D3 builds thread

[Cyn]

What is the best 1.03 Wiz build now with average to below average gear?

[your favorite signature spell]
Blizzard [stark winter or snowbound]
Hydra [venom or arcane]
Energy Armor - Force Armor
Magic Weapon - Force
Teleport - Fracture or Mirror Image [whatever]

Illusionist, Glass Cannon, Galvanizing Ward, Blur and Temporal Flux (with arcane hydra) are all great. Generally stack enough VIT/resist to survive 1-2 hits with force armor (it's a lot easier now), and focus on weapon/focus DPS, INT and then crit%/+.

All just my opinion of course, but that's the build I used to solo to halfway through act III inferno, and the only change to it after 1.03 is IAS nerf, so just focus on INT and crit instead after the patch (try to use a weapon with at least a 1.4 APS of course). It's a great build for being able to do anything with a little effort, so you never have to give up your NV stacks to change anything.

[Fryte]

I have a crap weapon and equipment, but I've been doing just fine up until Act3 Inferno before the patch with:

Arcane Orb (Tap the Source)
Hydra (Venom or Arcane)
Diamond Skin (Crystal Shell)
Teleport (Fracture)
Energy Armor (Force Armor)
Magic Weapon (Fore Weapon)

Passives: Illusionist, Temporal Flux, and Glass Cannon.

I have been debating replacing Magic Weapon or Diamond Skin with something else, but this build feels safest and can kill most things. Unless of course, they are vortex, firechains, and fast or invulnerable minions.

[Meko]

Looking for ideas for dual wield barb or 2h mostly DPS oriented. I'm looking for something varying the sword and build/defensive builds I've been running. Any ideas?

[Rhyis.]

http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/calculato...QiP!ZYg!aYZcaZ

AOE DESTRUCTION EVERYWHERE.... Worked in hell.

[Guitarman]

[your favorite signature spell]
Blizzard [stark winter or snowbound]
Hydra [venom or arcane]
Energy Armor - Force Armor
Magic Weapon - Force
Teleport - Fracture or Mirror Image [whatever]

Illusionist, Glass Cannon, Galvanizing Ward, Blur and Temporal Flux (with arcane hydra) are all great. Generally stack enough VIT/resist to survive 1-2 hits with force armor (it's a lot easier now), and focus on weapon/focus DPS, INT and then crit%/+.

All just my opinion of course, but that's the build I used to solo to halfway through act III inferno, and the only change to it after 1.03 is IAS nerf, so just focus on INT and crit instead after the patch (try to use a weapon with at least a 1.4 APS of course). It's a great build for being able to do anything with a little effort, so you never have to give up your NV stacks to change anything.

Really solid setup, and i use 75% of what you do, though i'll give my changes so he has a few options for builds.

In place of Magic Weapon i use Frost Nova with Cold snap. Invaluable when something gets the jump on you. Also gives you 2 oshit buttons, teleport/nova.
For passives, i've recently switched to Glass Cannon/Galvanizing Ward/Cold Blooded.
I know cold blooded is a bit odd, almost nobody seems to use it, but since your snares are coming from blizzard, everything you fight is going to be taking an extra 20% dmg by default, so it's fantastic to rip shit apart. Especially since blizzard slow is letting venom hydra's stacks build a bit more before an enemy walks out of it.

edit; signature spell is personal preference like Cyn said, but I tend to favor magic missle with split for large groups, or seeker for bosses/elites.

[miokomioko]

I know cold blooded is a bit odd, almost nobody seems to use it, but since your snares are coming from blizzard, everything you fight is going to be taking an extra 20% dmg by default, so it's fantastic to rip shit apart.

I don't know if you misread Cold Blooded like I originally did, but I thought I should clarify that only cold damage is increased by 20% on chilled/frozen targets. I read it as all damage and got excited back when I unlocked it because it would have been amazing when paired up with Ice Armor - Chilling Aura since anything that gets near you is chilled anyways... and I was a big fan of Frost Nova - Shatter > Arcane Nova as well. I assumed I was kicking ass but, in all honesty, Cold Blooded is only effective if you use Blizzard a lot.

