Picking a class for Diablo’s next season

Diablo 3‘s second season will start on Friday, February 13th. A lot of the comments on that article were from players wondering which class people were planning to roll as their next seasonal character, and I thought it’d be a good thing to ask about here as I haven’t decided myself. I doubt most players have extensive experience with all 6 classes at 70 — I know I don’t — and many of them have changed since Reaper of Souls went live anyway.

I’ve mostly played a witch doctor and would argue they’ve been vastly improved since launch. These are a few of their pros and cons in my experience, though other people may see them differently:

Advantages

• Fun spells WDs have some awesome-looking spells and abilities.
• Two of the game’s best “Oh s**t!” abilities Spirit Walk is a combination Get Out of Jail Free card and lifesaver, and Spirit Vessel (a passive) will yank you back from the grave. You’ll be hard-pressed to find any build that doesn’t have at least Spirit Walk, and for hardcore characters, they’re a godsend.
• Punching above your weight Pet-centric builds are particularly good at getting you into higher difficulty tiers without too many issues.
• Hugely variable playstyles You can run pet builds, builds where you have pets but they’re just a nice bonus, petless DOT builds, or petless nuke builds.
• Cool armor, design, and personality While this is more a matter of personal opinion, WDs arguably have the most distinctive armor sets in the game. Both the male and female voice actors do a great job, and the WD is just a likable character to play.

Disadvantages

• Pet builds again Yes, they’re pretty safe, but can be a little boring. In practice you’ll probably be spamming Rain of Toads to proc fetishes a lot.
• Gear dependent In fairness, everything you do in D3 regardless of class is going to be gear-dependent, but there’s not as much overlap between WD gear sets as there used to be. I find this to be a particular issue if you’re trying to jump from a generic pet build to a DOT or nuke build.
• Mobility and speed This is the traditional bugbear of the class, but was addressed somewhat with Fierce Loyalty. However, if you’re running a petless built or just can’t afford to take the passive, you’re back to square one.
• Starmetal Kukri You really need this. It’s really amazing. You really won’t get it for a while.

So folks — what are you playing in season 2, and why? Do you have any recommendations or comments on your experience with a class you’ve played recently?

And just because I keep seeing it come up, is there a reason why everyone seems to have a female crusader?