Post by Afallingrock on Jan 26, 2014 23:57:19 GMT
GUIDE: How to CoB: Gearing/Build tactics for advanced users
1. Gearing
2. Builds
3. Tactics
4. Hardcore
Second post: Hall of fame: video demonstrations by Top WDs
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Disclaimers:
- i take no credibility for any of the builds nor gearing
- i dont claim this gearing method is the best, i claim that it will give you highest DPS possible
- the guide is for people that want to farm XP and Loot - END-GAME
- i could not care less if 1H or 2H is better for you
- if you use mana passive when CoBing you are a NOOB!
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There are two main roads for gearing:
- 1H+Mojo: best possible gearing set-up in terms of DPS, EHP
and mana management is:
* Sword or Axe: only black dmg weapons! (Allows to reach high AS breakpoints easier)
* Zunimassa String of skulls(need to have critchance, int/vit and min.4% dmg to elites)
* Inna temperance: needed for movement speed and DPS
* Crafted bracers, shoulders, gloves
* Tal rasha chest: the needed rolls are: armour, int/vit, allres
* Tal rasha amulet: get highest DPS stats you can afford
* Witching hour belt: this is a very good slot to have pickup radius
* Zunimassa pox, vision and trails
* SoJ with bats reduction: min stats are 6/27/8
With the above set you will get huge DPS and more than enough survivbaility! If you ask me, i can
convince you that EHP from 350 minimum to 450K maximum is the most efficient to aim for! Why is that? here is why:
youtu.be/6VlsCmqmA3o - vs siegebrake, EHP test My conclusions are that even with overkill EHP you cannot tank RD when using 1H. I will wait for community approval to include the conclusions on the 2H test! For more info see post 56 - us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/10587068874?page=3#56
Why you will get maximum DPS in this way? For the following reasons:
- Tal rasha chest is 12-18K more DPS compared to zuni marrow with similar EHP (it has lower EHP of course, but negligible)
- Inna temperance will give you 10-15K over any pants in addition to the movement speed
- Most important is the fact that cob deals dmg as fire, so you have hidden 3% more dmg from tal-rasha's combo
- Zuni mojo is top DPSer, because in addition to the nice stats, it allows u to use the tal chest and keep the 4 zuni pcs bonus
Cost: this setup is expensive ... i have tried to push the lower limits, but seems that for less than 50 mln its not worth, and these 50 mln prolly could have been spent better. Reasonable amount of gold to start this set up and make it MP10 farming efficient is 150-250 mln, depends how well u snipe, or 500 mln if u want to faceroll MP10
video demonstration with 50 mln set:
youtu.be/UCeqeWxPvxI
Why you dont want to use manajuma knife:
- since you have a lot of bonuses from elemental sources, you lose a lot of DPS,
because they are added to the physical dmg of the weapon
- you need to put ruby inside, lowering your crit numbers and reducing burst dmg
Why you dont want to use manajuma gory fetch:
- it has natural fear: this is very bad stat for cob WDs, because you need the mobs
to come to you, not runaway
- it has very low EHP stats
- does not have dmg to elites, like SoS and Uhkapient, in turn reducing the DPS
Most important of all: both are quite expensive, if you need suitable ones
- u need to combine it with zuni marrow, yielding much lower DPS (10-15% due to the loss of tal bonus, dmg to elites)
There are no gear limitations! Every gear limitation can be compensated with skills! Above 1H setup will give you the highest DPS possible!
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-2H:
No surprises here, you need to use 4 zuni pcs and a SoJ + the rest is like above. This
set up is a bit more tanky (with lowish DPS chars), but lacks killing speed and flexibility ... This road is the safest possible: with enough EHP you can tank everything. Basically the choice is yours: you want to tank everything go 2H you want to melt everything go 1H!
Main aspects are to have SoJ and 24% movement speed for efficient farming for both gearing ways
Why you need only one item with PUR: because you need to control how you collect globes!
If you have a lot of PUR, when you first kill the first mobs you will immediately collect
all the globes, leaving nothing for later use, when they will be more valuable to restore
mana, health and increase EHP!
When you can replace soj and with what? You can replace it for areas that are full with white mobs:
Like FoM and possible sands/oasis. Best rings to replace the SoJ are HF ring for XP farming and Unity!
Dont take trifecta rare rings, they will never outdps good unity!
