Angry Chicken Witch Doctor Guide

1. Do the Challenge Rift for the materials to cube Legendary Powers. You can complete this once a week for additional resources and we always update the guide for you!

2. Gather the full Spirit of Arachyr set. Each piece can be gambled from Kadala for Bloodshards. Do not salvage any duplicate pieces you find! Instead convert them to another part of the set with Recipe 4 in Kanai's Cube. If your last missing set piece is a weapon, ring or amulet - don't gamble for them! Instead gamble for a cheap and easy item, like the Shoulders, and once again covert it with Recipe 4. If you have extra materials you can use Recipe 3 to craft the remaining pieces, but this is expensive and not recommended for new players.

3. Gamble from Kadala in this order:

1. The full Spirit of Arachyr set
2. Manajuma's Gory Fetch, Manajuma's Carving Knife
3. Gold Wrap and Aquila Cuirass
4. Warzechian Armguards & Nemesis Bracers
5. In-geom
6. Ring of Emptiness, Rechel's Ring of Larceny and Convention of Elements

4. Craft using Recipe 3 in Kanai's Cube in this order:

1. Ceremonial Knife to get Manajuma's Carving Knife
2. 1-Handed Sword to get In-geom
3. Rings to get Ring of Emptiness, Rechel's Ring of Larceny and Convention of Elements
4. Amulets to get Squirt's Necklace
5. Anything from the Gamble list in Step 3 that you haven't already acquired.

5. Do Bounties to acquire several important items for this build:

• Act 1: Ring of Royal Grandeur
• Act 2: Gloves of Worship
• Act 3: Avarice Band
• Bounty Turn In: Recipes for Captain Crimson's Trimmings, Sage's Journey and Cain's Destiny

6. Use Primordial Ashes in Kanai's Cube with the new Curiosity of Lorath Nahr recipe to obtain a free Crafted Primal Ancient. Since you can only equip one of them, choosing the right item to focus matters! Great candidates are Weapons, Offhands, Jewelry or any item with an important multiplier. With that in mind, we recommend getting one of the following items:

• Ring of Emptiness
• Convention of Elements
• Squirt's Necklace

• Bane of the Trapped is the most powerful DPS gem in the game and provides a 1.6x Damage multiplier.
• Boon of the Hoarder gives you 30% Movement Speed for 2 seconds after picking up gold as well as making enemies have a chance to drop gold on death.
• Bane of the Powerful is a good option for speed Greater Rift runs as it provides a consistent, long lasting Damage and Damage Reduction buff without requiring you to slow down or position yourself to get the buff.
• Molten Wildebeest's Gizzard gives a giant Life per Second boost and is used to give a shield based off your Life per Second which protects our Squirt's Necklace. This gives double Damage, some additional Toughness & insane Healing.
• Esoteric Alteration can replace Molten Wildebeest's Gizzard when running with The Flavor of Time instead of Squirt's Necklace while doing Greater Rifts.

• Hex Angry Chicken is your main source of damage. Step 1 - Turn into a Chicken. Step 2 - Boom. The range of this explosion is unfortunately small so get nice and close to what you want to blast.
• Horrify Stalker is used with Rechel's Ring of Larceny for another 60% Movement Speed Bonus.
• Soul Harvest Soul to Waste gives 3% Intelligence per enemy affected and increases Movement Speed by 5% per stack, up to 5 stacks or 10 with Soul Harvester equipped.
• Summon Zombie Dogs Life Link is used for the Movement Speed buff from Fierce Loyalty as well as the Damage Reduction it provides.
• Piranhas Piranhado gives you a way to "pixel" enemies together if your first Chicken blast doesn't kill the pack you dove into.
• Spirit Walk Severance can be used to get out of harm's way if you end up waiting on your Hex Cooldown and to get close to enemies for Soul Harvest. It also gives another 100% Movement Speed bonus before going into Angry Chicken.
• Locust Swarm Pestilence is what allows you to get the 300% Damage buff from the Ring of Emptiness if needed for damage.

