Witch doctor Set suggestion for patch 2.7

Witch Doctor
1

Witch doctor had one of the fastest speed farming build - angry chicken, but like Jade, firebat its damage is a bit outdated. Nowadays, every witch doctor run with Manajuma’s Way. It is sad to see that witch doctor have so many unused skills.

Jade Harvester
Haunting Girdle: Haunt attack 50% faster deal 50% increased damage and releases 1 additional spirit.

Quetzalcoatl
Locust Swarm and Haunt now deal 200% of their damage in half of the normal duration

Sacred Harvester: Soul Harvest now stacks up to 15 times and last 100% longer

Lakumba’s Ornament: using a spirit realm skill reduce your damage taken by 60-80% for 30 seconds

I suggest that we break the interdependency of the scared harvester and Lakumba’s Ornament, so that they can be used to provide damage reduction separately. I also suggest changing Lakumba’s Ornament to be trigger by all spirit realm skill, so soul harvest is no longer needed in every build.

Zunimassa’s Haunt
(4) Set: You gain 50% damage reduction, each additional pet provide an addition of 1% damage reduction
(6) Set: Each active Fetish increases the damage of all minions and primary skills by 80% (18400% for 23 fetishes)

Spite: now also increase Gargantuan damage by 600%

Zunimassa got a lovely DOD build. The build has 2 problems. First, the damage bonus had to be trigger by secondary skills. This is very annoying to use. Second, its damage reduction is difficult to ramp up. One could die multiple times in a row before get back on their own feet.

Spirit of Arachyr
(6) Set: increase damage of creature skills by 20000% plus an additional 1% for every 50 life per Hit

Bakuli Jungle Wraps: Creature skills deal 500-600% increased damage against enemies affected by Locust Swarm or Piranhas

Rhen’ho Flayer: Plague of Toads now seek out enemies, can explode twice and deal 300-400% increased damage.

The Spider Queen’s Grasp: Corpse Spiders releases a web on impact that Slows enemies by 80%. Also increase damage of Corpse Spider by 500-600%.

Manajuma’s way (2) set: Hex also turn all your summons into angry chickens. Angry Chicken explosion damage is increased by 400% and slain enemies trigger an additional explosion. Angry Chicken now lasts 15 seconds and movement speed as a chicken is increased by an additional 100%.

Nothing special for firebat build, just need a higher damage multiplier for the current game. I had also include additional incentives for stacking life per hit.

Helltooth Harness
(2) Set: Zombie dog deal 300% increased damage. Each Zombie dog attack also generate 50 mana.
(4) Set: Gain 60% damage reduction for 4 seconds as long as your have an active zombie dog
(6) Set: Increase the damage of Zombie Dog, Acid Cloud, Zombie charger, Grasp of the Death, and Sacrifice by 10000%.

Grasp of the death - Death is life and Circle of life passive and now summon an addition Gargantuan Dog.

Uhkapian Serpent: 50% of all damage taken by the Witch Doctor is split evenly among Zombie Dogs. Each zombie dog passive also increases damage of zombie dog by 100%.

Split Tusk: Zombie dogs spilt acid (kiss of Death) when you do.

SuWong Diviner: Increases Acid Cloud Damage by 500–650%. Enemies damage by acid cloud deal 40% reduced damage.

Scrimshaw: Increases Zombie Charger Damage by 400–550%. Reduces the Mana cost of all skills by 50%.

Deathseer’s Cowl: Zombie Charger summons addition Explosive Beast based on your zombie dog limit.

Anessazi Edge: Sacrifice now cost 10% of your life but will no longer kill the zombie dog. Sacrifice deal 300% increased damage.

I love the effect of Carnevil. I always want to see more legendary items that do the same thing. Just imagine Zombie dog would split acid, it will be super fun.

Other defense/support option:
Things of the deep: Increases Gold and Health Pickup radius by 20 Yards. Swampland Attunement now also affect allies. You gain double effect from it.

3 Likes
2

Mundu SB damage is the benchmark now for all the WD sets. Mundu speed build is faster that Manajuma HT chicken. The combination of: Soul Harvest Soul to Waste, Horrify Stalker, Rechel’s Ring, BBVD Boogie Man + Fierce Loyalty + Krelms belt, In-geom + Spirit Walk Severance - is much faster.

And Mundu SB Manitou actually kills stuff as you move where as chicken doesn’t kill anything until you stop and let the Garg hit stuff.

Buffs will need to happen on the item scale but certain shared items can’t be buffed without overpowering Mundu SB. This means no buffs to Sacred Harvester.

Zunimassa and Helltooth have to be balanced with each other. You want Zuni to buff fetishes and Helltooth to buff dogs and Gargs. Otherwise if Zuni’s pet buff is higher than Helltooth , then no one will use Helltooth. Right now, it’s easier to buff the rings for dogs and gargs for more damage without affecting Zuni/HT balance.

2 Likes
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Helltooth should do something completely different then Zuni and Arachyr. I my suggestion, zuni will be the go to set for DOD and Gargantuan. Arachyr is for speed chicken and firebat. Helltooth is for zombie dog, sacrifice, zombie charger and acid cloud.

1 Like
4

Hi, any d3 planner on this build you could share? Thanks

5

If nothing else changes for WD at all, I hope at the very least Blizzard do something to address the ubiquity of these two items in almost every WD build. Obviously I hope they do a little more than that, but the dependency on Lakumba’s + Sacred Harvester really, really needs to be looked at.

