LoD Poison Dart “Carnevil” 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. This is a Legacy of Dreams build whose success is heavily dependent on this gem's rank. The first order of business is to equip a Legendary or Set item in every slot to take advantage of its power. Make sure to not have any Set Bonuses equipped or the gem will be nullified and you will deal no damage! Farm speed Greater Rifts (in under 5 minute clears) to find the items and get this gem as high as possible. Above Rank 25 ancient pieces of gear will give you even greater power. Note that meanwhile Legacy of Dreams is great to get you started, don't forget to farm Legacy of Nightmares Rings for high solo push.

3. Gamble from Kadala in this order:

1. Carnevil and Mask of Jeram
2. Depth Diggers
3. Any Legendary Mojo, preferably Thing of the Deep for speedfarming
4. The Witching Hour
5. Aquila Cuirass
6. Ice Climbers
7. Stone Gauntlets
8. Convention of Elements, Unity, Rechel's Ring of Larceny and Oculus Ring

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

1. Ceremonial Knives to get The Dagger of Darts
2. Maces to get Echoing Fury
3. Amulets to get Squirt's Necklace
4. Rings to get Convention of Elements, Unity, Rechel's Ring of Larceny and Oculus Ring
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 and Pauldrons of the Skeleton King
• Act 2: Gloves of Worship and Illusory Boots
• Act 3: Avarice Band
• Act 4: Can drop any bounty item from any act
• Bounty Turn In: Recipes for Cain's Destiny and Sage's Journey (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 Dagger of Darts
• Convention of Elements
• Shukrani's Triumph

• Legacy of Dreams is the Legacy of Nightmares Set in a gem, which frees up two ring slots at the cost of removing Bane of the Stricken. Due to the rings available to us this is a great trade-off to take for speedfarming while high-end solo push will prefer Legacy of Nightmares.
• Simplicity's Strength is a mandatory gem as it provides us with a 100% separate damage multiplier and great Life recovery with our Poison Dart.
• Enforcer is strictly better than Bane of the Trapped since its damage multiplier is unconditional and all our damage comes from Fetishes. It also allows them to survive in higher Greater Rifts.
• Bane of the Stricken helps us kill the Rift Guardian. This is why we need to go for Legacy of Nightmares for high-end Greater Rift push.
• For Nephalem Rifts, Boon of the Hoarder is always a default include specifically due to its amazing synergy with Avarice Band.

• We use Poison Dart as our main damage dealer. Spined Dart is used in order to ensure good Aquila Cuirass uptime. Our Fetishes' Dart will always deal Poison damage regardless of the rune we take.
• 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.
• Soul Harvest Languish for massive damage and damage reduction buffs with Lakumba's Ornament.
• Horrify Frightening Aspect for a permanent 50% Armor buff.
• The final slot is open and can be filled with different options. Big Bad Voodoo Slam Dance in combination with Grave Injustice for 15% Attack Speed and Additive Damage is the best damage output option. Summon Zombie Dogs Life Link in combination with Uhkapian Serpent is a popular defensive option otherwise.

• Fetish Sycophants is mandatory in order to get Fetishes without using Fetish Army as a skill. You can have a maximum of 15 Fetishes from this passive. You have to be careful when you are starting a Rift or have lost your Fetishes (e.g. from a death), as you will be very squishy and you won't be dealing a lot of damage until you spend some time attacking to bring them back. Additionally, you can use the Fetishes as meat shields to tank hits and block attacks for you.
• Grave Injustice is the cornerstone of our playstyle. It reduces cooldowns when you kill enemies, allowing a very high uptime of Spirit Walk and Big Bad Voodoo.
• Pierce the Veil is a 20% additive damage buff at the expense of increased Mana costs. As this is a Generator build with Poison Dart the latter does not matter.
• Spirit Vessel as a cheat death mechanic because you are really squishy and dying requires you to rebuild your Fetish Sycophants from scratch.
• Confidence Ritual or Gruesome Feast are great options if you have a fifth passive or feel brave enough to get rid of Spirit Vessel. Defensive passives like Swampland Attunement or Jungle Fortitude are also good options.

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

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 Poison Dart while building your Fetish Sycophants army.

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 shooting Poison Darts, then group them up using Piranhas Piranhado.

When you are ready to damage monsters:

• Position yourself and your Fetishes away from the pull to not get hit and get a good shooting angle.
• Cast Big Bad Voodoo if its cooldown is ready for a nice damage burst.
• Start shooting Poison Dart into the pull when your Convention of Elements Poison cycle is coming. Your Fetishes will mirror your attacks and cast towards the same location.
• If you are fortunate enough to get an Oculus Ring spawn near you, you can quickly get inside while shooting.
• Use Spirit Walk wisely to protect your Squirt's Necklace stacks, especially when a Poison cycle is coming. Time it so that it ends when monsters start to die to reset its cooldown, as Grave Injustice won't work if Spirit Walk is still active.
• After your Poison cycle, continue to aggro enemies with Poison Dart and group on Elites with Piranhas Piranhado.

On Rift Guardians:

• Do not get hit to maximize Squirt's Necklace stacks. This is where having an army of Fetish Sycophants shines even more as Fetishes are going to tank the Rift Guardian.
• 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 and your Fetishes 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!

The Legacy of Nightmares setup is relatively squishy for Hardcore; playing the Legacy of Dreams setup is recommended due to its inherent higher tankyness. Don't forget to play with Spirit Vessel. You can 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!

• In this specific build Fetishes double dip Attack Speed, which means they benefit twice from it!
• Fetishes (Fetish Army and Fetish Sycophants) damage, like most Pets, is scaled using Attack Speed as a separate damage multiplier. This means Attack Speed is always a damage gain for Pets.
• Carnevil makes Fetishes shoot a Poison Dart when you do. Because of this particular interaction, Fetishes will scale with your own Attack Speed as well. Hence, you want to aim for a high Breakpoint on Poison Dart.
• As an example, the 75% Attack Speed from the 5 Echoing Fury stacks results in a 117% damage output increase with full Attack Speed on gear in the push setup. Speed Pylon is a 41.5% damage output increase without any Echoing Fury stack and a 27.5% increase with 5 stacks.

• With this item equipped, the 10 Fetishes closest to you will shoot a Poison Dart when you do.
• Fetishes will shoot in the direction of your cursor, which makes cursor and Fetishes positioning a crucial point to manage in order to maximize damage output.
• The Poison Dart shot by Fetishes is a special one that uses the Poison Element and deals 455% weapon damage instead of the usual 185%, meaning the rune from your own Poison Dart does not matter.
• The Poison Dart shot by Fetishes does hit the enemies twice! As a result, Fetishes' Poison Dart is around 5 times more powerful than your own, before even taking damage multipliers specific to Pets into account.

• 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 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 at your advantage on some Rift Guardians which need a target to perform some abilities (Bloodmaw's Jump for instance).

• Fetish Army Damage on your items (Shoulders, Chest and Off-Hand) is a separate damage multiplier for Fetish Army as well as Fetish Sycophants.
• Poison Dart Damage from Belt and Pants is also a separate damage multiplier for Fetishes because of the Carnevil interaction, despite being additive damage for your character.
• As you can get up to 55% Fetish Army Damage and 30% Poison Dart Damage on your equipment, those stats put together translate to a 2.015 damage multiplier for this build.
• Zunimassa's String of Skulls comes with 20-25% Fetish Army Damage as a fifth primary affix instead of the usual 10-15% affix roll.

• 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.