• Grave Injustice is an amazing Passive that restores 1% of your Life and Mana as well as reducing all skills Cooldowns by 1 second every time an enemy dies within 20 yards. This bonus is also impacted by your Pickup Radius, increasing the range of the effect.
• Gruesome Feast can be utilized for a consistent Damage boost as you'll pick up a lot of Health Globes due to the massive Pick up Radius boost from Avarice Band.
• Fierce Loyalty is also great in speeds for the 15-30% increase to Movement Speed based on if you're in combat or not.
• Tribal Rites reduces the Cooldown of your Hex by 25%.
• Spirit Vessel is the Witch Doctor's Cheat Death and can be used to provide an extra layer of protection if you're constantly getting turned into a Chicken Nugget. Take away Fierce Loyalty if you use it.

Patch 2.7.0 revamped the follower system giving all 3 hirelings new powers and the emanate system. The first thing you should do is read our complete follower guide and remember the key takeaways:

1. The emanation system allows followers to share certain legendary and set powers with you. The most important ones are: The Flavor of Time, Nemesis Bracers, Avarice Band, Sage’s Journey and Cain’s Destiny. Click the guide above for the full list.
2. Follower’s powers are based on their main stat (maxed at 25,000, but they have a 2.5x multiplier so you only need 10,000). This means we stack Intelligence on the Enchantress, Dexterity on the Scoundrel and Strength on the Templar.
3. Guardian's Jeopardy (3) Bonus works for followers by improving their inherent stat multiplier from x2.5 to x3.5, making it slightly easier to hit the 25,000 main stat threshold if needed.
4. Followers share 20% of their Experience, Magic and Gold Find stats with you.
5. Legendary gems do not work on followers, except Esoteric Alteration and Mutilation Guard.
6. Cooldown Reduction does not work for any follower skill except the Templar’s Heal.
7. Followers never deal significant damage; you’re on your own to clear the content.

With these in mind, let’s get into our recommendations for this build.

Follower Setups

T16 Enchantress

Speed GR Enchantress

• T16 Enchantress
• Speed GR Enchantress

For T16 we recommend this Enchantress setup because she is the only follower that gives Cooldown Reduction, allowing you to spam your abilities more. Since this is T16 content, she’ll stay alive with Esoteric Alteration and Mutilation Guard and use Hand of the Prophet to gain all skills. This will give us Cooldown Reduction, Elemental Damage, Reduced Damage from Ranged Attacks, Armor, Attack Speed, and a Cheat Death.

Stat Priorities:

Since we do not have the immortality focus, we need to stack survivability on our Enchantress.

Intelligence > Vitality > Life % > Armor > All Resistance > Life Per Hit > Attack Speed.

Key Items:

• The Flavor of Time: For double duration on Pylons.
• Nemesis Bracers: For extra Elites, Death’s Breaths and In-geom procs.
• Avarice Band: For the insane pickup radius.
• Ring of Royal Grandeur: To complete our sets.
• Gloves of Worship: For 10 Minute Shrine Buffs.
• Sage’s Journey: For double Death’s Breaths.
• Cain’s Destiny: For 25% more Greater Rift Keystones.

For speed Greater Rifts we recommend this Enchantress setup because she is the only follower that gives Cooldown Reduction, allowing you to spam your abilities more. Since this is speed content, she’ll stay alive with Esoteric Alteration and Mutilation Guard and use Hand of the Prophet to gain all skills. This will give us Cooldown Reduction, Elemental Damage, Reduced Damage from Ranged Attacks, Armor, Attack Speed, and a Cheat Death.

Stat Priorities:

Since we do not have the immortality focus, we need to stack survivability on our Enchantress.

Intelligence > Vitality > Life % > Armor > All Resistance > Life Per Hit > Attack Speed.

Key Items:

• The Flavor of Time: For double duration on Pylons.
• Nemesis Bracers: For more progression from Elites.
• Oculus Ring: For 85% increased damage.
• Ice Climbers: To make your follower immune to Freeze and Immobilize effects.
• Hellfire Ring, Leoric's Crown and Cain's Destiny: For more Experience and Attack Speed.

