The stampede is on the way and you're the one commanding the charge! This build utilizes the immense power of the Helltooth Harness to deliver a devastating stream of Zombie Bears to destroy everything in your path. An old school Witch Doctor fan favorite has been enhanced in Season 22 with a new Mojo Ursua's Trodden Effigy, an improvement to the Scrimshaw as well as a giant boost to the 6 piece Helltooth Harness bonus from 9,000% to 17,500%!
You'll spend your time running around using Locust Swarm to gather up enemies, while maintaining your Toughness buffs from Soul Harvest and the Helltooth Harness. Captain Crimson's Trimmings and Blood Ritual work together with high Resource Cost Reduction to make your Zombie Bears cost virtually no Mana, allowing you to spam them at will.
While the build was never the strongest, it always made its way through as a competitive build. It's only with Season 30 that the build really get a chance to shine more due to a massive (6) Bonus buff to 37,500%.
This is an Area Damage (AD) build, since Zombie Bears can proc it. The build has a very mindful playstyle since Zombie Bears have collision with layout, meaning the player has to be extremely careful about his positioning and aim on monsters to destroy the battlefield with a mob of scary Zombie Bears. Let's get into it!
Bears! ✔ High Toughness ✔ Never Resource Starved ✔ Great Against Large Packs ✔
❌ Lack of Mobility ❌ Hard Positioning ❌ Weak Single Target ❌ Not Group Friendly
Core Setup
Core Item Build
Items
Helltooth Harness (4) Bonusand (6) Bonus are the primary focus of this build as they give 60% Damage Reduction for 10 seconds when you use your Zombie Charger or Wall of Death and a 17,500% Damage buff for 15 seconds after casting Wall of Death.
Captain Crimson's Trimmings gives a massive Toughness boost since you are focused on Resource Cost Reduction with this build. The Cooldown benefits aren't utilized as much in solo but still provide a great Damage buff.
Scrimshaw reduces the Mana cost of Zombie Charger by 75% and boosts its Damage by 6-7 times. This Main-Hand also has a Primary Stat option to get another 80% additive Damage buff to the skill.
Ursua's Trodden Effigy gives Zombie Charger up to a 150% Damage buff as well as spawning more Zombie Bears, launching 8 per cast instead of 3.
Ring of Emptiness provides a 300% Damage buff as long as the target is affected by Locust Swarm.
Finally Ring of Royal Grandeur allows you to utilize both Helltooth Harness and Captain Crimson's Trimmings.
Season 33 Shades of the Nephalem
For the duration of Season 33, you gain one extra slot in Kanai’s Cube that allows to choose any Legendary Powers for a total of 4 slots. While normally a player can equip one power each from the Weapon, Armor, and Jewelry categories, now you can add a second of one of these categories! Some builds enjoy major damage buffs while others are able to run completely different setups, for example through otherwise impossible combinations of weapon effects.
In addition, whenever you press a shrine or pylon, you spawn a Shadow Nephalem of your class to assist you for 1 minute. These use various abilities and provide helpful extra damage in the early game and for lower tier Greater Rifts. Learn more in our Season 22 overview.
In this build, push setup gains a free Convention of Elements to produce huge damage bursts during your Elemental cycle while speed setups can add Sacred Harvester for instance.
Global Stat Priorities
Our offensive priorities are: Critical Hit Chance & Damage > Poison Damage > Zombie Charger Damage > Attack Speed & Area Damage > Resource Cost Reduction > Cooldown Reduction. A mix of Attack Speed and Area Damage is nice as they can both help in different areas of a Rift. Attack Speed will help greatly on the Rift Guardian where you'll struggle the most and having some Area Damage will help throughout the Rift a decent amount as we group enemies together.
When doing T16 or speed Greater Rifts prioritize Cooldown more to give yourself as much Spirit Walk uptime as possible and to get a greater Damage buff from the Captain Crimson's Trimmings set. You unfortunately don't have any Crowd Control immunity on a Witch Doctor so try to roll at least 1-2 Crowd Control Reduction Secondary Stats on your Helm or Jewelry. There are many desirable stats for this build which means Vitality is sometimes left behind a bit but this can be made up for easily using Paragon points if needed.
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.
