Hello! Here we discuss the Witch Doctor set: Zunimassa’s Haunt. Let’s discuss what’s considered to be the “STANDARD” build of the set (Carnevil darts).

Zunimassa is honestly quite strong. Helltooth and LoN seem favored over it, but it does quite a huge chunk of damage.

Witch Doctor: Zunimassa’s Haunt
Standard Build | Stat Priority & Rerolls | Playstyle | Variations | Speedfarming

Zunimassa’s Haunt: Skills & Items Setup

Zunimassa’s Haunt : Standard Build
Items Skills & Rune
Helm Carnevil Poison Darts Spined Dart
Shoulder Aughild’s Piranhas Frozen Piranhas
Chest Zunimassa’s Marrow Spirit Walk Jaunt
Hands Set Item Soul Harvest Languish
Legs Depth Diggers Big Bad Voodoo Slam Dance
Feet Zunimassa’s Trail Fetish Army Legion of Daggers
Amulet Traveler’s Pledge Passives
Bracer Aughild’s Pierce the Veil Spirit Vessel
Ring Compass Rose Bad Medicine Swampland Attunement
Ring Zunimassa’s Pox Kanai’s Cube
Belt Belt of Transcendence Dagger of Darts
Weapon Starmetal Kukri Mask of Jeram
Off-hand Zunimassa’s String of Skulls Ring of Royal Grandeur
Legendary Gems
Simplicity’s Strength
Enforcer
Bane of the Trapped

Shoulder, Wrist (and to an extent Belt) have some options. As an important note, I theorize that Coils of the First Spider + Mantle of Channeling can be a usable defensive setup, but you’d need some serious Mana management changes.

Zunimassa’s Haunt Stat priority & Re-rolls

Chunky unsightly table of re-rolls right below

CLICK TO REVEAL STAT PRIORITY TABLE
Zunimassa’s Haunt : Stat Priority & Rerolls
Slot Item 1 2 3 4 5 6
Head Carnevil INT VIT CRIT RES ARM –
Shldr Aughild’s INT VIT AD% RES ARM Army%
Chest Set Item INT VIT ARM RES Army% –
Glove Set Item INT VIT CHC CHD RES ARM
Legs Depth Diggers INT Darts% VIT RES ARM –
Boots Set Item INT VIT ARM RES ARM –
Belt Transcendence INT Darts% VIT RES ARM Life%
Wrist Aughild’s Poison% INT CHC VIT – –
Neck T.Pledge Poison% CHD CHC – – –
Ring C.Rose INT CHC CHD – – –
Ring Set Item INT CHC CHD – – –
Weap Starmetal DMG INT CHD AS% DMG% AD%
Off Set Item DMG+ INT CHC AD% Army% ANY

SOCKETS are priority in Helm, Rings, Amulet, Chest (3), Legs (2). Of course your best weapon should be socketed via Ramaladni’s Gift.

Poison Darts%: Unlike most builds that you might be used to re-rolling, DO NOT FORGET the primary+ on legs and belt – before you ruin an item with a missed reroll!

Fetish Army%? This one is a little weird. It supposedly affects Poison Darts shot by Fetishes from Fetish Army, I’m a bit unclear (almost certain) it doesn’t work with the basic guys of the belt or passive. I can’t tell if its absolutely worth it. The bright side is you have up to 25% from the Zunimassa’s off-hand so you wont miss the other rolls TOO MUCH.

Armor: being an Intelligence character who has a lot of +Resist, you want SOME Armor rolls. In the case of Zunimassa, that might be in Chest, Boots, Shoulder… maybe Belt or Legs. Just keep in mind when rerolling that it’s not a useless stat.

Weapon: Attack Speed is REALLY good in this build. This is more notable in the weapon roll, AS% beats out DMG%. AD may be better than DMG%, too.

Keep note some of the sets “hidden properties”

Starmetal Kukri has +CHD which is why it isn’t cubed. On the flipside, if you want VIT or some other stat, you may want to reverse it and equip Dagger of Darts instead.

 

Playing the Build

Keep as many Fetishes up as much as possible, as they’re core to your offense and defense!

Poison Darts PIERCE, so “try” to fire in such a way to tag as many dudes as possible. The Fetish melee attack, while not bad, is far from your main DPS source. The darts do a large chunk of your damage

Fetish defense: Use the little guys body-blocking capabilities to the fullest! They not only tank mobs, but can block some projectiles – this is a huge increase in defense that’s not seen via stats.  There are times you get sucky grouping with enemies fighting a far away Fetish – don’t let that distract you.

“Port” your pets – if in the case above happens, move a bit and hope to get a better overall clump, due to piercing darts.

Reposition wisely: Zunimassa build uses Traveler’s Pledge so keep in mind that more movement = less damage, and vice versa. So try to utilize both halves of the set. Obviously, pulling or scouting means you’d like DEF+, but keeping a high uptime on DMG+ while shooting darts can take practice. Make sure every movement you make is worth it!

Big Bad Voodoo / Oculus Ring: Related to the above, your Fetishes don’t gain a bonus if they stand in there – it’s only when you are in it will the little guys benefit, too.  So try to somehow manage BBV to make sure it’s up on more relevant clumps.

