Just got your Witch Doctor to Level 70 Witch Doctor? Now what? Look no further. In this guide, you’ll learn exactly what to do for each step for Seasonal Jounery, Haedrigs Gift, Builds & Items,and ultimately leading to the end-game as your Fresh 70 Witch Doctor. (Not 70 yet? See: WD Leveling Guide)

In Season 26, the Witch Doctor free set is: Zunimassa’s Haunt.

Season 26 and YOU. How does it affect?

S26’s unique mechanic is the Echoing Nightmare. Here’s how it works

– Beat a Greater Rift Guardian, get a Petrified Scream.
– Transmute the Scream in the cube, and enter an Echoing Nightmare

More difficult as it progresses, progress faster by killing monsters quickly. Rewards on completing an Echoing Nightmare: EXP, Legendary Items, Blood Shards, Gems, and a new Legendary Gem, Whisper of Atonement.

– Whisper of Atonement is used exclusively to augment legendaries, up to L125!

Thank god… this basically removes a huge grind via levelling up gems for augmentation at least up to 125 which is good for 99% of people.

For this guide though, the free set doesn’t matter (but we WILL be able to beat the whole Seasonal Journey, don’t worry), as we’re rushing with LoD. Why? We want to get out of the early and early-mid game, freeing up for us to transition STRAIGHT into high-tier speedfarming or tryhard builds. LoD is the easiest, non free-set reliant way to do this, which you can transition from easily.

Step 1) Initial Build & Getting Legacy of Dreams

Don’t get stressed out, yes, LoD builds might seem a little daunting but let me tell you that it’s a fun and exciting process. Ultimately you need two things right now: The actual LoD gem, and a basic build to get you going.

Generic Starter build (slightly related to our ‘final build’)

WD Fresh Level 70 No Set Build
Skills Rune
Haunt
Resentful Spirits (Any)
Locust Swarm (Open)
Cloud of Insects (Searing Locusts)
Soul Harvest
Languish (Soul to Waste)
Spirit Walk
Severance (Jaunt)
Summon Zombie Dogs
Leeching Beasts
Gargantuan Humongoid
Passives
Fierce Loyalty
Rush of Essence
Pierce the Veil Midnight Feast

The above build is meant to be in the middle of two things: Easy to edit – that hopefully game-changing legendaries can fit in no matter what. Related to our ‘final build’ – it’s a rough basic version of our “goal”, so it feels more natural as you transition towards it. Have a look down there for the final build preview to see what we’re going for.

Getting Legacy of Dreams ASAP

It’s simple, you need this GEM so get it ASAP.

Get 3 rift keys → Run 3 rifts → Wear three gemstones on your gear.

The first three gems will always be Bane of the Powerful, Legacy of Dreams, and one random one. So thankfully, there’s no RNG there.

Step 2) Easy power-ups. Huge gains for little effort.

You can go all of these things “simultaneously”, basically small tasks here and there that you should keep in mind right now that will greatly increase your power for little to no effort.

Make a Reaper’s Wraps: Speaking of no effort to big returns… Make this ASAP. Plans drop from any Torment Malthael.

What three Legendary gems?

Your next goal should be getting at least L25 on your three most important gems. Just get rift keys and spam GR’s until you get them, and do the absolute minimum level you need to level them up. Get them and level them quickly – do not feel pressured to “maximize” your rift keys by inflating the difficulty.

Legacy of Dreams is mandatory, as mentioned in the basics segment! Level this up as much as you can.

Enforcer is a solid DPS option for any Pet build. The “damage immunity” ain’t bad either. More DPS? Powerful or Trapped.

Esoteric Alteration or any other defensive gem should be best for now (Moratorium is also OK if you need another one)

Can’t ever go wrong with leveling up a Boon of the Hoarder for speedfarming. (Need a refresher? Basic offensive: Powerful, Trapped. Basic Defensive: Esoteric Alteration, Molten Wildebeests Gizzard)

Legendary Items in ALL SLOTS

LoD gets stronger with each legendary item you have equipped – so get to it! You should aim to get this done “passively” by natural item drops, but you can also craft items if you’re desperate.

