The Helltooth WD in 2020

Hi all!

I am a true fan of the original “Caster-WD”.
Back in the day, where not a single legendary with power or damage multiplier were in the game i was a pure WD player.
I truely loved the Helltooth’s original intent, to become a master of Death and Decay.
The use of poison and decay skills were a thing and really kept me playing Diablo 3.

After the years of no love for the master of desesase and summoning i allways wanted to revive him and suggested some ideas.

This will be another try and i will bring in the feedback i got in the past.


Here are some suggestions and mechanic changes to some existing items and the basic Helltooth-Set.


Current iteration of the Helltooth-Set.

(2) Set:
Enemies hit by your primary skills, Acid Cloud, Firebats, Zombie Charger, Zombie Dogs, Gargantuan, Grasp of the Dead, Piranhas, or Wall of Death are afflicted by Necrosis, becoming Slowed and taking 3000% weapon damage every second for 10 seconds.
(4) Set:
After applying Necrosis to an enemy, you take 60% reduced damage for 10 seconds.
(6) Set:
After casting Wall of Death, gain 9000% increased damage for 15 seconds to your primary skills, Acid Cloud, Firebats, Zombie Charger, Zombie Dogs, Gargantuan, Grasp of the Dead, Piranhas, and Wall of Death.


My personal wish for the set and the reason behind it.

Disclaimer:

Remove the dot-damage part of the 2pc bonus. It provides unnecessary server load and makes the game lag at some point.
The 2pc bonus would now give a slight defense boost in the early gear-progress and fits the rule of “Master of Death and Decay”.


Give the helltooth set its strength it once had, back in early 2016.
This set should NOT focus on pet damage, but, as the majority of the playerbase wanted it, keep the pets in the sets.

Most of the items should just get a damage multiplier, a slight tweak, in or in some cases, a new legendary item.

SuWong Diviner (Acid Cloud)

Acid Cloud gains the effect of the Lob Blob Bomb rune and deals 650%-750% increased damage.
(Affecting, but a hidden mechanic: The Lob Blob Bomb deals damage according to the rune type)
(Maybe a change to the color too, Fire orange, cold blue…)

Deadly Rebirth (Grasp of the Dead)

Grasp of the Dead gains the effect of the Rain of Corpses rune and deals 325%-400% increased damage.

Scrimshaw (Zombie Charger)

Reduces the Mana cost of Zombie Charger by 40% and deals 525%-600% increased damage.

Wilken’s Reach(Grasp of the Dead)

Grasp of the Dead no longer has a cooldown and deals 50%-100% increased damage.

Jeram’s Bracers (Wall of Death)

Wall of Death deals 450%-500% increased damage and can be cast up to three times within 2 seconds before the cooldown begins.


The Tall Man’s Finger (Zombie Dog)

I recommend to adjust base values + summoning cooldown.

Rewording and revamp

Zombie Dogs instead summons a single gargantuan dog that combines the power of all single dogs.
(Hidden: Affects HP and Damage)
The Zombie Dog deals 900%-1000% increased damage and its rune effect is increased by 50%.

To help understanding this intention, i will repost the above change to the basic Zombie-Dog Skill.

Beside the legendary i want to see base values of this skill changed aswell.

Zombie Dog:
Reduce Cooldown to 35seconds
Increase base damage to 180% weapon damage

„Rabid Dogs“
Increase the damage to 180% weapon damage over 3 seconds.

„Chilled to the Bone“ (changed)
Enemies who hit or are hit by your Zombie Dogs are chilled for 3 seconds and take 10% more critical strikes from the you and your pets.

„Life Link“
Increase damage absorbtion to 15%

„Burning Dogs“
Increase damage to 120% weapon damage every seconds.

This means with all passives (3 needed), instead of spawning 6 single Zombie-Dogs you spawn a mighty single one that has:

  • 6x the HP of a single dog (might needs adjustion due to too high value)
  • 6x the base damage
  • 6x the rune damage

!THEN, the „ring’s boost“ occurs!