Rings to get Ring of Emptiness, Rechel's Ring of Larceny and Convention of Elements
Amulets for Traveler's Pledge, Squirt's Necklace and The Flavor of Time
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: For any bounty-specific item
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:
1. PoisonDamage 2. Critical Hit Chance 3. Intelligence 4. Life per Hit 5. Armor
Amulet
Squirt's Necklace The Traveler's Pledge The Flavor of Time
1. Socket 2. PoisonDamage 3. Critical Hit Damage 4. Critical Hit Chance 5. Intelligence
Belt
Captain Crimson's Silk Girdle (Crafted) Goldwrap (Cubed) Belt of Transcendence (Cubed)
1. Intelligence 2. Vitality 3. Armor 4. Life % 5. All Resistance
Potion
Bottomless Potion of Kulle-Aid
For breaking walls to pull enemies and increase DPS
Gems
Bane of the Trapped is the most powerful DPS gem in the game and provides a 1.6x Damage multiplier.
Bane of the Stricken is needed to kill the Rift Guardian at the end of the Rift when solo pushing.
Gogok of Swiftness is a great option for speed Greater Rift runs as it provides Attack Speed, Cooldown Reduction as well as a toughness buff.
Zei's Stone of Vengeance is a great option as we often hit enemies from a distance with the long range of Zombie Bears
Bane of the Powerful is a good option for speed Greater Rift runs as it provides consistent long lasting Damage and Damage Reduction buff.
Molten Wildebeest's Gizzard can be used to gain a shield buff for Squirt's Necklace on top of insane healing in T16 runs.
Skills
Zombie Charger is what this entire build is based around and will be the primary source of Damage with this build. Using the rune Zombie Bears you'll channel a constant stream of Bears that destroy everything in front of you for 520% weapon Damage each.
Wall of Death is utilized with the Helltooth Harness to grant 17,500% increased Damage to Zombie Charger for 15 seconds. Wall of Zombies is great to use while pushing as it allows you to group up enemies quite well which assists our Area Damage. Communicating with Spirits is another great choice as it synergizes well with Piranhas as well as the additional 25% Damage Reduction it applies to enemies.
Soul Harvest gives 3% Intelligence per enemy affected up to 5 stacks normally and 10 if using the Sacred Harvester, it also boosts your Armor by 10% per stack when using Languish and Movement Speed by 5% per stack when using Soul to Waste.
Summon Zombie Dogs Leeching Beasts is used in T16 for the Movement Speed buff from Fierce Loyalty and in pushing for the insane healing we get by utilizing a single Life per Hit roll on our Bracers. This skill synergizes well with the Wall of Zombies rune and can be used as a pair in any type of run
Piranhas Piranhado gives you a way to "pixel" enemies together for maximum Area Damage, as well as causing enemies to take 15% more Damage during its duration. Cast it in an area with no enemies present to get the best pull possible. This skill synergizes well with the Communicating with Spirits rune and can be used effectively especially if you find yourself in group Greater Rifts where you may have support characters increasing your toughness as well as pulling enemies together.
Spirit Walk Severance is mostly used for mobility as well as defensive purposes but also can be used offensively with the help from Shukrani's Triumph.
Locust Swarm Pestilence is what allows us to get the 300% Damage buff from the Ring of Emptiness.
Passives
Confidence Ritual gives a 25% multiplicative Damage increase to enemies within 20 yards which is a common occurrence since you are regularly casting Soul Harvest.
Swampland Attunement gives a massive Resistance boost for every enemy within 20 yards, up to a maximum of 25 targets increasing our toughness to those elements by roughly 50%! This synergizes well with Confidence Ritual and our close combat playstyle. It's important to note that this bonus is also impacted by your Pickup Radius, increasing the range of the effect.
Grave Injustice is an amazing Passive that restores 1% of our Life and Mana as well as reducing our skills Cooldowns by 1 second every time an enemy dies within 20 yards, like Swampland Attunement this bonus is also impacted by your Pickup Radius, increasing the range of the effect.
Blood Ritual provides further Resource Cost Reduction by allowing 20% of Mana costs to come from Life, this passive also gives 1% Life per Second! This passive synergizes with Captain Crimson's Trimmings for a further 25% toughness boost and is necessary to use if you're wanting to have Aquila Cuirass.
In T16 and speed Greater Rifts Gruesome Feast can be utilized for a consistent Damage boost as you'll get a lot of Health Globes naturally when killing enemies so rapidly. Fierce Loyalty is also great for the 15-30% Speed bonus.