Zunimassa: Variations & Evolutions

More than most sets, Zunimassa’s build is pretty rigid with few flex slots and variations available. But let’s talk about them anyway.

Legendary Gem

Legendary Gems: Simplicity > Enforcer > OPEN (likely Trapped)

Simplicity’s Strength is your best gem here. It provides a DPS boost and relevant self-healing. While it doesn’t boost Fetish Army or Gargs if you’re going that route, Poison Darts deals the most damage out of your whole kit.

Enforcer is naturally a top tier gem here too, boosting all pet DPS and survivability.

Some math: Simplicity + Enforcer, or Simplicity + Trapped gives pretty much the same DPS. Trapped is “harder to trigger” and doesn’t give pet defense so Enforcer is the better option of the two. So that pushes Trapped to third place as “Purely just a DPS gem”.

Other DPS Gems: Trapped is probably better “overall” DPS. Stricken is best for when rift guardians are giving you a hard time. Powerful is a great hybrid gem. So if you’re on the market for a third DPS gem, I would say…

Note that without Aughild’s set bonus, Powerful becomes the best gem of the above three. Do not forget the defensive half of Powerful introduced in S6.

Defensive Gems: Esoteric Alteration is the basic choice, and with the amount of self-healing your build can have, Moratorium makes a case for an overall reduction.

Aside from the gems mentioned here, it’s very unlikely anything else is of use.

Passives

Passives: Not many choices here, but lets discuss why we chose some of them.

That about wraps up the main passives of the build. The last one is your preference. I’ll list the only ones that are worth considering…

Ultimately, Zunimassa and the WD passives don’t get along too much.

Items

Items: While there’s a lot of ways to setup Zuni 6, Carnevil is backed up into a corner regarding core build evolutions.

Belt: Hmm… Belt of Transcendence frees up one passive (Fetish Sycophants). If you have another belt in mind (Witching Hour, String of Ears), you need to swap a passive to Fetish Sycophants.

Shoulder + Wrist combos? Man, I don’t know. Aughild’s isn’t great but there’s very little we can do here. The best thing I thought of is:

Do we need Endless Walk? Well, that 100% is going to be hard to make up… You might be tempted with CoE or Short Man’s Finger but ultimately, it changes the build quite a bit. For Carnevil Zuni setups – Endless Walk is the best, and most consistent by far.

RoRG – so we have 1 extra Item, Why Depth Diggers? Depth Diggers: Provides the largest DPS boost by far, for a focused build. There are some fillers…

Skills

There’s a few options here that have a meaningful impact.

Zuni 6 Spender options: This is where some preference comes into play…

The above would be the only “realistic” choices for soloing. I recommend Piranhas above since it has the most punch out of all of them (empowering your little dudes).

Soul Harvest is the only true optional skill here, so we can discuss some options:

Soul Harvest-Languish is strictly better FOR DPS compared to Horrify-Frightening Aspect . As you’ll end up getting the same Armor bonus. However, the Fear CC, and higher consistency makes Horrify strictly the better DEFENSIVE choice. It’s up to you. Others also argue Soul Harvest to be a bit disruptive to the playstyle. Try both.

What about replacing Soul Harvest or Horrify? Hex-Jinx is probably the next best thing.

Big Bad Voodoo-Slam Dance is a great default rune, and it’s probably best. Are the other runes any good? I can only think of 2 with a marginal use…

  • Rain Dance can be used for Mana intensive spenders.
  • Ghost Trance can be used for defense.
  • any other runes are likely better for niche group play.

Poison Dart-Spined Dart is used to activate Depth Diggers! If you’re using another setup the only possible variants would be:

Aside from this, there’s not much else we can gain from changing your skills up.

Speedfarming? Build changes

You might want to first check out:
D3 Speedfarming (General) | Witch Doctor Speedfarming Guide.

Main Changes:
Items: Goldwrap, Avarice (break Endless Walk set), Boon of the Hoarder.
Passives OUT: Swampland Attunement, Bad Medicine
Passives IN: Gruesome Feast, Fetish Sycophants

Changelog

April-4-2016 – Guide Created

Witch Doctor: Zunimassa’s Haunt
Standard Build | Stat Priority & Rerolls | Playstyle | Variations | Speedfarming

Other WD Guides:

D3 Directory Guide – for a complete list of guides you might want to check out!

Well well! I hope you learned a thing or two about the Zunimassa’s Haunt build!

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8 COMMENTS

  1. I’m having some trouble with this build for some reason… when I fully transitioned into the itens and skills, my damage dropped sharply. Only when I use Piranhas it seems I can do real damage. The piranhas only add some 37%ish damage (15% base plus 22% from my Trapped at the moment. Am I missing something here?

  2. I’m thinking if it’s legit to drop BBV for Garg-Big Stinker. That would also mean I have to replace DD and the ring. It seem like a good idea to combine both builds.

    • If you go that route, I don’t know if that’s worth it. you lose CoE and BBV for 3 Gargs. If I go that route, I would drop Darts and Carnevil instead or maybe just drop Starmetal, and add Furnace, either way i will be updating this in preparation for 2.5 where this set is getting buffed huge.

    • Ahhh I forgot to clarify this! This is very weird… Dagger-shooters (which consist of over 90% of your damage) do poison elemental damage regardless of their rune or the dart rune. Weird, but a legit question!

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