Diablo III- Skills Article CXXII: Witch Doctor, Passive Skills (6 of 6)

Grave Injustice: Whenever an enemy dies within 8 yards of you, increased by effects that increase your pickup range, you regain 1% of your maximum Life and Mana and all your spells on cooldown advance an extra second.

This skill is a particularly sticky situation.  On the one hand, it’s very nice for a close-range Witch Doctor- on the other hand, the Witch Doctor skills that need it most for their long cooldowns aren’t really the purview of a close-in Witch Doctor.  Not so say that a Witch Doctor who focuses on their proximity spells can’t benefit a lot- more than a few of the close-range skills have short cooldowns where just a few kills will cut the wait by as much as 20%.  Of course, then the close-range Witch Doctor is stuck with the choice between Grave Injustice, Spirit Vessel, and Rush of Essence.  Not an easy one to make.

More notably, a Witch Doctor who is Fetish-focused, with Fetish Syncophants and Tribal Rites, will have several of the longest cooldowns the class can get on them, and Grave Injustice can go a long way over the durations of those cooldowns to reduce the length of their waits.  However, they have a mirroring problem- most such Witch Doctors won’t want to enter close range if they can help it, and 8 yards is very close range.  Even pickup gear can only help that so much, as you’re usually sacrificing other benefits, like increased stats, attack speed, or movement for the sake of the pickup benefit.  This means that while Grave Injustice may be alluring to virtually any Witch Doctor, only the close-range characters will actually be able to use it to any noticeable benefit.  A sad fact, but a true one nonetheless.

Tribal Rites: Your cooldowns for Fetish Army, Big Bad Voodoo, and Hex are all reduced by 25%.

This skill is both powerful and weak- its power lies entirely in the fact that it shaves 30 seconds off the cooldowns for Fetish Army and Big Bad Voodoo (about 17 off Fetish Army if you have the cooldown rune for that skill enabled, but bringing it from almost-70 seconds to a flat 50 in cooldown time is very nice anyways).  It’s weak in that it only affects three particular skills.  What’s more, if you’re playing in standard mode, you can’t even have all three of them available at the same time.  Yet again- Elective Mode shows up to save the day, so to speak, and when you -do- have all three skills, Tribal Rites becomes simply amazing.  All three of these skills are very powerful ones that you want to have available, specifically in case you suddenly run into a very hard fight- which can happen a lot in later difficulties of the game.  This skill lets you use them without having to completely freak out over not having them available in the sudden appearance of a set of champions moments after you finally topple a unique monster that’s been doing a fairly good job of kicking your butt.  It also combines quite well with the Fetish Syncophants skill, enabling you to benefit from it even more often, as all three of the skills it accelerates are on the Fetish Syncophants skill’s list.



Much like the Monk, the Witch Doctor’s passive skills all create their own categories, defining different types of Witch Doctor far more than the active skills do.  Also like the Monk, these categories are not the sort that are immediately obvious.  Actual statistics in the game, such as critical hit chance, don’t define or particularly lend themselves to or against any of these types, with the exception of pickup-range gear and its effect on the passive ‘aura’ skills available to a Witch Doctor.  This makes it very easy to change how your Witch Doctor functions, as well- since which gear you choose is unlikely to have much impact on which skills you choose, you can very easily alter what you do- and that makes it easy to shuffle things around to better fit your group in multiplayer games.