Showing posts with label Flavor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Flavor. Show all posts

Sunday, October 2, 2011

Witch Doctor - Spirit Doc




As a resource, mana hasn't changed much since Diablo 2 compared to other classes. Mana is the slowest regenerating resource by the time you reach the endgame, but it also manages to raise in how much you can reserve as you level. To follow this, most of the Witch Doctor's skills will also increase in cost, and with the omission of mana pots this time around, different tactics have to be taken this time around to make sure your blue globe isn't dry. One such solution is by focusing in the spirit school:

Active Skills

-The Spirit is Willing
A pretty no-nonsense nuke here, Spirit Barrage does great damage for a very cheap cost. A Golden Runestone here adds some mana return after your done bombarding the target.

-Draining Spirit
Extremely potent damage over time spell thats pretty easy to keep going considering it will find a new target after it's first is dead. Better yet, with another Golden rune, this spell will be better than free, coming out with a net gain of 300% mana cost after the dot has run it's entire duration. Great with packs of enemies, no need to spam on bosses and uniques though.

-Vengeful Spirit
This one on it's own is a great self buff that will help empower your main damage spells. Alabaster sweetens the deal by making the 5 afflicted enemies take 250% weapon damage, meaning you can get in with some of your enhanced physical damage if you feel like or let your party start wailing on your foes like crazy.

-Ruthless Terror
Fantastic defensive cooldown that can really get you out a tight jam. If your feeling low on mana, you can set this up for some major returns from your Gold by getting into a pack and send them scuttling in fear. Bonus points for Soul Harvesting first.

-Healing Journey
Another great defensive cooldown that will let you get in/out of a large group of enemies. An Alabaster here will restore almost half your life if you can let it run it's full duration. The cooldown period is only 15 seconds, so make use of the healing whenever you can.

-Paranoia
Mass Confusion on it's own can be a real game changer, cutting your foe's forces in half and giving you some buddies for a little while. Add in the 80% increased damage buff and you can absolutely decimate a large group of foes. This will also work great for Bosses and Uniques, if only for the extra damage

Passive Skills

-Rush of Essence
The passive that makes a spirit doctor, by spacing out and rotating your skills around, you'll be passively regenerating twice the amount spent on each spell over the course of 10 seconds. Granted some of the skills (even ones listed on the passive) don't actually have a mana cost, but between the ones that do and the Golden Runestones socketed into half your skills, you should be swimming in mana...

-Pierce the Veil
...maybe even too much mana, but thats where Pierce comes in. 20% damage for 30% cost is a real bargain considering most of your skills will be giving you a net gain of mana anyway. Pretty much gravy for this build

-Vision Quest
The last bit for mana management. With the Runes set up in this particular fashion, your looking at 2 15-second cooldowns, a 20-second cooldown, and a 60-second cooldown. Opening up with Mass Confusion, followed by as many of your other long cooldowns as possible will put extra damage on the board, top off your health, fear a lot of foes, and then start up the 300% regeneration phase. Once you've got this going, feel free to start haunting and barraging as much as you can before Harvest or Walk come off cooldown.

Lots of room for tweaking here, as some of the mana return may be overkill or underwhelming depending on your playstyle. Add more Golden Runestones if you find yourself going dry, otherwise swap some out for more interesting abilities. If you end up dropping skills with long cooldowns, it will be to your benefit to swap out Vision Quest for something else, such as Spiritual Attunement. Another possibility is throwing in a skill to drain excess mana, such as Firebats or Wall of Zombies (great with fear).

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Barbarian - Epic Cooldowns



Many of the classes this time around for Diablo now feature many more skills that trade long cooldowns for extremely powerful effects, usually meant to be used in emergency situations. The Barbarian in particular features a diverse trinity of varied yet ultimately destructive high level abilities that can greatly shift the shape of any conflict. Utilizing particular passives to aid in cooldown reduction and fury generation, you too can shake the very foundations of Sanctuary:

Active Skills

-Unleashed
As a Fury generator, Bash unruned is probably second only to Frenzy. By throwing in a Golden Rune, you'll be able to top off Fury very easily, while dishing out some great damage to boot. Handy considering you'll be going through that orange globe like candy.

-Invigorate
An Alabaster here not only makes you more durable, but the rest of your party as well. The final effect is a mixture reminiscent of a D2 Barb's Iron Skin and Battle Orders rolled together in one package. Better yet, you'll see a nice buff to passive life regeneration, as well as a solid 30 Fury to boot.

-Smash
Excellent single target nuke at a pretty cheap price, Hammer is great for dealing with bosses and uniques. If you manage to sync this up with Wrath, you should see a plethora of crits off this bad boy.

-The Mountain's Call
The first in our trifecta of super skills, Earthquake is going to be your main way of taking out large packs of enemies. For 40 Fury and a 20 second cooldown, you'll be able to dish out what is essentially 14 weapon swings to all enemies in a 15 yard range over the course of 8 seconds (dunno if I put enough numbers in that last sentence).

