The Gargantuan Witch Doctor is one of the classic pet builds in Diablo 3. As a master of voodoo and spirits, it's very laid back and easy to play. While Gargantuans are outclassed by other setups such as Spirit Barrage, Zombie Bears or Jade Harvester, they can still be used to successfully both in farming and pushing solo Greater Rifts.
While a few setups are possible for this, the best set to use is the Helltooth Harness for its massive 17,500% damage bonus to your Gargantuans. The best part about is: you won't have to rely on a single pet, but instead you will have three little Gargs through The Short Man's Finger that will decimate your foes! Just stay back, activate your buffs and enjoy the show. This makes this build ideal for console and newer players!
With the Witch Doctor changes in Season 25 buffing Lakumba's Ornament for more toughness and allowing Gargantuan to benefit from Ring of Emptiness the build has become a lot stronger than in the past, allowing it to compete with Zombie Bears. Worth noting, the Season 30 offers a massive (6) Bonus damage multiplier buff to 37,500%.
Since you only need two core skills and a few items alongside the set to make it work, you can experiment with other setups, especially for speedfarming lower content. This guide will show you what we believe is best for Nephalem and Greater Rifts alike!
Easy to Play ✔ Great Class Fantasy ✔ Few Buttons to Press ✔ Has Massive Meatshields ✔
❌ Lacks Speed ❌ Very small AoE ❌ Relies on Borked Pet AI ❌ No Match for META builds
Core Setup
Core Item Build
Items
The Helltooth Harness set is the core of the build, giving 17,500% damage increase to your Gargantuans after using Wall of Death.
Spite effectively adds the most important rune (Humongoid) to the setup, giving your Gargs cleave damage.
The Short Man's Finger splits your Gargantuan into three, each dealing 750% of the original damage (for a total of 2,250% damage done).
Mask of Jeram adds 200% damage bonus to your Pets. This affix stacks additively with Elemental damage rolls on your items.
Tasker and Theo give 50% Attack Speed to your Pets, adding another great bonus and allowing you to reach the right breakpoint.
Lakumba's Ornament is a core defensive item for any Witch Doctor build, buffing Soul Harvest with an extra 70% damage reduction.
Sacred Harvester is a great boost, adding an extra 15% Intelligence bonus to Soul Harvest and buffing Lakumba's Ornament damage reduction to a tremendous 80% due to additional stacks!
Shukrani's Triumph adds 100% additive damage during Spirit Walk and lots of mobility.
Season 31 Forbidden Archives
For the duration of Season 31, the slots in Kanai’s Cube that allow you to equip three additional Legendary Powers will not be restricted to their usual categories. While normally a player can equip one power each from the Weapon, Armor, and Jewelry categories, Season 31 players can mix and match between all three! This might allow you to run two Weapon powers with one Armor power. Or perhaps you might choose to run three Amulet powers instead.
Unfortunately, this build cannot really make a good use of this Season Theme because we need several Legendary Powers such as Mask of Jeram, Tasker and Theo and Ring of Royal Grandeur.
Global Stat Priorities
As this is a Pet build, Gargantuan Damage acts as a separate multiplier instead of being in the additive category, making that item affix stronger than usual. Rolling this on your Off-Hand, Chest and Shoulders will be the main priority.
On the other hand, Mask of Jeram's damage bonus counts into the same category as Elemental Damage, which makes this stat comparatively worse here than in most other builds. Your overall offensive stat priority will be: Critical Hit Damage > Gargantuan Damage > Critical Hit Chance > Area Damage > Attack Speed > Physical Damage > Intelligence. Defensively you want to go with Vitality > Armor > Elite Damage Reduction > All Resistance.
Contrary to most other pet builds in the game, there are only very few fixed breakpoints for Gargantuans, which depend on whether Tasker and Theo is equipped and Restless Giant is active. Attack Speed instead scales their damage done per hit. See the Mechanics section for more info.
Assembling the Build
1. Do the Challenge Rift for the materials to cubeLegendary Powers. You can complete this once a week for additional resources and we always update the guide for you!
2. Gather the full Helltooth Harness 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.
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 (for your follower)
Act 3: Avarice Band
Act 4: Can drop any bounty item from any act
Bounty Turn In: Recipe for Spite, Captain Crimson's Trimming's, Sage's Journey and Cain's Destiny
6. Once you have acquired the recipe, craft Spite from the blacksmith. The materials are quite cheap, so you should invest into a good roll here!
