Diablo III- Skills Article CXV: Witch Doctor, Voodoo Skills- Big Bad Voodoo

Big Bad Voodoo (Cooldown 120 Seconds): Summon a Fetish Shaman on your location who stands and dances.  This creates a circle roughly 40 yards wide (half a screen) for 20 seconds.  You and your allies increase your attack and movement speeds by 20% while within this circle.

Big Bad Voodoo is a skill to reserve for those hard fights- Arcane Champions, Illusion Rares, and boss battles.  The cooldown is horrifyingly long, but the lack of a Mana cost is nice, and the effects of the buff are tremendous.  There are some fights where the area of effect makes the buff hard to use (particularly Azmodan) but for the most part it’s fairly easy to take advantage of- and the advantage it lets you take is huge.  Definitely something to have on tap for boss fights, even if you don’t keep it with you the rest of the time.

Jungle Drums (Cooldown 120 Seconds): Summon a Fetish Shaman on your location who stands and dances.  This creates a circle roughly 40 yards wide (half a screen) for 30 seconds.  You and your allies increase your attack and movement speeds by 20% while within this circle.

For those longer fights, Jungle Drums keeps the buff going half again as long.  While not the most valuable effect available for Big Bad Voodoo, Jungle Drums is pretty universally useful- just make sure you need the extra 10 seconds of duration on a regular basis, otherwise you wind up wasting a rune.

Rain Dance (Cooldown 120 Seconds): Summon a Fetish Shaman on your location who stands and dances.  This creates a circle roughly 40 yards wide (half a screen) for 20 seconds.  You and your allies increase your attack and movement speeds by 20% while within this circle.  While you are within the circle, you regenerate 122 additional Mana every second.

Rain Dance is a rune that only benefits you- even other Witch Doctors in the circle don’t gain the increased Mana recovery, sadly.  That said, if you pack the right skills, that added Mana recovery will let you debuff enemies and boost yourself to some pretty ridiculous levels- or just dish out a ton of extra damage.  If you’re soloing, this is definitely worth it- if not, you may find another rune even more useful.

Slam Dance (Cooldown 120 Seconds): Summon a Fetish Shaman on your location who stands and dances.  This creates a circle roughly 40 yards wide (half a screen) for 20 seconds.  You and your allies increase your attack and movement speeds by 20% while within this circle.  Your allies (but not you) deal 30% extra damage while within the circle.

This, for instance, is the premier party-friendly form of Big Bad Voodoo.  Slam Dance doesn’t do squat about your damage per attack/skill, but it will please your allies to no end to get the damage boost.  This is particularly valuable when paired with Hex, set alongside Wall of Zombies, or even just used in a boss fight with a pair of ranged-attack allies and a Monk or Barbarian to tank for you.

Ghost Trance (Cooldown 120 Seconds): Summon a Fetish Shaman on your location who stands and dances.  This creates a circle roughly 40 yards wide (half a screen) for 20 seconds.  You and your allies increase your attack and movement speeds by 20% while within this circle.  You and your allies heal 5% of your maximum Life each second while you are within the circle.

The other major party-happy option for Big Bad Voodoo, Ghost trance is startlingly less effective in most cases than Slam Dance, despite being one of the only healing effects available in the game that is based on your Life total and not your level.  While the healing is amazing (100% over the entire 20 second duration), it’s hard to get the most value out of the healing without playing stupidly.  That said, this is by no means a bad rune- it’s just easier to take advantage of Slam Dance, at least for ranged attackers.  If you can plunk this down where a melee ally can use it while punching the boss in the face, of course, it’s just that much better- but then, so is Slam Dance.

Boogie Man (Cooldown 120 Seconds): Summon a Fetish Shaman on your location who stands and dances.  This creates a circle roughly 40 yards wide (half a screen) for 20 seconds.  You and your allies increase your attack and movement speeds by 20% while within this circle.  When an enemy dies in the circle, it has a 50% chance to reanimate as a Zombie Dog.

Not for the first time, the phrase is ‘If Zombie Dogs were worth something....’  When eventually they become so, as Blizzard is unlikely to leave an entire class submechanic out in the cold if they can help it, this will be the best form of Big Bad Voodoo for solo play while dealing with mass mobs.  In fact, it’s really the only form of Big Bad Voodoo that should be used for mass mobs, and even that’s a little dubious.  Remember, two minute cooldown means saving this for when you really need it.  Then again, there’s always the fight with Iskatu....