Introduction

Zunimassa Carnevil Solo Push
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Carnevil builds and their unique playstyle that revolves around Poison Dart being shot by hordes of Fetishes have been around for the longest time, starting in Season 3. Zunimassa's Haunt got buffed from 5,500% to a whopping 15,000% damage increase in Season 16 but it is only with Season 17 buffing Carnevil and The Dagger of Darts that this build became one of the strongest Witch Doctor (WD) setups in the game.

Carnevil can also be played using Legacy of Nightmares or Legacy of Dreams which allow for way more flexibility in terms of gearing and skill setup choices. Anyways, Zuni Dart is the best setup to compete on the Zunimassa leaderboard if you're willing to do so!

This build enables a completely unique playstyle where you have to manage your Fetishes very carefully in order to wreak havoc on your opponents. Positioning is absolutely critical as only the 10 Fetishes closest to you shoot a Poison Dart when you do, aiming where your cursor is. Let's get into it!

Ranged WD Build ✔
Fast Attack Speed ✔
Unique Pet Playstyle ✔
High Single Target Damage ✔

❌ Very Squishy
❌ Lack of Mobility
❌ Low AoE Damage
❌ Limited Gearing Choices

Core Setup

Core Item Build

Items

The Zunimassa's Haunt (6) Bonus is where the majority of our damage comes from, while the Zunimassa's Haunt (4) Bonus grants us a tremendous toughness boost depending on our Fetish count.
We add another damage buff with The Dagger of Darts which will also make our Poison Darts pierce targets.
Carnevil is the core item that makes this build work as 10 of your Fetishes will now shoot a powerful Poison Dart whenever you do. This, in combination with the Zunimassa's Haunt (6) Bonus, is the main reason why our pets deal all the damage in this particular build!
Mask of Jeram increases all Pet damage by 200%. This is an Elemental Damage buff additive with other sources of it (Bracers and Amulet).
Depth Diggers gives us another 100% damage boost on our main skill Poison Dart.
The Witching Hour is used in every setup for the Attack Speed and Critical Hit Damage which are great offensive stats.
Ring of Royal Grandeur helps us to complement Zunimassa's Haunt with Aughild's Authority and other supporting items.
On the Jewelry slots, options can include Squirt's Necklace, The Compass Rose & The Travelers Pledge or Convention of Elements.

Season 28 Altar of Rites

Season 28 brings a brand new progression feature called the Altar of Rites 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 unbelievable Damage, Defense, Quality of Life, Increased Drops, 3 Potion Super Powers, and the juicy Wings of Terror. Read the full guides on Unlocking the Altar and the Altar Mechanics by Raxxanterax and Chewingnom to learn everything about this fantastic Season!

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

Global Stat Priorities

Make sure to optimize your Attack Speed to reach certain Breakpoints. For this build Attack Speed is one of the most important stat as Fetishes benefit twice from it (see Mechanics).

As Carnevil makes your Fetishes scale with your attacks you want to aim for a decent Breakpoint on the Poison Dart.
Furthermore your pets damage per shot also scales with Attack Speed as a separate multiplier. So even if additional Attack Speed does not give you an extra Breakpoint it is still worth getting it and one of the most important stat!

For the solo setups you do not need any Cooldown Reduction. In speed runs however it makes sense to stack around 40%-50% to keep up Big Bad Voodoo with the help of Grave Injustice.

Assembling the Build

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 Zunimassa's Haunt 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 Zunimassa's Pox - don't gamble for it! Instead gamble for a cheap and easy item, like the Gloves, and once again covert it with Reci p e 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:

The full Zunimassa's Haunt set
Carnevil and Mask of Jeram
Depth Diggers
The Witching Hour
Convention of Elements, Zunimassa's Pox and The Compass Rose

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

Ceremonial Knives to get The Dagger of Darts
Maces to get Echoing Fury
Rings to get Convention of Elements and The Compass Rose
Amulets to get 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
Bounty Turn In: Recipes for Aughild's Authority and Cain's Destiny (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. It's better to spend your materials improving your set pieces, getting ancient weapon etc.

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
Squirt's Necklace

Item Stat Priorities

Gems

Skills

Passives

Paragon Points

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.
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.
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

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.
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.

Gameplay

Hardcore

Variants

GR Solo Speeds

GR Solo Push

GR Group RGK

Echoing Nightmare

Zunimassa Solo Speeds

Concept
In this setup we focus mainly on Movement Speed as well as Cooldown Reduction. We will have an awesome Echoing Fury and Big Bad Voodoo uptime as we are constantly killing enemies for our Grave Injustice passive. We add Molten Wildebeest's Gizzard combined with Squirt's Necklace for double damage, some additional toughness and insane healing.

That being said, the LoD variant of this build is better at speedfarming, as it is way tankier, can reliably keep Squirt's Necklace and can use Shukrani's Triumph or Thing of the Deep on top of not having to apply the Zunimassa (6) Bonus to deal damage.

