Tribal Rites

Tribal Rites

Tribal Rites is a cooldown passive that significantly reduces the cooldowns of a fixed set of skills, including Gargantuan, Fetish Army, Summon Zombie Dogs, Big Bad Voodoo, Hex, and Mass Confusion. At its heart it speeds up your summons and powerful cooldown spells so you can deploy them more often.

The slot earns its place wherever your build uses several of these skills at once and their cooldowns are a limiting factor. Pet builds benefit especially, since they can resummon their minions faster and play buffs like Big Bad Voodoo more frequently. If you run only one of the listed skills, the benefit is smaller and another passive may serve better. Combined with further cooldown reduction from your gear, though, you can keep these key spells almost permanently available, which makes Tribal Rites a strong enabler.

Which skills are affected – and which are not

The passive reduces the cooldowns of exactly the six named skills by 25%. Other Witch Doctor cooldowns, such as those of Spirit Walk, Horrify or Soul Harvest, remain unchanged. So check your bar carefully: if only one of the six skills is on it, the gain is much smaller than with several. Tribal Rites only unlocks at level 55.

Where 25% matters most

The six skills have very different cooldowns. The reduction hits hardest on the long ones: Fetish Army and Big Bad Voodoo are the longest waits on the list, followed by Gargantuan and Mass Confusion. For Hex and Summon Zombie Dogs the passive saves fewer seconds in absolute terms, but gets you replacements faster when dogs fall.

Working with items

Some items shorten the cooldowns of the same skills in their own way. Starmetal Kukri reduces the cooldown of Fetish Army and Big Bad Voodoo every time your Fetishes deal damage. Last Breath cuts the Mass Confusion cooldown by a fixed amount. The Short Man's Finger changes Gargantuan to summon three smaller Gargantuans – so a faster replacement means three minions at once. In setups like these, Tribal Rites works alongside those effects rather than replacing them.

by eRnstl