T10 Speed Farm Witch Doctor [Season 5] [Patch 2.4]
The fastest T10 build for the witch doctor this season, this build takes advantage of Wildwood and the new mojo, Vile Hive, with Legacy of Nightmares. Consistent damage, along with near full rift clears, gives this build an advantage over Helltooth and Arachyr's builds with Manajuma's.
Skills
| Slot | Skill | Rune |
|---|---|---|
| Left Click | Spirit Walk | Severence |
| Right Click | Locust Swarm | Searing Locusts |
| 1 | Soul Harvest | Soul to Waste |
| 2 | Fetish Army | Tiki Torchers |
| 3 | Summon Zombie Dogs | Burning Dogs |
| 4 | Gargantuan | Humongoid |
| Passives | Grusome Feast Pierce the Veil Fierce Loyalty Midnight Feast Grave Injustice/Zombie Handler |
|
Paragon Points
| Slot | Stats |
|---|---|
| Core | Movement Speed Intelligence Max Mana Vitality |
| Offense | Crit Damage Crit Chance Attack Speed Cooldown Reduction |
| Defense | Armor % Life % All Resistances Life Regeneration |
| Utility | Area Damage Gold Find Resource Cost Reduction Life on Hit |
As with just about any build, max out your movement speed to 25% (including gear), then dump the rest of the points into intelligence. Don't bother with maximum mana because you shouldn't ever be casting your skills and only dump points into vitality if you have trouble surviving.
For offensive paragon points, critical hit damage and critical hit chance are fine; critical chance is applied on cast, so either all ticks from Locust Swarm will crit or none of them. Attack speed does nothing for this build and the same goes for cooldown.
All of the defense paragon points matter to some degree, especially when compared to other paragon categories. Armor is better than life, and life is better than resistances.
Since this build doesn't take advantage of cooldown reduction or resource cost reduction, a lot of paragon points are wasted; with the exception of area damage, all of the utility points are wasted.
Gear
| Slot | Item | Stats |
|---|---|---|
| Head | Quetzalcoatl Mask of Jeram |
Intelligence Crit Chance Socket Vitality |
| Shoulders | Corruption Pauldrons of the Skeleton King Homing Pads |
Intelligence Locust Swarm % Vitality |
| Torso | Aquila Cuirass Cindercoat |
3 Sockets Intelligence Locust Swarm % Vitality |
| Hands | Tasker and Theo Magefist |
Intelligence Crit Chance Crit Damage Area Damage Vitality |
| Legs | Hexing Pants of Mr. Yan | Intelligence Vitality Armor Life % |
| Feet | Fire Walkers | Intelligence Vitality Armor |
| Belt | Harrington Wasteguard Hwoj Wrap |
Intelligence Vitality Armor Life % |
| Bracers | Nemesis Bracers | Fire Damage Crit Chance Intelligence Vitality |
| Amulet | Hellfire Amulet | Socket Fire Damage Intelligence Crit Chance/Damage |
| Rings #1 | Litany of the Undaunted | Socket Damage Intelligence Crit Chance/Damage |
| Ring #2 | The Wailing Host | Socket Damage Intelligence Crit Chance/Damage |
| Weapon | In-geom Sun Keeper Starmetal Kukri |
Socket Weapon Damage Damage % Intelligence Vitality |
| Offhand | Vile Hive | Damage Range Intelligence Locust Swarm % Crit Chance Vitality |
This build has two variations:
- Pet Damage
- Fire Damage
The pet damage version with Aquila Cuirass and Tasker and Theo is a little better than the fire damage version with Cindercoat and Magefist (although the added fire damage helps Firewalkers out quite a bit).
With the way damage over time (DoT) abilities work in Diablo 3, you want to focus on consistent damage over critical hit damage. Damage and intelligence is slightly better than crit chance/damage (make sure to maintain the 10:1 ratio of damage:chance).
Kanai's Cube
| Slot | Item |
|---|---|
| Weapon | Wormwood |
| Armor | Mask of Jeram Quetzalcoatl |
| Jewelry | The Short Man's Finger |
With the nature of Legacy of Nightmares, you want to cube Wormwood and equip a one-handed weapon for the bonus damage and damage reduction. You could possibly run Vile Hive in the cube and use Wormwood, but remember that you are losing mobility (and damage) from In-geom and the Legacy of Nightmares set.
The armor slot is whatever helm you are not wearing. With a guarenteed max roll, it's a little easier to have Mask of Jeram in the cube but it does offer less flexability with other builds.
Gems
| Slot | Gem |
|---|---|
| Helm | Amethyst (Life %) |
| Torso | Topaz (Damage) |
| Pants | Topaz (Damage) |
| Weapon | Emerald (Crit Damage) |
| Jewelry | Bane of the Trapped Bane of the Powerful Zei's Stone of Vengeance |
Pretty standard speed farming gems. Bane of the Trapped is almost always an auto include into builds at this point (and works very well with Hwoj Wrap). Bane of the Poweful is better than Bane of the Stricken for farming and Zei's Stone of Vengeance is the standard ranged damage dealing gem.
Gameplay
Summon your zombie dogs and gargantuan then look for mobs. Vilewood will cast Locust Swarm on anything around you roughly once per second, so all you need to do is stand next to a mob until it triggers, then you can run away; Vile Hive recasts Locust Swarm on other mobs when things die, so just keep moving. Make sure you stay within 1-2 screen lengths of mobs or your damage over time will fall off (Locust Swarm lasts up to 8 seconds, so remember to not move too fast if you don't do enough damage).
Spirit Walk allows you to run through enemies and that allows Firewalkers to do significant damage. When In-geom triggers after killing an elite pack, take advantage of the fact that you have near permanent Spirit Walk. Move on to the next elite pack and let Vilewood do its job on the trash.
Single target damage is not this build's strong suit, so save your Fetish Army for yellow packs and the rift guardian. You want your Locust Swarm to kill trash with one cast from Wormwood (adjust the difficulty to accomodate), but a lot of your damage will come from your pets during long fights.
A side note about Fire Walkers... Fire Walkers is very strong with Legacy of Nightmares, just about any full ancient build with Legacy of Nightmares and Firewalkers can do T10.