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Grimiku
Fresh Meat N' Greet - Surijak#1957(1)Category: Witch DoctorMarch-23-2015 11:29 AM PDT (9 years ago) Go to Blizzard forum post
The world of Sanctuary is a BIG place, defended by hundreds of thousands of heroes each and every day. To help you get to know some of these fellow nephalem a little better, we've created the Fresh Meat N' Greet.

The Fresh Meet N' Greet is a recurring series of interviews featuring you, our community. A few times each month, we'll sit down and chat with six different community members, one for each class, and then post our Q&As right here in these forums.

Up this week for Witch Doctors: Surijak#1957

Read on below to find out more about your fellow ally in battle!

General Info
My Strike is True
Who's Up Next?
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Grimiku
Fresh Meat N' Greet - Surijak#1957(2)March-23-2015 11:30 AM PDT (9 years ago) Go to Blizzard forum post
[GENERAL INFO]

Grimiku: Tell us a bit about yourself.

SURIJAK: G'day, I'm Aaron and I'm from Perth, Western Australia. I'm married with two beautiful and energetic daughters that ensure it's always go time at my place. So I take what Diablo time I can at nights when sleepy heads go to bed.


Grimiku: Got any cool hobbies or talents?

SURIJAK: I like playing cricket when I get the chance, it's nice spending the day out in the searing sun, I love the heat. Haven't played on the competitive scene since kids though.


Grimiku: What’s your history as a gamer?

SURIJAK: Hah, I've been playing computer games since I was three on my uncle's Commodore 64. I think I actually started with a combat flight sim as my first entry into computer gaming. Since then I've gone through an assortment of platformers, puzzles, pure text through to modern day roleplaying, turn based strategy, first person shooters, racing, real time strategy and arpg/moba.


Grimiku: What are some of your favorite games?

SURIJAK: I've had a long standing affinity for RTS games: Warcraft, StarCraft, Command and Conquer, Age of Empires. Give me a battlefield and I'll feel right at home, it's probably why I enjoy Diablo so much, I love the overlord point of view.


Grimiku: Do you play any other classes?

SURIJAK: No, I seem unable to detach myself from my Witch Doctor. I levelled up a Barbarian to 60 in vanilla as a nod to my Diablo 2 Barbarian and did the same for Reaper of Souls to get him to 70 but that's all the play he's seen and the longest I've been able to convince myself to stop playing with my Witch Doctor. The Wizard did a story line play through for my wife so I've never touched it either.


Grimiku: What’s your past with the Diablo franchise like?

SURIJAK: I had a brief brush with the original Diablo but moved quickly on to its sequel. I've spent innumerable hours in Diablo 2 though throwing curses, summoning skeletons and beasts, whirlwinding through zombies, smiting the undead and covering the battlefields with the elements. I played my Necromancer, Barbarian, Druid, Sorceress and Paladin mostly. The Amazon and Assassin never really did it for me though so they went mostly neglected.


Grimiku: Are you in a great clan or community? If yes, tell us about them!

SURIJAK: Yes, I'm in a clan. You'll notice this has been a common trend for your Witch Doctor interviews but I'm another member of Forsaken Voodoo. There's a lot of friendly people in the clan and a lot of people I've known for a long time now from playing Diablo. I trust everyone in there enough to answer the "Can I get that Ancient Starmetal Kukri transmog" question with a yes, even though ancients don't get their own transmog.


Grimiku: What's your most embarrassing moment while playing?

SURIJAK: Oh I make mistakes all the time, mostly caused by constant gear swapping. Like going into greater rifts ready to Carnevil it up with my rain of toads, that one never gets old. The most embarrassing though was a salvage. I thought I'd found a potential thorns build utilising the interaction between Shackles of the Invoker, Tiklandian Visage and Hack which I'd been holding in my stash for 6 months. So I spent the next week trying to gamble for Invoker set pieces that suddenly decided they weren't a common item anymore. I finally get all the gear ready, crafted Demon's Hide pieces and moved it all to my inventory ready to do some play testing the next day. So the next day comes and I immediately get caught up in a group rift without moving gear and on the first trip back salvaged that Hack on motor reflexes. Oops! Got so ticked off I mass salvaged the rest of the gear. Turns out the build never worked out anyway but that's another story.


Grimiku: Okay, what about your most AWESOME moment while playing?

SURIJAK: There's something to be said for story mode, that first time you encounter something new and cool, something completely inspired. For me, the ride on the battering ram was pure awesome. I love everything about it, the massive build up, the frantic wave clear in a tight space and the huge rush as you crash into that gate. The idea of a travelling platform interlude is not a new one to gaming, but I felt like Blizzard nailed it.
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Grimiku
Fresh Meat N' Greet - Surijak#1957(3)March-23-2015 11:30 AM PDT (9 years ago) Go to Blizzard forum post
[MY STRIKE IS TRUE]

Grimiku: What drew you to the Witch Doctor?

