D3 S28 Witch Doctor Fresh Level 70 Guide | 2.7.5

This season’s “theme” is the Follower buff + emanate items. I’m guessing it will be a permanent addition from after this season.

This mainly affects farming speed. While the follower buff skills make them more relevant in tryharding GR’s, it is by no means game-breaking.

Essentially, this season unlocks
NEW HEIGHTS FOR SPEEDFARMING

I highly recommend checking out our Follower Guide (Builds, Item, Skills etc).

REROLLING YELLOW ITEMS IS SUPER LEGIT, CHEAP, AND UNDERRATED.
Nicely rerolled yellows will carry you for a LONG TIME.

WEAPON: Craft or find a 2H Mace. The stats you want are INT VIT LpH or Socket (Purple gem for LpH, Red for DMG+, Green for CHD+). Avoid any other stat for now.

— INT Characters need Armor and not ALLRES! —

Since Necro is an INT class, you get free ALLRES as your INT goes up. Since this has diminishing returns, you want to REROLL OFF as much ALLRES in your gear. In its place, ROLL ON as much Armor as you can.

—

Self-healing , specifically Life per Hit is an insane god tier stat for early game WD. It’s used in tandem with Zombie Dogs – Leeching Beasts, essentially giving you up to 4x the value for each LpH roll! It’s an absurd survivability tool.

Rings and Amulet: You NEED socket on these to prep for legendary gems. Get any stat on these that you feel you’re missing. Feeling soft? Get defenses. Need DPS? Crit and mainstat. Feel free to roll “random helpful stats” on these for now, instead of the usual endgame CHC/CHD/MAINSTAT.

Belt: Is a huge source of defense. Main stat > VIT > RES/ARMOR > Life%. You’ll be surprised how a single item can give you a whole load of toughness on.

GEMS: For body pieces you’ll want Emeralds or Rubies for Armor. Helm may vary (Amethyst for Life%, Topaz for resource cost reduction, Diamond for Cooldown Reduction) depending on your needs.

Elemental% (Poison%) can be found on Bracers and Amulets. The element you want is most definitely Poison as you’re locked into the Zombie Bears rune.

Skill% (Zombie Charger%) can be found on Helm and Boots. Typically it’s safer to roll on boots but if you’re removing trash stats for it you can take it on helm too. Having it on both is great, at a cost to defensive stats.

OTHER SLOTS will be taken over by your free set pieces. No matter how bad they are stat wise, the 4pc bonus will heavily outperform any temporary yellow you can make. Witch Doctor doesn’t really need to tryhard on many of these yellow pieces given how easy their early to midgame transition is.

Getting the “correct” stats beats getting the “perfect” stats for now. REMOVE USELESS STATS and get any USEFUL STAT for massive gains in power.

Remove useless stats: Reroll off the stats that really don’t do anything significant.

• unused skill and elemental% – actually useless.
• resource cost reduction: Crutchy for most builds.
• attack speed: It’s only important for absolute endgame build refinements…
• ALLRES: You get too much of it for “free”, take Armor instead.
• Life Regen per Second: The worst stat of all time. Trash can.
• Excess CDR isn’t too good early on.

For good stats like:

• INT VIT – your core stats
• Life per Hit – WD needs this early one!
• Armor > Life – your best defensive stats
• Crit related stats – best DPS stats for the endgame

For clarity this box contains info and builds if you currently have 0 pcs of the Helltooth free set, going for 2 (you don’t have any Haedrigs gift bag, going for the first).

A general “goodstuff” build. As long as you have LpH (preferably on weapon) Leeching Beasts will CARRY YOU. DoT’s and Pets will absolutely slaughter your enemies while you AFK. Unbelievably powerful build that can, with good rolled yellows, enter Torment RIGHT NOW (but don’t, finish the journey on minimum difficulty lol).

If you have a powerful legendary – edit the build to accommodate it if needed.

*Pressing Shift+J (PC) opens up your Seasonal Journey tracker!*

The entries in these early chapters are dead easy. The build above gives you a good balance of offense, defense and speed built in to help you breeze through this as mindlessly as possible.