Why 24% ms is so important? Even with the increased mob density, abt 60-80% of the time in the game you spend walking around. The faster you walk, the faster you will clear any area! MS allows you to move from bad dmg spells, like frozen, arcane or molten explosions, when your SW is on CD!
Why not lacuni? Well there are many reasons, most important of which is the price! If you want lacuni to compete against crafted bracers you need to invest min. 1 bln and you will lose EHP stats! The combo of inna temperance with crafted bracers will always give you more DPS and almost always better EHP, plus its a lot cheaper!
Why SoJ? The ring is BiS for WDs, because combined with Zuni set regen and regen from Mojo it allows for extremely efficient mana management and use of high AS!
Problems with mana comes from recasting, soj has maximum mana so this helps a lot! When you are oom, the 1H set restores mana faster, thanks to the regen from the mojo.
The bats reduction on SoJ allows you to cast bats efficiently even with PtV and with 1.6-2.0 AS. In addition, getting high AS is very beneficial for burst dmg, so if you
can, get AS, dont runaway from it!
Do i need 4 zuni pcs? The short answer is HELL YEAH! You can pull it off without them, like here:
youtu.be/yThlRCr0DtA - as you can see going oom is very bad for us, so even if its doable, its just not worth it!
Why you should gear towards DPS when using 1H? Because no matter what EHP u have, u just cant tank RD with good DPS!
Some stats to aim for:
Highest DPS: good ones start from 200K with SoJ, but if you can reach 300K DPS its great
High AS: from 1.5 to 2.15 are all ok
EHP: minimum 350K. Good and balanced stats are 700-750 alres, 3500 armour, 50K HP and high dodge chance (aim to reach 20% which is abt 400-500 dex): i am not sure people realize that dodge can avoid all attacks except RD, meaning you can avoid molten and frozen explosions, some harder hits, which can lead to CC etc .. inna pants is very good piece, because they have natural 100, so if you can get at least 100 more helps a lot!
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2. Builds
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Some skills are absolutely mandatory for general farming when using cob:
SV - allows you to live in the spirit world, move faster, cheath death etc
GF - mana and DPS/EHP huge buffer
GI - reduction of all cooldowns!
SW - no explanation needed! You need to gear in a way to support Jaunt rune! Meaning mana efficient items
SH - huge DPS EHP buff
MC - CC needed for DPS and ranged mobs
From this base, you can take depending on the situation, FA, BBV, Hex, Grasp etc.
Here comes the fun part, depending on the area and your gearing, you can take any of the following builds:
For act1 farming, where you need to use locust to pull mobs:
offensive version:
us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#chUdji!YTe!caacYZ
defensive version:
us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#chUdjX!YTe!caacYY
video demonstration of act1 farming:
youtu.be/o2LxHTOrWC4
Good route is: 1) Festering woods (for NV stacks) 2)Fields of misery (crypt+scavenger den) 3)Weeping hollow. Optionally if you have high DPS you can also clear Halls of agony lvl 2
if you have only 3 NV in FW, clear leoric manor area as well. Depending on the gear, you should be able to reach 150 - 200 mln XP/hour
Halls of agony runs:
youtu.be/8UFiiB--QLA
Some tips:
try to eliminate the distance when fighting dark berserkers and hulks
fighting hulk elites alone is not good, try to pull them in a group and spam on them during SW to avoid interruption
you need to reposition more often, otherwise dark berserkers can one shot or engage the group as close to the dark berserkers as possible
Crits can interrupt the hard hit from dark berserkers, if your SW is on CD, try to SH them
For vota runs and act2 farming:
defensive version:
us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#cXUdjQ!YTe!cYacYb
offensive version:
us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#ciUdjQ!YTe!cZacYb
you dont need locust there, because mobs are very fast and come immediately at u! Another very important issue:
Skip Blazing guardians, because they have huge natural reduction from fire dmg ... the time it takes to kill them is simply not worth!
youtu.be/kIZtCw3Q6ao - act2 run, video demo in vota and oasis
youtu.be/HpcpQikHMc4 solo vota run with 4 men party on MP10
Good route is: 1)VotA 2)Dalghur oasis and the two channels in the north east corner 3)Storm halls
act3:
same as act2, what you can consider is adding grasp, unspeakable grasp in the place of bbv if you have troubles with shamans/occultists, like so:
eu.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#cZUdji!YTe!caacYZ - this build has huge CC, but loses DPS and EHP compared to standard one, so dont use it outside act3
video demo:
youtu.be/Zw6afkcUGhI - key warden run!
