Zunimassa Poison Dart 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 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 Recipe 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:

1. The full Zunimassa's Haunt set
2. Carnevil and Mask of Jeram
3. Depth Diggers
4. The Witching Hour
5. Convention of Elements, Zunimassa's Pox and The Compass Rose

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. Rings to get Convention of Elements and The Compass Rose
4. Amulets to get Traveler's Pledge, Squirt's Necklace and The Flavor of Time
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
• 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

• Simplicity's Strength is the highest flat damage gem in the game if you are using any sort of Primary Skill. That's exactly what we do with Poison Dart, so this one is a no-brainer as it also provides an insane amount of healing at high Attack Speed rates.
• Enforcer is the staple for pet builds! It provides an unconditional flat 1.6 separate damage multiplier to all our pets and basically makes them invincible with the 90% damage reduction.
• The last gem slot is a bit situational:
  • For solo push we need Bane of the Stricken to kill the Rift Guardian;
  • For speed runs we can take Bane of the Trapped but we need to stay in melee range for the rank 25 effect to proc itself within 15 yards providing us a flat 1.6 damage multiplier;
  • Molten Wildebeest's Gizzard can be used to gain a shield buff in combination with Squirt's Necklace for double damage output, some additional toughness and insane healing.

• We use Poison Dart as our main long ranged damage dealer. Any rune choice is possible as our Fetishes will always shoot the Poison element Dart from the base rune and our own damage does not matter at all! Most players use Poison Dart Spined Dart for the additional Mana regeneration to spam Piranhas with Grave Injustice.
• Fetish Army is dealing all the damage in combination with Fetish Sycophants and Carnevil. On top of that we get damage reduction from the Zunimassa's Haunt (4) Bonus for each Fetish we have alive.
• Piranhas Piranhado is used to group up monsters and proc our Zunimassa's Haunt (6) Bonus. Keep in mind you need to kill monsters to reduce the cooldown of this skill with Grave Injustice.
• Spirit Walk is mostly used for Movement Speed as well as defensive purposes and can also be used offensively by getting in an Oculus Ring zone easily and safely.
• Soul Harvest offers us great offensive (Intelligence) and defensive (Armor from Languish and All Resistance through Intelligence) buffs.
• The last skill slot is very situational: For solo we use Horrify Frightening Aspect for a permanent 50% Armor buff. For speed runs we use Big Bad Voodoo in combination with Grave Injustice for extra Attack Speed, Damage and Movement Speed.

• Fetish Sycophants are used to summon even more Fetishes for damage and even more toughness from the Zunimassa's Haunt (4) Bonus. You can have a maximum of 15 Fetishes alive from this passive alone, resulting in another 45% damage reduction. You have to be careful when you are starting a Rift or have lost your Fetishes in other ways (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 meatshields to tank hits for you.
• Grave Injustice is used to reduce cooldowns of skills like Piranhas and Big Bad Voodoo and is particularly strong in any kind of speed runs, where you kill monsters very fast.
• We can take one or even 2 of these defensive passives especially for solo gameplay. Take Spirit Vessel as a "cheat death" or Swampland Attunement for an insane Resistance boost during huge monster pulls.
• Another damage options include Confidence Ritual for a multiplicative damage increase in close range combat or Pierce the Veil as an additive damage increase in exchange for increased Mana costs. As we are a Generator build with Poison Dart the latter does not matter.
• In group play take in Gruesome Feast for this last passive slot as it is one of the best passives in the entire game if you have a support such as zBarb providing you with Health Globes using skills like Threatening Shout Grim Harvest.

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

Always keep Horrify Frightening Aspect up for the permanent 50% Armor buff. When you enter a map start off by using Spirit Walk to run towards enemies and use Soul Harvest to get the offensive and defensive buffs up. Cast your Fetish Army and group up monsters using Piranhas Piranhado.

Position yourself a few yards away from the pull to not get hit and proceed by casting Poison Dart into the pull. Your Fetishes will mirror your attacks and cast to the same location dealing massive damage. Continue to aggro enemies with Poison Dart and group on Elites with Piranhas Piranhado. Run around a lot and try to dodge most Elite Affixes and ranged projectiles as you are very squishy.

This build is very squishy and it is hard to add in toughness buffs. Definitively not recommended for Hardcore except for experienced players. You can swap Echoing Fury with Sacred Harvester and Aughild's Authority with Lakumba's Ornament and Pauldrons of the Skeleton King.

However the Legacy of Dreams variant (see Guide) is very tanky and generally better at speedfarming. Check out our dedicated Hardcore Survival Guide to learn more about how to succeed in this game mode!

• In this specific build, Fetishes benefit twice from Attack Speed!
• Fetishes (Fetish Army and Fetish Sycophants) damage, like other 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 decent breakpoint on Poison Dart.

• Zunimassa's Haunt (2) Bonus only affects Fetish Army's fetishes. Thus, Fetish Sycophants will still last 60 seconds regardless of this bonus.
• Because of Zunimassa's Haunt (4) Bonus, you and your pets gain 3% damage reduction for each Fetish alive, stacking additively with each other.
  That bonus alone is the reason why we use Fetish Army Legion of Daggers as it summons 8 fetishes instead of 5 with other runes. Fetish Sycophants, on the other hand, has a 15% chance to spawn a fetish per cast, up to a maximum of 15. This brings us to a total of 23 fetishes, granting us a total of 69% damage reduction.
• Zunimassa's Haunt (6) Bonus requires you to hit enemies with a mana spender ability (like Piranhas or Locust Swarm) every 8 seconds in order to benefit from its damage multiplier of 15,000%. This bonus only buffs damage coming from your pets such as Fetishes.
• 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.

• 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 pets 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.

• 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.

• Fetish Army damage on your items (Shoulders, Chest and Offhand) 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 equals a 2.015 damage multiplier for this build.

• 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.
• Fetishes does benefit from this Intelligence bonus.