Diablo® III

There's a keybinding for 'move' in the options menu. I've got it bound to a key on my keyboard. You move to the position that your cursor is at. No clicking, no stopping to pick things up or attack. Super useful.

Dont stand on fire. It's popular in WoW. Applicable too on this game.

Dont go melee. WD are not tanks. Have your dogs/follower tank for you.

Make sure you have kiting (snare/slow) abilities so you could hit-run-hit your mobs when your tanks are dead.

I've had great luck by getting life leech on my gear, equipping Dire Fire Bats, and using the Blood Ritual passive in conjunction with Spiritual Attunement.

At the moment, Dire Fire Bats appear to be proccing life leech on each guy they go through, so percentage-based life leech is quite powerful, as they do massive damage. Combined with Blood Ritual's 1% life regen and the health globes that drop from enemies, it's very though to die because you regen so fast.

Other options exist, though: Vampire Bats and Consuming Spirit are early lifesteal runes on your abilities, and your Zombie Dogs and Gargantuan are effective at keeping enemies off you. In short, though:

• Make sure you have high armor, as it reduces the damage from each blow.
• Intelligence increases your damage AND all non-physical resistances. I have to do some more theory work on it, but I believe it's out best stat at the moment.
• Try using AoE abilities in conjunction with on-hit life gain gear. Percent is stronger than fixed amount, but they're both good
• Prioritize regeneration. It appears to be better itemized than max health.
• Don't discount Strength and Dexterity. Strength increases physical resistance and dex increases dodge chance

Thanks skamage but I was already aware of that. The issue is that clicking on an empty space past the enemy group tends to auto-target an enemy within that group, so I have to move my mouse behing my character and run away for a while.

It's quite annoying, but there is actually an unbound move key that can be assigned to allow movement only.

Anyway @Troglodyte
On hit effects only occur when you use an ability that does not include an element. So something that does: x weapon damage will work. Something that does x weapon damage as physical won't work.

Also resistance (and consequently intelligence) raises physical resists too. There is no reason not to stack as much of it as you can get. Treat each point of intelligence and strength as +1 armor for the purposes of determining when a peice of gear will provide more defense than the previous. Dexterity is incredibly useful up to 100, but tapers off quickly afterwards.

I'm trying to do nightmare mode and my WD dies ALL the time :/

Team up with a Monk or a Barb, they go great with the WD. Also once you level up and get Gargantuan, life becomes much easier. Dunno about Nightmare though, still in Act III myself.

My WD is currently lvl 21 and it gets so much better down the road.

I definitely started dying frequently at the start of Act 2, the damage the monsters were doing were unexpected when compared to Act 1. You just have to play very cautiously and be aware of your surroundings when you hit the second act.

Don't worry, as your gear and level progresses...the WD becomes a VERY strong class. I am enjoying it quite a lot.

You shouldn't be taking hits. It's unavoidable sometimes esp when the enemy can teleport or wall/jail you, but for the most part, you need to have your dogs and gargantuan out, and for most of my playthrough I used groping eels. If the mob focuses you instead of your pets kite them with eels, if they focus your pets run in to the middle and pop SH then burst them down.

If you're dying use the templar, that heal is a life saver.

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#heZbYT!Zde!aaaZaa

That build will tear through almost anything. For single target, switch out Firebomb for Splinter Darts.

05/16/2012 01:42 AMPosted by Bowlfrog

act 2, dont get hit by the bugs man..... thats it

Yeah man I learned that the hard way!

The cool thing about the WD is there are so many different combinations of skillsets that are effective....just play around with different combos and see what works for you

I've found putting the grab hands in slot 3, with spider jars and dire bats is very effective. Snare them, and alternate between spamming jumping spiders and dire bats. I'm only lvl 20 though, but this has worked pretty well for me.

ok my build witch works great even though i am lvl 13

1. toads/darts I useally keep it on toads
2. jumping spiders I love this ability because you stock them up even without enemies

left click haunt I like this ability but trying to juggle which powers use is my problem
right click dire bats

I have on passive increase manna

on circle life says that yard pic increase its range which is green, and so is % what increase 5%

I found that I skipped my defensive abilities for offensive. In D2 that would have been fine, but I'd consider D3 considerably harder (I never died in D2 normal, but I die in D3 normal). Honestly you only really need to run with your primary (most likely poison darts) and your secondary (most likely dire bats), soul harvest, and almost everyone runs with a gargantuan. Everything else is basically optional. I started with just grasp because it did have offensive purposes as well, but it wasn't enough, then I moved to horrify which solved almost all my death issues, then I changed to mass confusion as I got better at dodging damage and was able to give myself a really good "oh !@#$" button.

The only times you really die are when you get surrounded, and horrify/mass confusion solves that problem.

Level 19 now, died twice, never played any Diablo before, so I'm happy.

Why arent your followers mentioned as often as I expected in this thread? I have that warrior dude tank most of the damage and keep my distance

I'm dying a lot as witch doctor and it's painful. Im watching barbs and monks just wreck everything

Higher levels the dogs can tank some significant damage. Just takes until like around nightmare mode. I use Jungle Fortitude and Zombie Handler passives to make them a more effective meat shield. They only work against smaller groups of mobs, so use the glyph that gives them a chance to spawn a new one when you sacrifice them. This results in 4 dogs that you can use to nuke anything. Generally I get 1 less dog each time I sacrifice my dogs. Its really good vs bosses too because it's essentially doing 10 sacrifices if you get lucky, which can hit up to 1k each by the end of act 4 normal difficulty.

Good luck anyway.

Just starting out, level 4. How do you bind the skills to the action bar? Can a sword or other melee weapon be bound to action bar? I am wearing a sword and shield but can only currently use my spiders and grasp as spells, no melee attacks.

Actually I had same issue as OP - then i realized I was being a dumb wow player - Armour means nothing get +INT it will increase all of your resists to all damage type, then basically you can survive with some of these posted builds. I was getting 2 shotted by the fire pots in start of A2 until i made this change. After can take 11-12 hits.