Diablo III- Skills Article CXIX: Witch Doctor, Passive Skills (3 of 6)

Bad Medicine: Whenever you deal Poison damage to an enemy, their damage is reduced by 20% for 3 seconds.

This skill works best if you make sure that your other skills all deal Poison damage.  It can be a bit hard if you have particular requirements, but between the blowgun skills, the toads, the acid-spewing, the gangrenous zombies, the poisonous spiders.... yeah, nevermind, it shouldn’t be hard to get into a position where this skill is useful.  The real question is what you should take it over, and when you need it.  You definitely shouldn’t take Bad Medicine if you haven’t already got Jungle Fortitude- since Jungle Fortitude doesn’t care whether your enemies have been touched by anything or not, it’s a more reliable way to reduce incoming damage.  If you have a lot of area of effect stuff in your hands, though, and you deal a lot of poison damage at close range, Bad Medicine can go really nicely with Jungle Fortitude to increase your lifespan even further.  A Bad Medicine/Jungle Fortitude Witch Doctor with a lot of poison effects can basically ignore the fact that the class isn’t really meant for melee durability, which makes a nice change and open up all sorts of interesting opportunities, particularly by abusing the skills that normally exist to punish enemies for closing to melee range.

Blood Ritual: When you spend Mana, you spend Life instead of 15% of the Mana spent.  You heal an additional 1% of your maximum Life every second.

Blood Ritual falls on the other side of the scale from Bad Medicine and Jungle Fortitude- this skill is clearly for long-range Witch Doctors.  You simply won’t be able to afford the damage risks if you’re consuming your Life to power your spells.  At the same time, this makes amethysts very useful to you as socket fodder, particularly for your hats.  Interestingly, if you’re careful, you can use the automatic Life healing effect to keep you on your feet in combat, if you rely on a lot of low-cost skills.  Still, the low-cost skills don’t do much damage, compared to your other options, so it’s unlikely you’ll find Blood Ritual applicable in that sense.  Combining it with Mana regenerating skills, on the other hand, can turn you into a constant fountain of magical effects the likes of which most other classes dream of matching.  Not a bad option if you function at a distance and are hard on your Mana.

Zombie Handler: You can have up to 4 Zombie Dogs at once, instead of 3.  The maximum Life of your Zombie Dogs and Gargantuan is increased by 20%.

As before, a skill that is of most use with summons- which are mostly useless in the later game right now.  Combining it with Jungle Fortitude can alleviate the scaling issues a little bit further, but not enough by a long shot to make Zombie Dogs and the Gargantuan viable long-term skills.  Should those summons ever be fixed, though, you’re looking at one of your best friends.  Having a fourth Zombie Dog has the potential to improve your state immensely, particularly in the sense of keeping things off your back.  The added Life should also ensure that your summons stop dying nearly as easily, probably making Zombie Dogs a viable distraction in boss fights.  Again, though, this is dependent on a fix coming through for the Witch Doctor summons.