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:
Ring of Emptiness
The Short Man's Finger
Squirt's Necklace
Item Stat Priorities
SLOT
ITEM
STAT PRIORITY
Main-Hand
Sacred Harvester Echoing Fury
1. Damage Range 2. Socket Ramaladni's Gift 3. Attack Speed 4. Damage % 5. Area Damage 6. Intelligence
1. Physical Damage 2. Critical Hit Chance 3. Intelligence 4. Life per Hit 5. Vitality
Amulet
Squirt's Necklace
1. Socket 2. Critical Hit Damage 3. Critical Hit Chance 4. Physical Damage 5. Intelligence 6. Attack Speed 7. Area Damage
Belt
The Witching Hour Goldwrap
1. Intelligence 2. Vitality 3. Armor 4. Life % 5. All Resistance
Potion
Bottomless Potion of the Unfettered
To avoid Crowd Control effects during your DPS phases
Gems
As a pet build, Enforcer is the best gem in any case, giving up to 60% damage increase and making your pets practically immortal.
Bane of the Trapped is the second best gem, adding another 60% damage and a slow aura around your character. Gargantuans using the Humongoid rune (from Spite) will apply slows by default and buff themselves this way.
Bane of the Stricken is required to kill the boss in solo pushing. For farming, other options like Bane of the Powerful, Zei's Stone of Vengeance or Esoteric Alteration are useful. In Nephalem Rifts, Molten Wildebeest's Gizzard shield is great to protect your Squirt's Necklace buff if it drops too often.
Skills
Gargantuans are our core damage in this setup. They do all the heavy lifting while you stand back to buff them. The Humongoid is gained from the offhand, so we choose Restless Giant for big DPS bursts when we need them the most.
Wall of Death is the activator for the Helltooth Harness set. The most useful rune here is Communing with Spirits for its defensive bonuses, but Wall of Zombies can be useful for grouping enemies, too.
Soul Harvest Languish is our main defensive buff, adding 30% Intelligence, 100% Armor and 60% damage reduction when combined with Sacred Harvester and Lakumba's Ornament. Everything accounted for this buff gives you roughly x5 toughness and x1.3 damage.
Spirit Walk Jaunt is a great defensive tool that allows you to use Endless Walk and Oculus Rings more effectively.
Piranhas Piranhado gives you a 15% additive damage bonus and groups enemies for Crowd Control and better Area Damage.
Locust Swarm Pestilence is used to activate Ring of Emptiness.
Passives
Midnight Feast adds a 50% multiplicative damage bonus to your Gargantuans. This is a must-have!
Confidence Ritual adds a 25% multiplicative damage bonus against nearby enemies.
Pierce the Veil gives another 20% additive damage bonus with practically no downside as we are not limited by Mana whatsoever.
Spirit Vessel adds a cheat death when things go wrong. Swampland Attunement is another great defensive tool if you rather want to go with raw toughness or replace one of the smaller DPS boosts.
Other useful passives are: Fierce Loyalty and Bad Medicine.
Paragon Points
Core
Offensive
Defensive
Utility
1. Movement Speed
1. Attack Speed
1. Armor
1. Area Damage
2. Intelligence
2. Critical Hit Damage
2. Life %
2. Life per Hit
3. Vitality1
3. Critical Hit Chance
3. All Resistance
3. Pickup Radius
4. Maximum Mana
4. Cooldown Reduction
4. Life Regeneration
4. Resource Cost Reduction
1 Add a bit of Vitality if you feel too squishy (a total of 800,000 Life is recommended).
Altar of Rites
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!
Note: The suggested path assumes you are playing Solo and used the Challenge Rift Cache to help you level up.
Optimal Path
Node 2: Choose Anointed to gain a full set of 70 yellows from level 18-70!
Node 6: Rush to gain double Bounties to help unlock other Nodes in the Altar.
Nodes 7-14: These are the last Nodes you can gain until the Challenge Rift resets. Take at least 1 Node at the bottom of each path to unlock all 3 Potion Super Powers. Pick up the Mirror Node at the top for a colossal 41% extra XP all season. Remember to unlock Father once you clear GR70 solo and have your first Primal!
Nodes 15-26: Pick up the final Quality of Life, Damage, and Defense Nodes (in that order) to finish the Altar.
Potion Super Powers: Take Father first, then Mother, and finally Mortal.