SURIJAK: I gravitate towards tribal/earth roleplaying elements when choosing characters to play and the Witch Doctor seemed to fit rather well with that. I also like swarm gameplay mechanics having played so much RTS over the years which we get with the pets and the overall gruesome thematic to his skills is a beautiful touch.


Grimiku: What’s the voodoo that you do: do you drain your foes' life force over time, unleash your minions upon them, or call forth a surge of power to crush them?

SURIJAK: I'm definitely a minion master, the Witch Doctor is not meant to be alone. Almost everything he does involves a critter or a zombie in some form. I love being able to position anywhere amidst the chaos and remain untouched behind a veritable wall of flesh and bones.


Grimiku: What's your favorite skill (or skill rune), and why?

SURIJAK: I'm torn on this one because there's different reasons to like different skills but I feel like corpse spiders really encapsulates the Witch Doctor for me, sending forth an unending stream of spiders to debilitate and eliminate your prey. It satisfies my desire for my own personal swarm of minions.


Grimiku: What build are you running currently?

SURIJAK: I'm currently focused on the Carnevil variant of pet builds, I love the semblance of control it gives over your army because they all attack where you command. Definitely look up OftRepeated's Carnpendium if you're interested in the build.


Grimiku: If there was one thing you could change about the Witch Doctor, what would it be?

SURIJAK: This is definitely a hotly contested topic because there's just so many good ideas floating around for this class. For the biggest impact I strongly recommended that you look into raising the damage output of mana spenders to a competitive level again. By mana spenders I don't just mean anything that consumes mana but specifically zombie charger, acid cloud, firebats and spirit barrage. These skills are perfectly suited to introduce a different approach to gearing and a different gameplay mechanic that we haven't used in a long time. They don't even need alot of attention the first go round because the core is already there, no fancy sets or legendaries are required to simply bring them to parity, allow the community figure out the rest. That blue globe over there on the right has been dormant since Reaper of Souls released, I'd like to interact with it again.


Grimiku: Name one piece of advice that you think every Witch Doctor should know.

SURIJAK: If you're playing a Witch Doctor then come visit the Witch Doctor forum. There is an absolute wealth of information here ready to help you out in your progression through the game. And even if you don't play Witch Doctor we have topics that may help you with group play.


Grimiku: What’s the coolest looking Voodoo mask in your opinion?

SURIJAK: Visage of Giyua is without a doubt the best looking Voodoo mask. That is one sick eyeball and it immediately reminds me of the flaming Sauron eye from Lord of the Rings.


Grimiku: Pick a Witch Doctor quote!

SURIJAK: If I could ever figure out what my Witch Doctor keeps chanting everytime he slips into the spirit world I'd have something for you, all he needs is a solid beat for his lyrics.
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Grimiku
Fresh Meat N' Greet - Surijak#1957(4)March-23-2015 11:31 AM PDT (9 years ago) Go to Blizzard forum post
[WHO'S NEXT?]

Grimiku: Which Witch Doctor should we interview next?

Surijak: I think it's time we put the Witch Doctor who plays like he's a NASCAR driver into the hot seat. The one and only MCP#1477.


Grimiku: Pick a question to ask in the next interview:

Surijak: Got any ideas or suggestions for making Witch Doctors go faster?


Grimiku: Rockon87 asks: What would you like to see as a general improvement to the WD?

Surijak: Thanks Rockon87, this is a big one. General improvements would start at the core of gameplay where every skill pulls from a wide ranging list of design features. Damage, area of effect, range, piercing, maximum target limit, trajectory, speed, directional targeting, auto targeting, resource consumption, resource replenishment, cooldown, buff, debuff, channeling, snapshot, response to terrain, response to waller, response to missile dampening, response to reflect missiles, proc coefficients, crowd control, taunt, pathing, hit boxes and pet survival. I've probably missed several but it should be enough to make my point with. I would like to eventually see improved correlation between the mechanics that make up a skill and how it all ties into overall dps and survival.

Example: horrify is the strongest crowd control tool available to Witch Doctors currently while wall of zombies is far behind in this regard, ergo wall of zombies needs to offer more than a paltry directional barrier that only hinders some monster types with a tiny bit of damage tacked on. I realise wall of zombies has been targeted for future redesign already but I could just as easily pick on grasp of the dead sans the death is life rune, which does actually provide something useful that horrify cannot in health globes.

Considering our fetishes as they exist currently, we have melee single target fetishes with a gearing structure to support their sustained high damage output. And then we have the ranged dart shooting fetishes using carnevil which perform significantly less damage per hit but the gearing shifts their focus to piercing area of effect damage which greatly increases damage output when hitting multiple targets. This is a positive example of design configuration allowing different styles to thrive.

There is some measure for concern that the gearing requirements drive a wedge between the two styles making it harder to pack single target, aoe and support skills into a build though but I would like to see this general role driven approach disseminated broadly through all skills and their lesser used runes.


Got any questions yourself for Surijak? Post them below!
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