Circle of Life + Zombie Dog runes

[HardRock]

So, today I decided to try out Circle of Life, since I wanted to drop my dogs from the hotbar for more damage. To my surprise, when the first dog finally emerged, it had the Life Link rune effect. Here's a screenshot as proof: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/20530300/d3/witch doctor/circle of life.png

Looks like dogs summoned with Circle of Life will have the rune effect of the Zombie Dog skill, even when you don't have skill equipped. This opens the way for more diverse summoning builds.

Circle of Life's base 12 yard radius however is really small and it requires you to be essentially in melee range if you want to "summon" your dogs. For this reason I gathered some items which increase my health orb and gold pickup radius. I managed to extend CoL's radius by another 12 yards quite easily, which made a huge difference. This way I could stay at a safe distance from combat, while still getting dogs and my damage stayed the same as well.

I hope this is actually new information. I don't remember reading anything about Circle of Life from other testers.

[Tomsch]

Can you have more than one dog with "Circle of life"? If yes what's the limit?

[HardRock]

You can have the same number of dogs as with the skill itself, which is 3 by default.

[WD pimpin summons]

If you remove the Summon Zombie Dog skill from your skill selection, do the dogs go away also?

[HardRock]

Circle of Life don't require you to equip the Zombie Dogs skill, as you can see from the screenshot. However if you interact with the Zombie Dogs skill in any way, then your dogs will die.

For example, let's say that at one point you had Zombie Dogs selected as a skill with the Life Link rune. You decide to change it to Haunt, select Circle of Life as your passive and you kill some stuff to get your dogs. After this, if you select Zombie Dogs as one of your skills again, then your currently "living" dogs will poof, even if you don't change the rune in the skill.

I hope it's clear what I'm talking about. :)

[reflexii]

Hmm, it's kinda interesting that you get the last rune from Zombie Dogs with even the passives. Dunno if its a bug or a feature, but it seems good nevertheless.

[HardRock]

Dunno if its a bug or a feature, but it seems good nevertheless.

I wonder about this as well. Personally, I think it's a feature. If you think about it, the price of summoning your dogs this way is potentially very high.

First of all, you can't resummon them if **** hits the fan and I'd bet that will happen from time to time later in the game.

Second, the range is limited, so you have to be close to your enemies to do this and that's more dangerous. You can counter this with more defensive skills or by increasing CoL's radius with items, but then you're just shifting the drawbacks elsewhere.

And finally, you're sacrifing 1 out of 3 passive slots to do this, instead of 1 out of 6 active slots, so CoL is more costly.

For these reasons, I think CoL is fine as it is.

[WD pimpin summons]

Am I understanding correctly

Remove Summon ZD = dogs go poof
Remove Circle of Life = dogs go poof

[HardRock]

Remove Summon ZD = dogs go poof

Yes, in all cases.


Remove Circle of Life = dogs go poof

I'm not sure about this. If you have the Zombie Dogs skill on your hotbar when you do this they may survive. I'll check this out later today.

[reflexii]

I just tested it, the zombie dogs do NOT disappear when you remove the passive. This is a bug imo, and I'll report this (if it isn't already)

Edit: Okay, this was reported week ago in battle.net forums.

[HardRock]

You mean when you have the Zombie Dogs skill on your hotbar or even if you don't?

[reflexii]

No zombie dogs selected on skills, only passive.

[HardRock]

Ok, that must be a bug then. :)

[konfeta]

I wonder if this is relationship is also true for other skills' rune effects that summon puppies.

[yovargas]

Does this passive do anything if you have ZD on your belt and have all 3 dogs out?

[HardRock]

No, it doesn't do anything with 3 dogs. It does provide you with another way to summon a dog when one dies, obviously.

[HardRock]

Unfortunately they "fixed" this in the last patch. Now skills don't remember the runes you selected for them when you drop them from your hotbar. This means, that if you want a runed dog effect with Circle of Life you have to equip the Zombie Dogs skill now. I'm a sad panda.

[reflexii]

Yep, noted the same myself. They fixed the runed dogs with passives -part but you can still get 3 dogs with passive and then change it away :P. But good note is that it's not that big of a deal anymore. Why? Well, THE DOGS ACTUALLY DIE AFTER THIS PATCH! Skeleton King's Whirlwind attack just demolishes zombie dogs.

[HardRock]

THE DOGS ACTUALLY DIE AFTER THIS PATCH! Skeleton King's Whirlwind attack just demolishes zombie dogs.

Yeah, I noticed that as well. Good thing we got Sacrifice to take advantage of them another way. :)

[WD pimpin summons]

I just remembered that Big Bad Voodoo has a rune that causes dead enemies to become Zombie Dogs.

It would be interesting to make a Sacrifice build utilising every way to get Zombie Dogs.

[reflexii]

Basically something like this: http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#.SYQj!bSi!.ZcZc with a skill of your choosing for a primary attack (when all your zombie-dog generating stuff are on cooldown) and an escape mechanism (probably?)

[yovargas]

Fun idea, though you should definitely add Zombie Handler in there. :) I'd go with this:

http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#VSYQjU!bWT!aZcZcc