Sal4m4nd3r: My name is Matthew. I have a beautiful wife, a 5 month old daughter. I live in Northern Virginia just outside of Washington DC, although I am originally from Massachusetts. I am a die-hard New England Patriots fan and Boston Red Sox fan. I am a tree climber by profession. Some would recognize the term arborist. I climb trees to remove dead and diseased branches, and also cut them down as well. I currently do this work for the federal government on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol building.

Sal4m4nd3r: I am a professional tree climber. The more technical term is Arborist. Its fun and exciting and a little bit dangerous, which adds to the excitement. I also enjoy tabletop miniature gaming (Warhammer 40,000)

Sal4m4nd3r: Ever since the original title came out! Diablo I gave me nightmares as a young man, especially the Butcher (FRESH MEAT!!!!!)

Sal4m4nd3r: I get obsessed with one video game at a time. I have a 5 month old Daughter, a wife, a full time job and run my own business on the side.. so I don’t have much time for another game!

Sal4m4nd3r: I have a Level 70 Wizard. It’s kind of a fun/not optimal build. A Spectral blades/cold build. Although I did see that the Build highlight was a melee-spectral blades-arcane build, so I will have to check that out!

Sal4m4nd3r: I am in Kindred Bones. It is a WD dedicated clan. The guys are amazing! There’s always someone to play with, and run with to item share. Everyone is friendly even though I am relative new-comer to the clan.

Sal4m4nd3r: I have never been an achievement type of player. I like collecting rare and "cool" legendary items. I am definitely a Legendary item hoarder.

Sal4m4nd3r: See below!

Sal4m4nd3r: Both of these questions come from the same instance. I am at paragon 13-something at this point, and furiously grinding and item hunting for that ONE elusive ceremonial knife 99.9999% WD's are (the other .0001% already have it), the Starmetal Kukri. I get an invite from a WD friend of mine. I accept his invite and join the game. When the game loads and I appear in town I click on his banner within second to hop right into battle as I saw he was engaged with an elite! So the game begins to load me into the battlefield. By the time I had been loaded into town and then loaded onto the battlefield Starmetal Kukri dropped! I literally didn’t have to kill a single enemy to get it. When I joined the fray the pack was dead and I saw the GOLDEN STAR on the minimap and saw it was a ceremonial knife. I knew by the shape of the item sitting on the ground it was the SMK and started to dance around.. in real life.. around my computer. It rolled decently to! My WD friend (who admittedly I only knew for a few weeks) asked if he could have the transmog. I hesitantly agreed. At the moment I dropped it on the ground and he picked it up, and I instantly regretted it as he could take my precious item and run! We had no ties. I felt like a FOOL!!! He did give it back after gaining the transmog, but he did joke about never talking to me again, and how our short friendship was worth the SMK he had in his inventory at that moment. He did give it back to me though...THANK GOD!

Sal4m4nd3r: If you mean a witch doctor, it would be Witch Doctor Endugu from Act 3 in Diablo2. I played a lot of single player and that little jerk killed me very, very, many times. A lot people in multiplayer skipped over him because his quest wasn’t an essential on to completing the act. But I had many glorious battles with that fire breathing short stack, and so I named my current witch doctor after him, Endugu!

Sal4m4nd3r: At first it was the direct comparisons to the Diablo II character, the Necromancer. I love the dark shadow-y-ness of both characters. The Witch Doctor (WD) felt like a natural progression as I made the transition between the two games.

When I first investigated the WD, I fell in love with how comical (in concept) some of his skills were, but also how dark and morbid some others were. For example, the skill Hex where the WD will summon a shaman that turns his enemies into chickens was just plain funny to me. Whereas the Rain of Corpses rune for the skill Grasp of the Dead had my imagination creeped out and intrigued all at once!

Sal4m4nd3r: I like to "manage the battlefield." I enjoy controlling my enemy’s actions. That sense of control over my enemies is exciting to me. With that in mind I enjoy the use of minions as one aspect of that philosophy, while also using various other skills to take abilities and attributes away from my enemies, or simply using their strengths against them. Alternatively there are times I find exploiting their weakness as my strength against them to be more beneficial but still keeping that theme of control over life and using it to confer death and destruction!

Sal4m4nd3r: Without hesitation is is Wall of Zombies. Raising zombies from the ground that block and attack your enemies is visually gruesome (in a wicked awesome way), and I love hearing the zombies scream and gasp as they rise and attack. But tactically it’s great too. You can control where they can’t move. Sometimes using terrain to funnel or bottleneck them into a prime location to focus your attack. I wish it were a little bit more competitive with other skills in my arsenal though, because sadly it’s just simply not at all at this point. And I like the fact that a 6 piece set is dedicated to that skill. I see A LOT of potential for the future though ;)

Sal4m4nd3r: I am a PROUD and LOUD advocate for the Carnevil build. I love it. Its versatile, powerful, so much fun and visually cool to continue watching while I farm for hours! Never gets old. Most WD's prefer the Mask of Jeram build, but I like the direct control I have over my minions. I tell them what to attack and when. I direct their damage output. It has a few other advantages over the standard MoJ build as well such as:

I don’t have to worry about pet collisions. My fetish's darts don’t compete for damage per yard. Sometimes the stabby fetishes have to run around each other or terrain to get in combat. It also takes time for them to run up the enemy. The instant I see a mob my damage just happens, and I can control which specific enemies I want to die first.

With Carnevil, I my damage (in terms of APS) is a lot higher since it is based directly of my APS.

One last thing is it synergizes well with Fetish Sycophants since the skill I use to do damage DIRECTLY (poison dart) also proc's the Fetish Sycophant skill, which when spawned start to directly follow my commands of shooting darts. I don’t have to worry about using a skill to simply proc the Sycophants, like some build do with Rain of Toads.

Sal4m4nd3r: I think this class is in a great place right now. I think other classes need to be brought up to the level of the Witch doctor through the use/implementation of legendary items that have build altering/creating legendary affixes. Like Carnevil, Mask of Jeram, Tiklandian Visage, Grin Reaper, and Quetzalcoatl! And those are just helm's! This doesnt even take into effect the ceremonial knives that promote seperate or alternate builds! This is the direction I would like to see other classes go towards.

Sal4m4nd3r: You can look up guides on the internet, but nothing gives you a great gaming experience like forming your own builds and play styles, even if they are not the absolute more efficient or optimal at grinding and farming, some of the most fun builds aren’t!

Sal4m4nd3r: I would love to see the reaction I would get by bringing my zombie dogs to the local dog park.

Sal4m4nd3r: YOU DIE!

Sal4m4nd3r: OftRepeated#1136!

Sal4m4nd3r: "Why does Sal4m4nd3r haunt your dreams every night?"

Posted by: Sal4m4nd3r09/03/2014 03:02 PM

To more appropriately answer the question about my favorite fictional character..I would have to say my favorite would be Rorschach from Watchmen, he graphic novel.