How to stay alive with Spirit Barrage build?

Exploring the new Spirit Barrage build, and while it packs a punch I find myself dying alot. I just now was able to clear GR75, I have the damage to go higher but Im not a fan of dying 15 times in a GR. I realize Im still missing bracers and helm in the cube, but what should I be doing to stay alive longer?

You need Lakumbas wrist, sacred harvester weapon, the set and other defensive items. Witch Doctor is squishy

I have the full set and the sacred harvester in the cube. Only things Im missing are the bracers and mask of jeram.

The biggest misunderstanding with Spirit Barrage is seeing people at P300 gear like players at P1000. It doesn’t work because you don’t have 700 paragon worth of paragon points keeping you alive.

1. Proper itemization

  • Don’t use Crimson until you have over 50% cooldown. Otherwise you get more survivability running - Flavor of time, Unity, RoE, belt of transcendence.
  • You really need Lakumba bracers - they are required for survivability
  • You really need the Mask of Jeram for the damage
  • All your shards should being going to get any Jeram (to cube) and any Lakumba’s (to wear no matter how bad)
  • Vitality on gear is more important than mana regen since the extra damage is additive.

2. Tank first then increase damage later

The base set has plenty of DPS by default if you don’t die so quit trying to stack more DPS. Dead DPS = zero DPS.

  • The right gems - All Rubies to stack armor for tankiness
  • Emerald in you weapon
  • Horrify Frightening Aspect instead of BBV
  • SB Phlebotimize instead of Manitou
  • Get rid of creeping death and add Swampland attunement .
  • In paragon, max your movement speed first, put all other points to vitality until you get to 700K life (at low paragon, your dps is coming from Trapped and Enforcer, not Intelligence paragon points)

3. Adding more DPS - once you have more paragon

  • Bane of the Trapped, Enforcer, Bane of the Stricken - those gems should be at the same level you’re trying to clear. So if you’re trying to clear GR75, then your gems should be level 75.

  • You can swap out Swampland Attunement for Confidence Ritual

  • You can swap out Wormwood in your Cube for CoE

Basically, you can’t gear at P300 the same way you gear at P800 without dying a lot.

A tanky build at P800 without an ancient weapon and around 8000 Intelligence can do GR114-115. With an ancient weapon and swapping out tank skills and gear for dps, I’ve gone as far as 118 with 8500 Intelligence.

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The bracers as a huge amount of damage reduction. It’s 60% DR. It’s probably a good idea to wear both Aquila and unity for extra damage reduction

Along with esoteric legendary gem and the physical%DR one as well. All this together should help you survive

I’m not even p700 with shabby gears and since ~p600 I can comfortably speed farm gr80 in ~3 mins - goods times close to 2 mins, bad time still way under 4 min. There was only one time I got a really aggressive map I pretty much died constantly and finished it in 5 to 6 mins :joy:

I can put up a video later showing this.

Apart from the usual stuff about equiping unity, lakumba etc., do take note of these as well:

  1. socket str/dex gems in your chest and pants.
  2. don’t underestimate the extra attacks blocked by your fetishes from transcendence belt. They make a HUGE difference.
  3. keep moving/reposition yourself unless you know what you are doing staying still.
  4. Try fitting in wormwood in yourcube. It promotes moving around and you can have locust swarm cloud if insects instead of pestilence, a toughness passive instead of creeping death.
  5. For speed farming rely as much on manitou i.e. non-pet damage as possible because phatasms, or pet damage, require at least four casting for immediate damage. that’s more time to deal damage, a lot of standing still and more chance for dying.
  6. For pushing, ignore manitou and only rely on phatasms i.e. pet damage. Swap out any non-essential speed options (including wormwood) for your best damage and defense options, Your speed will take a great hit but hey, it’s just pushing.
  7. This playtyle does require a bit of practice but it’s in no way finichy like a certain old necro build meaning once you get the hang of it you will be fine :wink:

Using the set, Lakumbas/Sacred Harvester with Soul Harvest and Unity combo, I can do GR100 without taking much damage.

I’m only at p750 or so, with mainly non-ancient gear, other than weapons.

EDIT: I also use the defensive BBV rune.

Thanks all! Esp ockhamdesign, I followed some of your suggested changes and was able to do 87 last night. I could probably do 90 but was getting sleepy. I still didnt find the bracers or mask of jeram yet though. I imagine I can probably go much higher when I get them.

WD is squishy (not as much as necro but squishier than wiz). Having Mundunugu’s set now, you don’t need to worry about DPS for a long time (for starting new WD’s), all you need is to focus on your survival.

This is tied to your 4pc bonus and Spirit Walk skill, your Soul Harvest + Lakumba & Sacred Harvester, Horrify (50% armor rune), good awareness and movement / positioning.

There are couple versions of Mundu’s but I’d highly recommend belt of transcendence for low paragon / inexperienced WD’s, full str / dex gems in gear for more armor, reroll armor on all armor pieces and % life - except gloves.

You don’t need 15% more dmg on SB at this paragon, you want the 15% more hp or armor instead. Use Passives that increase your toughness and / or fail-safe (spirit vessel).

