Just got your WD to Fresh Level 70 Witch Doctor? Now what? Your goal is to get your FREE SET ASAP. In this guide, you’ll learn exactly what to do for each step, ultimately leading to the end-game as your Fresh 70 Witch Doctor.
In Season 15, the Witch Doctor free set is: Helltooth Harness.
Fresh 70 Witch Doctor: Free set available! | No free set!
Getting the Free Set | Free Set 70 | Gaining Power | Bridging to the End-game
WD Leveling Guide | D3 Guide Directory
Fresh 70 Witch Doctor: Getting the Free Set!
Click below to reveal the instructions you need for each step:
Fresh 70 Witch Doctor: 6pc Free Set Build
| Helltooth Harness 6 piece Set Build | |||
| Skill | Rune | ||
| Wall of Death | Comm. w/ Spirits | ||
| Piranhas (Open) | Piranhado | ||
| Soul Harvest | Soul to Waste / Languish | ||
| Spirit Walk | Severance / Jaunt | ||
| Zombie Dogs | Leeching Beasts | ||
| Gargantuan | Humongoid | ||
| Passives | |||
| Fetish Sychophants | Gruesome Feast | ||
| Pierce the Veil | Midnight Feast | ||
Options:
Piranhas can be anything but you may as well get used to it now. Group ’em for cleaves.
Soul Harvest and Spirit Walk both have tryhard and speed rune options.
Passives: Fetish Sycophants is pure defensive filler. Change later on.
So, now what!?
Torment VI++: It’s time to push your Helltooth set to its max power. This will now be your minimum speedfarming level. Increase torment as you see fit.
A quick review before proceeding…
Gaining Power!
We now need to gain as much power as we can.
Legendary Gems
One way to gain power is using Legendary gems! 3 of these legendary gems will grant you access to higher torments.
Get these three to L25 ASAP: Enforcer, Powerful, Trapped.
Powerful: Should be left at 25~ in the early game, and should be leveled sparingly. Level this up to 25 first if you can, since its L25 bonus is huge, and doesn’t scale well past that.
Enforcer: This does it all. Makes your pets nigh invulnerable (yes, they actually die later on), and increases your damage by a HUGE amount. No-brainer for any pet build.
Bane of the Trapped: Wall of Death’s cold rune (you know, the one we recommended in the table above…) makes short work of triggering the slow we need to reap the damage bonus.
Defensive gem? If defenses are a problem, simply interchange
Bane of the Powerful with Esoteric Alteration.
Any other gems worth it?
Bane of the Stricken: You might be forced to use this sooner or later. Higher level Rift Guardians can take a while, and this is the answer right here.
Esoteric Alteration: Is a hard carrying defensive gem which serves you well at any point.
Boon of the Hoarder: NEEDED for efficient speedfarming. Luckily, Helltooth is an amazing set for just that… Stops at L50 so that’s great.
(See: Speedfarming General | Witch Doctor Speedfarming | Best WD Speedfarming Build)
Aside from the gems listed above, any other gem is considerably worse.
GR 34 is enough to get these gems to level 25. Just go for efficient farming and cheap empowering.
With 3 of your best gems at L25 – try much higher Torment levels. So now the real farming begins!
Playing the Build & Adjustments
Here I’m gonna list 2 main things. Some tips on how to play better with the build, and various build adjustments you might need as you progress and pick up more items.
Helltooth isn’t THAT strict on build so you can be creative with fillers…
Here we discuss Playstyle Notes and build Build Adjustments.
Summon your boys and go ham. That’s it! There are many intricacies to the build but you’ll only ever remotely need them if you go waaaay up. Here’s a few small tips.
Wall of Death – don’t let it fall off. You don’t need ANY CDR to keep the Helltooth 6 buff on 100% of the time. It’s only the little thing called “laziness” that makes it fall off.
Frozen sucks – Yes they can be frozen and it’s bad news for you. Try to “port” your boys to safety before they get iced, it’s a massive loss of DPS!
Teleporting your friends or “porting” occurs after you travel a short distance from their location. I’m sure you know of this by now… It’s worth mentioning anyway.
Spirit Walk – Invulnerability for the most part. This is the most OP defensive skill, and when tryharding the Jaunt rune is an obscenely long “defensive” cooldown.
Offense is usually categorized in Damage or, indirectly, Resource Gain.
The build is fully packed on “practical” sources of damage. If you want to increase your DPS further you can try the following, but I can’t really recommend what to remove…
Confidence Ritual comes with the keyword “Confidence” in it.
I honestly cannot recommend any other minimal skill or rune changes to accommodate more damage this early on.
Defense is usually categorized in either Toughness or Self-healing capability.
Leeching Beasts is also extremely good in keeping yourself healthy, and also currently recommended in the build above. It single handedly carries these types of WD builds for such a minimal cost.
