DOUBLE EDIT: I just realized the old passive Circle of Life acted very differently, the tooltip is incorrect if you look at the Wiki version. Circle of Life now has a 5% chance to summon a zombie dog if a monster dies within 12 yards of you. Mouseover tooltip is correct but the wiki page is wrong. Oops.
While making my last Witch Doctor video, I noticed some odd behavior regarding the Circle of Life passive skill. I'll include the video so you guys can see it and I intend to put a post on the official forums to see if I can get a Blizzard Blue response about it.
---Observations---
Circle of Life does not increase Zombie Dog limit: Circle of life can be used in conjunction with the Summon Zombie Dogs skill, but it will not allow you exceed the maximum limit of Summon Zombie Dogs.
Circle of Life inherits Zombie Dog runes: If you slot Summon Zombie Dogs with any runestone and have less than 3 (or 4 based on your passives) dogs, then the Zombie Dog that gets summoned will have the same properties of your Summon Zombie Dogs skill
Circle of Life can be used without Summon Zombie Dogs: You can get Zombie Dogs while using Circle of Life, but not having the Summon Zombie Dogs skill attached. Circle of Life will still operate on the same rules as the Summon Zombie Dogs skill. In other words, you can still have up to 3 or 4 dogs, you just cannot summon them at will.
Runes are inherited even without Summon Zombie Dogs: This one interested me, apparently Circle of Life will still in inherit the runestone that is slotted to Summon Zombie Dogs even if the skill is not present on your skillbar. To test this, I put a rune on my dogs, summoned them once, then removed the skill. The Zombie Dogs still had Life Link even though the skill was removed.
Zombie Dogs will not despawn when Circle of Life is removed: This one I'm pretty sure is not intended. If you remove Summon Zombie Dogs from your skillbar, the dogs that were summoned will go away. If you do not have Summon Zombie Dogs on your bar, but you have dogs summoned through Circle of Life, the Zombie Dogs will not go away and will still fight for you until they die.
Hopefully you've found these findings as interesting as I have. I think it makes Circle of Life an interesting passive choice as it's like getting a 7th skill slot if you don't want to have Summon Zombie Dogs. This increases its potential for Witch Doctor builds.
Cool, I was wondering some of these things myself (like the # of dogs limit). The "7th skill slot" conclusion was spot-on, an interesting passive to consider, although, with the new rune system, they would be unruned dogs.
Actually all this testing was done on patch 13, where I was able to get Zombie Dogs with "Life Link" even with the new rune system. I couldn't confirm they got the full mechanic, but the dogs had the artwork of the Life Link dogs. It'll need more testing and Blizzard never confirmed my theory in the bug report forum
Nice job. Gotta say, kinda disappointed though....For such a small chance to proc this really seems lackluster. Maybe its only meant to be used by people without the zombie dog skill...
If you don't have the summon zombie dog skill, but do have the circle of life passive then how many zombie dogs are you allowed to have out at once? I am guessing 3, no?
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One is never hurt by being given additional choices, only by taking them away. A QUADRILLION MAGIC FIND is worthless if you can't kill shit!
Runes are inherited even without Summon Zombie Dogs: This one interested me, apparently Circle of Life will still in inherit the runestone that is slotted to Summon Zombie Dogs even if the skill is not present on your skillbar. To test this, I put a rune on my dogs, summoned them once, then removed the skill. The Zombie Dogs still had Life Link even though the skill was removed
^ this is definitely interesting, and i hope it will be kept in the game. Now the choice has to be between 2.25% leech (per dog) and 10% life link. Thanks for sharing.
How many runes are available in the beta for zombie dogs? Maybe the circle of life dog just does random rune effects, but since only 1 (?) is available that's all it does ? =)
Thanks, guys. I bumped my post on the official Blizzard bug reporting forum to see if we could get a response about it being intended or not. So far, no luck. I'll let you guys know if I hear anything.
A little bit related... Does the zombie dog summoned from a runed Zombie Charger benefit from a runed Summon Zombie Dogs?
For example, if I use Final Gift on Zombie Dogs (get a health orb on death), will I get one from Zombie Charger runed with Explosive Beast?
A little bit related... Does the zombie dog summoned from a runed Zombie Charger benefit from a runed Summon Zombie Dogs?
For example, if I use Final Gift on Zombie Dogs (get a health orb on death), will I get one from Zombie Charger runed with Explosive Beast?
My guess would be no since that rune appears to fully replace the Zombie Charger and it's probably not an active pet. Someone with a private server that knows how to hack into the abilities to use them could tell you more, I suppose, otherwise we'll have to wait and see.
The way it's written, I expect in stead of a zombie charger that runs forward, you get a dog that runs forward then explodes and it's gone, kind of like how zombie charger returns to the earth at the end of his animation. Most likely just a separate skill entirely.