Spirit Vessel is the Witch Doctor's Cheat Death and can be used to provide an extra layer of protection if needed!
Paragon Points
Core
Offensive
Defensive
Utility
1. Movement Speed
1. Attack Speed
1. Armor
1. Area Damage
2. Maximum Mana
2. Critical Hit Damage
2. Life %
2. Resource Cost Reduction
3. Intelligence
3. Critical Hit Chance
3. All Resistance
3. Pickup Radius
4. Vitality1
4. Cooldown Reduction
4. Life Regeneration
4. Life Per Hit
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.
Node 7: Take Vigor to help your build sustain its resources.
Nodes 8-14: 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(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.
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.
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.
With these in mind, let’s get into our recommendations for this build.
Speed GR 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.
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.
T16 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.
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 Scoundrel
For Greater Rift Pushing we recommend this Scoundrel setup for the Critical Hit Chance from Anatomy, 10% increased damage from Piercing Shot, and the insane Critical Hit Chance cloud from Night’s Veil. Don't choose either of the first skill options as they apply crowd controls that we want to avoid. If you accidentally select one, you'll either have to live with it or make a new character to fix it as there is no way to de-select a follower skill :(.
Stat Priorities:
Since we have the immortality token, we do not need to stack survivability on our Scoundrel.
Dexterity > 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 Cain's Destiny: For more Experience and Attack Speed
Gameplay
Right away you want to focus on getting Soul Harvest stacks as well as making sure to hit an enemy with Wall of Death or Zombie Bears to get your Damage Reduction from the Helltooth Harness(4) Bonus before getting into too much trouble. Soul Harvest has a range of 16 yards so it's wise to get the Damage Reduction buff from Wall of Death before you move in for the Soul Harvest buff.
The defensive buff from Helltooth Harness lasts for 10 seconds and the offensive buff lasts for 15, keep this in mind and make sure you are keeping both buffs throughout the entirety of the rift. When fighting a Rift Guardian in high Greater Rifts it's very important to keep these Soul Harvest stacks at 5+. If you die it will take almost 2 minutes to get these stacks back and you'll have to do it slowly and carefully unless you want to die again and start the process over. ALWAYS keep your Soul Harvest stacks up, especially on the Rift Guardian!
Focus on gathering enemies together by kiting them through the rift and spreading Locust Swarm around. Once you have a large pack of enemies cycle through your buffs: Wall of Death, Piranhas, Soul Harvest and Spirit Walk before channeling Zombie Bears to take them down.
You'll find that with big groups of enemies this build can eliminate a pack very quickly, however once your pack is dwindling down your Damage will fall off significantly. It's also very important to note that the Zombie Bears will collide with objects and terrain on the map and this results in some extremely clunky play at times. Try to keep your packs of enemies in open areas and use Wall of Zombies or Piranhado to pixel them into the open as much as possible.
Hardcore
This build already holds up very well defensively but lacks the ability to impede Crowd Control from enemies which can be a bit more troublesome in Hardcore. Flawless Royal Topaz can be used in Softcore or at high Paragon but changing these out to Flawless Royal Ruby or Flawless Royal Emerald will provide a noticeable armor boost. Another great way to get more defensive is to put even more Paragon points into Vitality. Also make sure to grab Spirit Vessel!
Check out our dedicated Hardcore Survival Guide to learn more about how to succeed in this game mode!
Variants
Nephalem Rifts
GR Solo Push
GR Solo Speeds
Zombie Bears T16
Concept For Nephalem Rifts moving as fast as possible is the primary objective and to do so you'll be taking advantage of our good friend Gold as well as grabbing as much Cooldown as possible for improved Spirit Walk uptime. Skill wise you'll be changing from Languish to Soul to Waste as well as picking up Horrify Stalker, for Passives we grab Fierce Loyalty, Grave Injustice and Gruesome Feast.
Throw an In-geom into the Cube. Pick up Horrify Stalker and put on Rechel's Ring of Larceny to get a tremendous Movement Speed buff. Molten Wildebeest's Gizzard can be used to gain a shield for Squirt's Necklace. The final touch is the combination of Goldwrap, Avarice Band and Boon of the Hoarder which make you immortal once gold starts dropping.
