So recently, my hand started to really hurt playing my Demon Hunter in Diablo 3. Too much spamming of keys, mouse buttons and just hard to control. I decided to try something else for a bit since I was burning out on the Demon Hunter. That made me return to my Witch Doctor.
The Witch Doctor to me feels like an underutilized, massively under played class. Not sure if it’s because of how the Witch Doctor looks or his abilities. But outside of PVP where the Witch Doctor rules, few use the class as a farming class. It’s a shame because the class for me has been loads of fun. I use the Acid Cloud build, which to me, is loads of fun without requiring too heavy of an investment.
When I started Inferno, I put around 18 million gold into getting his gear. I tried balancing stats like All Resists with some damage and armor. That allowed me to handle normal mode Inferno just fine (although I still haven’t completed Act 4; that’s just me being lazy). Recently, I put in another 15 million gold by purchasing Tal Rasha’s Allegiance with some critical hit, Zunimassa’s Marrow with better life related stats and a cheap (1.5 million) Vile Ward with again life related stats. The idea was to push a little extra DPS and survivability. I went from 20k health to 28k health, which is more than enough for Inferno normal mode. Outside of increasing my DPS, I would say that I need a little more life-on-hit for Reflect Damage mobs. But on normal mode Inferno, I don’t feel any effect.
If my guy dies, it’s just dumb luck or me being sloppy. Spirit Walk is my “get out of jail” card so I’m able to handle most situations unless it’s on cooldown. My build is a good mixture of tankiness and DPS. He’s hitting a little over 100k DPS (maybe over 80k unbuffed) and I can rush through Act 3 without any major difficulties.
What I like about this build is that it’s pretty much brain dead easy. You have 4 minions on top of your follower (for which I use a templar). Most of the time you’re spamming Acid Cloud on large groups of enemies, which essentially 1-shots them. I use Firebomb with Ghost Bomb for single targets when my mana is low. My minions handle everything else.
Now, here’s the reasons why I enjoy this build so much: pickup radius! Unlike my Demon Hunter who has virtual no pick up radius (actually the rest of my guys for that matter), my Witch Doctor has a pretty sizable pick up radius with the Thing of the Deep offhand. Most top Witch Doctors use the Uhkapian Serpent. While those may provide a DPS boost for Witch Doctors, I find it better at least for entry level Witch Doctors to go with Thing of the Deep. It just feels less painful not having to deal with gold and health globes on a micromanagement level.
I have yet to try my Witch Doctor on higher Monster Power levels. But I think since he’s beginning off, there’s really no point in pushing him at this stage. I’m doing this mostly to take a break and try a different class while waiting for the new patch to come out. My hand feels better in playing this class compared to my Demon Hunter. Overall, it’s a lot less micromanagement. The class/build is pretty well balanced, doesn’t take an outrageous amount of gold and can be pretty fun. You can’t beat the Whirlwind Barbarian nor Tempest Monk for farming and paragon leveling specs, but this build with the Thing of the Deep offhand does allow you to farm gold and play reasonably efficiently without going nuts on a budget.