Spending Blood Shards is “OK”, but only use Death’s Breath to fill up the slots if you’re absolutely desperate. You’ll get an item for each slot in no time (you can even craft them). Save your resources for finding SPECIFIC items that will greatly boost your power. We talk more about this in the next segment, refinement.

Ancients DOUBLE this bonus, and they’re a welcome boost to consider.

Defense Type & Gems

Wizards / WD’s / Necros are INTELLIGENCE classes (they get free ALLRES from INT). So, in the face of all this free allres, your prime defensive stats are ARMOR > VIT. So try to reroll Armor on your gear if you need defense – it’s your best defensive stat by FAR.

So your gemming strategy (body and legs) should be slotting your best Rubies or Emeralds, as they give Armor.

Basic Rerolls

Since legendaries are a little expensive to reroll EARLY ON, try to make the most by REMOVING GARBAGE STATS, and getting anything “remotely usable”.

Life per Hit is AMAZING ON WD’s since we abuse Zombie Dogs – Leeching Beasts. You can socket amethyst on weapon, or reroll it on pretty much anywhere.

Gargantuan% is found in Shoulders and Chest. This is your only skill percent that matters.

The Element% you want for now is Cold (others may be viable with Spite), found typically in Bracers and Amulet.

Remove useless stats

  • Life Regeneration – garbage for any build.
  • Attack Speed – it usually an endgame tune-up stat.
  • Excess Resource Cost Reduction – Is a crutch, and only niche builds need it.
  • Excess Cooldown Reduction – Only useful for an endgame “need”.
  • Unused skill% – literally USELESS.
  • All Resists – Useless for us, take Armor and VIT instead.

Take better stats

  • INT VIT– can’t go wrong with these. Your core stats!
  • ARMOR Life% Great defensive stats.
  • Sockets are essentially MANDATORY.
  • Life per Hit – Great early game sustainability.
  • CRIT Stats (CHC / CHD) – More for endgame, but I’d take this over garbage stats.
  • Skill and Elemental% – that you use.

FOLLOWER GEAR!

Do not forget to fully equip your follower for farming. You can start by crafting Sage or Cain’s NOW and worry about the rest later.

Step 3) Refining, Using Resources -> ‘Full Build’

Full Build Preview

So you can easily see what items you’ll need, and you can get an idea of what we’re trying to do here.

S26 Fresh 70 WD: Early Game LoD Gargantuan speedfarm
Head Mask of Jeram Skill Rune
Shoulder Any / Skeleton Kings ANY (Haunt) Resentful Spirits
Chest Aquila Cuirass Locust Swarm Pestilence
Arms Tasker and Theo Spirit Walk
Severance / Jaunt
Legs Blackthorne’s Soul Harvest
Languish / Soul to Waste
Boots Ice Climbers Zombie Dogs
Leeching Beasts
Belt Goldwrap Gargantuan Humongoid
Bracer Lakumba’s Ornament Passives
Amulet Hellfire / Squirts Midnight Feast
Ring The Short Man’s Finger Rush of Essene (Open)
Ring Ring of Emptiness Grave Injustice (Open)
Weapon Echoing Fury Fierce Loyalty (Open)
Offhand Ukhapian Serpent —
Kanai’s Cube Legendary Gems
Wormwood / Sacred Harvester Legacy of Dreams
St. Archew / Frostburn Enforcer
Unity / CoE Hoarder (or Defensive Gem)

LoD Garg is actually a decent set to farm with due to its brainless playstyle. I would be happy to augment this…

Get CORE ITEMS asap. The heart of your build

The absolute core of your build are these:

  • Mask of Jeram (Helm) Tasker and
  • Theo (Gloves) – use Blood Shards.