Hard Mode on for Chapters 1 & 2. Clear through all the entries on Hard. Just up the difficulty to complete one Neph on Expert.

Don’t forget to level up all the NPCs in town. Completing your weekly Challenge Rift will help you get resources to do this easily, if you haven’t already.

When you’re done here, get your first free set from your mail, and proceed onward.

For clarity this box contains builds and info if you currently have 2 pcs of the Helltooth free set, going for 4 (you have the first Haedrigs gift bag, going for the second).

Major overhaul: Here we make sure to utilize the 2pc set bonus. Spreading Necrosis around as easily as possible is your goal. This build is essentially a “speed farm” version. Double Mana regen passives, CDR and speed passives are pretty greedy but it will help you along.

If you have a powerful legendary – edit the build to accomodate it if needed.

*Pressing Shift+J (PC) opens up your Seasonal Journey tracker!*

Difficulty: Although there are entries here that need to be finished on Master, you can still complete the bounty cache, if you haven’t already, on Hard. For the bounty, try to do the whole five acts as you’ll need to do this down the line anyway.

These entries are still on the easy side, so we can be a little lax with our build making as little sacrifices as possible to retain good DPS, Speed and some thought to defense. When you’re done with this chapter, collect your 2nd set of free set and let’s finish the next chapter for the remaining free gear!

No changes. If you’re having a hard time CHECK OUT THE GR20 TAB for a “non-greedy” version of the build. The 4pc bonus doesn’t require build adjustment, it simply gives you mega toughness just for playing the way you have been.

This build will be the baseline for all entries in this tier (Torment II, IV, and GR20) While this build may seem overkill for the Torment II entries, you may as well prep up for the harder parts of this tier.

Upgrade a Rare to Legendary w/ Kanai’s Cube:

Complete a Torment I Rift: This will be the minimum level you should be farming at should you need to do it. Increase if you can easily obliterate a rift. There’s also a “Kill a Torment II Boss” entry here which should be easy.

Complete any other odds and ends that you can, before proceeding to Torment IV.

Stick to the “usual build”, and if you are having a hard time check out the GR20 tab below for the “non greedy build“

In Torment IV things get real. For many of the free sets, this place is the breakpoint whether your build needs help or not. And for S23 and Helltooth, heh. It’s GGEZ.

• Kill Odeg – Keywarden in ACT I, Fields of Misery.
• Kill Sokahr – Keywarden in ACT II, Dahlgur Oasis.
• Kill Xah’Rith – Keywarden in ACT III, Stonefort.
• Kill Nekarat – Keywarden in ACT IV, Gardens of Hope 2nd Tier.
• Kill Specific Boss – Check your journal to see who it is this season.
• Keywardens maps have a key icon next to the waypoint. Purple arrows point you to their location after a short while once you’re in their respective map.

For the boss and all Keywardens – STRAIGHT UP RUSH TO THEM!
Ignore ALL TRASH and just beeline! Get it done ASAP!

You’ll really notice the if you’ve neglected your temporary yellow gear and rerolls. Hopefully you have powerful legendary to carry you (and even if you do), you will notice if you’ve neglected your gear. Refer to the very top setting up tab if you need help.

Either way, this is a good time to take a closer look at your items and get as many powerups and rerolls stated in the setting up tab above.

In case you need a non-greedy build. Basically stacking all defense! As the only way you’ll fail this is through repeated deaths. This build makes that almost impossible. Almost.

You should have an idea of how strong you are given the drops (or lack thereof) you’ve gotten. Be practical and don’t be afraid to shore up your build a little. If you feel a little weak – Do 4 quick Nephs, then do 4 GR10+.

It should be unnecessary though as WD doesn’t even need set items to do this.

The “ultimate” challenge gating you to getting your full six piece free set! The difficulty varies wildly on your class and seasonal set. As someone who has cleared with EVERY SINGLE SET AND CLASS WITHOUT ANY OTHER LEGENDARY, or taking pylons – let me tell you, they’re not all created equal.

As implied, these are the items that are core, or important, to your build. I talk more about how to obtain these later on – remember to keep these in mind always.

At the very bottom of this guide, you can preview what a good base template build is for items / skills / passives to get an idea what you’re going for.