Gameplay This build is a little clunky compared to some others but still quite fun and speedy in Nephalem Rifts. The big difference here is we need to make sure to keep our Horrify buff up at all times but the rest is mostly business as usual but with extra speed! Once you arrive to some enemies use Wall of Death, Soul Harvest and Piranhas to get your buffs then channel Zombie Bears until the enemies perish.
Setups If you're doing more than enough damage, you can replace Wormwood with In-Geom and take Stone of Jordan over Ring of Emptiness. Another option is to just swap the weapon and manually cast Locust Swarm (instead of Piranhado) for the buff.
In groups, take Nemesis Bracers instead of Warzechian Armguards for the additional elites from pylons! If you still feel strong enough, swap Captain Crimon's Trimmings with Sage's Journey.
Zombie Bears Solo Push
Concept The Solo Push build is the one described in the Core section of this guide as well as the focus of the Gameplay section above. You are going to DPS with Zombie Bears, keeping up buffs at all times as you progress through the Rift. Go for Area Damage as a higher stat priority on this build instead of focusing on Cooldown Reduction like the other Variants. On top of that you'll need extra Toughness while pushing, use Belt of Transcendence so the Fetish's can act as a distraction.
Gameplay Slowly make your way through the rift dragging all enemies along with you while casting Zombie Bears. Once you have a large pack in the center of an area unleash a stampede of Zombie Bears. Things will feel pretty good until you get to the Rift Guardian, try to give yourself a lot of time as we are at our weakest during the boss fight by a considerable margin. Keep those Stricken stacks building up and never let your Soul Harvest fall off. If it does be VERY careful as you get your stacks up to 5+ before trying anything heroic.
Setups Another variant is using Wall of Zombies to push around enemies. If you have extreme trouble surviving, replace Piranhas Piranhado with Summon Zombie Dogs Leeching Beasts for insane recovery.
Belt of Transcendence can be a solid option as the Fetish's will act as a distraction and help keep the enemies grouped up for you to burst them down.
Instead of Endless Walk you can also play the build with the Squirt's Necklace + Convention of Elements combo. Like this you won't have to stand still all the time but it only works better when you can keep up the amulet's buff sometimes.
Zombie Bears Speed GR
Concept In speed Greater Rifts you are essentially doing the same thing as in solo but at a much faster pace, in content that we can decimate in a few minutes at most. You will be giving up a decent amount of toughness to pick up Movement Speed while maintaining enough Damage to make sure they go quick.
Gameplay Here you are going to be moving a lot faster as well as having your Spirit Walk much more often compared to the pushing variant. Use this to your advantage and jump from Elite to Elite while your Locust Swarm is following you, cast Wall of Death and Piranhas when you see an Elite or large pack of enemies then hit them with Soul Harvest and channel the Zombie Bears! Watch your Squirt's Necklace and play around Convention of Elements as much as possible.
Setups If you feel too squishy, replace Shukrani's Triumph with Sacred Harvester in the cube.
Video Guide
Guide Video
Mechanics
Zombie Charger Zombie Bears
Zombie Bears will spawn 20 yards behind your character when you cast them. If you put your back up against terrain it will force them to spawn in front of you thus increasing their range by the amount that's been compensated.
The interaction between Zombie Bears and terrain in general is very clunky and they will be stopped by nearly any terrain or object in your path. They don't seem to function well when stacking against a wall either so always try to get your back up against something and channel them into an open space.
Zombie Bears are considered a projectile but will not be slowed by Missile Dampening Rare Elites.
Locust Swarm
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.
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.
Gruesome Feast
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.
Summary
You are the Lord of the Bears and no one can tell you differently.
Keep your Wall of Death and Soul Harvest buffs active and never let them fall off, especially on the Rift Guardian as they provide a large portion or your Damage and Toughness respectively.
Use your Wall of Zombies to push all the enemies into a tight line to maximize the effectiveness of your Area Damage.
Don't forget to get a Life per Hit roll on your Bracers or Weapon so the Leeching Beasts can heal you immensely.
The buffed Zombie Bears come back as a blast from the past and add an exciting - although at times a bit clunky - build to the Witch Doctor's arsenal. It's not the strongest, but can be used for solo pushing into the higher tiers regardless. But be careful, PETA is watching you!
Credits
Written by Chewingnom & Facefoot. Reviewed by Raxxanterax & wudijo.
