Side note: none of this is/was my idea, it's information I found and used, and decided to post a small guide on it.

The Zoo Doctor

1. Main Skill
2. Pet Information
3. Equipment
4. Secondary Skills
5. Example Builds
6. FAQ


1.Main Skill:

The Main Skills of Zoo Doctor is:
Summon Zombie Dogs: Burning Dogs
Gargantuan: Big Stinker
Fierce Loyalty

Now that the main skills are known, I will know explain how to keep them alive.

2.Pet information:

Since we are using pets, I bet you are wondering," what stats can the pets use?"
I'll show you.

Pet Health
Dog: ~11000
Gargantuan: ~31500

These stats do not change (these stats are the lvl 60 stats)

Strength: Yes (through increasing armor)
Dexterity: Yes (through increasing dodge)
Intelligence: Yes (through increasing resistances)
Vitality: No
Block: No (but you want to use shield anyway for the extra armor that pets do benefit from)
Dodge: Yes
Armor: Yes
All Resistance: Yes
Missile Damage Reduction: Untested
Melee Damage Reduction: No


Offensive Stats
Intelligence: Yes (through increasing your damage)
Attack Speed: Yes (increases pet damage)
Critical Hit Chance: Yes (increases pet crit chance)
Critical Hit Damage: No
Thorns: Yes (Must take Fierce Loyalty Skill)
Bleed Chance: Yes, through their auras, but not their melee attacks. Each separate Bleed also stacks and does not overwrite one another.

So now you know how important what stats are, you have a better idea on how to get your gear.
and that is our third part of this tiny guide.

3.Equipment:

The Priority of a Zoo Doctor are slightly different then one of another WD or any other char.

Defensive Stat Priority
1. Stun/Freeze/Fear/Knock Back
2a. Armor/Strength
2b. Resist All
3. Life Regeneration (Must take Fierce Loyalty Passive)
4. Intelligence
5. Vitality
?
7. Dex (for dodge)

The Stun/Freeze/Fear/Knock Back bit is to stop monsters cold in their tracks, that is why we are using Big Stinker and Burning Dogs. They have DoT in an aura effect, each tick has a chance to Stun/Freeze/Fear/Knock Back.
This makes one very intresting setup.

Offensive Stat Priority
Intelligence
Bleed

As stated in the prev. section, each tick has a chance to tick the blood effect, and the good part is it can stack.
It's not uncomon to freeze a stack of monsters with under 10% Freeze, Bleed can go up to 35%.
yay for us.

Now we used the Fierce Loyalty passieve for the health regen, but not everything goes to the pets.

Life Regeneration: Yes
Thorns: Yes (Only for Zombie Dogs. Must use Leeching Beasts. Thorns count as THEIR damage. Be warned that the amount healed from Leeching Beasts will be reduced from 50% to 10% in Inferno mode.)
Life Steal: No (needs more testing)
Life On hit: No (needs more testing)
Life Per kill: No (needs more testing)

With this we know what to look out for in the AH.
But not all the CC can be found on all items (sadly)
so here is a list for you folks:

CCs From Gear
Amulet - Chance to Blind on Hit
Belt - Chance to Freeze on Hit
Boots - Chance to Immobilize on Hit
Bracers - Chance to Knockback on Hit
Gloves - Chance to Stun on Hit
Helm - Chance to Fear on Hit
Pants - Chance to Slow on Hit
Shoulders - Chance to Chill on Hit
Weapon - Bleed Chance + all of the above CCs
Off-Hand - Bleed Chance + all of the above CCs

4.Secondary Skills:

Survival for your pets is very important, since you can only cast them every 2 minutes.
So I bet you wonder what skills help:

From Abilities
Firebats + Vampire Bats Rune: No
Haunt + Consuming Spirit: No
Spirit Barrage + Phlebotomize: No
Spirit Walk + Healing Journey: Yes

From Passive Skills
Blood Ritual Skill: Yes

from this we can see all %life heals your pets, but life leech kind of attacks do not.

So the first (must have) skill is
Spirit Walk + Healing Journey

Other good options are:
Big Bad Voodoo + Ghost Trance
Horrify + Frightening Aspect
Hex + Hedge Magic

These are all decent defensive abilities, everything heals. Besides Horrify which doubles your Defence for a couple of seconds, very useful.

