Diablo 3 – First Impressions Witch Doctor

My monk is level 60 and I’m ready for a new challenge! My female Witch Doctor Astarte is ready for some demon hunting. Ok, I’ll admit. I played her a bit before my monk reached level 60. She’s actually already level 36. So, yeah. How kick ass is she?

When Diablo was still in development and small bits of information were released to the public, there was this one thing that was so cool, it stuck with me until the release. The zombie tower skill of the Witch Doctor. I don’t generally like zombies. I try to stay far away from games, movies and books with zombies in them. But isometric zombies don’t scare me that much. The idea of zombies being smart enough to climb on each other’s back to kill the big ass Butcher, just fascinated me.

I think that in early game the Witch Doctor is a very squishy class. Compared to the monk, you don’t do a lot of damage, and the mobs can three-shot you. The good thing is that you’re ranged. You can run away and try to hit them with poisoned darts. The trouble begins when you run into an elite mob with the ‘Fast’ enhancement. Running away won’t work now. The third skill you learn is Zombie Dogs, but they don’t do damage. You already have a low DPS, your dogs only do a fraction of your damage. They’re only useful for distraction. Let the mobs hit them, while you blow dart them to death.

After I hit level 30, I realized that most of her skills (in appearences and sounds) reminded me a lot of Act 3 from Diablo 2. The fetishes, the poison darts, the locusts. It made sense. She grew up there and used the spirit world to dominate the creatures around her. I wish I could play her in the Kurast docks. I’m sure she blends in perfectly.

The Witch Doctor also likes ponies

I took Astarte to Whimsyshire after I beat the crap out of Diablo. I needed to test exactly how much damage these ponies and cuddly bears do. Astarte was level 34 when I went in and it hurt. Especially this particular mob in the screenshot hurt me a lot. The experience makes up for it. So, in some way, it does resemble the Cow level from Diablo 2. It hurts, but the loot and experience are definitely worth it. Just don’t try to go there alone when you’re not above level 30. Unless your gear is overpowered.

I’m still working my way through Nightmare but the loot is better (as always) here and I finally do some damage. I don’t know what the average DPS is for someone in Act 1 Nightmare, but having 602 DPS and a triple dart in under a second, it seems too easy. I blow dart a zombie, run away and wait until it falls over. I use my locust swarm (360% damage over 8 second) which basically infects all mobs visible on my screen, run away and wait until everything is dead.

I’m sure that when I reach level 60, she will be a killing machine. It’s definitely a very fun class to play with a lot of different builds to suit your needs.