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Hellforge: The Tall Man’s Sacrifice

by - 10 years ago


One of the most epic parts of being a nephalem in Sanctuary is that there are so many of us! On a daily basis, players are wracking their brains, stashes, and forums for new ideas on how to build a better demon slaying machine. The Hellforge is an iconic location steeped in lore and visited briefly in Diablo II – it is a place for getting dangerous deeds done. We wanted to bottle that same ethos and create a compendium of possible builds for players new and old to research, test, and iterate upon. We will scour the community’s offerings to bring you some of the more intriguing entries in celebration of innovation and inspiration for new creations.


Welcome back to the Hellforge! My name is Dannie “I” Ray, and today I’ll be showing you a PTR build.

 

This particular build takes full advantage of some of the key changes that Patch 2.1 is bringing to the Witch Doctor. As you might have guessed from the title, this build makes full use of the Tall Man’s Finger and the  revamped Sacrifice skill. But unlike the build that I presented you on last Saturday’s edition of Basic Theorycrafting that revolved around the use of Sacrifice, this one uses our favorite exploding dogs to compliment something else.

In fact, the combo of Homunculus, Sacrifice, and Tall Man’s Finger could potentially be added to any WD build, all you need is one spare active skill and you are set. Both Pet Builds and Jade Harvesters can benefit a great deal from this lethal combination.

But both dedicated Pet builds and Jade Harvesters have been done to death, so today we will try something a bit different.

The build if decided to roll with is a Physical Damage dealing build that is able to deal both good area and single target physical damage, while retaining the ability to take some hits. Our skill set up will allow us to keep decent damage while still allowing us to gear for defense and healing. This will take full advantage of the 2.1 changes to healing.

The Build

calc

 

Actives:

Corpse Spiders – Widowmakers: When the our is tight, these trusty spiders will help you continue to deal damage. They pack quite a punch against single targets and they will greatly support your damage against bosses and elites.

Sacrifice – Next of Kin: 3000+% Damage with a 35% chance of instantly allowing you to cast it again? This is just too good to pass on.

Zombie Charger – Pile On: The biggest Physical Nuke on the WD’s arsenal, these Zombies will make the best use of your mana to put the hurting on your enemies.

Piranhas – Piranhanado: You could go with Bogadile for a lot of extra damage, but I love the ability to pull mobs in close together.

Locust Swarm – Cloud of Insects: The PTR has made this rune physical, it is mostly a fire and forget skill and the extra damage won’t hurt us. In fact, is a pretty good way to keep the damage rolling when you have to move around waiting for your next Zombie Dog to spawn.

Fetish Army – Legion of Daggers: This will help boost your single target damage for those guys who just won’t die to your first burst of Sacrifices. With Zunimassa’s on, you won’t have to worry about stacking CDR.

Passives:

Jungle Fortitude: We are going to be taking some damage, we could really use the boost to our toughness.

Circle of Life:  Extra free Zombie Dogs will make clearing trash way faster.

Pierce the Veil: 20% Damage is a lot. If we we consider that our hardest hitting abilities are not tied to our mana consumption, then it becomes an obvious choice.

Fetish Sycophants: Moar Pets!

Stats

Int > Physical Damage > Sacrifice Damage > Critical > Life Per Second > Armor > All Res >Zombie Charger Damage >Resource Cost Reduction.

High Int, Physical Damage, Sacrifice Damage, and Critical Hit Chance+Damage will make your exploding dogs take care of most things in your patch. Life per Second and Armor, paired with your naturally high AR, will make sure you live to tell the tale.

Items

 

Core:

[d3item name =”The Tall Man’s Finger”]:  The Name sake of the build, it needs to be in here.

[d3item name =Homunculus]: This allows us to skip Summon Zombie Dogs.

Zunimassa’s Trail, Marrow, and Vision: Permanent Fetish Army will help you wreck bosses.

Ring of Royal Grandeur: We need this to complete our Zunimassa’s, you could use the Zunimassa Ring but then you would be missing out on a lot of other set bonuses.

Alternatives:

Reaper Wraps + String of Ears + Jade Harvester’s Joy, Mercy, and Courage: The 2 and 4 piece set bonuses from Jade Harvesters are some of the best things you can acquire for this build.  String of Ears is there to add some much needed survival.

Blackthorne’s Belt, Pants and Neck + Aughild’s Shoulder and Bracers:  This is another option that will give you a lot of durability while not completely neglecting your damage output.

 

Final Thoughts

 

caincut2

This build tries to make the most out of every resource that the Witch Doctor has to offer. The mix of skills we’ve selected offer us a pretty balanced arsenal that can deal area damage, single target damage, and damage over time. Because we only need Critical Damage, Critical Chance, and Intellect as our main damage stats, we can try and stack up some defensive affixes on that fourth slot.  The trade-off is mostly positive, since Attack Speed, CDR, and RCR provide minimum help to our build.

 

 

 


JR Cook

JR has been writing for fan sites since 2000 and has been involved with Blizzard Exclusive fansites since 2003. JR was also a co-host for 6 years on the Hearthstone podcast Well Met! He helped co-found BlizzPro in 2013.


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