Now for offensive abilities we want more DoT moves to improve the CC capability.
Some good moves are:
Firebomb + Fire Pit Rune
Corpse Spiders + Spider Queen Rune
Plague of Toads + Rain of Toads
Locus Swarm + Any
Acid Raid + Slow Burn

and finally the passieve skills:
Pierce the Viel
Jungle Fortitude
Blood Ritual
Bad Medicine

5.Example Builds:

Since this is alot of information I'll post 3 orso builds that are used frequently.

The "Standard" build
Firebomb + Fire Pit Rune
Locus Swarm + Cloud of Insect

Horrify + Frightening Aspect
Spirit Walk + Healing Journey
Summon Zombie Dog + Burning Dogs
Gargantuan + Big Stinker

Fierce Loyalty
Zombie Handler
Jungle Fortitude

LS to start a 10 second DoT move, then throw Fire Pits everywhere, Spirit walk when pets need healing and Horrify when your in need of the extra defence, or getting swarmed.

This build was used by
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/6008720970
This guy, he managed to solo Diablo.
Proof that this build is indeed manageble.

The "High Life" Build
Firebomb + Fire Pit Rune
Acid Raid + Slow Burn

Horrify + Frightening Aspect
Spirit Walk + Healing Journey
Summon Zombie Dog + Burning Dogs
Gargantuan + Big Stinker

Fierce Loyalty
Blood ritual
Jungle Fortitude

This build is not THAT different, but if you get high life (let's say 60K), that's 600 life regen for free + 4200 life/sec under Spirit Walk.
The more HP you have the more it rises. Stack this with your own life regen gear, and your pets will never die.

The "More Pets" Build
Corpse Spider + Spider Queen
Plague of Toads + Rain of Toads

Summon Zombie Dog + Burning Dogs
Gargantuan + Big Stinker
Hex + Hedge Magic
Grasp Of The Death + Any

Fierce Loyalty
Vision Quest
Fetish Sycophants

At the start of a battle, summon the spider queen, make sure VQ is always active after this.
Now the big deal with Plague of Toads is, that it get's a hidden 50% IAS bonus.
So for procing CC and for getting more Fetishes, this is ideal.

The only con of this build (imo) is that you have to resummon your pets (so if they die during those 2 min, you have to wait)
It is not uncommon to be running around with atleast 5+ Fetish.

6.FAQ:

Q: Does this build work at the end of Inferno?

A: As posted in the "standard" build, yes it is.
This guy here :http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/6008720970
finished Inferno using only the pet build.

Q: If a monk uses the evasion mantra, does your pets gain twice the bonus?

A: I can neither deny it nor confirm it. This should be tested.
But my common sense is telling me yes, it does (your base stats go up + they get the bonus, still testing is needed)

Q: What stats are needed at ______ area?
Act 1:
Damage: 10,000
Armor: 3200
Dodge: 19%
Resistances: 550
Life: 15,000
Life Regen: 500
11% combined chance for Stun and Freeze

Act 2:
Damage: 10,000
Bleed: 33.6% for 1471-2618 damage
Armor: 6500
Dodge: 22%
Resistances: 650
Life: 20,000
Life Regen: 1500
15.5% combined chance for Stun, Freeze, Fear, Knockback

at later levels, it's life and learn I guess.
You can check out the post about the dude who defeated Inferno Diablo.
He posted his stats of A3 and A4 in there, but those aren't the minimum ... probably.

Thank you for reading, have a nice day
if anyone got any more questions, or has something to add.
You go ahead and post.

Also those of you who are using pets as main skills, feel free to discuss.

This post was edited by The_Chao_Master on Jul 26 2012 02:00pm

looks good m8!


about the pet life / wd life

Pet Health
Dog: ~11000
Gargantuan: ~31500

Fetish?:
11000/9*20= 24400
31500/25*20= 25200
~25000



for CC-tanker, that use pets for CC
and rain of toads for LoH+CC
it can be nice if monsters not fight summons, just your WD, also allow lower repl life for summons i think!