[Cyn]

It's good for upping the damage of Ray of Frost, but not much else.

[Tajin]

What's the cookie cutter build for A1 (inferno) for Witch Doctors?

[Warudo Ecksu]

swarm, darts, grasp of the dead, spirit walk. doesn't really matter just use swarm and run. and bears for elites.

[Thunder]

A lot of semi-tanky stuff has come out in the past few weeks.

I use acid rain/bears + SW/siphon/bigbadvoodoo/gargantuan with VQ/spiritvessel/junglefort in every act of inferno.

Acid rain is OP with LoH as it returns 280% per "hit" and stacks up to 3 times. With a ceremonial knife and a voodoo mask with ~+10 mp regen you can spam acid rain(much less bears) so long as VQ is up.

It's a lot more fun than going DPS and doing everything slower and more dangerously than a DH. WD played dps is literally like DH-1 and it, quite frankly, has pissed me off for so long since I play with a DH more often than not.

I wouldn't go full out barb gearing though. Need a healthy mix of allres/armor/hp AND dps. It only sucks because a good ceremonial knife with high LoH is pretty expensive(what's good that isn't on the gold AH lol) unless you've made some blizzard $, then it's reasonable.

Edit: some anecdotal: I wasn't full on tank, or even near it, just didn't ignore hp/allres/armor(for instance, the first 120 or so resistance gives approx. 20% reduction while going from 700->800 is like an additional 3% reduction and I was at ~150 in allres in my "dps" build so that I wouldn't have BS 1hko deaths) so when I tried this thing out I first only spent a few hundred K and saw that I could literally face tank everything in Act1 with 0 problems. No elite gave me trouble, I could stand in desecrator's stuff, plague, etc etc and be fine. Well, arcane still could kill me if I just stood on the center but, yeah. I think my armor was like 4.5k, ~500 resists, only 460 LoH, and ~40k hp? That was with mostly iLv 63 blues that had stuff like all res and vit, or all res and int. Sank a couple million into the gear and I can face tank inferno diablo, some elites, all trash, etc etc. It's fun. Game still sucks, but I'm enjoying myself when I do play with a very tanky WD. Oh, and save some of your DPS shit if you do decide to try playing tanky. You'll need to swap to it when you run into a goblin because there is no way you're chasing that bitch down in tank gear lol

[Plow]

So I've been experimenting with DH builds, and I really can't find anything I like since the NT nerf.

Here's my baseline setup, basically the same as I did with NT but with rapid fire.

Entangling + Rapid fire, rune on entangling varies by what I'm doing, rapid fire is fire support.
Bat
Prep, usually backup plan, sometimes the heal.
SS, duh
Multi with fire at will (critting for 100k+, usually crits, pretty cheap for a massive aoe)

Archery/Steady Aim/Sharpshooter

Any ideas for improvements? I can't find anything that competes with multi for aoe, rapid for single burn, or entangling for utility, though frost arrow is fairly competitive in terms of all 3 at once.

I've messed around with bola a tad but to no success on anything meaningful really.

Aaaand anything else that involves discipline I find myself just saying fuck it because the best way to spend it pretty much always ends up being more ss, like, always.

[arus2001]

DH just has a slew of shitty abilities, which some may confuse with the passable ones being too good. Bat you could probably swap with Marked for Death/Mortal Enemy. Figure it a bit more handy on harder targets with the damage boost. I'm not fond of RF since you need to stand still and channel it, and the SS nerf made that a lot harder to do against faster prey if you have nothing else to tank for you. MS/FaW isn't bad, but I think I preferred the Discipline regen rune prior to the SS nerf, too. Since then, NT/Lightning Orb simulated a nice frontal cone attack with larger range than MS, too. I just couldn't bring myself to like Frost Arrow because the split seemed too unpredictable. The slow effects from Entangling and FA also get nerfed a bit too hard in Inferno, IMO. Similar could be said of Caltrops.

