I was just running some tests on attackspeed and dots, and the TL;DR is that Attack Speed is a useless stat for dots.
I was able to add 25% attack speed between a ring and an amulet without effecting any other stats. I had no other bonus attackspeed, but I was wielding a pretty fast ceremonial knife to start with. I did all my testing on the Zombies outside Tristram in hell.
My stats, off the character sheet:
Damage: 1273.63
Damage increased by intelligence: 870.00%
Damage increased by skills: 0.00%
attacks per second: 1.4
Critical Hit chance: 5.00%
Critical hit Damage: +50.00%
Equipping my two attackspeed items changed:
damage: 1592.04
Attacks per second: 1.75
First I checked locust swarm. I didn't record the order of ticks (which seemed random), only the number of ticks of different numbers.
Without attack speed I saw:
- 15 ticks, 11*200, 4*240, 1*40 = 3200 damage total
- 15 ticks, 5*240, 10 * 200 = 3200
- 16 ticks, 4 * 240, 1 * 40, 11 * 200 = 3200
With attack speed I got:
- 15 ticks, 5*240, 10 * 200 = 3200
- 15 ticks, 2 * 240, 1 * 120, 12 * 200 = 3000 (user error?)
- 16 ticks, 3 * 240, 1 * 80 = 3200
- 16 ticks, 1 * 240, 1 * 160 = 3200
Haunt was a little less clean. Most ticks were 213, but the increments were all still in multiples of 40, and it seemed like the extra 3 damage varies between the casts with different numbers of ticks.
Without attackspeed I got:
- 23 ticks, 5*255, 18 * 213 = 5109
- 24 ticks, 1 * 43, 4* 255, 19 * 213 = 5110
- 22 ticks, 10 * 255, 12* 213 = 5106
- 23 ticks, 5 * 255, 18*213 = 5109
- 23 ticks, 5 * 255, 18*213 = 5109
- 24 ticks, 4*255, 1*43, 19 * 213 = 5110
with attackspeed:
- 24 ticks, 1 * 83, 3 * 255 = 5108
- 24 ticks, 1 * 43, 4 * 255 = 43 + 1012 + 4047 = 5110
- 23 ticks, 5 * 255 = 5109
- 23 ticks, 5* 255 = 1265 + 3834 = 5109
- 23 ticks, 1* 128, 7 * 255, 15*213 = 5108
Result: I'm nearly sure I just miscounted that one locusts (counting two different things while kiting even slow moving mobs is harder than it looks :/), and there's what looks like rounding error with the numbers out of haunt, but we were looking for a 25% damage increase, and it's just not there.
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])
Best Answer
Witch Doctor Skill Coefficients
Primary Skills
Secondary Skills
Defensive Skills
Terror
Decay
Voodoo
Source: Witch Doctor Skill Proc Coefficients