-Thrive on Chaos
An all around awesome self-buff for the Barb, Wrath will let dish out and take more damage over the course of it's duration. With a Golden Rune slotted in here, every Bash will add at least a second to the duration. War Cry during this skill three seconds. Like the Hammer, it's best usage is going to be on Bosses and Uniques. Expect about a minute on average for the cooldown when all is said and done.

-Duty to the Clan
Everybody remember the Rite of Passage quest from Act 5 of D2? It's like that except these bruisers are on your side now! During the duration of this ability, you'll basically be quadrupling your weapon damage, extra nice if your beating down a lone target. Boon plus Gold will mean the extra Barbs are up nearly all the time, the dead zone lasting only 5 seconds. Assuming they also benefit from the effects of your War Cry as well, they should be able to hold their own with ease.

Passive Skills

-Boon of Bul-Kathos
This alongside all your runed cooldown reduction is going to make you an explosive powerhouse. Keep your barbs up, quake in large packs of enemies, and Wrath when you see a boss.

-Unforgiving
This is a very heavy Fury spending build. Your going to have to top off your resources in as expedient a fashion as you possibly can in order to quake, wrath and call. Being able to carry over spare Fury from your last engagement, as well as passively generate more Fury between fights is going to go a long ways in making this possible.

-Animosity
The other great Fury passive, Animosity is going to make you much quicker in not only getting your big skills going, but also sustaining Wrath's duration.

The first 3 skills in the build are actually very modular when it comes to keeping the spirit of this build intact. If your having trouble with AoE, you can drop the Hammer or it's rune for something with a little more reach. Switching Hammer for another Fury generator with a long Cooldown is probably the best solution if your having trouble getting topped off, that or throwing a Gold into War Cry. Mix and match to find what works best for you.

Sunday, September 25, 2011

Wizard - Fire Wizard (a.k.a. Tim the Enchanter)



So in the most recent update, we not only got a lot of revisions to Demon Hunters and Skill damage, but the Wizard got a brand new passive! At the time of writing, the actual number of skills that deal fire damage seems to be woefully lacking, but there's still a build to be found. Lets take a look at roasting some enemies:

Active Skills

-Surge of Power
Lots of footage of Electrocute recently has shown it to be a very effective spam skill, capable of hitting lots of targets and putting out a lot of damage in a short period of time. All of this is going to be gravy on top of the actual purpose we'll be using this skill for: Regenerating Arcane Power. A Golden Runestone plus a particular passive is going to turn this into a resource generating machine.

-Molten Impact
An extremely damaging skill, Meteor with a Crimson Runestone has a HUGE coefficient of 990% damage, and thats just on impact! We'll be combining this with a few passive to turn this into an even more horrifying main nuke of a spell. Your probably going to want to space out the casts a bit to let the dot from this and your passive run their full course, assuming of course that the dot goes off of a replacement effect as opposed to a stacking effect.

-Brimstone Serpent
Buffed up fire monster, this Hydra aims to be your main AoE support. Walls of fire have proven in the past to be very damaging on old-school Fire Sorcs, with the downside of being a little bit complex to use. Having a buddy do this for you allows you to spend your time micromanaging other spells and getting even more damage onto the board. Drop this beast in the middle of a pack enemies and watch the fireworks.

-Energy Tap
A deeper reservoir of Arcane Power is going to let you line up a Hydra and a Meteor or two in pretty quick succession, so this Armor wins out for the Wizard. The extra defense is also nothing to sneeze at.

-Mirror Mimics
The only thing better than you raining down fiery death on your foes is two more of you doing it. Even at 70% strength of your spells, this spell functions mainly as a dps cooldown, but has the added benefit of possibly drawing away enemies away from you.

-Sparkflint
Little bit of damage from yet another buddy, that's cool. An extra 40% damage on top of all your spells? That's pure win.

Passive Skills

-Conflagration
Pretty much what this build is built around. 15% damage over 3 seconds is a very solid increase, depending on how well it will interact with passives. Once again, if the dots are replacement effects (the timer goes back up to 3 seconds each time the target is hit with a spell) as opposed to additive effects (3 seconds get added to the dot each time the target is hit with a spell), then your going to want to space out your casts of your meteor spells to get the full effectiveness of your spells compared to how you spend your Arcane Power (throw some Electrocutes in between). Now if they would just fix the icon...

-Glass Cannon
If your good at keeping your distance and dodging projectiles, Glass Cannon is always going to be a go-to passive to increase damage output. As always, feel free to switch out in tougher difficulties if the enemies just become too overbearing.

-Prodigy
This coupled with Surge of Power and Energy Tap should be enough to sustain your very costly Fire Spells. A 12 AP gain minimum per cast while dealing out good AoE damage is pretty darn awesome.

With any luck, some of the Runestone effects in the future will be changed around to add fire damage and give this passive a little bit more variety, but in terms of flavor and some burst dps, this build is actually looking pretty solid. Some changes that could be made to the build would include adding more passive Arcane Regen, using Arcane Dynamo to charge up even larger Meteors, or some shifting of desired support spells. Here's hoping a thematic passive for cold spells gets added soon!