The Ironworks

A different witch doctor build.

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#egUdXS!VXf!caaZYc

Just like everyone else, I had hit the Act 2 wall. I could manage Act 1, but I couldn't survive 10 seconds to those Lacuni. Everyone in the forums suggested disregarding survivability and going full DPS, since everything would one-shot you anyway. But grave-rushing didn't fit my style (and that really helped once 1.0.3 hit us), so I was looking for something else.

Then I watched a video of someone using haunt as their main attack. It was an interesting idea, so I went and tried it out. The idea is that, while using something like poison darts (very popular at the time), you can do 180% weapon damage to one target, haunting several enemies lets you deal 200+% weapon damage to several enemies, without interruption.

The first thing I noticed is that haunt (and searing locusts, for that matter) doesn't scale at all with attack speed. You only care for weapon damage, so having really fast weapons (which is what everyone and their mother were doing) was no use. Therefore I grabbed the slowest, hardest hitting two-handed weapon I could find and gave it try. It worked much better. I could disregard IAS bonuses, which was pretty much the most sought-after affix on items at that point, and that let me get some good items for cheap. Not caring about virtually bumping my DPS with IAS, I tried stacking survivability, still hoping I could resist some hits from mobs. I was onto something.

Some gearing-up later, I was taking down mobs in act 2. I wasn't the fastest (you had people with 100K+ DPS around everywhere), but I wasn't getting enraged and was progressing. Before I knew it, I was farming Act 2 without problems. I remember encountering only one elite pack that I had to forfeit.

At this point the patch was announced, and it just reaffirmed this build for me, since they were nerfing everything I wasn't using, and making things much easier for me. I then stepped into act 3, and I started farming siegebreaker without dying much, and was happy with it. Invulnerable Minions Soul Lashers? Bring it.

With the new patch, my build is just as strong, but monsters hit less hard, so it dies even less. I can usually take 3 elites in act 2 at once without problems, and almost don't die in act 3.

After tinkering a lot with builds, this is the core of it:

Haunt: your primary attack spell. You can use it with mana return or with slow, they're both good. It doesn't deal that much damage per second, but you can deal damage to many creatures at once, and also gives you maximum kiting potential. Luckily, it has a fast casting animation, so you can stutter-step it quite effectively.

Spirit Walk / Soul Harvest: Everyone knows these abilities. I use Jaunt because I need the time to be able to cast locust swarm, and Siphon as one way to regenerate life (I am taking some hits after all).

Horrify: This is your key defensive spell, as it also doubles your armor, which makes you quite tanky. You get full benefit from spirit vessel by using all three abilities, which is nice.

Locust Swarm - Searing Locusts: Haunt alone just doesn't do enough damage, and this is probably the spell with the highest damage output per cast in the game. It's obviously great for big packs (and acts 2 and 3 have quite a bit of those), but it's also quite effective against elites. It's not stellar against bosses, but it stills deals 468% damage with just one click, which is efficient, albeit expensive.

Blood Ritual: This build uses heavy hitters, and it's quite common to be casting a haunt or a locust swarm every second or so, so it's saving you 15-30 mana per second when you most need it. My character always has 40K+ HP, so it also gives a very nice life regeneration bonus, which is crucial since you can't really use life on hit here.

I have two left spots open - an active skill and a passive skill. Depending on your build, and what scenario you want to farm, you have some options. Right now I use Spirit Barrage – The Spirit Is Willing and Rush of Essence to be able to support it, but you can also go with something like Jungle Fortitude + a cheap primary or Grasp of the Dead.

So which way to go? I feel like having another primary attack, like Spirit Barrage or Poison Darts, is really useful for bosses. You don't really need them to take down elites. It can help speed things up, but your main damage spells will probably get the job done. Against bosses like Siegebreaker (or good ol' Azmodan) you might need too high a DPS to pull it off, and that can't come at all from attack speed.

You might be thinking: why would I ever favor spirit barrage over splinters? I have to pay all that mana for just 10% more damage? Well, that's not all you're getting. Spirit Barrage is much more versatile, it can go through walls (both real walls and the ones waller elites produce) and all sorts of obstacles (invulnerable minions anyone?) and has a much faster animation, allowing you to kite more effectively. Have you used Splinters with a 0.9 attack speed? You will hate it after the third activation. But it might be justified to favor something like Jungle Fortitude for that extra tankiness. If you use the spirit is willing with rush of essence, you are paying 92 mana per activation and are getting back 76.4 mana each time (provided you hit). That's quite cheap if you ask me, and you still get all the benefits of Spirit Barrage over Splinters. The problem is that you're utilizing an extra passive. This, however, makes your Haunt actually produce mana for you, and you essentially have a limitless pool, or it can enabling using the slow rune for better crowd control.

So what type of gear do you want for this build? I like having a balanced character, so I try to have +Int+Vit+AR on every item I can, with +Armor being a nice bonus. You also need a way to regenerate life, so I try having some life regen here and there (more on that later). Criticals work very well with DOTs, so feel free to stack them at will, it will increase your DPS in a very realistic way. Right now I just have crit chance on my gloves and crit dmg on a ring, and that's fine until Siegebreaker, but I feel like I have to bring it up after that. It's gonna be expensive, though.

