Witch Doctor Act 3 solo/group build

After seeing a lot of Witch Doctor "help me" threads and questions about viable builds lately I've decided to write another build guide. This time I will explain the build I'm currently using, and what kind of gear to go with it.


The build:

The Stats:

The gear:

Explanation of skill choices:

• Poison Dart [Splinters]: Proabably the best primary attack in most situations, you can switch it to leaping spiders if your attack speed is high enough (I would recommend 1,7+ attacks per second).
• Hex [Jinx]: The ultimate single target crowd control spell. With the almost 100% uptime due to low cooldown fighting solo bosses becomes extremely easy. I use the Jinx rune as I play in alot of groups, and the 20% increased damage is really nice for just that.
• Spiritwalk [Jaunt]: It's hard to avoid using this spell, as it is our only actual escape spell. I recommend the Jaunt rune for increased duration, but you can go with Honored Guest if you are having mana problems.
• Grasp of the Dead [Unbreakable Grasp]: This will be your primary spell for CC and keeping white monsters at a distance. If you feel comfortable enough with the 60% slow version you can switch rune to Rain of Corpses, for some additional damage.
• Plauge of Toads [Explosive Toads]: Now this is a interesting spell. Before the IAS nerf I did not think very highly of it, the fast attack speed I used to have burned through my mana and due to the randomness of the toad's pathing the results were not very good. But now as I'm stacking more crit/crit damage this spell starts to shine.

The trick is that you have to look at this spell as more of a "trap" than direct nuke spell. Throw down your slow and start spamming toads, enemies will then charge right into your toads taking extreme damage. If you are in a group with a melee tank, you can also just sit behind him and spam toads all day. I chose this spell as I were having trouble with mana in groups, as locusts and acid cloud are very expensive. I don't have any exact numbers on it, but I think the damage per mana spent on this spell is extremely high. Each cast is 34 mana, which produces 3 toads each doing 170% weapon damage + your crit damage.

• Soul Harvest [Soul to Waste]: I use this mainly for groups, but extra damage is always nice right? Not that much to explain here really, for me the 5 stacks is almost a 20k dps increase which is just too much to say no to for group play. The increased duration rune is a must in my opinion. If you have very high damage already(70k+ for groups, 50k for solo) you can switch this spell for another CC ability.

Passives

• Spiritual Attunement: I use this because I have no mana regen on my gear. If you have no issues with mana regen you can switch this for either Bad Medicine or Fetish Sycophants for group play, or Jungle Fortitude for solo.
• Pierce the Veil: This is used in almost every dps build, and I don't really see a reason not to use it.
• Spirit Vessel: Again almost everybody use this passive, if you have no trouble surviving without it you can switch it for something else suitable.

Gear requirements

• For this build you want to have the highest amount of intelligence, crit hit chance and crit hit damage possible. I'm sitting at around 35% crit with 235% crit damage, which gives me 55k dps unbuffed (73k with Soul Harvest). Always prioritize damage over survivability on your gear at first, then as you get more wealthy you can start buying gear with both survival and damage output stats (my resistances are quite high as you can see in the picture). Feel free to ask gear questions in this thread.
• One gear related tip I can give you is that life regen is very underrated by most people, but in my opinion is extremely good for any class. Having some life regen (300-500/s) almost completely nullify reflect damage bosses, and also is very good for kiting as you regen while you run.
• My gear and the recommendations I give is for farming act 3 efficiently (a.k.a fast). You can ofcourse use this build even with lower damage in act 1/2 or for progression.

Posted in: Witch Doctor build