Diablo III- Skills Article CXIII: Witch Doctor, Decay Skills- Wall of Zombies

Wall of Zombies (103 Mana, Cooldown 25 Seconds): Zombies half-emerge from the ground in a line roughly 20 yards wide and perpendicular to your facing, centered on the target location.  This line of zombies lasts for 5 seconds and prevents enemies from passing through it.  The zombies that compose the wall attack for 80% weapon damage as Physical damage.

This unique and highly recognizable skill is very useful both for general battlefield control and offensive damage dealing.  Especially both at the same time.  The short duration of the wall is sort of a shame, but the effect is rather strong and the cost quite low, so it’s an understandable restriction- and also reduces screen clutter.  This is not a skill to use in emergencies- this is a skill to routinely make use of in combat if you can manage it.  Placed correctly, this can be very party- friendly, especially if your party is heavy on ranged attackers.

Barricade (103 Mana, Cooldown 25 Seconds): Zombies half-emerge from the ground in a line roughly 30 yards wide and perpendicular to your facing, centered on the target location.  This line of zombies lasts for 5 seconds and prevents enemies from passing through it.  The zombies that compose the wall attack for 80% weapon damage as Physical damage.

Barricade improves Wall of Zombies by making it that much more difficult for enemies to get around it- and giving the zombies that much longer to claw them to death.  Sadly, the five second limit remains, but Barricade is still a significant improvement on the Wall of Zombies skill.

Unrelenting Grip (103 Mana, Cooldown 25 Seconds): Zombies half-emerge from the ground in a line roughly 20 yards wide and perpendicular to your facing, centered on the target location.  This line of zombies lasts for 5 seconds and prevents enemies from passing through it.  The zombies that compose the wall attack for 80% weapon damage as Physical damage and their hits slow enemies by 60% for 5 seconds.

Unrelenting Grip goes a long way to alleviate the problems caused by the Wall of Zombies’ short duration, causing anything that survives them to continue having trouble reaching you- and reducing the number of survivors to boot by keeping them within its reach for longer as they try to pull an end run around it.  This is very, very good battlefield manipulation, and should be leaned on especially hard if you’re in a party with multiple ranged allies.

Creepers (103 Mana, Cooldown 25 Seconds): Up to 3 zombies will erupt from the ground and wander around for a little while, attacking nearby enemies for 25% weapon damage as Physical damage at your attack speed..

Creepers turns Wall of Zombies into a sort of Zombie Dogs effect with a limited duration.  Fortunately, the Creepers scale better than Zombie Dogs do, but overall, you’re sacrificing a highly useful tactical advantage and damage source for a lighter source of freefloating damage that isn’t tactically advantageous other than its ability to draw a little aggro, and can’t be controlled at all.  If you like having Wall of Zombies, this rune will make you sad- if you want a summon though, this isn’t half bad.

Pile On (103 Mana, Cooldown 25 Seconds): A mass of zombies appears in a pile and falls over, dealing 765% weapon damage as Physical damage to all enemies it falls on.

Pile on is a horrifically damaging skill, only clearly outmatched by the Barbarian’s Earthquake.  Sadly, it is a skill that needs to be aimed in order to hit what you want to hit, and aiming it is a bit tricky.  If you can get the hang of making it fall where you want, though, it’s a really impressive source of damage every 25 seconds.  Still, not as tactically useful as Wall of Zombies- but with the ability to pretty much autokill anything you would want to Wall of Zombies anyways, is this actually a problem?

Dead Rush (103 Mana, Cooldown 25 Seconds): Zombies erupt from the ground in the target area and rush outwards from the targeted location, dealing 445% weapon damage as Physical damage to enemies they charge through.

Dead Rush replaces the tactical consideration of Wall of Zombies with a less staggeringly powerful but much more controllable effect than Pile On, pretty much assuring the death or severe maiming of anything near the target location.  If you don’t mind losing the tactical advantage, or just find yourself facing lots of ranged enemies, consider using this instead of Wall of Zombies.