Witch Doctor Budget Build Guide 1.0.8

Diablo III Witch Doctor Budget Build Guide 1.0.8 submitted by Recount.

Recount’s Budget Build Guide 1.0.8

Hello fellow Witch Doctors (WD), my name is Recount and I’ve been playing my WD as my main since release. I am a casual player and I just want to share some basic and fundamental knowledge in both build and gearing for your WD. 

The reason why I made this guide is because lately I’ve been seeing a lot of people coming back on their WD or are NEW to WD’s. Instead of going into every post, I’ve decided to make this guide, enjoy!

Table of Contents:
• Introduction
• Builds & Stat Priority
• Leveling & Farm Route
• Budget Guide



Introduction:

I’m going to provide standard WD builds for effective farming & leveling at lower Monster Power (MP) a long with getting the proper gear in your budget range!
This guide is mainly for people that are new to WD’s and people that are coming back from a long break.

If you are having issues farming lower MPs or are not farming/ leveling fast enough, this is probably because you are not gearing or building your WD’s properly.

Guide continued after the page break..





Builds & Stats:

• Stats:
o Damage: 70,000
o Armor: 3,000
o Resistance: 500~
o Pick Up Radius (PUR): 20+
o Health: 30,000
o Mana Regeneration (MR): 25 base + 20 = 45 minimum

• Build Link: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#fRUdXi!YeT!caacZb

Skill Choice Explanation

• Acid Cloud (AC): Acid Rain – One of the best Area of Effect (AOE) spells in the game. With the stats above you can one shot most white mobs, making speed clears fast.

• Zombie Charger: Zombie Bears (ZB) – A lot of people ask “You already have AC as your secondary, why ZB also?” Reason is AC does good AOE damage but does not provide good burst versus elite groups. ZB allows you to kill off elites quicker which equal to faster clear time and quick Nephalem Valor (NV) stacks.

• Spirit Walk (SW): Jaunt – SW provides your WD with 50% move speed. It’s mandatory for a speed clear and can save you from an unnecessary death. It is also a good way to avoid getting destroyed by Damage Reflect (DR) affixes. If mana is an issue for some of you, you can always swap it out for Honored Guest.

• Soul Harvest (SH): Vengeful Spirit (VS) – You can’t go wrong with SH:VS. Provides a great damage and AR boost.

• Horrify: Stalker – This rune is mainly for movement speed (MS) increase for faster speed clears, adds 20% MS.

• Hex: Angry Chicken – This is another rune mainly for movement speed increase. Adds 15% MS. The only thing I have against this rune is that it knock backs & does mediocre damage.



Passive Skill choice Explanation

• Gruesome Feast (GF): This is one of the reasons why you would want to get at least 20+ PUR. It provides you with a good amount of damage and AR, along with 10% more mana each stack.

• Spirit Vessel (SV): This skill is pretty much essential for speed farming. People make mistakes, this passive does not only lower your SH & SW cool down (CD) but it provides you with a second chance. If you die in the middle of a Keep 2 run, it may slow your clear time by 1-2 minutes and you don’t really want that.

• Grave Injustice (GI): This is the other reason why the 20+ PUR is mandatory. If you are just running through mobs this skill will almost always keep your mana and health topped off. Another thing is each kill you make it reduce your skill CD by 1 second. So you will almost always have your SW, Horrify, and Hex off cool down.



Leveling & Farming Routes:

• I do MP0 Act3 Standard & Tweaked Alkaizer runs. Alkaizer is, I believe world’s first who reached Paragon Level (PL) 100, for those who don’t know who he/she is.

Common questions: 
Q. “Why do you do MP0? Doesn’t higher MP provide better drop and exp boost?”
A. Majority of the Diablo3 community should know this by now, but I’ll give a quick explanation. Yes higher MP does yield more experience and provides higher magic find (MF) per mob. But these mobs also have increased HP and DMG, the little HP that these mobs gain may slow your clear speed. Remember; Speed > MP.

Q. “I can almost 1 shot white mob at MP3. Should I ditch MP0?”
A. My suggestion is, no. Almost one shotting white mobs and one shotting them makes a huge difference in your run time & experience PER HOUR. If you can clear MP3 in 20 minutes but can clear MP0 at 10-15 minutes, MP0 wins all the way, SPEED > MP.
Q. “What is the best WD Build?”
A. I see a lot of people on the forums asking this one question, but do not provide me with what MP they are farming or what their goals are. The build that I provided is not the BEST but I would say is one of the MOST efficient build for lower 
MP farming/ leveling.

• And finally for those who don’t know what a Alkaizer run is:
o Arreat Core (Get the check point in front of Azmodons Lair, so that every time you restart a game you will start at that point)
o Tower of the Damned 1 (Clearing both Arreat Core and TotD1 should get you atleast 4-5 stacks, this will give you max experience at the higher density fields)
o Arreat 2
o Bridge of Korsikk (I usually run counter clockwise around this map)
o Keep 2 (Have good judgment, if you made a wrong turn and it takes you too long to walk to the other side of the map then it’s not worth it, just reset and do the run all over again.)
o Stonefort & Skycrown are optional. Decent trash mobs and a straight forward route.



3 Million Gold Budget:

**PLEASE READ** If you have issues finding the right prices, scroll down to the TIPS section.

• Here we go, for the few casual players who don’t have time to play but would still like to have fun in speed clearing runs. (Scroll down for additional AH search tips) 

Off Hand: The Thing of the Deep (ToTD) This is an almost must have for this budget build, since it provides your WD with a 20 PUR (Anything additional after 20 PUR is a plus) In the auction house put this into the search; 100 Vitality (VIT), 100 Intelligence (INT) and set Average Damage to around 200~. 

