Arachyr Corpse Spiders 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 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. Brood of Araneae
3. Lakumba's Ornament
4. Shukrani's Triumph or any Legendary Mojo for the start
5. The Compass Rose and Ring of Emptiness

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

1. Ceremonial Knives to get The Spider Queen's Grasp
2. Maces to get Echoing Fury
3. Staves to get Wormwood
4. Rings to get Ring of Emptiness and The Compass Rose
5. Amulets to get The Traveler's Pledge
6. 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
• Bounty Turn In: Recipe for Cain's Destiny and Captain Crimson's Trimmings (for your follower)
  
  

6. At this point you can somewhat comfortably farm Nephalem or Speed Greater Rifts where you can find all the remaining items you need for different variants of the build. Spend your materials getting items with better rolls and/or ancient quality.

7. 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:

• The Spider Queen's Grasp
• Ring of Emptiness
• Shukrani's Triumph
• The Compass Rose

• Simplicity's Strength is a mandatory gem as it provides us with a 100% separate damage multiplier and great Life recovery with our Corpse Spiders.
• Enforcer is strictly better than Bane of the Trapped since its damage multiplier is unconditional and all our damage comes from Corpse Spiders.
• Bane of the Trapped grants us a global separate 1.6 damage multiplier. Spirit of Arachyr Webs and The Spider Queen's Grasp continuously apply slows to proc it.
• Bane of the Stricken helps us kill the Rift Guardian. As long as you don't need more than 2 minutes to kill it you can equip Bane of the Trapped instead. This is only necessary for RGK setups.
• For Nephalem Rifts, Boon of the Hoarder is always a default include specifically due to its amazing synergy with Avarice Band.

• We use Corpse Spiders as our main damage dealer. Widowmakers is preferred due to its slightly higher raw damage compared to other runes.
• Locust Swarm is mandatory in order to proc our Ring of Emptiness massive damage multiplier.
• Piranhas Piranhado is used to apply a 15% additive damage debuff and pull enemies together. Keep in mind you need to kill monsters to reset its cooldown with Grave Injustice.
• Spirit Walk Jaunt or Severance for mobility and survival purposes as well as a damage cooldown with Shukrani's Triumph.
• Soul Harvest Languish for massive damage and damage reduction buffs with Lakumba's Ornament.
• Horrify Frightening Aspect for a permanent 50% Armor buff. At higher Paragon, this can be swapped with Big Bad Voodoo Slam Dance in combination with Grave Injustice for 15% Attack Speed and Additive Damage which is the best damage output option.

• Grave Injustice is the cornerstone of our playstyle. It reduces cooldowns when you kill enemies, allowing a very high uptime of Spirit Walk.
• Pierce the Veil is a 20% additive damage buff at the expense of increased Mana costs. As this is a Generator build with Corpse Spiders the latter does not matter.
• Confidence Ritual is a staple for its 25% separate damage multiplier.
• Spirit Vessel as a cheat death mechanic because dying always sucks, right? Swampland Attunement is also a great option for defensive purposes.
• If you feel brave enough to get rid of a pure defensive passive, Gruesome Feast is always a pretty good option for more offense and defense.

¹ Add a bit of Vitality if you feel too squishy (a total of 700,000 Life is recommended).

The Altar of Rites is a tree that grants tremendous powers to your entire account in exchange for sacrifices. It requires you to farm Bounties, kill the Ubers, craft the Staff of Herding, and more. Completing all 26 of these tasks, along with sacrificing 6 Primal Ancients grants you extra Damage, Defense, Quality of Life, Increased Drops and 3 Potion Super Powers. Read the full guides on Unlocking the Altar and the Altar Mechanics by Raxxanterax and Chewingnom to learn everything about this fantastic mechanic!

Optimal Path

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. With Enforcer equipped on the player, it is much easier to keep followers alive without immortality relic since the 90% damage reduction works on them.
7. Cooldown Reduction does not work for any follower skill except the Templar’s Heal.
8. Followers never deal significant damage; you’re on your own to clear the content.

Select Follower

When you enter a Greater Rift, start off by using Spirit Walk to run towards enemies and use Horrify Frightening Aspect and Soul Harvest to get your defensive buffs. Never let them drop! Then start to gather monsters with Corpse Spiders and Locust Swarm.

