WD - enough damage?

[Naja]

From what I saw in the new gameplay video, the Wizard was slaying things left & right, the Barbarian was sort of along for the ride...and the Witch Doctor was just on the sidelines throwing fire bombs and toads.

Sure, she cast some Soul Harvests here and there, but I never really got the feeling that she was causing massive damage on the scale of the Wizard.

Anyone else feel this way?

[psuedoenviro]

Agreed. However, the video was meant to feature the Wizard and not the WD. We saw one new skill and my guess is that it is a very low level skill on par with charge bolt.


Lots of speculation here: Also if the WD is a Necro/Druid type char, then he probably isn't designed to be a massive damage dealer like a Barb or Sorc (Wizard). For pure power a fire sorc > fire druid. For game play fun and diversity of skills a fire druid > fire sorc. Also think WD will have a skill for every situation where as Wizards will tend to be single tree and run into monsters later on that will have resistances or immunities. If a fire sorc ran into a FI she was out of luck, but if a fire druid ran into a FI he had physical included into his fire damage or had summons.

I always saw the druid as a jack of all trades, master of none. Anything he did, someone else could do better. What made him fun was his diversity. A fire sorc is a cold sorc is a lightning sorc. A pure elemental druid is not a pure SS, nor a pure summoner, nor a hybrid of any three trees. Every time was like playing a new char. This is what I hope the WD will be.

[Mad Mantis]

Gotta agree with psuedoenviro, the Wizard was probably overpowered compared to the other classes for sake of showing off the skills. Just as long as they aren't so tough on the WD as they have been on the Necro I'm fine with other classes being more powerful.

[Naja]

There's power and there's power.

My anxiety isn't over how much damage Witch Doctor skills deal - I share your opinion that the Wizard was overpowered in order to showcase her skills in that video.

I'm more concerned about how powerful the Witch Doctor feels as a character.

The Barbarian gives off the feeling of enormous strength; his skills are accompanied with crushing sound effects and graphics. Similarly, the Wizard can cast these over-the-top elemental skills that fill the screen up with crazy graphics and electrifying sounds. Whereas the Witch Doctor falls into the background, lobbing firebombs and toads from a distance.

That to me was what hurt the most about that video. I had to consciously strain to pay attention to the Witch Doctor. She seemed so irrelevant to the outcome of the battle, as if the Barbarian and the Wizard could fare well enough without her.

I'm not in favor of more damage, so much as more atmosphere. The Witch Doctor's spells need to feel scary and absolutely destructive. Fire Bombs and other fire skills need to burn monsters into cinder and ash; the poison that those frogs leave behind should melt the skin off of monsters. They need louder and scarier sound effects.

Locust Swarm is a good step in this direction. A sinister "hiss" sound as the locusts emerge, nothing but the bones of monsters being left behind.

That's what I mean by more power: the feeling that should accompany the character's archetype. In this case of the Witch Doctor, this should be fear and destruction.

[fatwisconsinguy]

Guys, these are trailers to show off skills. We don't even know what the other 2 classes are and you are already complaining about a class being OP? Stop. Let's see closer to the release date, and then start complaining!

[Mizantrop]

From what I expiranced today I would say that all 3 classes are pretty much even in killing poweress, at least at low levels. While the barbarian has brute force and the wizard has pure energy power the WD is more of a jack 0f all trades. The combination of his pets (buffed), his CC (wall of zombies which does damage) and his spells is more than enough to keep up with the killing pace of the other 2 classes.

[Mad Mantis]

The Witch Doctor's spells need to feel scary and absolutely destructive. Fire Bombs and other fire skills need to burn monsters into cinder and ash; the poison that those frogs leave behind should melt the skin off of monsters. They need louder and scarier sound effects.

That is something I hadn't though about, but you are making sense. So I took another look at the earlier videos.

Indeed the character doesn't have the terrifying aura around it you'd expect from a dark and deranged WD. It might be because of the small size, or passive nature of a movie, but the spells lack visual impact and don't feel fantastic. Exploding his mongrels in particular doesn't seem even the least bit impressive. Sometimes the skills are even comical.

Still I'm hoping that this either changes with the higher level skills or that actually playing a character is much more satisfying than just watching the skill.


Let's see closer to the release date, and then start complaining!

Why wait until it is too late?


The combination of his pets (buffed), his CC (wall of zombies which does damage) and his spells is more than enough to keep up with the killing pace of the other 2 classes.

That is at least some good news. Tell me, did you get to see other skills of the WD? Any idea on how many summons a WD can have?

Now I'm going to go panic and whine some more. Jack-of-all-trades do tend to be underpowered in all aspects since they can do anything. This seems like a fair trade-off, but after a week the other classes will have optimized gear and skills and a WD will be left behind in the dust of more powerful classes.