youtu.be/H62VZaZw3PE - act3 elites kill compilation, picked up only the fleeting elites with high CC affixes. Its a nice compilation, because you can see how fast they die when everything goes right and how paintful they are when things go wrong
Most areas are decent for XP farming, avoid fields of slaughter
act4:
So here going CoB is STUPID! CoB works as long as you are not interrupted, while in act4 almost every mob interrupts channeling!
here is a good build for act4 using zombie bears:
us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#fXUdjQ!YTe!cYacYb
Here is a demo how to execute it:
youtu.be/8Gpl1lnJG9g
Builds for Ubers:
Solo version:
us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#cXUTji!ace!cYZcYZ
Group version:
us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#cXUQji!ace!cYZbYZ
When there is a 0dogger in the group, you need to replace BR with GF
I suggest you take a skorn for siegebraker!
for key farming, make sure to always have hex! All the wardens can be hexed, otherwise they are a huge pain with their constant fleeting!
PtV test run:
youtu.be/Fd35NbbVfbo - act1 farming with no mana passive/regen
If you like using PtV read the excellent guide from one of the most skilled WDs Jumbasa:
us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/10160926622 - there are detailed explanation of the build and how to manage it!
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3. Tactics:
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- There is more to right mouse button warriors
For example when you thrash farm, you need to pull mobs, SW in the middle of the group, SH and then Start CoB. You can even use MC before you start cob for maximum safety and DPS
- VS Reflect: IMO with high DPS reflects cannot be tanked, because you need to absorb the reflected dmg and then apply the healing. I prefer to kill them while living in the spirit world with the following procedure:
* wait 2-3 sec after u meet the elites
* position yourself in the middle and place bbv/mc/hex/SH whatever is in your arsenal
* click SW and start to CoB. Using Jaunt should give you enough invulnerability till the remaining RD shield is off and then kill them like normal elites. Here is a short video using this method:
youtu.be/WubgXkEtpEo - you can see another use of SV - cheating death once every 90 sec
- You can outheal RD only when using 2H and have huge mitigation, like 4200 armour and 850+ allres. However its not consistent solution, because you need to use ruby in the weapon and still when you are fully buffed, you run the risk of oneshotting yourself if your DPS is 200K + SoJ! In my experience, when you start critting for more than 2-3 mln, then EHP becomes useless and does not save from Reflects, especially when you hit all of them at once! The 2H also need to be with high life steal: more than 5.4%.
- GI+SV allows u to use SW to avoid dmg, that interrupts channeling or one shots u: like bulls in act1, molten explosions, frozen affix etc. U need to time how use SW in order to benefit in maximum way: normally u want to use it in order to enter in the middle of the elites and start spamming however if you see frozen affix, attack them normally and wait with the SW to use it to avoid the frozen!
- How to use FA? U need for the armour buff, which is the only savior from reflect, when your DPS grows above 200K with SoJ! Always time the casting before the fights! You dont need to scare elites
- Why you dont need more than 450K EHP? Because in order to get it, you need to start sacrificing DPS, movement speed, mana management etc! The biggest EHP is the ability to use life stealing! As long as cob WD is hitting mobs, he always outheal the spells thrown at him! The idea is to have enough EHP to avoid oneshotting, which is abt 400K and then focus as much as possible on DPS! This means also another thing: if you are low on DPS, you need higher EHP because you need to survive longer and take more DMG, while if you kill fast enough, you need to have enough EHP to stay alive for few sec only ...
- why do u need high AS? Because it affects how often cob is hitting and therefore how often you heal from LS! It can happen with low AS that you die, because you take
too much dmg without enough healing. Best place to be is around 1.5 to 2.15
- how to use bbv and mc together? - Both skills are DPS boosters. In VotA you dont need to drop both of them vs every pack, u need to be careful and maximize their output as follows:
- for extra health fleeting elites drop both
- for fleeting elites, drop only MC
- for melee elites you can drop only BBV
In VotA in most cases its better to use only one of them, because elites are quite close to each other. When you see a big group of mobs, SW inside and wipe them in order to reset CDs
- its not efficient to farm areas, where mobs flee a lot or are able to hit while outside CoB range. Examples of such areas are: halls of agony, fields of slaughter and most of act4
demo by one of top EU WDs in act2:
youtu.be/kDelFY0OUPc - 2.14 AS, no mana passive/skill
- How to kill goblins: its actually very easy: you need to approach the goblin and start CoB, after about 2 sec (or when you see his body bend for the second time) start SW and the gob will not move! Unless its a very bad RNG of crits, they die during Jaunt time If not, they will have like 20% of the health and you can finish them easy.