Right now, I use Hunger/Devouring Arrow, EA/Lightning, MFD/ME, Caltrops/Immobilzation, SS/Lingering, and Prep/Heal. Using Caltrops is a lot more resource friendly than SS, but it can also mean a lot of stutter stepping/kiting.

I'd like to see the grenade-related abilities mean something, but they suffer a lot from hatred cost or mechanical issues like having no range. Spike Trap with Bandolier can be decent as an ambush move, but that's all it's really good for once you start kiting harder targets. Sentry is no Hydra, and doesn't justify the Discipline cost. Chakram fails in confined spaces. Bola would be better without its delay. Fan of Knives just sucks for reasons similar to grenades. Blah blah, yadda, Blizz can't balance for shit.

[kisada]

So I've been experimenting with DH builds, and I really can't find anything I like since the NT nerf.

Here's my baseline setup, basically the same as I did with NT but with rapid fire.

Entangling + Rapid fire, rune on entangling varies by what I'm doing, rapid fire is fire support.
Bat
Prep, usually backup plan, sometimes the heal.
SS, duh
Multi with fire at will (critting for 100k+, usually crits, pretty cheap for a massive aoe)

Archery/Steady Aim/Sharpshooter

Any ideas for improvements? I can't find anything that competes with multi for aoe, rapid for single burn, or entangling for utility, though frost arrow is fairly competitive in terms of all 3 at once.

I've messed around with bola a tad but to no success on anything meaningful really.

Aaaand anything else that involves discipline I find myself just saying fuck it because the best way to spend it pretty much always ends up being more ss, like, always.

you could just go back to using NT. it's not absurdly strong the way it used to be but it is still effective. i tried it out for a while and it's really not horrible by any means. there's a lot to be said for using a skill you've familiarized yourself with more than anything else. try it out and you'll see what i mean.

i have tried most everything you can think of. chakram animations suck and make it bad for kiting. impale/OP is fast but expensive to use. cluster arrow/cluster bomb is even more expensive and very unwieldy.

that said... if you learn to wield it, CA/CB is the best of the bunch. the fuckheads at blizzard didn't want to pigeon hole people into killing bosses, so what did they do? they pigeon holed people into killing elites. so that means all we should be gearing for are elites and CA/CB straight up obliterates them if you do it right. 3 solid shots will get an entire pack down by 50% or more. with sharpshooter you can reduce the weaker packs into mere trivialities. it's also a very nice skill for azmodan. i haven't been able to replicate the 10-15 second kills that i had with NT but i've gotten pretty good times. if you get up in his face to and drop 3 well-placed shots you can put him into blood pool mode within 10 seconds.

as far as the other skills some people like grenadier with it but i like vengeance because you're getting 3 shots off anyway, and the orbs really speed up your game if you're working act 3. it sucks, but part of A3 farming means you have to hunt the big ass field. vengeance helps by letting you push through aggressively. if i'm using CA/CB then i'll go with HA/spray (better all around since you can't use CA 100% of the time), bat, prep (always backup plan), and shadow power/gloom. reflect mobs are our class's biggest weakness and SP/gloom fills that gap perfectly. it's also nice now that wall mobs have gotten so damn smart, so chaining that and SS really gets you out of tight spots.

lately, though, i have been playing with frost arrow. it's not a bad choice at all, but i get the feeling it's not optimal. it's better though if you find yourself dying too much because of the slow.


if you're speed farming A1 like most people are these days then you don't even need anything remotely close to that build. for that i go with HA/DA(i think), multishot, SS/vengeance/vault, and the rest is w/e. i like ferrets cause you should be speeding past most trash anyway and saving multi for walls of mobs you can't get around. i also tend to go with archery/TA/steady aim.