Be above 700k HP (gear + paragon). Don’t fight bad affixes if you are not sure you can do it, leaving 1 pack of elites / champ is not the end of the world (especially in HC).

If you do want to play HC, I’d highly recommend starting a wizard then transition to a WD, hydra TV (or LoD) is very very tanky, has super dps for T16 speeds / gem leveling in GR, bounties (you don’t need DW+ES for under GR100), is more casual / beginner friendly (teleport with reset CD if you get hit --> put in a bad spot, unlike fixed 2-3s SWalk with long CD even at high CDR - you can die in higher content in a second in a bad spot).

After you learn how and when to use your abilities and get a gauge of your skill at piloting the doc, you can start transitioning into pushing GR, adjusting gear as you gain paragon, augments, upgrades etc.

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Amazing reply. I appreciate the info also.

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I did GR118 With P900~

Not the best gear, not the worst, but I am happy.

It may also be how I play too. I guess I dont know the proper rotation of skills either. I usually start a rift by hitting Spirit Barrage 3 times, Big Bad Voodoo, hit spirit walk for the defensive buff and run into a pack, then hit Soul Harvest try to to get as many stacks as I can. Then I generally spam Spirit Barrage to kill, Soul Harvest and BBV to keep them going. When facing elites I will hit Piranahs or Locust swarm and then spam Spirit Barrage. Is this generally correct or am I doing it wrong?

I am not using BBV yet, am running Horrify (Frightening Aspect) because am playing HC and am not comfortable with my toughness to run the BBV.

What I do is when I start a rift, cast 3 phantasms, move forward, when I hear / see enemies, I spirit walk, move a bit around to see what’s in vicinity, then horrify and pull most mobs into piranhdo for a 10 stack harvest and start nuking to reset my CD’s, and pretty much always have horrify up when moving, and also in between piranhdo’s / SW on champion / elites to fear them.

I went split between CDR and RCR with Captain Crimson so that I have close to 50% DR from 2pc, CDR not so important solo HC as you get reduction from kills, ~40% is enough (in groups always prio CDR as you get defensive buffs from barb & monk), so am ~1B toughness at 700ish paragon (more when moving because of traveler’s).

Being HC I need to be extra careful and avoid getting proc’d (spirit vessel), so it’s a juggle between defense and DPS.

I don’t spam SB all the time, pretty much I like to let it accumulate for bigger explosions (obviously depends on what am fighting).

I think you meant RCR for Crimson not CDR as RCR gives you DR, CDR gives you damage, am sure was just a typo :slight_smile:

I’m sitting at 50% RCR and 40% CDR for HC, that’s like a Unity I don’t have to cube or wear, cooldown ain’t that important for solo, you reset your CD’s anytime you kill stuff, and even when pushing trash will die in one rotation, it will be elites / champions that survive, hence why is always good to drag them towards other mobs to have a constant resupply of resets.

But most important IMHO is to learn to move constantly and make a habit of paying attention to every elite / champ pack affixes before engaging, to know if you are facing dangerous affixes combos, like arcane + nightmarish or black hole (you can and will die if you get feared with no CC reduction through 4 beams hitting you along with mobs), always move around the density you gather, you don’t need to go in middle of them to pop Soul Harvest you can do it from outside it has quite a large radius.

<3

50% RCR is almost impossible to get to without max RCR on weapon, shoulder, glove and rings.

On gloves, shoulders and with the Crimson set your RCR is around 30%.

When you run a tanky build, your rings are : RoE , Unity and CoE.

When you run Crimson, you have to replace one of those rings with the RRoG.

The ring you replace is usually CoE which is 200% damage for 4 second for 1 of 4 elements. This averages to 50% damage.

Crimson at 50% CDR makes up for the the loss of CoE.

Actually am close to 56% RCR and 43.75% CDR. I rolled RCR on offhand and weapon yes (weapon already had 7% dmg increase so no point to reroll for 3% more which is abysmall), shoulders have both RCR and CDR. It is not impossible, shoulders can come with 1 (with yellow dot) RCR or CDR so you just roll the other one at expense of vit or int which you can easy make up with paragon + enchant.

CoE is for groups pretty much. I run RorG in cube, and wear Emptiness & Compass Rose for solo play. For group pushing (not pugs!!!) I will drop travelers and use CoE + Emptiness with RoRG cubed (don’t need the 50% from travelers when moving, I get plenty of extra DR from barb and monk buffs) if it makes sense :slight_smile:

Well am close to that 50% CDR, but am not aiming for it for solo, for grouping ofc it’s different and I have a 2nd set focused on CDR instead of RcR for aforementioned reasons.

Also for speeds / bounties am using gizzard gem instead of stricken (no point to use this one) the 200k+ shield and 140k hp regen / sec makes sure I don’t take any damage 99% of times when speeding sub 91 GR or doing bounties or nephalem rifts (solo or in groups).

