Zombie Bears with Helltooth Feedback

PTR Feedback
1

I came back after a 5+ year gap to specifically play Zombie Bears.
Thanks!
<3 VUDU clan

Edited to update for latest Patch 2. (or is it patch 3? Whatever has new Zombie Bears Mojo)

Gameplay:
Still seeing same basic Bears gameplay, even with buff from 3 to 8 bears.
This hasn’t changed much since Season 1 and even before that.

Highest level feedback:

  • 3->8 bears and farther/faster somewhat alleviates the issues with bears
  • Needs higher defense
    ** Lakumbra is still stupid. It should be 60% with any amount of Soul Harvest stacks
    ** I get one shot (die) a lot at the start of the greater rift level because I need to apply necrosis to an enemy and get Lakumbra
    ** Also lost locust damage reduction rune
  • Needs a lot more damage to balance both bad luck issues and to simply reach same level as Mundugu
  • Bears still get caught on corners/edges/floors/walls. This means many lost greater rifts runs due to bad luck with levels spawned, thus the need for it to be more powerful
  • Would greatly benefit from special “Illusory boots” ability, however this is not worth a cube slot losing defense IMHO. Adding this to the Mojo or Scrimshaw would work around a lot of issues with waller elite affix and bad levels

My experiment:
Gems: Trapped, Stricken, and Pain Enhancer (bleeding gem)

  • Live Server: Cleared GR83 and close to GR84 with slightly lower Paragon and Gem levels, same gear and skills as Patch 1 PTR
  • Patch 1 PTR: Cleared GR101 and close to GR102 at P900 + lvl 90 gems
  • Patch 2 PTR: Cleared GR110 (13m17s). Same Paragon+gems+gear (except new mojo and changed locust swarm run)
    ** Missed GR111 by seconds three times now, always due to the problems listed above with bears getting caught, or bad luck with levels

Baskentor clears:
Basically the same as the build I used, except Confidence Ritual in place of Swampland Attunement

  • Live Server: ? Anyone probably uses grin reaper and jeram’s for max DPS
  • Patch 1 PTR: GR 122. With about 7.35k paragon. With many high level Caldesann’s up to 150
  • Patch 2 PTR: GR130 in 14m27s. Basically same gear/gems at lvl 150

GR122 → GR130 means it’s doing about 3.5x more damage in aggregate. 1.17^8 ~= 3.51x more enemy HP

I did GR101->GR110, basically the same arithmetic at 4.1x more damage. 1.17^9 ~= 4.1x more enemy HP

New Mojo:
Pretty cool.
More bears go farther which is very good for gathering crowds and mowing down trash + elites.
Difficult to roll a good ancient one, because you really want to get a very high Legendary multiplier.
It’s a new multiplier that rolls between 100~150% more damage (or 2~2.5x more damage)
FYI It’s not Zombie Charger Skill %
Unclear how much the extra 3 to 8 bears adds for damage in practice. It definitely adds practical damage to both large crowds and fatty enemies, e.g. rift guardians

Patch 2 PTR: Cleared GR110

Running the same gear, gems, and paragon, except for one modification to patch 1 build
Replace Vile Hive mojo with slick new ancient Bears mojo
Replace Locust swarm damage reduction and bleed rune with Pestilence (required)
Same gems, gear (except mojo), paragon, as Patch 1 PTR

Patch 1 PTR: Cleared GR101 and close to GR102 (within seconds)

  • Cube: Soul Harvester, Aquila, and RoRG or Ring of Emptiness (RoE)
  • HT 5p: Except pants
  • Capt Crimson 2p: Belt and Pants
  • Vile Hive Mojo and Scrimshaw
  • Traveller’s pledge
  • Lakumbra
    Gems: Trapped, Stricken, Bleeding Gem
    Gems at about 90 for trapped and stricken
    No Caldesann’s

Live Server: Cleared GR 83 and close to GR84

One skill change: Spirit Walk Mana Rune required
With the same gear as Patch 1 PTR and slightly lower paragon level at 885 or gems about -5 levels. I cleared GR83 and almost cleared GR84.
No caldesann’s augments, and obviously the live server scrimshaw, I cleared GR83 with:

  • Cube: Soul Harvester, Aquila, and RoRG or Ring of Emptiness (RoE)
  • HT 5p: Except pants
  • Capt Crimson 2p: Belt and Pants
  • Vile Hive Mojo and Scrimshaw
  • Traveller’s pledge
  • Lakumbra
    Gems: Trapped, Stricken, Bleeding Gem
    Gem levels about 5 lower than PTR.

