Summon Zombie Dogs

Summon Zombie Dogs is a Witch Doctor skill enabled at level 1. It summons several zombie dogs, better known as "mongrels" which tank for the Witch Doctor.

This is the basic minion skill of the Witch Doctor.

Mongrels can also be detonated by the Sacrifice skill, dealing substantial damage to anything in the vicinity. This is their most effective way of directly damaging monsters.

Background

Diablo III Active Skill [e]
Summon Zombie Dogs
Used by:	Witch Doctor
Enabled at:	Clvl 1
Skill Description
The Witch Doctor summons a zombie dog to aid him. Can have multiple zombie dogs at once.
Type:	Summon
Resource Use:	Costs Mana
Skill Rune Effects
Alabaster rune:	Unknown
Crimson rune:	Dogs share WD's damage
Golden rune:	Unknown
Indigo rune:	Unknown
Obsidian rune:	Unknown

More points in the skill allow for more, higher level mongrels. They have good foot speed and are fearless, if not very damaging with their hand to hand combat. Sacrifice deals far more damage than the mongrels ever will.

Skill Effects

The following is a very quick list. See the Summon Zombie Dogs rune effects page for a more thorough summary of rune effects, or any of the individual rune pages for numbers, screenshots, blue quotes, and much more.

Skill		Effect
Summon Zombie Dogs (Level 1)		Summon 3 zombie dogs from the depths to fight by your side. Cost: 176 Mana. Cooldown: 60 seconds
	Burning Dogs	Light your dogs on fire allowing them to burn nearby enemies for 50 Fire damage per second.
	Life Link	70% of damage taken is absorbed by your zombie dogs.
	Rabid Dogs	Your summoned zombie dogs gain an infectious bite that deals 75 Poison damage over 3 seconds.
	Final Gift	Upon death, your zombie dogs have a 85% chance of leaving behind a health globe.
	Leeching Beasts	Your zombie dogs gain 65% of damage dealt as Life, half of which heals you.

Note: Information is based on a level 60 character and rank 7 runestones.

Skill Design

Two mongrels.

Summon Zombie Dogs is the first summoning skill most Witch Doctors will ever use, and forms the backbone of early Witch Doctor strategy. The dogs are not very strong individually, either in giving or taking damage, but they are effective meat shields for the Witch Doctor to use his attack spells from the back row.

At higher levels Mongrels can deal decent damage, and in a swarm they may be useful against individual enemies, especially when their damage is boosted by a runestone.

Enhancing the Dogs

Mongrel enhanced with Locusts.

Earlier in Diablo III's development, the Witch Doctor's fire and Locust spells could jump to the Mongrels, granting them fire or locust damage on top of their own (weak) attacks. This feature was removed in 2009, and later replaced by various runestone effects.

Synergies

• No synergies with any of the passive skills are yet known.

Skill Rune Effects

Fiery mongrels set a Wizard ablaze.

The known rune effects for Summon Zombie Dogs are:

• Crimson rune: Level 2 rune effect: Zombie dogs share 20% of the damage the Witch Doctor takes.
• Unidentified rune: Increases the mongrel's damage output.[1]
• Unidentified rune: Gives the mongrels more hit points.[2]
• Unidentified rune: Gives the mongrels substantial fire damage.[3]
• Unidentified rune: Gives mongrels a chance to drop a health orb when they die. It's not known if Sacrificed dogs would also qualify for this. If so, given that there are traits that enable mana gain from health orbs, it could be largely self-sustaining.

Development

Summon Zombie Dogs debuted with Diablo III in the WWI 2008 gameplay video, where the skill was in the Voodoo Skill Tree at Tier I. Summon Zombie Dog was called Summon Mongrel (as Mongrel was the original name of the Zombie dog), and mongrels could be enchanted with Locust Swarm or Skull of Flame, among other spells.

For BlizzCon 2009, the skill was moved to the Zombie Skill Tree. By then, skill enchantments had been removed, replaced by skill rune enhancements. For a brief period of time, this skill apparently cost health instead of mana.

At BlizzCon 2010, they evinced more damage and improved AI, preferring proximity to the Witch Doctor over dealing with stragglers. Flux described it like this:[4]

I saw them finish off the last zombie on screen a number of times, and I don’t recall ever having to summon new ones simply because the old ones had gotten stuck or lost around some corner of the dungeon. That speaks to their pathfinding as well, since the dungeons in this year’s Blizzcon PvM demo were made largely from narrow corridors and were quite windy and full of sharp corners and obstacles.

Skill tiers were removed for the July 2011 Press Event, and Summon Zombie Dogs became a level 1 skill.

Previous Versions

See the Witch Doctor skill archive for more details on previous versions of Summon Zombie Dogs (or Summon Mongrel) and other Witch Doctor skills.

In Other Games

Summon Zombie Dogs is the spiritual successor to Diablo II's Necromancer skill Raise Skeleton, which is also a low-level tanking minion summoning skill.

Media

Summon Zombie Dogs can be seen in action on video here:

• Gameplay: WWI 2008
• Gameplay: Blizzcon 2010 (in the Arena)
• Video: Blizzcon 2010 Rune Effects
• Gameplay: July 2011
• Video: August 2011 Witch Doctor Skill Animations

You can find pictures in the Diablo III screenshot and picture gallery:

• Diablo III screenshots and pictures
• Summon Zombie Dogs specific gallery contents

References

• BlizzCon 2008 Witch Doctor Gameplay Report
• BlizzCon 2009 Full Witch Doctor Skill Trees and Stats
• BlizzCon 2010 Witch Doctor Hands-on Report
• BlizzCon 2010 PvP Hands-on Report
• Zediono's translation of JudgeHype's pre-beta report -- IncGamers 1st Aug 2011

Template:Skill navbox Necromancer primary

Template:Skill navbox Necromancer secondary

Template:Skill navbox Necromancer corpses

Template:Skill navbox Necromancer bloodandbone

Template:Skill navbox Necromancer reanimation

Template:Skill navbox Necromancer curses