- How to fight CC elites - worst enemies of CoB WDs
* Grotesques in WH - easiest and safest way is not to engage the single pack, but move them in a cluster of mobs, drop your arsenal, click SW and then CoB. Check out the mobs population and use SW accordingly. U should be able to use min. twice even 3 times SW due to GI+SV reset and eliminate their natural+added CC. The point is to use the white mobs to reset SW CD and spam it immediately! 3 spams of SW is often enough to kill these
* Spinners in VotA - these are terrible, MC cant confuse them, your best bet is to engage them and wait 2-3 secs, if you dont get CC start SW, if you get (most likely u will) then dont use SW immediately, unless u are going to die, start CoB again and WAIT 2-3 secs and then start SW. CC effects cant be proc`ed with every hit, so when u take one, u have time to position and DPS them as much as possible!
* Fleeting range elites: here fighting without MC is quite difficult, if it is on CD, either pull them with u (always going forward not to lose time) and find mobs to reset MC and then with MC and SW u should be ok, or as a last resort fight them in a small narrow area, but without MC imo u can skip them
(That is why MC is more important than BBV to have in your arsenal)
* Worst combination of affixes for CoB is electrified and/or firechains, combined with CC affix, because these proc the CC efffect quite often
* Use SW as much as possible - this combined with high DPS makes WD close to immortals! These make the WD the safest HC class! U need high DPS to reset CDs and if u have enough, then u are immortal Learn to look at SW icon and click it as soon as it is ready
* SoJ is a life saver with its Max Mana roll, combined with zuni vision, it allows a lot of recasting and prevents going oom! Use it in every elite dense area
- How to deal with the savage beasts` charge: they dont charge at you, while you are in SW mode. Best way to farm FoM is pull the mobs, SW inside, place your arsenal and start CoB. In the first 2 sec, SW will reset, thx to GI+SV allowing you to spam it again. Dont stop spamming SW till the whole group is dead. If you are in SW during the fight, savage beast will not charge you, but will walk towards your CoB.
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Since there was post, what is end-game and why you should gear like that:
END-GAME starts when you kill diablo in inferno and start developing your character. The best way is to farm high density areas, like act1 fw/fom/wh and act2 vota/oasis/sands. Act3 is not so good in terms of experience! Builds above allow you to maximize kills per hour, which will give you higher chance of getting loot and faster para leveling! Thats END-GAME!
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4. Hardcore
This is for new HC WDs, that are just starting, after having some understanding of the class from SC
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For act1 farming, which is the safest area with high mob density u can use cob build like this one:
us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#chUdXj!TYe!caacYY
The skills u should always have available, when playing HC are SW, SV, GI, Horrify and i want to say GF. Horrify is very needed, because when you are cornered and about to get raped, it will save u.
video demonstration using 2 mln worth of gear:
youtu.be/qfs2jxF27Fg - part1 FW and WH
youtu.be/LVcCvQIXINs - part2 FoM and Crypt
U can see how CoB melts everything on MP3, with 30K DPS. The gear has close to no critchance/dmg and it is focused on high average dmg. This is needed for locust and SH. Both skills deal more DMG with 2H.
Tips
- When SV triggers, leave the game and start a new one (dont farm while it is on cooldown)
- dont farm high MPs, because u increase the risk of dying when the game disconnect or freeze (focus below MP5)
- 24% MS is important, get it as soon as u can afford it (tyrael chest is a good place for low budgets)
- its better to use 2H with high life steal (above 5.5%), because it allows u to tank everything with lowish DPS. Even not a skorn, but a weapon that has vit can be a good choice as well
- litany ring is a good item to have
- here dont focus so much on DPS, because with 50K u will oneshot most of things on lowish MPs
- dont spend a lot of gold, the gear is extremely overrated and not needed (i have 300 mln and will not spend a penny more on the WD), unless u want to farm high MP (valid for HC only players). Another reason is that as soon as u spent your precious gold, u can die and waste it all for nothing. U can use the investing rule for currency trading, not to risk more than 3% of your equity
- dont play HC when the weather is bad: it can lead to disconnect
1. Gearing
2. Builds
3. Tactics
4. Hardcore
Second post: Hall of fame: video demonstrations by Top WDs
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Disclaimers:
- i take no credibility for any of the builds nor gearing
- i dont claim this gearing method is the best, i claim that it will give you highest DPS possible
- the guide is for people that want to farm XP and Loot - END-GAME
- i could not care less if 1H or 2H is better for you
- if you use mana passive when CoBing you are a NOOB!