Special Note:
Grin Reaper isn’t useful for this build.
They don’t get RoE buff so they do 4x less damage
They don’t get new mojo buff for extra bears
I didn’t find Grin Reaper helped in PTR Patch 1 either

3 Likes
2

I would put part of the buff on the helltooth set so other builds which use HT can also profit from that. 25 gr is an awfull big number if every doubling of damage means 3 gr levels if i recall correctly. HT could use a 100k bonus damage on the set…

3 Likes
3

Hey I looked it up.

17% enemy HP growth per level.

Doubling time t_d = log (2) / log(1.17) ~= 4.4 GR levels

Every 5th GR level enemy HP will be more than doubled.

My value of “15” on both scrimshaw and Jeram’s appears to be a massive underestimation to reach at least +25 GR levels.

Napkin math, please feel free to correct:

25 levels at 17% growth means (1 + .17) ^ 25 = 50 times more damage needed!

Edit: In light of other HT builds, the HT bonus needs to be adjusted accordingly.

If the Garg build is behind Zombie Bears, then the HT and/or pet stuff needs a buff.

If the Zombie Bears build is behind Garg, then vise versa.

If the arachyr build is ahead or behind HT, then same trouble, must adjust arachyr 6p bonus to be in line with HT.

1 Like
4

Wall of Death -> Wall of Zombies rune may be better. It does a small knockback which slightly helps grouping enemies.

The big advantage Wall of Fire used to have is that if you used Jeram bracers the overlapping walls would all do damage which wasn’t true for any other rune.

2 Likes
5

Wow VUDU, it’s been so long. I left after being the last active member.

Welcome back!

I’ll try out zombears tonight or tomorrow. Have a full ancient/primal gear setup and see what I can achieve.

I doubt LOD will be competitive here since it’s literally half the damage as Helltooth.

My biggest issue is Blizz has never fixed pathing for bears. Stairs and ground objects still create clipping and wall bears.

In the case of season 22 I’d use wall 100% defensively and work in ROE with the extra cube slot for damage. I would also think that travellers is good in this set given the playstyle.

1 Like
6

VUDU!

Yes if you look up Wudijo’s d3planner builds, you’ll find exactly that.

Stairs, corners, etc, all bad and annoying. Often times I walk up to the enemy and face away.

Ring of emptiness + Locust pestilence and need a RoRG, so pick one to cube
Cpt Crimson 2p
HT 5p
Wear Lakumbra’s
Endless walk (compass rose + trav pledge)
Uhkapian serpent + life link dogs
Scrimshaw

Cube:
RoRG/RoE
Sacred Harvester
Aquila

Enough RCR to keep up Aquila
Add enough CDR for capt crimson defensive bonus
Add area damage

Question on gems:
Bane of trapped, bane of stricken, and … pain enhancer? gizzard? Toxin? Other?

Speaking of elite damage, we don’t have furnace yet, so you can sacrifice defense from sacrifice sacred harvester for +40% elite damage.

7

Echoing Fury could be a better cube choice, both for the significant attack speed buff and the movespeed when moving between packs.

1 Like
8

In speed runs Fury 100%, in GR pushing I’m guessing it’s just not worth it.

I’d probably look at Esoteric tbh for pushing since the set is already on the squishy side and make sure all gear is rolled armor and use vit/arm gems in chest and leg slots for maximizing toughness. Toxic could be good since has both def/off.

I’m excited to test but won’t get my hopes up too much.

2 Likes
9

I’ve suggested this in WD forum:

Helltooth 2pieces - instead of the 3000% tick, give Gruesome feast double it’s duration and allow it’s cooldown act like soul harvest.

Thing of the deep: Gives 20 pickup radius and adds 15% damage reduction for each stack of gruesome feast.

Hwoj Wrap - Locust swarm slow enemies by 60-80% and adds a chance to spawn a health globe if it dies under it’s effect.

Jeram’s bracer - gives it 400-500% increased damage.

This will allow us to use jeram’s bracer and avoid the need to use lakumba’s + sacred harvester combo. Also, we could use wormwood in the cube and free a skill slot in your bar. We need to have OPTIONS.

As for lakumba’s + sacred harvester I suggest to give soul harvest 10 stacks outright and sacred harvester adding more 5. This will even the bonus with the suggested bonus of TOTD + Hwoj Wrap + Gruesome feast in 75% and help Jade’s and Mundunugu’s survivability.