Main Hand: For this particular build you want a lot of base unmodified damage (before any Critical Damage (CD), Critical Chance (CC), and Increased Attack Speed (IAS) is applied) Put this into your Auction House (AH) search; Average Damage 650-700, INT, 40% CD, LS. If you have additional budget you can put OS into your search.

Helm: MR is a must on your WDs helm. Put this into your search; 200 INT, 100 VIT, MR, 4%+ CC, OS. 

Shoulders: You are able to get extra PUR from this piece. You want a good amount of VIT, INT & AR. Put this into your search; 150 INT, 100 VIT, 40+ AR. PUR is optional.

Chest: A lot of your main stats are going to be from your chest. Try putting this into your search; 3OS, 100+ VIT, 150+ INT, 50+ AR. PR and life% is optional.

Gloves: This is another piece where you can further increase your PUR. But a decent CC & CD gloves with PUR and decent main stats can be pricey. Try putting this into your search; INT 150, CC 8%+, CD 30%+. AR, PR and VIT is optional if your budget allows it.

Belt: Another piece where you can put PUR into your search (If you have around 25-30+ PUR, any extra wouldn’t hurt but it’s not needed) Try putting this into your search; 150+ INT, 100+ VIT, XX% Life, 40+ AR. If it gets too expensive try replacing that AR with PR.

Rings: The one thing a lot of new players don’t realize is the average damage on rings can boost your minimum DPS up by a lot! But are quite expensive when you put AVG DMG, CC, CD, and main stats into your search. Try this first; CC 4%, CD 20%, 100+ INT, 50+ VIT. If you still are able to spend more add AVG DMG 20~+ to your search.

Amulets: Same thing as rings as far as AVG DMG goes. Amulets can roll such high INT & VIT. This is what I would put in your search; 150+ INT, 150+ VIT, CC 7%, AVG DMG 30+. If you have enough gold from your budget, try adding CD to your search (40%+).

Boots: I would say at least 70%+ of the active level 60 WDs out there are using Zunimassa boots but the cheapest pair I’ve seen is still 700K+ with crappy stats and if you don’t have the other 3 piece of Zunis it’s not worth it anyways, you can get a way better set of boots for a lot less. Put this into your search 12% Move Speed (MS) 150+ INT, 100+ VIT, 50+ AR. Add PR to your search if budget allows.

Pants: To do actual speed clears of course you want the max MS possible. Inna’s Pants can provide you with that extra 12% MS. But for this budget build I would not recommend so. Here is why: A pair of the cheapest Innas is going for at least 1M. A pair of Innas with both INT & VIT can get quite expensive and the rolls on the INT and VIT on these things are quite low. I would put this into your search; 2 OS, 150+ INT, 100+ VIT, 40+ AR. PR into search if budget allows.

Bracers: There are so many options with bracers and they are all fairly cheap. This is another piece of gear that you are able to get MS on (Lacuni Prowlers). The thing is, these can get fairly expensive for ones with high main stats. Therefore this is what I would put in the search; CC 4%+, 150+ INT, 100+ VIT, 40+AR. If you have some budget left you can add this to your search, PUR, Life % & PR. Strongarm bracers with decent main stats are also a viable option.



***TIPS***

• When putting the recommended stats into AH, you can adjust the stats by 10 - 50 (e.g instead of 150 INT put in 130), it can make a big difference in cost.

• When doing AH searches, you can put around 200K into buyout so that you won’t go over budget.

• When searching for each piece of gear, try to prioritize INT. So put that on the top of your search bar and sort out the AH listings with the highest INT on top.

• If your budget is lower than 3M that is not a problem. You can lower your buy out and find similar items with less main stats and less survival stats; it is still viable for MP0 speed farms.

• If some of the gear with AR you find is too expensive, you can swap out that AR search with PR or +Armor.

• If your budget is higher than 3M, you can do a similar AH search for each piece of gear. Put a higher limit on your buyout (But don’t spend 500k on a pair of gear that is only a slight upgrade from what you can get for only 200k), you can also try to get higher main stats, life% and PR on top of what you are searching for if your budget allows it.

• [UPDATED]  Some new comers don't know this, If you want to maximize the efficiency of ZB, stand in front of a wall with your back against it and cast ZB. This will cause the 3 bears you cast to come out as a straight line, hitting one target hence maximizing each ZB cast.

I myself use this guideline for my newly leveled WD (check him out when my profile is updated).

I cannot take full credit for this guide; shout outs to ChuckNorris and SoundB. Their advice on both builds and gearing led my WD to glory!

Here is also a list of other great contributors I see in the WD forums (Sorry if I missed you): Brahm, SunTzu, skywalkerfx, and ofgortens.

For some of you that are looking for more advance advice or builds and can’t wait for a response you can refer to ChuckNorris’s & SoundB well constructed guides:



I currently have no videos or screenshots to provide to you unfortunately but I will post one of TryHards Videos, it’s quite similar to my guide with moderate tweaks: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=cC6-ELmwgdU#!

If some of my info above is misleading, inaccurate or out of date, please comment.

In addition if any other new WD has any more questions or concerns, you can add me in game Recount#1901 or leave a post here and either I or hopefully one of the other contributors can answer your questions.

GLORIOUS! Enjoy.

Recount