The Short Man’s FInger is the true jackpot, but it’s a ring and difficult to craft…

Spending Blood Shards and Death’s Breath

Blood ShardsDeaths BreathRings, amulets

Here’s advice on how to spend your blood shards with Kadala, roughly in order of importance:

  • Mask of Jeram (Helm)
  • Tasker and Theo / Frostburn (Gloves)
  • Goldwrap (Belt)
  • Lakumba’s Ornament (Bracer)
  • Aquila Cuirass (Chest)
  • Ukhapian Serpent (Mojo)

You can look for the other ‘unimportant’ things in the build preview after these (IE Ice Climbers, Gloves etc)

Here’s advice on how to get your weapons from Deaths Breath rare item upgrades (Kanai’s Cube Recipe: 25x Deaths Breath convert a rare into random legendary of same type), roughly in order of importance:

1h Axe for Echoing Fury is a surprising DPS boost for gargs.

Ceremonial Knife for Sacred Harvester is always a great option, increasing Soul Harvest stacks gives us alot of stats…

Wormwood – Staff, is great for brainlessly activating Ring of Emptiness…

Nothing else is really WORTH spending DB’s for, and would rather spend to try and get jewelry you might not have yet.

Rings and Amulets are tough to get from either BS or DB’s (due to the large amount of possible outcomes), but if you’re done getting your core items from these currencies – and you haven’t got your core accessories, it’s a viable way to spend them. Typically you’ll just find these as you grind – then use currency if you’re desperate. Anyway, if I had to rank the importance of your rings and ammys…

Short Man’s FInger is a HUGE boost. Like… “18x” stronger.

Ring of Emptiness is just a generic DPS increase that requires a bit of work…

Unity is a decent defensive option, but you need the follower immortality relic, and another Unity for the follower!

As an aside – Ring of Royal Grandeur and Avarice Band are BOUNTY ONLY rings (respectively ACT I and III), which DO NOT APPEAR FROM any other source. They, like any other bounty item, DO NOT DROP from monsters, gambling, upgrades or any other source outside of their respective BOUNTY CACHE.

Follower Gear odds and ends

More of a reminder than anything, once you start farming you will be running into those little bonuses for your follower farming build. Keep an eye out!

Summary & Outro

Welp, that’s about it. I’m liking these seasonal bonuses that remove the augmentation grind – makes the game a lot more humane. From here, you can easily do the Seasonal Journey if that’s your thing, or transition into literally any other build you like – the it’s exactly what the S26 fresh 70 LoD builds for each class are made for.

GL out there and check out our D3 Guide Directory if you need anything else!

32 COMMENTS

  1. Also when is a good time to start replacing the season set? Like how much of an increase should the item be before I swap it in to replace a piece of the seasonal set?

  2. What are your thoughts on the ancient legendary pig sticker? I got one with cdr skills 6%/reaource cost 10%/dmg to beasts 19%/dmg to humans 26%.

    • Pig sticker isn’t typically used by Witch Doctor. Sacred Harvester is a better all-purpose 1hander. It gets pretty insane once you augment it. But if you feel like it’s well rolled, save it.

      • Right after I posted about pig sticker I got the wormwood lol. That staff is so good I HAD to unequip it to complete the set dungeon. It would kill everything before I could do anything lol. Its gonna be hard to let this staff go.

  3. Brilliant guide! Perfect and exactly what I needed for the new ladder.
    Only suggestion would be advice to slowly transition into what looks like the most powerful build this season, which seems to be Jade Harvester.

  4. 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 🙂

  5. 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

  6. 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.

    • 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.

  9. 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).

  10. 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?

  11. 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.

    • 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

  16. Which gems should you level ASAP? You list Zei’s, Powerful, and Trapped but only talk about Trapped and Enforcer which isn’t listed.

  17. 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.

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