Zombie Dogs instead summons a single gargantuan dog that combines the 
power of all single dogs.
- Dog deals 900%-1000% increased damage
- Rune effects are increased by 50%

Rune improvements mean

  • „Rapid Dogs“: 180% weapon damage --> 270% weapon damage over 3 seconds
  • „Chilled to the bone“: 3sec chill + 10% --> 3sec chill +15% crit
  • „Life Link“: 15% dmg absorb --> 22,5% dmg absorb
  • „Burning Dogs“: 120% weapon damage --> 180% weapon damage
  • „Leeching Beasts“: 100% of LoH --> 150% of LoH

Overall, the Zombie Dog would get huge buffs and becomes a series single target choice, like it should be, not for the HT Set alone, but for each possible pet set build (including LoN).


New Staff:

Reduces the Cooldown of „Pirnanhas“ by 4 seconds. „Pirnahas“ gain the effect
of the „Bogadile rune“ and deal 425%-500% increased damage.
(Hidden effect: Bogadile deals damage according to the rune type, chosen)

Additional information: The bogadile should damage every enemy in a 9y radius, like DH grenades do.
Additional request: The zombie-piranhas rune should also do fire damage.


New Belt:

Insreases the attack speed of „Acid Cloud“ and „Zombie Charger“ by 30% and increases their damage by 250%-350%.

Disclaimer:
Utility and damage for the main „Decay skills“.
This belt plus the skill’s legendaries may be enough for the skills to perform well.


New Mojo:

„Wall of Death“ and „Piranhas“ deal 60%-80% increased for 8 seconds for every
„Decay“ skill that has been used. Stacks up 5 times.

Disclaimer:
This Mojo can be compared to the Necromancers Poison-Weapon.
Each Decay skill would increase the damage to 2 of the most interesting and underused WD skills and would compensate the lack of existing items for them.

Example:
A maxrolled mojo with 5 casts of Acid Cloud within the time frame would increase the damage of „Wall of Death“ and „Piranhas“ by 5x80% = 400%.

This mojo would furtherly enhance the sets intention, to be a caster set.


Another very important change that should occur!

Grasp of the Dead should be switched to the “Decay category” to complete the set’s original intention. With that change all originally intended skills would be in the same category.

TLDR:

  1. Tiny change to the set itself to reduce server lag
  2. Decay skills now contain "Grasp of the Dead
  3. Overall-boost to decay skills via multiplier + new items
  4. Boost to Piranhas + Wall of Death via multiplier + new items
  5. Greatly icnreased strength for Zombie Dog

EDIT 1:
Formatting might still be odd at some points.

6 Likes

Figured I should give a view and a reply as another player who likes analysis and theory. I made a WD post or two on the old forums myself (I might soon make a cleaner, updated post).

I completely agree with creating/modernizing more builds, including HT Decay ones. So the legendary multiplier buffs are simple good ideas.

I’m not sure about this exact change to Necrosis tho. I get the intent behind removing the extra DoT, but I think that weakening enemies is too much like the direct toughness given from the 4pc, and might total up as too much of it for one set.

But other ideas I agree with are buffing and defining Tall Man’s Finger, and moving Grasp to the Decay category.

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I see the WD as a summoning class, so having multiple sets with pet builds doesn’t really bother me that much. While the big dog is cool, I prefer having the multiple dogs as a way of health regen. If we were to go this route of a master of death and decay, then I would probably treat it much like the Necromancer Trag set, where Death/Decay runes on abilities get a huge damage buff.

Maybe a zombie rune for Locust Swarm and Gargantuan (example) that gives a damage buff instead of how it is now. The problem is that DoTs is kinda a big part of the fantasy of being a master of death and decay, which is a problem from a server lag standpoint and overlaps with Jade too much.

The damage bonus provided by TMF is surprisingly huge. The main issue is you need all those passives for the extra dogs, and reducing the dog to only one makes it less effective as aggro/meatshield.

I don’t see the point of the cooldown or initial cap on Zombie Dogs, so I’d like to see them removed. Instead they should cost Mana to summon and you no longer need any passives to get all six. Sacrifice should also get a buff so you can always cycle between summoning and detonating them when you need to,

TMF could be reworked so it consumes more mana to get bigger, stronger dogs, or it could add a seventh permanent giant dog in addition to the regular ones you summon.