Use Spirit Walk to move through enemies that are in the way, for defense, to dodge affixes and projectiles or similar. Don't waste it when you don't need it! When making a pull, engage several screens of monsters by bodypulling and casting Locust Swarm, then group them up using Piranhas Piranhado.

When you are ready to damage monsters:

• Make sure you infest most enemies for the (2) Bonus spread damage which constitutes most of your AoE damage. To do so, you need to hit them with the Thread between you and your Arachyr Spider Queen. Making a quick circle around the pull while the Spider Queen is in the middle of it is a good way to infest most enemies in the blink of an eye. Remember that you can position her at will by throwing Corpse Spiders at that location.
• Focus an Elite and throw Corpse Spiders onto it.
• If you get an Oculus Ring spawn near you, you can quickly get inside while throwing jars.
• Use Spirit Walk wisely to damage burst with Shukrani's Triumph.

On Rift Guardians:

• Make sure to infest the Rift Guardian since the Arachyr (2) Bonus works even on the target you're dealing damage to, meaning it doubles your damage output in single target.
• On Bloodmaw, use Spirit Walk whenever the Rift Guardian starts its Leap animation. This interrupts it as Bloodmaw needs to have a target to perform this attack.
• On Voracity, use Spirit Walk while entering Gas Clouds. As AoE ground effects snapshot toughness upon entering them, you will take 0 damage from the Gas Clouds.
• Use the layout to protect yourself from some Rift Guardians' abilities like on Agnidox, Cold Snap or Erethon. Check out this post about Rift Guardians to learn more!

This build is pretty tanky by default. For extra safety you can swap Echoing Fury with Sacred Harvester at the expense of significant damage. Don't forget to play with Spirit Vessel. You should also take the cheat death proc on your follower for extra safety. Check out our dedicated Hardcore Survival Guide to learn more about how to succeed in this game mode!

• (2) Bonus summons a permanent Spider Queen linked to you by an infested thread. Enemies hit by this thread are infested for 10 seconds. All damage done by Corpse Spiders to any infested enemy is also taken by every infested enemy. This bonus is at the core of the build, enabling the build to deal great AoE damage.
• The Spider Queen is commanded to move where you cast Corpse Spiders, so be mindful about where you cast them.
• (4) Bonus makes the Spider Queen leaving webs that last 15 seconds on the ground. These webs refresh the infest duration on enemies and grant you 75% damage reduction. The damage reduction effect lingers for 4 seconds when you leave the web.
• (6) Bonus grants 11,500% increased damage to creature skills: Corpse Spiders, Plague of Toads, Firebats, Locust Swarm, Hex and Piranhas.

• Each Corpse Spiders cast throws a jar releasing 4 spiders that last 4 seconds and attack nearby enemies. Each Corpse Spider usually performs 4 attacks before despawning. Unfortunately, as is tradition for Pets in Diablo III, they have a tendency to stand still doing nothing or reposition themselves while attacking, which means you can expect slightly more than 3 attacks per spider on average.
• Leaping Spiders can partially help circumvent the Pet targeting issue because they jump onto monsters up to 25 yards away but Widowmakers is preferred for its higher base damage.
• The Spider Queen is useless because you can only cast one at a time and Brood of Araneae stacking damage multiplier cares about the number of hits performed.
• Corpse Spiders is a primary skill, hence benefitting from Depth Diggers and Simplicity's Strength.
• Corpse Spiders are considered Pets. This means they are affected by Mask of Jeram and Enforcer. Corpse Spiders Damage on your gear is a separate multiplier.
• Attack Speed is not a separate damage multiplier nor an actual Attack Rate buff for Corpse Spiders. Attack Speed only increases the rate at which you can cast Corpse Spiders.
• Tasker and Theo increase the Attack Rate of Corpse Spiders, allowing them to attack up to 6 times within their 4 second lifespan.

• Brood of Araneae grants a 100% separate damage multiplier to Corpse Spiders by default.
• Brood of Araneae secondary effect applies a 1% stackable debuff separate damage multiplier to the target for every Corpse Spiders hit. Each stack has an independent 5 second duration. This is where things get interesting because it effectively means Attack Speed double dips! Indeed, Attack Speed allows you to cast more Corpse Spiders, meaning you get more hits while getting more stacks of this effect at the same time.
• The theoretical maximum Brood of Araneae stacks can be calculated using this formula, with FPA being your Breakpoint, S the number of spiders per cast, H the number of hits per spider and D the stack duration. S, H and D are all constants with S = 4, H = 3 and D = 5.