Anything that would potentially make Sacrifice viable again automatically gets my tick of approval :joy: It’s such a fun skill, and it already has a bunch of supporting legendaries - all the raw ingredients are there. I hope Blizz kicks it up a notch.

Overall you’ve addressed just about every major problem I currently see with the WD sets (and boy, if lack of damage reduction isn’t a recurring theme!) Great post.

2 Likes
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Mundu set
belt: Goldwrap / Krelms (cube)
bracer: Nemesis
rings: Rechel’s Ring of Larceny / Avarice Band / Ring of Emptiness (cube)
ammie: Squirts Necklace (use Gizzard so buff doesn’t drop)
weapon: Ingeom / Barber (cube)
off-hand: Gazing Demise

gems: Gizzard / Trapped / Hoarder
all rubies in chest and legs for Armor
diamond in helm

Spirit Barrage - Manitou
Big Bad Voodoo Daddy - Boogie Man (for the pet for speed)
Spirit Walk - Severance (for speed)
Soul Harvest - Soul To Waste (for speed)
Horrify - Stalker (for speed)
Locust Swarm - Pestilence (to get Ring of Emptiness bonus to one shot elites)

Pierce the Veil
Grave Injustice
Fierce Loyalty (speed)
Rush of Essence

7

Thanks a lot for the build! Wondering if this or the DH GoD speed build performs better.

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I saw that this is the only one of your Improvement Threads that I did not respond to yet.

I like that the 4 piece bonus is kinda split between a static bonus and a bonus based on additional minions and I think that this should also be applied to the 6piece bonus.

What I never really liked about the Zinumassa set is that it is primarily a minion only set and that it does not buff your own attack - in the current version your own attacks just enable minions to deal more damage, and even your version just buffs primary skills.

So maybe the set could:

  • increase the damage of your primary skills by 10.000% + 40% for each Fetish/minion you hat
  • increase the damage of your minion skills by 10.000 % + 40% for each Fetish/minion you have
  • increase the damage of your other non-primary attack spells by e.g. 10.000% + 40% for each Fetish minion you have

Number are just examples for the purpose of illistration.

Maybe on top of that, there could be a legendary item that increases the damage enemies take from your minion for ~8 seconds after they have been hit by an attack skill of yours (aka the current Zunumassa 6piece bonus with lower numbers).

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One more thing in regards to Lotus Swarm:

I think it would make Lotus Swarm more useful for other build (like LoD builds) if it would also cause enemies that are effected by Lotus Swarm to take ~10-15% more damage from your other attacks (and maybe minions).

That would indirectly buff other skills as well and therefore it might see more use in other builds as well.

Then Locust Swarm also could be placed into the Decay Skill Category and Spirit Barrage into the Secondary Skill Category, since that just would make more sense for these skills to be there.

1 Like
9

I think if they change Lakumba’s, it should just go to 8% instead of the 6%. WD lacks in this department.

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Please don’t, it would mean that we still need to use Lakumba’s and sacred harvester.

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I don’t mind the bracers and that’s their damage reduction item. Don’t have a ring, my voo’s variant doesn’t use harvester either.

12

In your summary topic in the General Forum you talk about diversity but then you say stuff like this and your 6 piece Zuni suggestion is based on 1 rune of a skill…
This is killing diversity!

By the way, this is not an attack, I like your creativty and a lot of your suggestions.
I am currently making a document with some revamps for our beloved WD and will post it later. But some I already have suggested in earlier posts.

1 Like
13

looking forward to your post.

For the problem of locking into 1 rune, I think we can make it so that all fetish summon same amount of follower.

14

I never see anyone else running with Manajuma. And when I tried it out, the damage was extremely underwhelming, even with suggested set items and combos. T16 in particular.

I’m driven away from using it because of such a case.

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One way to buff Manajuma is to make it also buff the damage of locust swarm, that way the angry chicken build can run around and kill trash with locust swarm and only use chicken explosion on elite.

Of course, we can also do something crazy like hex also turn all your summons into angry chicken.

16

I like the second one. All summons become angry chickens? Man, that’d fit in well with Zunimassa and Helltooth sets.

1 Like
17

Hex actually got a lot of potential. Imagine if hex would also turn Plague of Toads into Toad of Hugeness, or corpse spiders into spider queens.

I would also like to see Bogadile rune of Piranhas do something useful. Perhaps, we can make Bogadile kill enemies below 15% life.

I think we can make Spirit of Arachyr into a hex and creature skills interaction set.

1 Like
18

I had a thought. How about converting Manajuma’s into a regular legendary pairing instead of a set? That’d also make it much more viable for Legacy of Nightmares/Dreams builds too, then also split the power between the two. Then the effects can be split and cubed.

One contains the increased damage and the other contains the speed, with both increasing the duration of Hex by 7.5 seconds each.

1 Like
19

It is a cool idea. I think the mojo should give the duration and movement speed. While the knife give damage and on death explosion.

20

Bring back the damage from the Yeram mask and the cutthroat gem, or change the damage from the set from 20,000% to 17000%, or the damage from the Yeram mask to 150%, the build is not as pleasant and not as smooth as it was with the Yeram and the cutthroat. The damage is not smooth, jerky. And before, when there was a Yeram and a thug, everything was smooth and clear.