also if you really wanna try something new, i saw a guy use a non-natalya's set tank build. posted a vid of himself straight tanking belial and he said he's done it with azmodan too. basic gist of it of course was high vit/res, but after that a BUNCH of weird stuff. caltrops/jagged spikes, dual wielding high LOH crossbows, numbing traps for 25% dmg reduction, sentry for another 15%, custom engineering to double their times, etc. for christ sakes he wasn't even using SP/gloom in the video i saw, lol. i've been buying a bit of stuff here and there cause it looks fun as hell and i'd like to try it. hopefully i can before blizz (LOL i typed SE thinking of how they nerfed ninja back in the day) nerfs the shit out of it cause they don't want DH to tank. if i find the video i'll post it here.

[kisada]

so here's that vid. was a bit wrong about him not using shadow power but he wasn't leaning on it either.

[Kaope]

WD tanky stuffs

can you recommend a build that's tanky but cc heavy? i'm really liking grasp, wall of zombies and mass confusion with stun rune

currently using rain of toads, and since SW with healing journey is pretty much a must, that only leaves 1 more skill, which i'm not sure what i should put.

i keep seeing alot of people use soul harvest with siphon though...

[Dimmauk]

so here's that vid. was a bit wrong about him not using shadow power but he wasn't leaning on it either.

I've been messing around with something similar + CA CB. Repair bills are killing me LOL

[Thunder]

can you recommend a build that's tanky but cc heavy? i'm really liking grasp, wall of zombies and mass confusion with stun rune

currently using rain of toads, and since SW with healing journey is pretty much a must, that only leaves 1 more skill, which i'm not sure what i should put.

i keep seeing alot of people use soul harvest with siphon though...

Soul harvest is 13 all res for each person you suck up and 650 int is a significant boost in DPS when you've ignored some key slots for crit dmg/chance, atkspd%, and ~200int.

You're pretty much free to use whatever you want in that VQ-tank style so long as the first two spells are acid rain and bears.

If you drop VQ, you can instead run with rain of toads and/or firebomb/firepits. The damage is less but it's also less mana intensive and you're able to run bad medicine instead of VQ(since the other two are almost always fort and spirit vessel).

I stand by VQ and acid rain because of how great it is with LoH. It stacks three times and regens you for 280% of your LoH per second for every monster standing in near-center of it. And forgive me, I keep mentioning the 280% but I don't talk about the other spells and how they are with LoH lol; here they are: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/5271499223

VQ acid rain practically screams for zombie bears for DPS, so I grab that. Need spirit walk and honored guest is best(for this build, imo). Siphon for reasons above. And big bad voodoo is a sweet ability that you can drop and go crazy for a bit, and it's nice for VQ because of it's long CD. The last ability I fiddle around with and switch between stun garg, poison cloud for 100% LoH per damage he does with the cloud, or horrify with the armor buff.

Idk how useful wall will be on your WD if you go a tanky route. Mass confusion, and unbreakable grasp are great though, imo.

[kisada]

RE: DH tank build

someone else mentioned on bnet forums that you could use the aoe chakram for even better constant damage. i'll try it if i ever get back to playing normal, heh

[Darkmagi]

A lot of people have been rolling with spray of teeth and going with a high crit rate build. It works quite well in my experience. Also makes the discipline for crits passive a lot more viable.

[vrumpt]

DH builds: I've recently settled on using Entangling Shot (shock collar)/Elemental Arrow (Frost arrow), caltrops(damage), SS(LF), Prep(60% health), bat companion. Passives are Steady Aim, Cull the Weak and Archery. Basically everything you do slows for 60%, and its consistant since you aren't using sharpshooter. Frost arrow just does some very nice damage, so its basically your bread and butter for single target and packs. I like it.

I am going to look at some of the builds above and try them out to see how I do with them though.

Also note that my gear kinda sucks ass and I'm not into A3 yet farming yet at all.