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There are two main roads for gearing:
- 1H+Mojo: best possible gearing set-up in terms of DPS, EHP
and mana management is:
* Sword or Axe: only black dmg weapons! (Allows to reach high AS breakpoints easier)
* Zunimassa String of skulls(need to have critchance, int/vit and min.4% dmg to elites)
* Inna temperance: needed for movement speed and DPS
* Crafted bracers, shoulders, gloves
* Tal rasha chest: the needed rolls are: armour, int/vit, allres
* Tal rasha amulet: get highest DPS stats you can afford
* Witching hour belt: this is a very good slot to have pickup radius
* Zunimassa pox, vision and trails
* SoJ with bats reduction: min stats are 6/27/8
With the above set you will get huge DPS and more than enough survivbaility! If you ask me, i can
convince you that EHP from 350 minimum to 450K maximum is the most efficient to aim for! Why is that? here is why:
youtu.be/6VlsCmqmA3o - vs siegebrake, EHP test My conclusions are that even with overkill EHP you cannot tank RD when using 1H. I will wait for community approval to include the conclusions on the 2H test! For more info see post 56 - us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/10587068874?page=3#56
Why you will get maximum DPS in this way? For the following reasons:
- Tal rasha chest is 12-18K more DPS compared to zuni marrow with similar EHP (it has lower EHP of course, but negligible)
- Inna temperance will give you 10-15K over any pants in addition to the movement speed
- Most important is the fact that cob deals dmg as fire, so you have hidden 3% more dmg from tal-rasha's combo
- Zuni mojo is top DPSer, because in addition to the nice stats, it allows u to use the tal chest and keep the 4 zuni pcs bonus
Cost: this setup is expensive ... i have tried to push the lower limits, but seems that for less than 50 mln its not worth, and these 50 mln prolly could have been spent better. Reasonable amount of gold to start this set up and make it MP10 farming efficient is 150-250 mln, depends how well u snipe, or 500 mln if u want to faceroll MP10
video demonstration with 50 mln set:
youtu.be/UCeqeWxPvxI
Why you dont want to use manajuma knife:
- since you have a lot of bonuses from elemental sources, you lose a lot of DPS,
because they are added to the physical dmg of the weapon
- you need to put ruby inside, lowering your crit numbers and reducing burst dmg
Why you dont want to use manajuma gory fetch:
- it has natural fear: this is very bad stat for cob WDs, because you need the mobs
to come to you, not runaway
- it has very low EHP stats
- does not have dmg to elites, like SoS and Uhkapient, in turn reducing the DPS
Most important of all: both are quite expensive, if you need suitable ones
- u need to combine it with zuni marrow, yielding much lower DPS (10-15% due to the loss of tal bonus, dmg to elites)
There are no gear limitations! Every gear limitation can be compensated with skills! Above 1H setup will give you the highest DPS possible!
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-2H:
No surprises here, you need to use 4 zuni pcs and a SoJ + the rest is like above. This
set up is a bit more tanky (with lowish DPS chars), but lacks killing speed and flexibility ... This road is the safest possible: with enough EHP you can tank everything. Basically the choice is yours: you want to tank everything go 2H you want to melt everything go 1H!
Main aspects are to have SoJ and 24% movement speed for efficient farming for both gearing ways
Why you need only one item with PUR: because you need to control how you collect globes!
If you have a lot of PUR, when you first kill the first mobs you will immediately collect
all the globes, leaving nothing for later use, when they will be more valuable to restore
mana, health and increase EHP!
When you can replace soj and with what? You can replace it for areas that are full with white mobs:
Like FoM and possible sands/oasis. Best rings to replace the SoJ are HF ring for XP farming and Unity!
Dont take trifecta rare rings, they will never outdps good unity!
