D3 Witch Doctor Fresh Level 70 Guide Season 17 | 2.6.5

Fresh 70 Witch Doctor Items needed: As you progress just be aware of what you’re gonna need. A little care goes a long way. INT+VIT is a great start, rolling out useless stats like resource cost reduction and life regen. REROLLING YELLOWS IS PURE VALUE!

2H Mace: You’ll be using this for a while. A good 2H mace will carry you, and you’ll need something really bad ass to consider replacing this. INT goes without saying, LIFE PER HIT is SUPER LEGIT on weapon for WD’s.

Life per hit: If you can’t get it on your weapon, get it SOMEWHERE else. Why? We abuse Leeching Beasts to blaze through the seasonal journey. Many slots roll LpH so you’re bound to run into it. OK, fine I’ll list ’em. WPN, HELM, RING, NECK, WRIST, HAND.

Armor & Intelligence Characters: Since our main stat (INT) does NOT GIVE ARMOR – it gives Resists! This is great, but we lose an important piece of our defensive stack. Long story short, an Int char should roll Armor on: Chest, Legs, Boots, Belt, and Shoulders (early on).

Belt is a huge source of defense as well. INT VIT ARMOR LIFE > RES, you can get 4 of 5.

Fetish Army% (and Gargantuan%) roll on shoulders and chest.

Zunimassa has no shoulder piece! So you may as well roll a good one with INT VIT (Skill%) Armor, or something like that.

Gems: At least 5 of the best Topaz you can get (INT). Diamond for helm, Emerald for weapon. Early game, Amethyst on weapon can be a great source of Life per Hit. Diamonds on body are also a legit early source of defense.

Elemental% for Bracer & Necklace: LISTEN UP! This varies wildly depending on what your build is. Also, is it your bracer for RIGHT NOW? or is it your ENDGAME bracer? I won’t take responsibility for ruined items. Personally, I’m going for Poison% (for Darts).

SAVE YOUR BEST 1-HANDER & MOJO. As a backup. Why? Let’s say you get a great Mojo – you have no 1 hander to use it with! And vice versa. Just a precaution you should note.

Don’t forget to take Templar and a pet with you! Helps with your health and regen, and the gold collection from monsters (need this to level up your crafters!)

If you’re not allowed to put two skills on your bar because they’re from the same category – FEAR NOT! This isn’t a bug or a permanent in-game restriction. You simply have to CHECK ON ELECTIVE MODE, via Esc > Options > Gameplay > Elective Mode!

Binding Force Move to Mouse wheel up & down is a value change that every player should make IMO. It prevents misclicks and skill misfires, and forces you to move to where otherwise an enemy might be.

Here’s an overview of what you should accomplish per chapter for this season. Shift+J in game to check.

1st set: Helm + Gloves
2nd set: Boots + Ring
3rd set: Chest + Pants + Off-hand

This build is pretty much Speedfarming ready!

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

Due to the power of basic WD’s, we can be greedy enough to place many speedy elements into our build. A really basic, efficient killer this one is.

Difficulty: As per our reco, we suggested to level up your Witch Doctor in Hard mode. This holds true as you try to complete the seasonal journey, most of it, at least. The only times you have to increase difficulty is when its requiring you to (Neph on Expert).

Season Journey Chapters 1 & 2: entries here are pretty basic and self-explanatory. No need for us to delve into this too much. What I do to make it easier for me, I’ll just wait til I get to level 60-65, start a a full round of bounties making sure I tag all the bosses I need to obliterate for these 2 chapters.

That’s just my strategy but, of course, this will be easy if you take into consideration the things we discussed in the “Setting Up” Tab earlier.

No change to build! We can still be greedy, but defense will be a problem soon. Life per Hit and Armor… don’t care how many times I remind ya.

A direct upgrade from our previous build. We replace our “worst” skill, Locust Swarm – into a workhorse! Fetish Army!

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

Difficulty: If you still have to get bounty caches, complete them in Hard Mode. I’m sure you want to complete this as fast as you can; if that’s the case, why make it harder for you? Done? Increase difficulty to Master and do the following:

Beat these on Master difficulty:

• Nephalem Rift – just complete this. Stack up on defensives if needed. 
• Kill Belial – Act II, City of Caldeum
• Kill Maghda – Act II, Road to Alcarnus

The rest of the entries are just NPC interactions…. Finish these, get your 2nd set of Haedrig’s Gift from the mail and let’s go through the next chapter’s entries.

