to pop Spirit Walk, run into the crowd, cast Soul Harvest in mist of everything, and then run out again (but not too far). It works even better if you pile them up with Pirando or whatever the fishy skill is called.
Big Bad Voodoo you can either get healing and toughness from, Damage, or Mana regen Damage. Try and see what works out best for you, and have it summoned as much as you can. You Grave Injustice skill should reset it for you, if not, you are walking to far away or need more Pickup radius on your secondary rolls.
So I made the very bottom of the Ladder! Still no idea what the f*** I am doing!
-I cannot tell if spamming Barrage works or not. Why did the GR die suddenly at 50% hp?
-It seems almost impossible to get 10 stacks of Harvest without dying. What am I doing wrong? Its radius is pathetically tiny, and it isnt an aoe targeted spell.
The rift guardian dies suddenly because of the way Spirit Barrage and The Barber work: that is, damage accumulates (without being dealt) until the explosion triggers. You can manually trigger the explosion by placing a fourth Phantasm after you have three out, or the enemy will implode automatically once it accumulates damage that exceeds its current health. The latter is what you’re seeing.
Mechanically, this feels so incredibly confusing. So do I spam in large groups, or cast 3 times and run in circles? Is the spell technically channeling?
Defensively, is there any way to mitigate the dangers of croaking without 10 stacks of Harvest? Is my build fine for starting out?
yes, me and friend need to know how to actually use spirit barrage. mainly, how do you detonate it? like 50% time i do it some how where it makes a massive explosion that does huge damage, but i can’t figure out how to trigger it. no one, not even icy veins has explained how this is done at all. i cant figure out if it’s single cast sb, channel 3 times, or just spam it on mobs. terribly confusing.
I’ve seen Rhykker vid on this an its easy and been trying it out without the set pieces and its still quite strong even with another set.
But my question is about the The Barber knife …when you stop casting it does damage accumulated from the damage your doing…Hand on you can’t stop casting it just times out automatically…so is this how its suppose to work when it times out.
When you stop casting it does damage? I have to get this knife to questioning to see how it works.
But Rhykker says its the strongest set in season 20…well that’s yet to be determined.
From my limited knowledge and experience, the Barber works like this:
For Phantasms, you cast 3 of them, they do damage to monsters. Your accumulated damage will detonate when the following occurs:
1a. You cast a 4th phantasm, detonating the accumulated damage by the 1st one being replaced.
1b. The monster has accumulated its entire life in damage and detonates while dying.
The Manitou deals constant damage all around you. It’s damage will detonate only when the monster has accumulated its entire life, dying and detonating at the same time. This is what people see for bosses instantly dying at 30% health. The manitou has accumulated the remaining HP and triggers. It’s less apparent when clearing trash since you won’t notice individual monsters health (plus manitou will hit random monsters and accumulate less than on single target).
What I am not sure about is whether you should constantly channel or not. I am not sure what channeling actually does since both runes are dealing passive damage. The interaction with Stricken is also a mystery to me.
So I’ve seen different guides on this builds and I still don’t know if I’m playing it correctly…
I dont know what I did but at GR 120 my buddy who is a Zbarb and I were on the rift guardian…it’s health went from half to dead…Again I don’t know what I did but I think I did hundreds of trillions of damage if not more. Can someone explain this?