I'm already thinking about some tankish budget build for group play. I suppose dogs and garg are must, so are grasp and wall of zombies (they both have their damaged buffed nicely)

Any thoughts on pyrogeist firebombs? That 800% over 6 sec looks pretty nice and you can still use some other spells meanwhile.

Tankish build for group play is exactly what I'm going for also. Minions for tanking + support skills and then having a nice strong ranged attack to knock enemies out. I can see summoner WD being one of the new favorites/preferred for group playing.

This post was edited by proph21 on Aug 21 2012 08:48am

Any builds you have in mind with the official patch notes now known?

Was thinking about:

L: Firebomb (Pyrogeist, now up to 640% damage over 6 sec)
R: Grasp of the Dead (now buffed based damage to 320% with Unbreakable Grasp for the 80% slow)
1: Spirit Walk (for the oh shit situations with Jaunt)
2: Wall of Zombies (now also buffed up to 800% damage over 5 sec, don't know which rune yet)
3: Summon Zombie dogs (really nice overall buff they got, probably going with the life leeching ones)
4: Gargauntan (well buffed, with the stun rune will be a good addition for group play)

As for passives:
Jungle Fortitude for 20% damage reduction on pets and myself
Fierce Loyality will work nice with the already buffed base life regen of pets in addition to the 1600 I have on my gear
As for the third one:
- I might be dropping Summon Zombie dogs for some direct damage spell (Spider Queen maybe?) and go for Circle of Life now that the dogs have a 30% chance to spawn
- Go for Zombie Handler for 20% buffed pet health and an extra dog

What my concern is: I should also really have Big Bad Voodoo for group play, that damage buff is really a nice addition to the party, therefore if I go for Circle of Life as I mentioned, I can maybe drop Zombie Dogs I suppose.

But then again, I'd be lacking damage dealing skills, but if I think about it, I should be a tank/supporting class, let the others do the dirty part.

Just completed Act 4, was easy
Dogs only died when being oneshotted by Malet Lords.

Edit: And I even used a Mojo instead of Shield

This post was edited by lamer30 on Aug 22 2012 05:19am

what is your gear like and what build are you using? could you link your character profile please?

http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Lars-2240/hero/8816588

Requires weeks of sniping or a lot of gold. That Mojo is only temporary. I still run out of many very quickly...

Well I have a bit more of dps (24 k), a bit more HP (28k), 400 less life regen and 200 less all resists.

and just woah at manitou rune, really. that damage is insane.

can you please go into detail how you are doing your runs? the playstyle in general?

Just switched Spirit Walk's rune to more mana.

I recast my minions as soon as one should be dead (happens vs hard hitters only). When I run into a ground of enemies, I cast Manitou (it also fires while running, in jail, being frozen etc). Then I run close and spam bears until my mana is at half or I need to back up due to low life. In both cases, I'll use Spirit Walk (mana regen), run through the crowd to cast Soul Harvest (Life regen, more Int) and then stand behind the enemies (so close to ranged monsters and healers etc). Spam bears again, repeat

Still need more mana though

This post was edited by lamer30 on Aug 22 2012 08:59am

To ensure survivability, I would not go below 3800 Armor, 900 Allres, 1600 Liferep (plus Leeching Beasts). With those unbuffed stats every now and then a Zombie Dog dies (to Arcane+Molten+Desecrator mobs), but they still have 95+% uptime. I'm running Sacrifice for mana instead of Manitou now and can almost spam Bears all the time now.

Can anyone report of good survivability at the end of Act 3 with lower stats?

This post was edited by lamer30 on Aug 24 2012 04:44am

3700 armor, 750 all res, no life rep and pets barely die