Why 24% ms is so important? Even with the increased mob density, abt 60-80% of the time in the game you spend walking around. The faster you walk, the faster you will clear any area! MS allows you to move from bad dmg spells, like frozen, arcane or molten explosions, when your SW is on CD!
Why not lacuni? Well there are many reasons, most important of which is the price! If you want lacuni to compete against crafted bracers you need to invest min. 1 bln and you will lose EHP stats! The combo of inna temperance with crafted bracers will always give you more DPS and almost always better EHP, plus its a lot cheaper!
Why SoJ? The ring is BiS for WDs, because combined with Zuni set regen and regen from Mojo it allows for extremely efficient mana management and use of high AS!
Problems with mana comes from recasting, soj has maximum mana so this helps a lot! When you are oom, the 1H set restores mana faster, thanks to the regen from the mojo.
The bats reduction on SoJ allows you to cast bats efficiently even with PtV and with 1.6-2.0 AS. In addition, getting high AS is very beneficial for burst dmg, so if you
can, get AS, dont runaway from it!
Do i need 4 zuni pcs? The short answer is HELL YEAH! You can pull it off without them, like here:
youtu.be/yThlRCr0DtA - as you can see going oom is very bad for us, so even if its doable, its just not worth it!
Why you should gear towards DPS when using 1H? Because no matter what EHP u have, u just cant tank RD with good DPS!
Some stats to aim for:
Highest DPS: good ones start from 200K with SoJ, but if you can reach 300K DPS its great
High AS: from 1.5 to 2.15 are all ok
EHP: minimum 350K. Good and balanced stats are 700-750 alres, 3500 armour, 50K HP and high dodge chance (aim to reach 20% which is abt 400-500 dex): i am not sure people realize that dodge can avoid all attacks except RD, meaning you can avoid molten and frozen explosions, some harder hits, which can lead to CC etc .. inna pants is very good piece, because they have natural 100, so if you can get at least 100 more helps a lot!
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2. Builds
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Some skills are absolutely mandatory for general farming when using cob:
SV - allows you to live in the spirit world, move faster, cheath death etc
GF - mana and DPS/EHP huge buffer
GI - reduction of all cooldowns!
SW - no explanation needed! You need to gear in a way to support Jaunt rune! Meaning mana efficient items
SH - huge DPS EHP buff
MC - CC needed for DPS and ranged mobs
From this base, you can take depending on the situation, FA, BBV, Hex, Grasp etc.
Here comes the fun part, depending on the area and your gearing, you can take any of the following builds:
For act1 farming, where you need to use locust to pull mobs:
offensive version:
us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#chUdji!YTe!caacYZ
defensive version:
us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#chUdjX!YTe!caacYY
video demonstration of act1 farming:
youtu.be/o2LxHTOrWC4
Good route is: 1) Festering woods (for NV stacks) 2)Fields of misery (crypt+scavenger den) 3)Weeping hollow. Optionally if you have high DPS you can also clear Halls of agony lvl 2
if you have only 3 NV in FW, clear leoric manor area as well. Depending on the gear, you should be able to reach 150 - 200 mln XP/hour
Halls of agony runs:
youtu.be/8UFiiB--QLA
Some tips:
try to eliminate the distance when fighting dark berserkers and hulks
fighting hulk elites alone is not good, try to pull them in a group and spam on them during SW to avoid interruption
you need to reposition more often, otherwise dark berserkers can one shot or engage the group as close to the dark berserkers as possible
Crits can interrupt the hard hit from dark berserkers, if your SW is on CD, try to SH them
For vota runs and act2 farming:
defensive version:
us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#cXUdjQ!YTe!cYacYb
offensive version:
us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#ciUdjQ!YTe!cZacYb
you dont need locust there, because mobs are very fast and come immediately at u! Another very important issue:
Skip Blazing guardians, because they have huge natural reduction from fire dmg ... the time it takes to kill them is simply not worth!
youtu.be/kIZtCw3Q6ao - act2 run, video demo in vota and oasis
youtu.be/HpcpQikHMc4 solo vota run with 4 men party on MP10
Good route is: 1)VotA 2)Dalghur oasis and the two channels in the north east corner 3)Storm halls
act3:
same as act2, what you can consider is adding grasp, unspeakable grasp in the place of bbv if you have troubles with shamans/occultists, like so:
eu.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#cZUdji!YTe!caacYZ - this build has huge CC, but loses DPS and EHP compared to standard one, so dont use it outside act3
video demo:
youtu.be/Zw6afkcUGhI - key warden run!
