Zombie Bears

Zombie Bears is a rune effect in Zombie Charger, a Physical Realm Witch Doctor skill.

This rune effect summons a pack of zombie bears that charge forward for a short distance, stampeding over and through any enemies and dealing 235% poison damage to anything in the area. This is one of the Witch Doctor's more damaging attacks, and though it is short range, it hits across a quite wide space.

Skill Rune Effects

Refer to the Zombie Charger rune effects article for a thorough description of all five rune effects in this skill, including screenshots, videos, and strategy tips.

Name	Level	Description

<skill subcat="Physical realm spell" class="WitchDoctor">Zombie Charger</skill> <skill class="WitchDoctor" rune="Zombie Bears">Zombie Charger</skill>

Background

The bear effect was created by Julian Love and revealed at Blizzcon 2010, where it became something of a meme or running joke, where the Diablo III devs referred to it in interviews and panels with unbearable frequency. [1]

Slashdot: I was playing a Witch Doctor, and I used the spell that summons a zombie for you, and I got a rune that turned it into a swarm of bears. We got a real kick out of that. Julian Love: Yeah! Zombie Bears! It’s kind of funny, that’s one of the skills that came up – the way we work is that we sit down and throw a lot of crazy ideas out, and sometimes it’s a little scary, throwing an idea that you think “I’m not sure how the group will react. This is kind of wacky.” And I remember sitting in the group and they were saying, “What are we going to do? We need something else.” And I said, “I’m not even sure why this works, but I’m just going to say it: Zombie Bears!” And everybody went, “Yes!” And that was it. Look at the way to it feels to play that skill in the game – it just sounds fun, right?

Media

Two screenshots of the zombie bears. It's hard to get a good shot of them as they move quickly and have a skinless, bloody mess of an exterior. The bear-ness of them is much more visible in a video than a still image.

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Bears at work against Cydaea in Hell in this short video.

Development

Prior to the skill revision in February 2012, this rune effect was enabled by the Crimson Rune, granting the following effect with a level 7 runestone:

Zombie Bears

[e] Summons a stampede of three Zombie Bears, each dealing 112% weapon damage to enemies in the area.

Template:Skill navbox Necromancer primary

Template:Skill navbox Necromancer secondary

Template:Skill navbox Necromancer corpses

Template:Skill navbox Necromancer bloodandbone

Template:Skill navbox Necromancer reanimation

Template:Skill navbox Necromancer curses