Diablo – What determines the health of Witch Doctor minions

diablo-3diablo-3-witch-doctor

I've seen comments in the forums that minions like the Zombie Dogs will scale with gear, allowing them to be competitive.

I certainly hope this is the case, however I was not able to find any details of how this scaling would work.

Do we know what influences WD minions health, aside from the obvious effect of skills such as Zombie Handler?

Best Answer

This has been completely changed for the 1.04 patch on 8/21/2012.

For Zombie Dogs:

  • They get a base amount based on the level of the witch doctor (10,000 for level 60)

  • They get an additional 35% of the witch doctor's health

  • They have an inherent effect that limits the max damage they can take in a single hit to 10,000 * the % of damage that is not prevented by the witch doctor's armor and resistance

For Gargantuan:

  • Gets a base amount based on the level of the witch doctor (exact value is unknown)

  • Gets an additional 35% of the witch doctor's health

  • At level 60, gets an additional 50% of the witch doctor's health (for a total of 85%?)

  • Has the same max damage effect as mentioned for Zombie Dogs

Here is an example of the new system from Blizzard

Let's set up an example using a level 60 witch doctor. Let’s say this witch doctor has 32,000 Life, 45% mitigation from Armor, and 30% mitigation from Resistances. (For clarity, this means that 55% of incoming damage gets past the player’s Armor, and 70% of the incoming damage gets past Resistances.)

  • The base Life of a level 60 Zombie Dog is 10,000 Life
  • With scaling, each Zombie Dog will have 21,200 Life (10,000 [base] + 32,000 * 35% [scaling])
  • The maximum damage the Zombie Dog can take in a single hit will be 3850 Life (10,000 [base] * 55% [damage not mitigated by armor] * 70% [damage not mitigated by Resistances])
  • Ignoring passive Life regeneration, this means each Zombie Dog will always be able to take at least 5.5 hits (21,200 [Life] / 3850 [damage])