This build is very easy to play and have some success with, you will however notice that some of the skills don't synergize with Angry Chicken as well as one might expect. Simple things like having to go in and out of Angry Chicken form to cast other skills can make it a bit clunky, so timing of your skill cycle is important to really maximize the Movement Speed bonuses and make the most of the build. It's also important to note that this build performs much better in solo than in groups, in a full party even T16 can feel quite overwhelming so keep your Angry Chicken to yourself if you really want to see where it thrives.

• Always cast Summon Zombie Dogs LIfe Link at the start of a Bounty of Rift as they provide Damage Reduction as well as a Movement Speed Bonus from Fierce Loyalty. After this you're going to want to use your Spirit Walk to get close to enemies before casting Soul Harvest and Horrify.
• At this point you have all of the buffs and are ready to cast Hex Angry Chicken and pursue your first elite! Angry Chicken will last a very long time and the Cooldown starts right when you cast it, not when you explode. So it's fine to be patient as you search for a sufficient amount of enemies or an Elite before detonating, this can also be used to detonate twice in quick succession when you get to your first Elite as the Cooldown will be over so you can explode, cast Angry Chicken and explode again in an instant.
• Keep in mind that your explosions trigger a chain reaction when enemies die, so making sure there is a decent amount of trash around an Elite before detonating is crucial to killing them in one shot.
• If you detonate your Angry Chicken without an Elite or enough enemies around you won't get a buff from In-geom or Grave Injustice and might end up with some downtime. This is very undesirable as you want to spend as much time going in and out of Angry Chicken form since all of our damage comes from that explosion. You're also very squishy and want to spend very little time hanging around enemies without the ability to blow them up quickly.
• After detonating on a pack, one of two things will be the result; either everything around you will be dead or you'll have some Trash / Elite still alive.
• If everything around is dead and there are no enemies to get buffs from, you can use Spirit Walk to quickly find some enemies to cast Horrify and Soul Harvest on before going back into Angry Chicken and finding the next Elite pack. If it's going to cost you several seconds to slowly walk to find an enemy in a Sewer, Cave or other terrible map, just cast Spirit Walk before Angry Chicken and get to the next pack ASAP.
• If post detonation there are many enemies alive, cast Piranhado to gather everything around any Elites that you didn't kill, especially on to an Oculus Ring circle as there should be one from the previous carnage. Recast your buffs then blast them away with another explosion! The explosion from Angry Chicken has a surprisingly small area of effect so make sure you're getting very close to Elites before detonating.
• You'll notice against high HP Elites or Rift Guardians that your damage falls off significantly, due to the lack of chain reactions and Area Damage. We have our mini-Chickens but they do virtually nothing so don't count on them helping out here either. This is a great time to take advantage of our ability to explode twice in quick succession that we discussed in the second bullet point. Evade during the Hex Angry Chicken Cooldown and be prepared for Rift Guardians to require a few explosions to take down.
• Keep your buffs up and keep moving!

99% chance of being turned into a chicken nugget, would not advise.

Check out our dedicated Hardcore Survival Guide to learn how to dominate hardcore on other builds!

• A simple concept that's worth mentioning, this combination of items is a core part of any T16 build.
• Boon of the Hoarder makes enemies drop gold, Avarice Band increases your Pickup Radius when you pick up Gold and Goldwrap gives an insane Armor boost based off the amount of Gold you've picked up. The Pickup Radius bonus will cap out at 30 yards but this otherwise will scale continuously if you keep a consistent flow of Gold coming in.
• If you're playing T16 with any build this should be incorporated at all costs. PICK UP THE GOLD!

• This set allows your Hex Angry Chicken to last for 15 seconds, meaning you have that long before it will automatically explode if you don't manually activate it.
• A great thing about this is that your Hex Angry Chicken Cooldown actually starts the moment you become a Chicken and not when you explode.
• This can be used to your advantage in that you can let the Cooldown finish while still running around as a chicken then explode, recast Angry Chicken and explode once more in an instant once you find an Elite.

• Each stack, received upon picking up a Health Globe, has its own duration.
• You need 5 globes every 15 seconds or one Health Globe every three seconds to keep it at full power.
• The Intelligence bonus stacks additively with Soul Harvest's bonus.