As you’ll soon find out damage gets insane really quickly. Swampland Attunement (already listed above) helps out with this – increasing the range actually does a lot.
Spirit Walk-Jaunt should be used in tryharding, replacing Severance.
Soul Harvest-Languish is the ultimate survival tool for WD’s. The problem is you actually need to have a decent BASE ARMOR RATING. Meaning having this on Belt, Legs, Boots (and sometimes maaaaaybe, chest). Ancients also have a higher Armor rating, so you’ll notice this more a bit later on. It’s great to keep in mind.
Spirit Vessel – ain’t no shame in this. If constant one-shots are getting ya, then this may be the best choice to facilitate more brainless (less salty) play.
Mobility and Speed shouldn’t be focused on THIS EARLY. It’s a luxury for a Fresh 70 Witch Doctor. But when you can fit them in, consider these…
Spirit Walk-Severance is the ultimate go-to WD mobility skill. A simple rune change does so much, at little cost. If you’re not pushing GR, this is the rune to use.
Fierce Loyalty is a godlike speed passive that should find its way into your build for bounties or other when you’re speedfarming.
Any other changes for speed at this point is too greedy and I can’t recommend it.
(See: Speedfarming General | Witch Doctor Speedfarming | Best Witch Doctor Speedfarming)
Items to look for
Okay now that the easy part of powering up is done, it’s time for the farmy bit. Here I will be listing all the high-impact items you can pick up, and how to get them (aside from drops).
Core Reminder: informing you as early as now that Short Man’s Finger is just too powerful – look out for ‘it! This ring singlehandedly “triples” your DPS.
Since you got a free Helltooth 6, it’s time to patch up the extra pieces –
Mask of Jeram IS EXTREMELY RARE. It’s the absolute best thing you can pull out of Kadala’s butt, so I’m listing it high up here. The problem? The rarity on this thing will make you pull your hair out. A TRICK I USE is to ask for help PL’ing an L31 WD. Spend blood shards for helmet on this guy for a greater chance of MoJ. It’s gonna be cubed anyway.
Tasker and Theo from Gloves is a super godlike pickup as well this early on. While the use of this in the ultra end-game is debatable, there’s some serious gains to have here. Using MoJ and T&T in the same build requires RoRG.
Bracers: Lakumba’s Ornament is good for pretty much any WD, and our end-game item. Oh, you can get Nemesis here too, which pretty much what you’ll be using most of the time (speedfarming) until you actually NEED the damage reduction on Ornament. Jeram’s Bracer isn’t as good as it sounds, but serves as a good filler in the same pile.
Belt: Quite a few good belts here and there. Personally, my favorite at this point in the game is String of Ears. Belt of Transcendence is another amazing defensive option, too providing more little guys to tank for us. Witching Hour is the tryhard belt of choice. Goldwrap is never bad to have, either.
Just reminding you of the Bounty Rings:
- Ring of Royal Grandeur from Act I Bounties – allows for more filler items.
- Avarice Band from Act III Bounties – great for speedfarming.
Upgrading Ceremonial Knife – for Sacred Harvester is the end-game plan. +5 stacks of Soul Harvest is pretty huge and gets better the higher our base INT is. There’s a couple cute fillers here, nothing actually worth mentioning (which is why I recommend 2H Mace).
Upgrading Mojo – for any number of usable legendaries helps out. Henri’s Perquisition, Thing of the Deep and Uhkapian Serpent are ALL usable. But they’re all gonna suck if you don’t have a 1-hander to use ’em with which is why this step goes last. ALSO because we try to get these with Blood Shards, as well.
Coincidentally, Ceremonial Knife and Mojo also give us Manajuma’s Set, of which we can easily make a temporary bounty build from.
Lastly, Upgrading 2H Mace – hopefully gets us The Furnace. Also, Wrath of the Bone King is an amazing filler we might get along the way.
Ring of Royal Grandeur: “Break” your 6-piece to make space for a good filler item! Or you know… Mask of Jeram! (Tasker and Theo, too)
Accessory Sets: Focus–Restraint or Traveler’s Pledge. Completing any of these 2-sets is a vast power jump. +100%++ is substantial for only 2 slots.
Convention of Elements: Good ‘ol CoE. Wear it, Kanai it, as a filler or till the end of time. Learning to maximize CoE in any build you choose is a turning point for higher GR’s.
Unity: Straight 50% damage reduction in the cube. Too bad you need two of ’em.
Just reminding you of the bounty rings:
- Ring of Royal Grandeur: Act I bounties, to fit all our greed.
- Avarice Band: Act III bounties, for speedfarming.
Goldwrap + Avarice + Boon of The Hoarder: I don’t care how many times I have to remind you about this combo.