I’d love to see Zombie Dogs and Sacrifice get stronger and function as a core of a build, not just as damage sponges or temporary buffs.

2 Likes

Thanks for your input and thoughts.

The problem with the TMF that it competes versus the SMF. And the SMF itself, without having any other factor considered, gives a 22.5x multiplier to the skill “Gargantuan”.

Didn’t think about it yet, but i guess, this is the highest of multipliers in the entire game?


TMF3 = (4x3) + 1 = 13
TMF4 = (4x4) + 1 = 17
TMF5 = (4x5) + 1 = 21
TMF6 = (4x6) + 1 = 25

If i am correct, because i have just overflown the post, all passives should generate a x25 multplier to the dog?
That would my make my sentence about the highest multiplier obsolete i guess. :sweat_smile:
BUT, the investement is pretty high. 3 passives… out of 4 we have atm, cause HF can’t compete anymore.


Anyway… the damage increase from this ring barely competes vs that single ring SMF.
The Gargantuans can cleave, have a higher %w-dmg ratio and even got a new offhand added to the game a few seasons ago.


In terms of meatshield, yes, you are correct.
You lose more or less everything when you equip or cube that ring.
I could live with a single ultra strong dog to fight for you, scaled with passives.
In general you would go with gargantuans anyway, maybe try a combined gameplay.

If you keep all dogs and simply add 7th strong boy , we would lose a potential single target choice, depending on how strong the dog would be.

As for AOE damage, we have the gargantuans anyway and we basically have to use them anyway, so i guess a single dog would be totally fine if it can crush single targets.

Tough decision… :thinking:

I think a lot of the WD’s passives need tweaking or a redesign, Spreading out additional dogs over three different passives is really awkward, and nobody uses Zombie Handler or Circle of Life since their bonuses are so poor. I’m thinking that it would be good if all the +1’s were all taken off their exiting passives and merged into either in CoL or Tribal Rites, or put in place of the current ZH bonus.

Dogs need a lot of work to make them really shine. They’ve been in the shadow of Garg’s and Fetishes for too long, so they need something major to change to make them live up to their potential.

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I really hope that the WD gets some love and not just stupid multipliers to allready existing and, "in general, working builds.

Passives are another topic, each class has bad, good and better ones, the same goes for the WD, so no really BIG things to worry about, when it comes to passives.

I hope, they do their work on this this long-taking journey of balance. What they balanced for the monk/crusader was less than i expected, but for a first step, it was okayish.

I don’t see what they did to Monk, Barb and Crusader as balancing lol

Crusader was definitely over-tuned (and the Game Producer has confirmed this) but Barb and Monk have been at the bottom of the table for damage for years. This patch gave them something that lets them be vaguely comparable to what the other classes have been doing for years.

2 Likes

Spreading out additional dogs over three different passives is really awkward

My guess is that this was done to provide more fodder for using the Sacrifice skill. But Sacrifice has been nerfed to the point that it’s useless.

And I don’t see the devs making any changes to that. But if they were thinking about it, I’d recommend an update to the Anessazi Edge Ceremonial Knife.

Right now, that Knife causes “Zombie Dogs to stun enemies around them for 1.5 seconds when summoned.” I don’t think anyone uses that Knife right now, that weapon bonus isn’t useful.

How about adding a bonus that says “Each active Zombie Dog increases Intelligence and movement speed by 5%, and health regeneration by 10%”? Or perhaps, “Each active Zombie Dog increases Zombie Dog damage by 50%”? These would give people an incentive to actually use Anessazi Edge and summon lots of dogs.

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I have to go back and read old posts but I really want to find out why and who hated sacrifice SOOO much!!

Man, I loved the old sacrifice…

I miss my health globes they gave to necro… and the old animation was awesome!

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I would really enjoy playing a viable pet build again with the witch doctor for higher rifts. I think they should adjust the new Spite offhand to not only adding the cleave to gargantuans but also adding an extra damage boost to gargantuans, zombie dogs and melee fetisches. This way it will bypass the poison dart and phantasms from the other build and will ve dedicated to a full pet build.

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