youtu.be/H62VZaZw3PE - act3 elites kill compilation, picked up only the fleeting elites with high CC affixes. Its a nice compilation, because you can see how fast they die when everything goes right and how paintful they are when things go wrong
Most areas are decent for XP farming, avoid fields of slaughter
act4:
So here going CoB is STUPID! CoB works as long as you are not interrupted, while in act4 almost every mob interrupts channeling!
here is a good build for act4 using zombie bears:
us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#fXUdjQ!YTe!cYacYb
Here is a demo how to execute it:
youtu.be/8Gpl1lnJG9g
Builds for Ubers:
Solo version:
us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#cXUTji!ace!cYZcYZ
Group version:
us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#cXUQji!ace!cYZbYZ
When there is a 0dogger in the group, you need to replace BR with GF
I suggest you take a skorn for siegebraker!
for key farming, make sure to always have hex! All the wardens can be hexed, otherwise they are a huge pain with their constant fleeting!
PtV test run:
youtu.be/Fd35NbbVfbo - act1 farming with no mana passive/regen
If you like using PtV read the excellent guide from one of the most skilled WDs Jumbasa:
us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/10160926622 - there are detailed explanation of the build and how to manage it!
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3. Tactics:
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- There is more to right mouse button warriors
For example when you thrash farm, you need to pull mobs, SW in the middle of the group, SH and then Start CoB. You can even use MC before you start cob for maximum safety and DPS- VS Reflect: IMO with high DPS reflects cannot be tanked, because you need to absorb the reflected dmg and then apply the healing. I prefer to kill them while living in the spirit world with the following procedure:
* wait 2-3 sec after u meet the elites
* position yourself in the middle and place bbv/mc/hex/SH whatever is in your arsenal
* click SW and start to CoB. Using Jaunt should give you enough invulnerability till the remaining RD shield is off and then kill them like normal elites. Here is a short video using this method:
youtu.be/WubgXkEtpEo - you can see another use of SV - cheating death once every 90 sec
- You can outheal RD only when using 2H and have huge mitigation, like 4200 armour and 850+ allres. However its not consistent solution, because you need to use ruby in the weapon and still when you are fully buffed, you run the risk of oneshotting yourself if your DPS is 200K + SoJ! In my experience, when you start critting for more than 2-3 mln, then EHP becomes useless and does not save from Reflects, especially when you hit all of them at once! The 2H also need to be with high life steal: more than 5.4%.
- GI+SV allows u to use SW to avoid dmg, that interrupts channeling or one shots u: like bulls in act1, molten explosions, frozen affix etc. U need to time how use SW in order to benefit in maximum way: normally u want to use it in order to enter in the middle of the elites and start spamming however if you see frozen affix, attack them normally and wait with the SW to use it to avoid the frozen!
- How to use FA? U need for the armour buff, which is the only savior from reflect, when your DPS grows above 200K with SoJ! Always time the casting before the fights! You dont need to scare elites
- Why you dont need more than 450K EHP? Because in order to get it, you need to start sacrificing DPS, movement speed, mana management etc! The biggest EHP is the ability to use life stealing! As long as cob WD is hitting mobs, he always outheal the spells thrown at him! The idea is to have enough EHP to avoid oneshotting, which is abt 400K and then focus as much as possible on DPS! This means also another thing: if you are low on DPS, you need higher EHP because you need to survive longer and take more DMG, while if you kill fast enough, you need to have enough EHP to stay alive for few sec only ...
