Diablo III- Skills Article CX: Witch Doctor, Decay Skills- Zombie Charger

Zombie Charger (140 Mana): A decaying zombie staggers forth from your hands, dealing 205% weapon damage as Poison damage to each enemy it shambles through as it degrades into nothingness.

This skill is a bit odd.  When you first get it, it’s clearly not worth the mana cost, as while its damage is good and its range is passable, 140 Mana is a huge chunk out of your early Mana pool.  At later levels, though, this can become a fairly regular skill, and there’s very little to regret about that.  The base zombie only goes about 15-20 yards, so don’t try to use this skill against enemies near the edge of the screen- the skill won’t force you to move close enough to use it effectively.  This means that positioning for the skill is 100% up to you- which can be a pain in the neck at the same time as it’s a boon.

Leperous Zombie (140 Mana): A decaying zombie staggers forth from your hands, dealing 205% weapon damage as Poison damage to each enemy it shambles through as it degrades into nothingness and leaving a trail of noxious gas that deals 25% weapon damage as Poison damage per second to any enemy touching or passing through it.  This trail lasts for 2-3 seconds.

Turning your zombie from a shambling wraith to a moving sulfur vent is an interesting option, and lets this skill be used to stack yet more damage effects onto the plethora that any given Witch Doctor is likely to have active at a time.  While the damage from the trail isn’t much, keep in mind that Leperous Zombie can be used multiple times, and with other damage areas active, so it stacks well with other Witch Doctor skills.

Undeath (140 Mana): A decaying zombie staggers forth from your hands, dealing 205% weapon damage as Poison damage to each enemy it shambles through as it degrades into nothingness.  If it kills an enemy, the zombie will resurrect there and charge in the direction of another enemy.  If that zombie kills an enemy, it will resurrect there and charge in the direction of another enemy.  If that zombie kills an enemy, then it will resurrect and charge a fourth enemy- but it cannot rise any more times than that.

This bizarre permutation of Zombie Charger makes it akin to Hungering Arrow or a number of other ‘bouncing’ damage effects- except that each time a zombie resurrects, it will go its full path, even if it raises another zombie partway through that path.  This can be truly devastating against large numbers of enemies- or completely meaningless if the skill never actually gets a kill.  Get a feel for your Zombie Charger and figure out how often you kill things with it (as opposed to your other skills) before opting to take this rune for it.

Wave of Zombies (140 Mana): A spread of three decaying zombies staggers forth from your hands, dealing 75% weapon damage as Poison damage to each enemy they shamble through as they degrades into nothingness.

The multiple-target alternative to Undeath, Wave of Zombies is generally going to be less effective- the damage is much smaller to each enemy hit, and while you always get three zombies, you can only get three, and they all charge away from you.  There are some situations where this is preferable, but the reduced damage pretty much ensures this isn’t going to be as useful as Undeath.

Explosive Beast (140 Mana): A burning Zombie Dog charges in the direction you select, exploding when it hits an enemy, dealing 236% weapon damage as Fire damage to all enemies within 9 yards.

This barely qualifies as a permutation of Zombie Charger, acting far more like a variant of Firebomb than anything else.  Sadly, as it only affects multiple targets if they’re clustered together and the damage is Fire damage, the slight increase really isn’t worth using this rune.  Generally speaking, you should skip this one, unless you really like fire that much.

Zombie Bears (140 Mana): Several zombie bears stampede across the area around and in front of you in the chosen direction.  Each bear deals 236% weapon damage as Poison damage to any enemy it runs into.

Not the most intuitive improvement upon a charging, decaying zombie, Zombie Bears is nonetheless an amazing and useful skill.  While the range of the attack is effectively reduced, its area is massively increased, and larger enemies will be hit by more bears than smaller ones.  This makes the skill immensely useful against most bosses in the game, and a lot of fun for taking out clusters of enemies that get too close to you.  The damage is very nice even against small targets, as even one bear is more damage than a single Zombie Charger.  This rune turns the skill from a neat and useful effect into a virtually must-have skill.