This leaves me with the following stats:

28600 DPS (at 0.95 attacks per second, which means that my average vanilla hit is around 30K)

720ish All resist (I wanna bump it to 850 or so at least)

3800 Armor (With Enchantress and Horrify active it goes up to 8100)

43K HP

740 life per second

Effective HP: 360K raw, 540K w/Horrify, 677K w/+Jungle Fortitude

These aren't endgame stats, but it's working for me right now.

That DPS number looks awfully low, doesn't it? It would be extremely low for a Poison Darts Build, but a DOT build works differently, and has a much higher damage output (as long as you have 3+ enemies) in terms of percentage. So while a Splinters build can be streaming 180% of its DPS, this build can be dealing 425% divided in four enemies (an average elite pack) plus the occasional Spirit Barrage or whatever skill is there. In that sense, this would have the damage output of a 71K Splinters build against 4 enemies. That's starting to look better. With a corresponding 4-stack of Soul-Harvest (we said 4 enemies), the comparison goes up to 84K. As you can see, it's not that bad, but it's not insane. As the number of opponents goes up (think of a Champion or Elites+White mobs or 2 packs of elites (actually doable)), you do get a very good damage output, of course.

Life:

I'm not that happy with my EHP right now. I just lost some 75K to a weapon upgrade, and am looking to balance it. Getting some more resists and/or armor should probably do it. It is, however, good enough for taking up to Siegebreaker comfortably.

Life Regeneration:

I lost around 150 Vitality, which also takes away some life regen (from Blood Ritual). I did gain Life Steal from it, and I'm used to having 1300-1600 life per second when fighting, with spikes of 1900 or so when Spirit Barrage hits. Life on Hit is the big thing right now, and Life Steal has been set aside. If they ever decide to balance it a bit, this build will greatly benefit from it. That being said, Life Steal works here. You can just cast a Searing Locusts on a random white pack while fighting elites and that will beef your life regen quite a bit as they get eaten. When fighting 10+ opponents with locusts on all of them + haunt on some 4-5 of them, your life regen gets to a decent size. Since you're also essentially kiting all the time, your life pool should have time to go up without much trouble.

My main problem with how life steal works right now is not that it has 20% effectivity, I understand that. What I don't get is why you can only have it on your weapon, while life on hit has a much broader range of apparition. This makes weapon selection really, really narrow for this build.

Alternative: You can try with life after kill instead, especially with a high resist/small HP pool build. Timing the deaths of white mobs while killing elites could do the trick.

Weapon:

This is key, and you have to choose wisely, since you need high DPS, super-low attack speed two-handers. The high DPS must not come from IAS, otherwise that bonus won't do you good. So to recap, what you need in your weapon is:

Something like 1150-1700 damage at least

Some life steal

Some crit damage

Bonus: Some attributes other than dex.

This is a very small subset of weapons, since anything other than 2H maces and some polearms will never have that damage. If you want life steal and critical damage on top of it, it will be both hard to find and quite expensive. But hey, at least we're not asking for LoH.

The rest of your items have more flexibility. If you want to take hits, have all resist on most of them, barring maybe the rings. Also, don't think you can afford not to have +movement speed on your boots, this is a kiting build and kiting needs it.

So how do you actually play this build?

I thought you'd never ask! I find this to be a mid-range build. You don't wanna be face-tanking (you don't gain anything from it) but you also don't find yourself screens away from your enemies. Depending on the mob, I might Haunt to pull them and then spirit walk to get in a 5-stack Soul Harvest spot, harvest and swarm, and leave before walk runs out. I then start running/haunting/barraging whoever needs to be haunted/barraged, pulling horrify if I need it, trying to rotate between spirit walk and horrify. I might take a hit here and there, but it should be fine. If you already have SH stacks you might want to just swarm a guy at the end of the pack and keep kiting, playing the Spirit Walk more conservatively. Remember that Soul Harvest also boosts your resistances, so it's both offensive and defensive.

One advantage of this build is that you can tackle down so many mobs at once. If you are smart about it, you don't really care how many mobs are chasing you, and it really takes the same amount of time to kill 8 or 48 guys. I usually fight 2 or 3 elite packs at once when farming act 2, and it's fine as long as they don't have some particularly nasty affixes combos. As for the kiting, you don't have to be that far away, but try to be on one end of the whole group. Try using Horrify and Spirit Walk to position yourself better more than to create distance between you and the mobs. If only one or two guys can reach you, you can take it. I really dislike skipping elites, and I only remember skipping Tremors recently. Those are really tough, though, so good luck with them.

Locust Swarm is the real hard-punching ability, so use it well. Always try to use it after Harvesting, to deal maximum damage. It's mana cost is really steep, so don't spam it. It bounces wonderfully, so let it do its job.

Most troublesome affix? Vortex. I have always hated vortex. Fast is also tough (surprise!). Wallers can be used to your advantage, especially with spirit barrage, and Invulnerable Minions are designed to be taken down by you. Remember that Haunt still returns you mana off invulnerable minions, and Swarm still jumps, so cast it on whoever's closest and that will do the trick. Use Spirit Walk and Horrify more strategically against Jailers, especially if they have mortar or arcane sentries. As for mortar, decide whether you wanna be on the short end or the long end of the dead zone and stick there, try not to be in their sweet spot. Avenger is almost a joke against you, since you kill everyone at the same rate. Life Steal should more than outweigh reflect damage, but if it's overwhelming you have to use your Siphon strategically.

So that's that! If you don't know what to do, or wanna try something new, this might be the thing for you!