I was noticing this odd behavior as well, and had made a post in the beta bug forums a while back but it got little attention. But it's certainly something they are aware of i'm sure. Personally I think the rune still being activated should be removed. As it stands, this means that there is really little reason to have the summon skill in your build at all unless your going to be using sacrifice. Even then it's a bit meh since sacrifice is kinda crappy with the new rune system.
But the dogs not disappearing is certainly a bug, and will be fixed I'd imagine by release, maybe even by next patch. I'm not sure what could be causing it though, but I think it's probably going ot be tied in with whatever is causing the rune to carry over as well.
Another interesting thing that I noticed with this, is that the + pickup radius gear doesn't seem to be working right. In terms of just gold and health globes, you have to actually be moving for it to pick them up, which is lame, especially when that is then carried over to this passive. It's realy hard to tell while playing, so I may have to watch your video (I didn't since I had already noticed this quite a bit) but it seemed like while they would appear at times when standing still, 9/10 time it was only when I was moving that the dogs would be summoned. I tried to test this out, but it got a bit difficult as it was rare that one would spawn outside of big groups dying together.
It also seems like it doesn't incrase the range of the passive until you have more pickup radius than the passive's default range. Meaning that until you have more than 12 yards added to your pick up radius, it doesn't increase the radius for this skill to be used. This could be intended, but was a bit dissapointing to me, as I stacked a bunch on my gear in the beta but only got to like 13 yards, and with the already completely out of whack distance system of Diablo it was hard to tell if I was getting that 1 yard even, but I certainly wasn't getting 25 yards. I did test this as much as possible, and never got a dog to summon at further than 12-13 yards, again it's hard to really tell distance since the game doesn't calculate distances very well.
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I just realized the old passive Circle of Life acted very differently, the tooltip is incorrect if you look at the Wiki version. Circle of Life now has a 5% chance to summon a zombie dog if a monster dies within 12 yards of you.Mouseover tooltip is correct but the wiki page is wrong. Oops.While making my last Witch Doctor video, I noticed some odd behavior regarding the Circle of Life passive skill. I'll include the video so you guys can see it and I intend to put a post on the official forums to see if I can get a Blizzard Blue response about it.
---Observations---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVy7uG8ZzVE
If you don't have the summon zombie dog skill, but do have the circle of life passive then how many zombie dogs are you allowed to have out at once? I am guessing 3, no?
A QUADRILLION MAGIC FIND is worthless if you can't kill shit!
How many runes are available in the beta for zombie dogs? Maybe the circle of life dog just does random rune effects, but since only 1 (?) is available that's all it does ? =)
Nice read and cheers for the information.
For example, if I use Final Gift on Zombie Dogs (get a health orb on death), will I get one from Zombie Charger runed with Explosive Beast?
I was thinking about playing something like that: http://syl.comli.com/d3/?witch-doctor#VZRfSY!cbW!YcaYZb
My guess would be no since that rune appears to fully replace the Zombie Charger and it's probably not an active pet. Someone with a private server that knows how to hack into the abilities to use them could tell you more, I suppose, otherwise we'll have to wait and see.
The way it's written, I expect in stead of a zombie charger that runs forward, you get a dog that runs forward then explodes and it's gone, kind of like how zombie charger returns to the earth at the end of his animation. Most likely just a separate skill entirely.
Too bad, it could have been a nice combo
But the dogs not disappearing is certainly a bug, and will be fixed I'd imagine by release, maybe even by next patch. I'm not sure what could be causing it though, but I think it's probably going ot be tied in with whatever is causing the rune to carry over as well.
Another interesting thing that I noticed with this, is that the + pickup radius gear doesn't seem to be working right. In terms of just gold and health globes, you have to actually be moving for it to pick them up, which is lame, especially when that is then carried over to this passive. It's realy hard to tell while playing, so I may have to watch your video (I didn't since I had already noticed this quite a bit) but it seemed like while they would appear at times when standing still, 9/10 time it was only when I was moving that the dogs would be summoned. I tried to test this out, but it got a bit difficult as it was rare that one would spawn outside of big groups dying together.
It also seems like it doesn't incrase the range of the passive until you have more pickup radius than the passive's default range. Meaning that until you have more than 12 yards added to your pick up radius, it doesn't increase the radius for this skill to be used. This could be intended, but was a bit dissapointing to me, as I stacked a bunch on my gear in the beta but only got to like 13 yards, and with the already completely out of whack distance system of Diablo it was hard to tell if I was getting that 1 yard even, but I certainly wasn't getting 25 yards. I did test this as much as possible, and never got a dog to summon at further than 12-13 yards, again it's hard to really tell distance since the game doesn't calculate distances very well.
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the aspects of the game you want to know about? Check us out!