Disclaimer: The Mortal and Mother Potions require you to salvage 2 and 3 Primals respectively. Unlock them as soon as you have those materials as they don't cost a point!
Recommended Altar Path Use the Scroll Bar to see Altar Progression
Follower
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:
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.
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.
Guardian's Jeopardy(2) 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.
Followers share 20% of their Experience, Magic and Gold Find stats with you.
Legendary gems do not work on followers, except Esoteric Alteration and Mutilation Guard.
With Enforcer equipped on the player it's much easier to keep followers alive even without an immortality relic. The 90% damage reduction counts for them, too.
Cooldown Reduction does not work for any follower skill except the Templar’s Heal.
Followers never deal significant damage; you’re on your own to clear the content.
Select Follower
T16 Enchantress
T16 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. Since the build uses Enforcer, it's quite easy to make her survive. 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.
Speed GR Enchantress
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. Since the build uses Enforcer, it's quite easy to make her survive. 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.
GR Pushing Templar
For Greater Rift pushing we recommend this Templar setup for the sustain from Heal, 10% increased damage from Onslaught, and the very powerful cheat death mechanic from Guardian. This is the only follower build that stacks Cooldown Reduction because it works with Heal. Since this build uses Enforcer, it's possible to make your follower survive without an immortality relic so you could go with 50% CDR or all skills instead. Stat Priorities:Since we have the immortality relic, we do not need to stack survivability on our Templar. Strength > Cooldown Reduction > 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.
Unity: For 50% damage reduction if you're also wearing one.
Ice Climbers: To make your follower immune to Freeze and Immobilize effects.
Leoric's Crown and Captain Crimson's Trimmings: For more Cooldown Reduction on Heal.
Gameplay
Summon your Gargantuans at the start of a run.
Apply Necrosis (from the Helltooth Harness (2) Bonus) to an enemy using Wall of Death. Repeat this at least once every 10 seconds when in combat.
Rush into a pack of enemies with Spirit Walk to cast your first Soul Harvest for the damage reduction bonus. Keep up Soul Harvest by using it on an enemy at least once every 30 seconds afterwards.
Gather enemies by aggroing them and pull them together with Piranhas Piranhado close to your Gargantuans. Also use this on enemies that can't be moved for the extra damage bonus.
Stay mobile and use Spirit Walk to dodge enemy attacks and elite affixes.
Apply Locust Swarm once every 8 seconds to benefit from the Ring of Emptiness damage bonus.
Stay close to enemies when possible to benefit from Confidence Ritual. The radius is roughly the same as the Wall of Death Communing with Spirits circle.
To optimize your DPS force-teleport your Gargantuans in case they get stuck attacking a lone target somewhere in a corner. You want to have them hitting the most targets possible and it is your responsibility to move them (and the enemies) into the right place!
Make sure to keep the boss in the area of effect of either Wall of Death or Piranhado at all times to stack Bane of the Stricken. If there are additional monster spawns, try to hit only the Rift Guardian as the gem will only add stacks to one target at a time.
Hardcore
Witch Doctor is typically not a great class to play in Hardcore as you lack defensive tools like Crowd Control immunity and have a long cooldown on Spirit Walk, your only escape skill when things go downhill. Nonetheless you have three bodyguards protecting you and the overall setup is tanky enough to carry its weight. Make sure to always run with Spirit Vessel and take extra care to not drop your Soul Harvest stacks as you will most likely get oneshot without them.
Check out our dedicated Hardcore Survival Guide to learn more about how to succeed in this game mode!
Variants
Nephalem Rifts
GR Solo Speeds
GR Solo Push
Gargs T16
Concept In Nephalem Rifts damage is not the main priority as the Gargantuans have no issue killing or even one shotting stuff there. Instead, focus on extra speed and utility by running the Boon of the Hoarder, Avarice Band & Goldwrap combo and taking more speed: Horrify Stalker and Spirit Walk Severance. To smooth it out, roll extra Cooldown Reduction where possible (as long as you feel your damage remains high enough) and take the Grave Injustice passive. This setup uses the Poison rune Big Stinker for the damage aura, but running with Restless Giant is totally adequate. Just change the elemental damage rolls on your items accordingly.
Gameplay Zoom around the map to find elite packs and destroy them with your Gargantuans. Just make sure to keep up your buffs (Wall of Death, Soul Harvest) and ignore stray enemies.