- why do u need high AS? Because it affects how often cob is hitting and therefore how often you heal from LS! It can happen with low AS that you die, because you take
too much dmg without enough healing. Best place to be is around 1.5 to 2.15
- how to use bbv and mc together? - Both skills are DPS boosters. In VotA you dont need to drop both of them vs every pack, u need to be careful and maximize their output as follows:
- for extra health fleeting elites drop both
- for fleeting elites, drop only MC
- for melee elites you can drop only BBV
In VotA in most cases its better to use only one of them, because elites are quite close to each other. When you see a big group of mobs, SW inside and wipe them in order to reset CDs
- its not efficient to farm areas, where mobs flee a lot or are able to hit while outside CoB range. Examples of such areas are: halls of agony, fields of slaughter and most of act4
demo by one of top EU WDs in act2:
youtu.be/kDelFY0OUPc - 2.14 AS, no mana passive/skill
- How to kill goblins: its actually very easy: you need to approach the goblin and start CoB, after about 2 sec (or when you see his body bend for the second time) start SW and the gob will not move! Unless its a very bad RNG of crits, they die during Jaunt time
If not, they will have like 20% of the health and you can finish them easy.- How to fight CC elites - worst enemies of CoB WDs
* Grotesques in WH - easiest and safest way is not to engage the single pack, but move them in a cluster of mobs, drop your arsenal, click SW and then CoB. Check out the mobs population and use SW accordingly. U should be able to use min. twice even 3 times SW due to GI+SV reset and eliminate their natural+added CC. The point is to use the white mobs to reset SW CD and spam it immediately! 3 spams of SW is often enough to kill these
* Spinners in VotA - these are terrible, MC cant confuse them, your best bet is to engage them and wait 2-3 secs, if you dont get CC start SW, if you get (most likely u will) then dont use SW immediately, unless u are going to die, start CoB again and WAIT 2-3 secs and then start SW. CC effects cant be proc`ed with every hit, so when u take one, u have time to position and DPS them as much as possible!
* Fleeting range elites: here fighting without MC is quite difficult, if it is on CD, either pull them with u (always going forward not to lose time) and find mobs to reset MC and then with MC and SW u should be ok, or as a last resort fight them in a small narrow area, but without MC imo u can skip them
(That is why MC is more important than BBV to have in your arsenal) * Worst combination of affixes for CoB is electrified and/or firechains, combined with CC affix, because these proc the CC efffect quite often
* Use SW as much as possible - this combined with high DPS makes WD close to immortals! These make the WD the safest HC class! U need high DPS to reset CDs and if u have enough, then u are immortal
Learn to look at SW icon and click it as soon as it is ready* SoJ is a life saver with its Max Mana roll, combined with zuni vision, it allows a lot of recasting and prevents going oom! Use it in every elite dense area
- How to deal with the savage beasts` charge: they dont charge at you, while you are in SW mode. Best way to farm FoM is pull the mobs, SW inside, place your arsenal and start CoB. In the first 2 sec, SW will reset, thx to GI+SV allowing you to spam it again. Dont stop spamming SW till the whole group is dead. If you are in SW during the fight, savage beast will not charge you, but will walk towards your CoB.
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Since there was post, what is end-game and why you should gear like that:
END-GAME starts when you kill diablo in inferno and start developing your character. The best way is to farm high density areas, like act1 fw/fom/wh and act2 vota/oasis/sands. Act3 is not so good in terms of experience! Builds above allow you to maximize kills per hour, which will give you higher chance of getting loot and faster para leveling! Thats END-GAME!
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4. Hardcore
This is for new HC WDs, that are just starting, after having some understanding of the class from SC
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For act1 farming, which is the safest area with high mob density u can use cob build like this one:
us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#chUdXj!TYe!caacYY
The skills u should always have available, when playing HC are SW, SV, GI, Horrify and i want to say GF. Horrify is very needed, because when you are cornered and about to get raped, it will save u.
video demonstration using 2 mln worth of gear:
youtu.be/qfs2jxF27Fg - part1 FW and WH
youtu.be/LVcCvQIXINs - part2 FoM and Crypt
U can see how CoB melts everything on MP3, with 30K DPS. The gear has close to no critchance/dmg and it is focused on high average dmg. This is needed for locust and SH. Both skills deal more DMG with 2H.
Tips
- When SV triggers, leave the game and start a new one (dont farm while it is on cooldown)
- dont farm high MPs, because u increase the risk of dying when the game disconnect or freeze (focus below MP5)
- 24% MS is important, get it as soon as u can afford it (tyrael chest is a good place for low budgets)
- its better to use 2H with high life steal (above 5.5%), because it allows u to tank everything with lowish DPS. Even not a skorn, but a weapon that has vit can be a good choice as well
- litany ring is a good item to have
- here dont focus so much on DPS, because with 50K u will oneshot most of things on lowish MPs
- dont spend a lot of gold, the gear is extremely overrated and not needed (i have 300 mln and will not spend a penny more on the WD), unless u want to farm high MP (valid for HC only players). Another reason is that as soon as u spent your precious gold, u can die and waste it all for nothing. U can use the investing rule for currency trading, not to risk more than 3% of your equity
- dont play HC when the weather is bad: it can lead to disconnect