Bridging to the End-Game
So you skipped a whole chunk of the powering up phase with the free set. Now what? Like I always say, “Speedfarming first before pushing GR’s”. So, convert what you have NOW to be as speedfarmy as possible, first.
- Witch Doctor Speedfarming Builds & Primer
- D3 Speedfarming with any Class!
- Witch Doctor Best Speedfarming Build
Other Witch Doctor Guides:
- Witch Doctor Leveling
- Raiment of the Jade Harvester | Jade Harvester Set Dungeon
- Helltooth Harness | Helltooth Set Dungeon
- Spirit of Arachyr | Arachyr Set Dungeon
- Zunimassa’s Haunt | Zunimassa’s Set Dungeon
Check out our D3 Guide Directory for other resources.
Fresh 70 Witch Doctor: Free set available! | No free set!
Getting the Free Set | Free Set 70 | Gaining Power! | Bridging to the End-game
I can’t get any set pieces to drop from Izual in Torment 2. Is it just luck and RNG?
Is this your first class that you played this season? If yes, you should get the 2nd free set in your mailbox right after you kill Izual.
So what do I do once Ive followed the above? Unless im missing something here all you do is talk about build and playstyle?
You can now start farming for items (getting ancient legendaries, death’s breath, materials for kanai-ing). Long term goals are up to you really. You can aim to climb the WD leaderboard, complete the season journey (shift+J) to get stash tab/s or just complete achievements (Y). It depends on you.
This guide is to help you somehow beef up your fresh 70 witch doctor, with or without the free set, so you could go clear higher torments asap. Once you’ve completed the above, you can even try other Witch doctor set builds or classes.
Which gems should you level ASAP? You list Zei’s, Powerful, and Trapped but only talk about Trapped and Enforcer which isn’t listed.
Oh ZEIS??? That’s a typo! Leave powerful @ 25 (level sparingly), dump points into Enforcer and Trapped. FIXED LGEM SECTION
wow thats insane! Best guide ever found sofar! GJ !!
Thanks for this awesome guide! Followed it with super success! Awesome looking forward to see more like this!
This needs updating for S8
yes sir… we are working on it! will post once its ready
what about paragon points?
hi! its just the basic paragon priorities.
Core – Primary stat > Vit > Move speed (depends, 25 points at most) > Max Resource (optional). all other points will be placed in primary
Offense – CHC > CHD > CDR > Attack Speed
Defense – Res All > Life > Armor > Life Regen
Utility – Area Damage > RCR > LoH > Gold Find
Thank you so much for this guidea. It helped me out a ton. I am new to seasonal and Diablo 3. I am confused when you say ‘GR 38 is enough to 25 a gem.’ Does that mean I need to get to GR38 to get a gem up to 25? Thanks again.
we’re glad we’re able to help you! 🙂 GR38 is enough to level a gem up to 25 with 100% success rate
I have a doubt.
I just got the set of 6 free pc, but, before completing the set, I got the Quetzalcoatl, so it’s worth losing the 6 bonus level?
Ok nervermind, i send a post before but because I didnt know how the Kunai’s Cube works. Now I do (didnt play for a long time).
are you going to update this for Season 10 set ?
updated it last tues.
What do you mean when you say Belt of Trans works along Fetish Sycophant? Is it that you get Fetishes up faster?
Yes, you get them up faster. Also, in the eventual Darts build keep in mind that the belt only triggers off SPENDERS. The Passive works with all attacks. It can be suboptimal to have them both, but in the early game – them working in tandem can be a load off your mind.
Am I using acid cloud wrong if I am not getting Fetishes up to the passive max? I can do it easily with haunt but that is also much easier to spam.
Love yalls guides btw, third season using them and it is always great.
You’re absolutely correct and that’s why I mentioned both of those skills. Fetishes are much easier to gather with Haunt compared to Acid Rain. But alas, the Haunt coverage is pretty bad. Honestly there’s no way around suffering usability issues of Z6 early on.
last time I played diablo 3 was at the auction house disaster.Now I am back,taking a break from overwatch and the game completely change,without thinking about my build its already enormous,You helped me a lot and I really appreciate the time and effort you put on this.
Thank you very much
Thank you for your kind words! It’s what these guides are made for good sir!
I am using Z6 and have tried to follow this guide as closely as possible but I just can’t seem to get my fetishes up past 8. I am using haunt and I spam it liberally and move around and stuff. I tried acid rain but it just doesn’t work for me that well because it is not fire and forget like haunt (targeting issues) and I run out of mana so quickly and then stand there twiddling my thumbs. So not sure what I am missing because I am trying different things but since my gems got to 25 I can’t get past GR40 (T7) in time and that feels like I am behind the curve.
Advice? Suggestions? Appreciation in advance and thanx for the bitchin’ guide 🙂