Another concern comes from the way skills are handled. Since they want players to focus on 6 skills and you need at least 20 points in a tree before you can advance to the last tier, I'm worried that there won't be that many builds for a WD. Being a jack-of-all-trades they already tend to favor one build and this seems reinforced by the skill system.

Still, I'm hopeful that this won't be the case. I'm just a bit down because the Wiz got introduced and immediately has most of the talent tree online and some very visually impressive skills. While the WD only has some skills known and we still don't know why there is such a big difference in back problems between males and females.

[Naja]

I'm glad that the Witch Doctor is keeping pace. I'm sure that Blizzard remembers how nerfed the Necro was in D2, and will plan accordingly to make all characters equally relevant. It's rare that you can count so fervently on a company to do the right thing, but this is Blizzard. :)

On an optimistic note, I'd actually have to disagree with Mad Mantis on the danger of non-specialized Jack of All Trade characters getting outpaced by other characters as they all level up.

Being flexible allows for a greater variety of builds, ensuring that the Witch Doctor can meet challenges alone that would necessitate reliance on a team for other characters. In this respect, I wouldn't be surprised if the Witch Doctor became a lot like the Necromancer, who could solo Hell difficulty with not too much difficulty.

I don't understand how the skill system disempowers the Witch Doctor. From what we heard, it seems that the Witch Doctor's skills - which were at an absolutely equal level to the other two characters in the conference - had equal killing power. If the Witch Doctor has to spead out his skills as he levels up, he does so no more than the other characters, and at no additional cost. Unless we see evidence to the contrary, there's not so much reason to worry.

Truthfully, I think that the Jack of All Trades label is a bit misleading. A Witch Doctor-type character does not necessarily have its skills spread out everywhere. It functions much like the Wizard: as a caster. Stay away from the enemies, and let skills - not melee - kill the monsters.

The major differences between the Wizard and Witch Doctor seem to be a question of tactics, not damage. The Wizard is pure direct damage; she avoids enemies through purely defensive spells (Slow Time, Teleport, etc.). The Witch Doctor's direct damage spells are split between damage being done all at once (fire skills, Soul Harvest) or over time (disease skills); he avoids enemies through crowd control (Fear) and by minions, which also factor into his damage-dealing.

So the Witch Doctor is not necessarily a mediocre Jack of All Trades. He just has a lot more options.

[Mad Mantis]

I don't understand how the skill system disempowers the Witch Doctor.

That was mostly me totally misunderstanding how the WoW-style skill tree works. Since I have a clearer picture of that I think that I may need to readjust my assessment. Mostly because the WD has a mere 10 skills planned at this moment I'm thinking that the jack-of-all-trades feeling comes from the fact that there is no real way of specializing yet.

At this moment I'm mostly wondering where they will take the WD. They have a lack of skills at this point. My guess is that we will have a minion tree, a direct damage tree and a form of curse tree.

[Naja]

Judging from the fact that the Wizard seems to have upwards of 50 skills, I think we'll see some serious potential for specialization in all classes, the Witch Doctor included.

You're probably right that we'll see the traditional minion/curse/direct damage tree.

Although then again, maybe they'll theme it differently. The other summons that we've had a chance at seeing (Frogs, Bats, Locusts) are really a form of an elemental attack - fire or disease. Since the Witch Doctor is themed as a "master of disease and fire", what if his trees were broken into Fire, Poison, and a third like "Other World" which would encompass the curses, as well as more "traditional" undead summons like Mongrels.

Just a guess, at any rate. It would be kind of original to see summon skills interspersed with all three separate branches, subject to a greater theme.

[Mad Mantis]

It would be kind of original to see summon skills interspersed with all three separate branches, subject to a greater theme.

It would indeed be neat to see more thematic summons. Right now I'll settle for just knowing one or two of the other summon skills and whether or not it'll be possible to create an "army".

[Naja]

Absolutely. I'm all about the summoner legion of doom.

[Mad Mantis]

Apparently the WD is overpowered (http://forums.diii.net/showpost.php?p=6858147&postcount=11) damage-wise in the BlizzCon demo. Maybe it is to make amends for what they did to the Necro in all those years.

[MooCQ]

What if Less is More?

[Mad Mantis]

What if Less is More?

Then start praying for weapons with negative damage.

[Mizantrop]

After playing and killing Leoric with all 3 classes at Blizzcon I can say that for this boss fight barb>WD>Wizard. At least that's what I felt afterwards. But I think that this is mostly due to the fact the barb doesn't need mana. Also the WD can get mana from a spell that cost no mana so basically it's unlimited. The wizard on the other hands depends on mana orbs that didn't drop at all in the demo (didn't have the skill).
Aside from that I think the 3 classes are balanced even this early. Could be Blizzard worked especially hard towards this goal for Blizzcon.