Setups If your damage feels too low, consider rolling more damage stats (Attack Speed or Damage Range) instead of Cooldown Reduction. If your Squirt's Necklace keeps dropping all the time, consider using Molten Wildebeest's Gizzard instead of Bane of the Trapped to protect it with a shield. Another option for more DPS is to use the Circle of Life passive and replacing Horrify with Sacrifice Provoke the Pack to gain additional damage buffs when you need them. If you are overkilling everything easily, you can drop Spite for Thing of the Deep and replace Avarice Band with Rechel's Ring of Larceny to gain more movespeed with similar pickup radius.
Gargs Speeds
Concept In this setup we want to combine speed and damage to run lower Greater Rifts effortlessly. Due to the small AoE effect of the Gargantuans, doing extremely fast clears is impossible but if you run at a difficulty where you comfortably oneshot enemies you will be able to clear a run in 2-3 minutes.
Gameplay Keep up your buffs (Soul Harvest, Wall of Death) while zooming from elite to elite. Try to dodge attacks to not lose your Squirt's Necklace buff too often. Using Horrify at the right time will also help you with that. When you find adequate packs of monsters, pull them together with Piranhado and let your Gargs to their job! Use Locust Swarm on tough enemies to improve their damage.
Setups If you want the Spirit Vessel passive included for a cheat death, you should drop either Grave Injustice or Confidence Ritual. For extra defense, you could also run with Esoteric Alteration instead of Bane of the Powerful.
Gargs Solo Push
Concept This is also the variation described in the main section of this guide. For Greater Rift pushing we take all the damage we can get. This includes lots of Area Damage, Attack Speed and all the other damage stats you can get. The build is very slow paced, focused around killing small packs of enemies and positioning yourself, your pets and your enemies in the right place.
Gameplay As described above: Keep up your buffs (Wall of Death, Soul Harvest) and focus on pulling enemies together. When your Gargantuans get distracted by single enemies, try to position them better so that their cleave hits more targets. For the best DPS, stay close to your enemies for Confidence Ritual and apply Locust Swarm regularly for Ring of Emptiness. On the boss, stack Bane of the Stricken with Wall of Death or Piranhado.
Setups If you feel like you don't need the cheat death, you could replace Spirit Vessel with Swampland Attunement to be able to tank more damage at a time.
Video Guide
Mechanics
Gargantuan
Gargantuans have a total of 4 fixed Attack Speed breakpoints. These are:
60 FPA / 84 FPA (normally with/without Tasker and Theo)
48 FPA / 66 FPA (Restless Giant active with/without Tasker and Theo)
Instead of the expected Tasker and Theo bonus of 50% Attack Speed, we instead only gain a different breakpoint. Under normal circumstances, this means going from 84 FPA to 60 FPA, which is a 40% damage boost. When Restless Giant activates, the breakpoints are 66 FPA without and 48 FPA with the gloves equipped, resulting in a 37.5% damage bonus.
The enraging effect of the Restless Giant rune can only happen once every 45 seconds. Resummoning your Gargantuans will not reset the cooldown. The damage bonus is multiplicative and the effect activates at a very small distance (roughly 15 yards).
Contrary to what the tooltip says, Gargantuans with the Big Stinker rune deal Poison damage with their regular attacks, too (and thus require Poison damage rolls on your items).
The Short Man's Finger
Instead of a single Gargantuan, you will split that one into three small ones which deal 750% of the normal damage. The total damage bonus is 2,150%.
In combination with Spite, these 3 small Gargantuans gain the Cleave ability as well as the chill effect of the Humongoid rune, granting the build additional AoE damage.
The extra two Gargantuans behave and deal damage exactly like the regular one, but are much squishier. But this should not be an issue with Enforcer equipped anyway.
Mask of Jeram
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 much lower relative damage increase to builds using Mask of Jeram in comparison to other builds.
Piranhas Piranhado
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.
Summary
Summon your Gargantuan squad to protect you!
Keep up Soul Harvest and Necrosis from Helltooth Harness up at all times.
Position both enemies and your pets to maximize your DPS.
Keep up Locust Swarm on your enemies for the damage buff from Ring of Emptiness.
Stay back and enjoy your Gargantuans mowing through your enemies!
While this build is not really top of the game right now, it's still quite good and decent enough if you are looking for a pet-focused playstyle. Good luck!
Credits
Written by wudijo with help from Rob. Reviewed by Northwar, Raxxanterax. Updated by Chewingnom.