Once more, am playing Hardcore, so things are a bit different (for example I will aug at least 3 pieces with str or dex instead of intelligence so I can drop horrify for BBV as I start pushing). I just need to make sure nothing can one shot me to proc my spirit vessel, as long as I can fulfill this scope, everything is fine :wink:

Yeah, I’m thinking you definitely want to focus on DR reduction early. Reminds me a lot of gearing a CL Necro or Zuni DoD to be honest. Lakumba’s, Endless Walk or Unity, Rubies/ Emeralds in gear, Sacred Harvester, etc. I’ve even thought about using defensive gems and I’m currently running Zombie Dogs w/ Leeching Beast instead of Locust Swarm.

Don’t even think Crimson’s is worth it until you get some paragon, ancients, augments etc.

I started with Crimson as soon as I hit lvl 70 on WD. Not saying that going Belt of Transcendence route is wrong, I just did not have the belt and crafting the 2 pieces crimson was the obvious choice to get something going (as you have to spend shards for offhand, find ring of emptiness, find 2 ceremonial daggers, find bracers, find mask of jeram - which I have yet to find).

Before I got 5 pieces of Munudunugu’s I was running LoD gem with random legendaries (cubed barber and that’s about it) with dogs leeching beast and the mojo that DR 30% to dogs. But you just have to use what you got - especially in HC, if you can live, you can kill, get your basic items (affixes / rolls unimportant at this stage), then once you have a working setup, start farming and upgrading / rerolling attributes on gear etc.

I was like 400 paragon (got my wiz to 70 as 1st HC seasonal because I knew she would be fine with LoD up to T9 and once she got TV set pieces can steamroll T16 for bounties & nephalem and level some gems to 60’s). Then WD took over, and sort of speedrunning up to GR 95 (and did not even had a socket in MH weapon until an hour ago when one consumable dropped, had like 170% CHD with 35% ChC, ~500k sheet dmg).

As long as you know what is important to your build (different for softcore vs hardcore) and you strengthen your priorities (be it DR or crit or cdamage or RCR or CDR or combo of all of above) you can do with what you have at hand until you find upgrades (not ancients / primals, just normal items with better affixes / rolls than what you have).

Think about it for a second, if you don’t luck out finding Belt of Transcendence early in your 70’s, the chances to get one from upgrading yellow belts is rather slim (I spent over 20k shards trying to find my 1st Lacumba at Kadala for reference) and you need so much more than that. Both Sacred Harvester and Barber are vital to the build, having offhand (Demise) also helps a ton (but can do w/o one for starting up, I’d prio Barber most followed by Sacred Harvester).

Then you need Traveler’s - it will drop in time and it will have bad affixes / rolls but it’s still better than anything else when you get a set. Lakumba’s mandatory. Then you need RoRG which means doing a lot of Act I bounties until you luck out to get one (easier to do / get on softcore, so few peeps do bounties from T6-T16 on HC Europe).

Just to put it in perspective, my WD with 1/3 of my Wizard Sheet dps (500k vs 1.5m) no socket in weap, cleared 5 GR higher than my TV Hydra wiz could (and she has all the gear she needs, but unlucky with rings for IAS to reach next APS BP for frost hydra), but wiz was so much more safe (huge shield, huge DR, teleport on demand, mobs frozen periodically).

I’ve been doing testing between my seasonal P900 vs my non-seasonal P3500, trying to figure out the balance between DPS and tankiness.

Even with high paragon, that switch from 50% damage reduction with unity to 30% reduction with Crimson is very noticeable, especially with ranged damage. With unity I feel fairly tanky – I can’t stand in affixes at but I do have enough time to move through affixes at GR125+.

Life on Hit on bracers is a must have when I’m running with Manitou instead of Phlebotomize.

At 18K Int (combo of paragon points, gear and a few augments) - I don’t get one-shot from Perdition or Blighter at GR128. I’m running at about 1.3M health.

In non-season, not having enough life is the issue - I don’t have enough paragon points to get to 800K health even if I dump all my paragon points into vitality. 800K is about where I need to be to avoid one-shots at GR116+.

You don’t need unity, you can get unity like with Crimson’s for solo as you really don’t need that much CDR (like an AOV sadder or TR monk would need) because of our passive that reduces CD’s by 1s for every enemy that dies within 20 yards.

For pushing everyone I saw on ladder and vids use Phlebotomize instead of Manitou, Manitou is more for speeds where it actually kills stuff while you zip-zap around and pops breakables :slight_smile:

Keep in mind if you run Swamp Attunement or w/e it’s called the passive that increases your resistances x nr. of enemies, it doesn’t do much at all vs RG that don’t spawn adds, I prefer to run Jungle Fortitude myself because it’s same toughness overall through the rift and helps me estimate my tankiness better (playing HC so more important).

With my setup I’m at 94.78% dmg reduction according to D3charplanner (this w/o Traveler’s 50% while moving, just standing still) and 97.39% when moving (at max stacks of endless walk). For HC that’s pretty darn good. And from here on I am only increasing DPS via paragon / augs, better items in each slot (eventually ancients, better rolled affixes etc).

Only 720k life, might add more later for sure, but probably not more than 100-130k tops.

Hope this helps ^^