Gameplay
Be quick, keep up your toughness buffs and pay attention to Elite affixes as you want to keep up your Squirt's Necklace to maximize damage output. Group on Elites and Spirit Walk as often as you can for unhindered movement and better shield uptime. Always use Piranhas Piranhado before you attack to get your Zunimassa's Haunt (6) Bonus damage bonus!

Setups
If you have trouble with the Squirt's Necklace buff, feel free to swap out Molten Wildebeest's Gizzard for Bane of the Trapped to get a 60% separate damage multiplier. If you do not like the Piranhas Piranhado cooldown based playstyle switch to another spender like Locust Swarm to proc the Zunimassa's Haunt (6) Bonus damage bonus constantly.

Video Guide

Mechanics

Fetishes & Attack Speed

Zunimassa's Haunt

Carnevil

Mask of Jeram

Fetish Army & Poison Dart Damage

Piranhas Piranhado

Gruesome Feast

Summary

Put together the core items and acquire the full Zunimassa's Haunt set.
Enjoy the damage burst when Echoing Fury is stacked up.
Positioning is crucial!
Legacy of Dreams variant is possible with less damage but with more toughness and utility.

This build is fun to play with a good pushing potential but lacks a lot in toughness and consistency. If you want to check out another strong WD build, take a look at the Mundunugu Witch Doctor.

I hope you enjoyed the guide! Cheers!

Credits

Written by Rob with special help from Chewingnom. Contributions by wudijo.
Updated by Chewingnom.

Changelog

11 February 2023
Updated for Season 28 / Patch 2.7.5.
3 August 2022
Updated for Season 27 / Patch 2.7.4.
20 March 2022
Updated for Season 26 / Patch 2.7.3.

SLOT	ITEM	STAT PRIORITY
Main-Hand	The Dagger of Darts Echoing Fury (Cubed) The Furnace	1. Damage Range 2. Socket Ramaladni's Gift 3. Attack Speed 4. Damage % 5. Area Damage 6. Intelligence
Off-Hand	Zunimassa's String of Skulls	1. Fetish Army Damage 2. Critical Hit Chance 3. Area Damage 4. Intelligence 5. Elite Damage 6. Vitality
Helm	Carnevil Mask of Jeram (Cubed)	1. Socket Flawless Royal Diamond 2. Critical Hit Chance 3. Intelligence 4. Vitality 5. Armor
Gloves	Zunimassa's Finger Wraps	1. Critical Hit Chance 2. Attack Speed 3. Critical Hit Damage 4. Area Damage 5. Intelligence
Shoulders	Aughild's Power (C rafted) Pauldrons of the Skeleton King	1. Fetish Army Damage 2. Area Damage 3. Intelligence 4. Cooldown Reduction 5. Vitality
Chest	Zunimassa's Marrow	1. Fetish Army Damage 2. Sockets Flawless Royal Ruby 3. Intelligence 4. Vitality 5. Armor
Pants	Depth Diggers	1. Poison Dart Damage 2. Intelligence 3. Vitality 4. Armor 5. Sockets Flawless Royal Ruby
Boots	Zunimassa's Trail	1. Intelligence 2. Vitality 3. Armor 4. All Resistance 5. Life Regeneration
Ring 1	The Compass Rose Convention of Elements Ring of Royal Grandeur (A1 Bounties, Cubed)	1. Socket 2. Attack Speed 3. Critical Hit Damage 4. Critical Hit Chance 5. Area Damage
Ring 2	Zunimassa's Pox	1. Socket 2. Attack Speed 3. Critical Hit Damage 4. Critical Hit Chance 5. Area Damage
Bracers	Aughild's Search (C rafted) Lakumba's Ornament	1. Poison Damage 2. Critical Hit Chance 3. Intelligence 4. All Resistance 5. Vitality
Amulet	The Traveler's Pledge Squirt's Necklace	1. Socket 2. Critical Hit Damage 3. Critical Hit Chance 4. Poison Damage 5. Attack Speed 6. Intelligence
Belt	The Witching Hour	1. Poison Dart Damage 2. Attack Speed 3. Critical Hit Damage 4. Intelligence 5. Vitality
Potion	Bottomless Potion of Kulle-Aid	For breaking walls to pull enemies and increase DPS

Core	Offensive	Defensive	Utility
1. Movement Speed	1. Attack Speed	1. Armor	1. Area Damage
2. Intelligence	2. Critical Hit Damage	2. Life %	2. Pickup Radius
3. Vitality¹	3. Critical Hit Chance	3. All Resistance	3. Life per Hit
~~4. Maximum Mana~~	4. Cooldown Reduction	4. Life Regeneration	4. Resource Cost Reduction

Zunimassa Poison Dart Witch Doctor Guide