This post was edited by Tommyvv on Jul 27 2012 09:09am

I have been trying to build one of these guys and here is my current set up



I have a 17.7% chance of either freeze/kb/stun/fear, with my 1300 regen my summons stay alive for a nice duration. Though far from invincible, they stay alive long enough. I use a different strategy for my WD by using the Gruesome Feast Passive and it's because I really rely on the extra mana it gives you. The Extra DPS can be really nice increase when combined with the Soul Harvest. For mana regen I also use spirit walk with Honored Guest. I pretty much just try to keep a constant flow of things with my summons. Basically it's keep the Gargantuan and Dogs alive for 45 seconds, and unleash fetish army while I constantly spam Toads.

The whole time basically people are frozen or stunned or running away in fear. It's a very nice setup, I am only in the beginning stages of Act 3 solo as of now, but I feel with more life regen (2000-2500) and a bigger globe radius with in the end switching out (assuming you have higher mana regen) Spirit Walk with Grasp of the Dead and the rune that makes enemys drop health globes in the radius if they die will make act 3 a breeze

That is my thoughts and I hope this helps anyone looking to try to remake a necromancer in D3

This post was edited by lordzhangfei on Jul 29 2012 02:18am

I have been trying to build one of these guys and here is my current set up



I have a 17.7% chance of either freeze/kb/stun/fear with a 33.2% chance to cause bleed for 404-1109 damage over 5 seconds (This stacks like crazy with 4 burning dogs), with my 1300 regen my summons stay alive for a nice duration. Though far from invincible, they stay alive long enough. I use a different strategy for my WD by using the Gruesome Feast Passive and it's because I really rely on the extra mana it gives you. The Extra DPS can be really nice increase when combined with the Soul Harvest. For mana regen I also use spirit walk with Honored Guest. I pretty much just try to keep a constant flow of things with my summons. Basically it's keep the Gargantuan and Dogs alive for 45 seconds, and unleash fetish army while I constantly spam Toads.

The whole time basically people are frozen or stunned or running away in fear. It's a very nice setup, I am only in the beginning stages of Act 3 solo as of now, but I feel with more life regen (2000-2500) and a bigger globe radius with in the end switching out (assuming you have higher mana regen) Spirit Walk with Grasp of the Dead and the rune that makes enemys drop health globes in the radius if they die.

That is my thoughts and I hope this helps anyone looking to try to remake a necromancer in D3


SORRY FOR DOUBLE POST, NOT SURE HOW THAT HAPPENED

This post was edited by lordzhangfei on Jul 29 2012 02:31am

not a problem, I'm happy you posted.

Last night I finally hitted 60 (can only play 1-2 days a week so :S)
I'll be posting my stats soon too.

atm I have
384 all res
653 life regen
6% freeze, 4.4% stun 4.2% blind
but only 9K dps

upgrading my weapon soon, I'll lose 2% freeze, but gain 34% 1K+ bleed.
and upgrading my belt from 2.2 to 4.3 freeze. (so the freeze ends up the same)

atleast, I hope so

its posible to spam rain of toads whitout vision quest, if 14mana regen weapon and 11 mana regen helmet, and not overdo your aps

the manitour does sutch a great LoH/CC-effects
i beleave its 50%per tick, and i beleave aps of tick = 2*aps only vs 1 target
and it works like always!

you should try it ou!

I'm gonna throw this out there but "Invulnerable minions elites" Are sooooo hard with this build............

I have to switch to bears/VQ

This post was edited by lordzhangfei on Jul 29 2012 06:04am

I'm looking forward to the 1.0.4 Witch Doctor! It's really fun to play WD already.
Just one little thing about your guide: Both pets have a cooldown of only one minute and you can reduce it to 50 seconds with Voodoo Masks I believe.

If they make the summons stronger or have more life, this build maxed out would be SO Brutal, i'm about to get my freeze/kb/stun/chill/imobilize up to 25% here soon hopefully and if I could just get that 500+ life regen Zunimassas chest, I would be golden

So what do you think about bleed damage? I found a nice weapon with 33.3% chance to bleed for 500-1500 damage.
...it does not work as good as expected, tried those in the Festering Woods.

Considering that 2x 30% for ~1500 bleed dmg would be about the highest amout possible, it probably won't do any great harm on higher acts...
(Does anyone know how bleeding effects add? I think both bleeding chances are rolled separately, am I wrong?)