Soul Harvest

Soul Harvest is a Witch Doctor skill enabled at level 14. This skill has changed a great deal during development, and is now a buff that boosts the Witch Doctor's spell damage when there are numerous enemies in the vicinity.

Background

Diablo III Active Skill [e]
Soul Harvest
Used by:	Witch Doctor
Enabled at:	Clvl 14
Skill Description
Gain X% increased spell damage per enemy within X feet for X seconds.
Type:	Buff
Resource Use:	Costs Mana
Skill Rune Effects
Alabaster rune:	Unknown
Crimson rune:	Unknown
Golden rune:	Unknown
Indigo rune:	Unknown
Obsidian rune:	Unknown

The Witch Doctor gains strength from the close proximity of his enemies.

Skill Effects

The following is a very quick list. See the Soul Harvest rune effects page for a more thorough summary of rune effects, or any of the individual rune pages for numbers, screenshots, blue quotes, and much more.

Skill		Effect
Soul Harvest (Level 14)		Feed on the life force of up to 5 nearby enemies within 15 yards. Gain 126 Attack for each affected enemy. This effect lasts 30 seconds. Cooldown: 15 seconds.
	Siphon	Gain 4258 Life for every affected enemy.
	Soul to Waste	Increases duration of the effect to 65 seconds.
	Languish	Reduces the movement speed of enemies by 60% for 11 seconds.
	Swallow Your Soul	Gain 1188 Mana for every affected enemy.
	Vengeful Spirit	Affected enemies also take 146 - 167 physical damage.

Note: Information is based on a level 60 character and rank 7 runestones.

Skill Design

This skill was initially a nova-type of attack, one that dealt damage and fed mana back to the Witch Doctor for everything it killed. That changed entirely during development, and the skill now buffs the Witch Doctor's spell damage.

Soul Harvest Video

A video of Soul Harvest, with the original, long-changed visual and effect, can be seen below, courtesy of the DiabloInc You Tube channel.

Synergies

• No synergies with any of the passive skills are yet known.

Skill Rune Effects

• No rune effects for Soul Harvest are known.

Development

Soul Harvest was first seen at WWI 2008 and BlizzCon 2008, where it was in the Spirit Skill Tree at Tier II. Originally, Soul Harvest was a low-damage, leeching, nova-like attack spell. Flux described using it:[1]

I seldom needed it, and found it to be less than effective as a killing weapon. It wasn’t that damaging, and wasn’t that cheap to cast either; so I had to make sure it was going to kill at least a few monsters to be cost effective.

The old version of this skill created a nova-like ring of blue smoke around the Witch Doctor. All targets within the ring were damaged, and if the damage was enough to kill them, their souls (white/blue ghosts) swirled into the air, then down into the Witch Doctor, where they added to his mana. The skill was just the same at BlizzCon 2009.

Soul Harvest was changed entirely for Blizzcon 2010, becoming a Tier 3 buffing sort of war cry. Unfortunately, there are no gameplay reports detailing any usage of this skill.

Skill tiers were removed for the July 2011 Press Event, and Soul Harvest became a level 14 skill.

Previous Versions

See the Witch Doctor skill archive for more details on previous versions of Soul Harvest and other Witch Doctor skills.

Media

You can find pictures in the Diablo III screenshot and picture gallery:

• Diablo III screenshots and pictures
• Soul Harvest specific gallery contents

References

• BlizzCon 2008 Witch Doctor Gameplay Report
• BlizzCon 2009 Full Witch Doctor Skill Trees and Stats
• BlizzCon 2010 Witch Doctor Hands-on Report
• Zediono's translation of JudgeHype's pre-beta report -- IncGamers 1st Aug 2011

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