• For instance, with a 17 FPA Breakpoint on Corpse Spiders, you can get a theoretical maximum of 212 stacks:

• This helps us to understand why Echoing Fury is that good for the build, since its 75% Attack Speed buff bumps us from 2.4 to 3.52 casts per second (25 to 17 FPA) meaning we cast Corpse Spiders ~47% faster and get ~47% more Brood of Araneae maximum possible stacks (144 to 212 stacks), resulting into a 1.47 * 1.47 = 2.16 damage multiplier.

• The 200% Pet Damage bonus from Mask of Jeram is a specific case: its damage buff is additive with your Elemental Damage (Fire / Physical / Poison / Cold). As a consequence, "Fire / Physical / Poison / Cold skills deal X% more damage" affixes (mainly found on Bracers and Amulet slots), grants a lower relative damage increase to builds using Mask of Jeram in comparison to other builds.

• The Grin Reaper spawns 2 Mimics that can cast most of your skills equipped. It used to be a popular item back in the days for zWD since their Piranhas casts for instance were stacking the damage debuff. However this got nerfed in Season 7.
• The Grin Reaper Mimics can cast Corpse Spiders with your equipped rune. The interesting part is that these Corpse Spiders can proc the damage debuff from Brood of Araneae.
• Tasker and Theo buff the Attack Rate of Mimics by 1.5 so they can cast more Corpse Spiders. At the same time, it also buff the Attack Rate of Corpse Spiders so they attack on average 6 times instead of 3-4.
• This means the The Grin Reaper + Tasker and Theo combination brings you at the same time more Corpse Spiders and more attacks from them, which result in an insane amount of Brood of Araneae debuff stacks in single target since it creates an Attack Speed triple dipping.

• The 100% Damage bonus while in the Spirit Realm from Shukrani's Triumph is an additive damage buff, meaning its effect is additive with other buffs such as Pierce the Veil.
• You are in the Spirit Realm when in Spirit Walk and when Spirit Vessel procs.
• After the initial duration of Spirit Walk (2 seconds or 3 with Jaunt), you stay indefinitely under Spirit Walk until you attack 3 times or until you have any Elite enemy within 20 yards.
• A very interesting property of Spirit Walk is that you do not generate aggro under this effect, which means you are invisible to all monsters. This mechanic can be used to your advantage on some Rift Guardians which need a target to perform some abilities (Bloodmaw's Jump for instance).

• When applied, Locust Swarm jumps to another nearby enemy once every second. With Creeping Death, this effect stays permanently as long as you are in range. It fades when you move ~1.5 screens away.
• The Cloud of Insects rune can be used to apply bleed to enemies for Pain Enhancer, as any Physical DoT effect provides the extra Attack Speed effect.

• This ability is one of the few ways in the game to pixelpull enemies.
• If used on top of enemies, it pulls them close together but does not pixelpull most of them. In order to get the best pull possible, it has to be used on a spot with no other nearby enemies.

• 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.

During Season 27, the LoD Corpse Spiders build was a force to be reckoned with as a RGK, able to destroy Rift Guardians within seconds (while creating massive lags in the process). The reason is that you could replace The Furnace in the cube with Echoing Fury and keep its buff fully stacked thanks to a zMonk using Sanctified Wave of Light. The resulting 75% Attack Speed buff is a tremendous damage buff for this build due to triple dipping.

Since The Grin Reaper Mimics seems to benefit from Legacy of Dreams damage multiplier but not from Arachyr (6) Bonus, this build is superior to its Arachyr counterpart in single target situations.

Gameplay
In the Rift your job is mostly to survive and give the Big Bad Voodoo and Sanctified Horrify buffs to your Trash Killer. During the boss fight try to dodge to keep Squirt's Necklace and make sure to keep Spirit Walk for your Physical Convention of Elements cycle.

Setups
You can add in some additional toughness by changing the rune on Big Bad Voodoo to Ghost Trance. It is also possible to give up some Attack Speed from Tal Rasha's Relentless Pursuit to take in Aquila Cuirass.