The Torment IV entries may seem really fat right now. The 4pc bonus is a phenomenal toughness boost, but we don’t actually deal THAT much damage…  Adjust your build accordingly.

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

Before you go head on to do GR20, try to familiarize yourself with the build and maybe increase your chances of getting a much better gear!

Upgrade a Rare to Legendary w/ Kanai’s Cube: This is a tough call. Go for 1h Ceremonial Knife and hope for something “usable”. There are a lot of decent ones you can cube for some gain in power.

Recipes: Still missing a couple? Grab a few from Squirt the Peddler in Act II town. The Hellfire Amulet gives you a free passive skill! Just noting it here…

Complete a Torment I Rift: TI will be our new “minimum” when farming. But I highly doubt you’ll need to do any extra farming.

Set Difficulty Torment II – Kill Azmodan – Act III, The Core of Arreat

Set Difficulty Torment IV – You gotta kill some bosses here, lots of walking involved!

• Kill Adria – Act V, Ruins of Corvus
• 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.
• 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.

GR20: Will tackle this in the next clicky. But before that, check if GR20 is already unlocked for you. If not, do a few GR runs to open up this tier. You can also level up your first legendary gem that drops from here (Hello, Bane of the Powerful).

Minor build adjustment: removing Spirit Walk for Poison Dart-Splinters to bolster our DPS. The only way you’ll fail this is a massive lack of damage.

“Hey I have a legendary that can really help me out: what skill do I remove?” If looking at the above, removing Poison Darts is your best bet for build adjustments. If you need a mana passive, use Rush of Essence since we spam Haunt.

FIX PARAGONS: INT | Crit | All Res | LpH

Practically the same build with a little more defense – the ONLY possible avenue of loss is dying a lot – EVEN THEN it is VERY UNLIKELY YOU WILL LOSE.  For a “reference”, here were my stats and what I tested with:

• Offense (sheet): 300k~
• Toughness (sheet): 7.7M~
• Recovery (sheet): 550k~
• NO ‘special’ legendaries aside from the 4PC Zunimassa’s Haunt.
• NO Pylons taken.
• NO Legendary Gems.
• NO Cubed powers used.
• Remaining Time: 2-5m

Defense is well taken care of: as long as you have at least 1 Life per Hit roll for your Dogs, and “some” armor rolls. Zuni 4pc is a workhorse in this regard.

DAMAGE IS YOUR MAIN ISSUE! Annoyingly, this build kills pretty slowly. The addition of Poison Dart is “KEY” if you’re attempting this with the same restraints as I did. Spirit Walk, while be sorely missed in the rift, is the only skill we can let go.

This is an anti-RNG setup, but you’ll get a close call. If you heavily neglected your gear, you will fail. You’ll clear with anywhere between 1 and 3 minutes I guess.

Reroll yellows for more DPS! Topaz on sockets!!!

Keep in mind if you have a passive, item or rune which removes mana cost – it is still considered a spender BUT A BUTTON MUST BE PRESSED for it to trigger. Meaning things like Wormwood won’t work.

Haunt, and its various runes, is REALLY EFFECTIVE – i know it sounds really bad when you think about it (slow application) but it just work, but the spirit “passing to a new guy” doesn’t seem to work? Need confirmation.

You have to flex your creativity a bit – experiment! Many random drops might help you find some weird in-between setup that’s best for now.

The Darts build requires a lot of items. Even if we don’t use Gargs later on, Short Man’s Finger is a midgame “filler” that really boosts you up since “getting the ENTIRE DARTS SETUP” is difficult.

• Carnevil
• Dagger of Darts
• Depth Diggers
• Simplicity’s Strength (LGem)

Armor & Intelligence Characters: Hate to be a broken record! Roll Armor on: Chest, Legs, Boots, Belt Shoulders. INT gives Resists, which is awesome, but leaves Armor sorely lacking.

Zunimassa’s has no shoulder piece! So you may as well roll a good one with INT VIT (Skill%) Armor, or something like that.

Life per Hit with Leeching Beasts is OP. Rolled on weapons (amulet) or temporarily, a Purple on weapon. Leeching Beasts may have to be dropped for temporary build evolutions from time to time – but remember that it is one of your best methods of sustainability.

Skill% (Fetish Army or Gargs) shows up Chest and Shoulders.

Belt is a massive toughness boost. INT VIT ARMOR LIFE RES, in that order.

Save your best one-hander and mojo – in case you get a great legendary one! It would suck picking up Sacred Harvester with no Mojo to use, and vice versa.

Getting the “correct” stats has a much higher impact vs.
getting the “perfect” stats, for now.