Grasp of the Dead (122 Mana, Cooldown 8 Seconds): Zombified hands reach out of the ground in a roughly 10-yard radius of the targeted location, dealing 20% weapon damage as Physical damage per second and Slowing enemy movement by 60% within the area, for 8 seconds.
If you’re dealing with any number of enemies greater than two or so, Grasp of the Dead is an immensely useful skill. The area can be planted anywhere you have line of sight to, is very broad, and deals continual damage over time. While the Mana cost is fairly high, the cooldown effectively mandates you can only have one Grasp of the Dead area of effect in play at a time anyways, so it’s not too hard to recoup your mana in between uses. The damage is actually fairly impressive if an enemy gets mired in the area for the whole duration, and that’s not too hard to manage given how strong the Slow effect is. Definitely a prime-pick spell for almost any Witch Doctor. Especially fun when you pin something down and then your summons/follower/allies beat on it for a while.
Unbreakable Grasp (122 Mana, Cooldown 8 Seconds): Zombified hands reach out of the ground in a roughly 10-yard radius of the targeted location, dealing 20% weapon damage as Physical damage per second and Slowing enemy movement by 80% within the area, for 8 seconds.
If fast enemies are a worry, or things keep escaping the area of your Grasp of the Dead, this rune is a very nice improvement, making the Slow effect even more drastic. Also extremely handy for slowing things down so you can run away, if you find you need to. Remember, if something kills you, you can’t kill -anything-.
Groping Eels (122 Mana, Cooldown 8 Seconds): Zombified hands reach out of the ground in a roughly 10-yard radius of the targeted location, dealing 26% weapon damage as Physical damage per second and Slowing enemy movement by 60% within the area, for 8 seconds.
Or perhaps the slow is fine, but you want more damage on there. This handy rune (oh gods the pun) improves the total damage from 160% weapon damage to a whopping 224% weapon damage- nothing to sneeze at.
Death is Life (122 Mana, Cooldown 8 Seconds): Zombified hands reach out of the ground in a roughly 10-yard radius of the targeted location, dealing 20% weapon damage as Physical damage per second and Slowing enemy movement by 60% within the area, for 8 seconds. Each time an enemy dies in the area of effect, it has a 5% chance to drop a health globe (separate from any other chance to drop a health globe).
If you’re working with allies, on the other hand, and they tend to take a lot of damage, you can use this to both mitigate the damage and improve the health globe drops, making it that much easier for them to patch themselves up regularly. Not as directly or obviously effective as Unbreakable Grasp or Groping Eels, there’s still a good place for this, particularly since the added health globe drops don’t actually cost you anything off of the original effect.
Desperate Grasp (122 Mana, Cooldown 6 Seconds): Zombified hands reach out of the ground in a roughly 10-yard radius of the targeted location, dealing 20% weapon damage as Physical damage per second and Slowing enemy movement by 60% within the area, for 8 seconds.
Supposedly, Desperate Grasp reduces the cooldown of Grasp of the Dead, making it easier to ensure nothing escapes the area- and in emergencies, letting you have two Grasp of the Dead effects active at the same time. Unfortunately, as of this writing (8/6/2012), at least some players are still experiencing a strange issue where the reduced cooldown isn’t taking effect. As nobody, playerside or Blizzardside, has piped up to say that the issue is not ongoing for them, it’s unclear whether this is a problem for everyone or not (or whether or not it’s a problem anymore at all), so find out for yourself.
Rain of Corpses (122 Mana, Cooldown 8 Seconds): Corpses rain over a roughly 10-yard radius from the targeted location for the next 8 seconds, each corpse dealing 80% weapon damage as Physical damage to any enemy it hits.
This rune turns Corpse Grasp into a purely-offense skill, useful primarily as part of a party strategy. If your allies are already slowing things and keeping them where you want them enough, then consider this alternative- it’ll deal a lot more damage out than Grasp of the Dead, and doesn’t perform redundant Slow. While the damage per hit isn’t anything special, the total damage- especially to a large enemy- can be fairly impressive.