We still could think of a survivability buff to Arachyr’s or Zunimassa’s related items and promote diversity between the sets and builds, but I couldn’t think of anything yet.

I still need to play the PTR, which I will do on Sunday, but for now my suggestions are pretty much it.

4 Likes
10

Gruesome feast changes long overdue! I agree it should have acted like Soul Harvest since a long time ago…

I did GR100 with trapped, stricken, pain enhancer variant on the Wudijo build.

Survival is not an issue compared to 2.3 patch. I don’t have to dodge gruesome death explosion, for example.

I failed GR101 by 2.5 minutes.

I’m paragon 900, I don’t have any caldesann’s, and I have some decent gear, but not great.

When I upgrade my gear and really try to push it, I should be able to get to GR103 or a little more.

But there’s the limit. GR110 for a mega leveled player confirmed.

GR100 for some group of players confirmed. I’ve gotten word of mouth of fellow players on twitch and discord.

That’s not anywhere close to solo GR limit on live (GR150), much less what those builds will do with a 4th cube slot.

So what, it’s going to take 243x more damage from what it’s currently at to add 35 more GR levels (1.17 ^ 35 = 243, vs 25 GR levels is 1.17^25 = 50)

11

I’ve been fiddling with zombie bears a little. Completed a 115, but over 4,000 paragon. Baskenater has a 121 done, but over 7,000 paragon.

Waller is terrible. I tried dropping locust swarm for haunt, the 20% poison rune and cubing the belt that allows 2 haunts at once. I didn’t test it long, but will give it another try. Am using Henris. Where can I put zombie dogs on my bar? Skills seem so overloaded, unless I drop Spirit Walk for it. Seems so squishy for a melee build aws well.

1 Like
12

Replace Piranhas for Zombie Dogs.

Also replace Spirit Vessel for Bad Medicine, but I’m afraid to do it ;p

13

What if you use wormwood in the cube… This way you can free a skill slot in your bar.

1 Like
14

Wormwood replaces Soul Harvester and Furnace.

Not really an option if you want to push higher.

But a good option for speeding things up if you’re not trying to push up to the max GR level.

1 Like
15

Hmm, I don’t think I am sold on giving up an ability that groups up enemies (prevents them from hitting you for a few seconds, helps with area damage & adds a small damage bonus to the mobs).

1 Like
16

Where does HT Garg and firebats stand. I would like them to up the damage on the set but you need those two builds into consideration

1 Like
17

I won’t be trying HT firebats.

I did a HT Garg build using the diablofans 2.6.8 patch " Helltooth/LOD Gargantuan 2.6.8" build.

I tried with Endless Walk and with Unity + Hellfire amulet variants.

Both cleared GR100 at about 17m30s and were clearly slower than Zombie Bears at killing the same types of enemies. Endless walk is better with some rift guardians.

EDIT: I cleared a GR100 with HT gargs, but that was after a handful of attempts

I have a lot of experience from trying to push LoN gargs from some years back, so I’m familiar with the play style.

As comparable to the ZBears build as I could make it. Swapping out pain enhancer for enforcer, and keeping my same trapped/stricken. Rolled a new small man’s finger to make sure I have current benefits.

Swapping out some HT gear to maximize garg damage + area damage.

Overall seemed slightly less damage, but very close.

18

So we only need a 100k damage modifier to get HT somewhere into the meta , not even top 🤦

1 Like
19

The scrimshaw buff is not nearly enough imo. I could barely keep up with the bar at 110 and I was getting killed easily. My other WD builds like Jade, Darts or Spirit barrage can almost speed 110 with similar quality gear. I think the build needs another item to support it.

edit: I Solved my toughness problem with esoteric and swampland attunement but this lowered my damage even more.

1 Like
20

I am not either. I just wanted to face tank with ZBears for once.

So I was 1s off clearing GR102 (my highest) with pirahnas, vile hive, and aquila (as opposed to Grin Reaper). Vile hive + physical locust cause bleed, thus making pain enhancer amazing

Aquila wasn’t up as often, but turned out to be very useful considering creeping death keeps me from recasting on elites/boss

I tried with nemesis bracers instead of Aquila at GR102, but I died a lot.

The only other option I have is strongarm bracers with knockback WoD rune, but that’s really annoying with ZBears.

Leoric’s for doubling Diamond CDR adds only 8% (42% → 50% CDR) from Captain Crimson…