Diablo 3: Changes to Witch Doctor and Pet Summoning Coming to Inferno Mode

Surviving in Inferno is a difficult feat for any class in Diablo III, but the Witch Doctor struggles more than any of the others because of the class's reliance on pets.

As it is, the pets that the Witch Doctor summons die instantly in Inferno mode and simply don't have enough health to last beyond a few hits. Needless to say, this isn't fun, so Blizzard is going to do something about it.

Posting on the official Battle.net forum, Blizzard community manager Lylirra made the following post to confirm the company's plans to change up the way summons work in Diablo III.

While the intent is for witch doctors to re-summon Zombie Dogs and Gargantuan fairly often, we agree that pets aren't living long enough in higher difficulty levels. Of course, the harder difficulties are supposed to be more challenging, but we don't think it's fun gameplay to cast Zombie Dogs, watch them die almost instantly, wait for the cooldown to reset, re-cast Zombie Dogs, watch them die almost instantly…etc. And this is happening even when players are wearing pretty reasonable gear.

We're looking into ways to improve witch doctor pet survivability at later levels, but we don't have any clear plans to share just yet. One thing we're considering, though, is having pets scale with your Vitality (which they currently do not do).

The pets will most likely have their health tied into the Witch Doctor's vitality stat and have their damage resists boosted to make them viable in Inferno mode.