So, you want to practice witch medicine, eh? Well, I've been saying the same stuff over and over and over to new 60s and frustrated Witch MDs for months and I figured it would be easier to just type it out once and start throwing links around like zombie bears.
Here is a great build. It's what I'll be discussing. This is the baseline build and all alterations will be discussed in relation to this build.
In case I screwed up the link:
Left Mouse: Poison Darts: Splinters
Right Mouse: Zombie Charger: Zombie Bears
1: Big Bad Vodoo: Rain Dance
2: Spirit Walk: Jaunt
3: Soul Harvest: Vengeful Spirit
4: Zombie Dog: Leaching Beasts
Passives: Spirit Vessel, Grave Injustice, Gruesome Feast
What's the big picture here?
This is an up close, in your face, big damage, fast moving build with some great built in safety nets. You are in, killing, out, and safe faster than you've ever been. You're using Spirit Vessel to reduce the cool downs on both Spirit Walk and Soul Harvest which gives you protection, damage, and bonus INT (always think of INT as both damage and protection via All Resist). You bring dogs to distract mobs that may otherwise be overwhelming... and they give a bit of life steal. This paired with internalizing the timing of Jaunt will give you all the survive-ability you need.
But... how does it work?
You are using 3 passives that all synergize and turn you into a snowballing monster exploding witch doctor tornado of doom. They are what matters. Spirit Vessel reduces the cool down of both Spirit Walk and Soul Harvest. Grave Injustice reduces ALL cool downs by 1 second every time something dies (READ: not killed by you) within your pickup radius +8 yards. Not only that, but GI ALSO gives you 2% of your max mana and your max health at the same time! Gruesome Feast turns health globes into health + mana + damage + all resist globes. This combined with your pickup radius means that you will be cool down free running from pack to pack picking up globes when they drop while being near invincible... all while increasing all the goodness you have in your little witch doctor heart.
Why these skills?
Left Mouse: Poison Darts: Splinters - I like Darts for their single target damage and 1.0 proc coefficient (proc coefficient determines how much life on hit you receive. That means if you have 100 life on hit on your gear you'll get 100 life back on a 1.0 proc coefficient, 50 life back on a .5 PC, etc). Also, you get maximum range and accuracy for doing things like firing through doors, putting damage on fast targets etc. It may be personal preference, but I like to compare the damage/utility of all other primary attacks to poison darts/splinters. Like I said above, this is the baseline and Poison Darts will probably be the first thing to go, but it's a great place to start.
Right Mouse: Zombie Charger: Zombie Bears - If you have a problem, the answer is MORE BEARS! But seriously, this ability is so powerful that it's almost impossible to replicate the damage with anything else. This will be your single target damage, your AE grinder, your best friend... THERE ARE MANY BEARS LIKE THEM BUT THESE BEARS ARE MINE. Put your back (or face out at 45%) to a wall to increase damage/range and focus fire the bears. If all 3 hit one target... it goes away.
1: Big Bad Voodoo Rain Dance - I use this ability solo, when I'm playing in a group that relies on me for the lion's share of the damage, or when there are other witch doctors around (their BBV will drain your mana FAST) because it allows you to cast bears at 20% increased speed almost endlessly due to the boost in mana regen. You'll really enjoy the free mana and attack speed. Swap this for Slam Dance if you've got a big damage Barbarian, Monk, or Demon Hunter in the group who does most of their damage from resource builders (frenzy/bash, thunderclap, hungering arrow).
2: Spirit Walk: Jaunt - The mana/life regen runes may seem exciting, but don't be fooled. The extra time you're *invincible and ignore collision will save your life way more often than the small gains in mana/health. This is CORE to the build and hasn't left my bar since I unlocked it. This is your speed, your tank, your mobility, your get of jail free card, and your efficiency. You can't kill something you can't hit... and you'll be un-hittable most of the time. Paired with Spirit Vessel which reduces its cool down and Grave Injustice which reduces cool down of all abilities you should be able to have this up most of the time.
3: Soul Harvest: Vengeful Spirit - I used to run with Soul Harvest and Siphon, but once I saw the damage potential of this AE nuke in action I'll never go back. The only exception is when I'm fighting on higher Monster Powers and want the increased duration rune. For all farming situations, Vengeful Spirit is the answer.
4: Zombie Dogs: Leaching Beasts - In a solo situation, this skill is invaluable. The dogs act as the other 3 players would... they gain the focus (aggro) of mobs that otherwise would be hunting you down. They also heal themselves/you... so they are quite durable without any pet tank passives. You're not relying on the dogs for damage, they are just there to change mob focus away from you. That means they are expendable. Let them die, that's what they do... they die so YOU don't have to. Also, the life steal WILL help even if it doesn't seem immediately apparent. When you have to run away and wait on cool downs you will be very happy they are there to reduce the number of mobs chasing you.
Making the most of your skills
You see a group of mobs hanging around being mobs... you hit Spirit Walk... but when? The body you leave behind is vulnerable and has 50% of your max life. That means if your body takes huge damage while you are spirit walking then you get knocked out of spirit walk where you're standing and no longer ignore collision and damage. If you fire Spirit Walk too early you won't have time to make the tactical decision to leave the fight if they were tougher than you originally thought and if you use Spirit Walk too late you'll leave your physical form vulnerable to the pack you're trying to kill. It takes a little practice, but the way I learned to do this was to fire Spirit Walk right before I took the first ranged hit. At that point mobs are aware but they are still too far off to run up and smash your physical form.
So you've Spirit Walked in, now you're going to use Soul Harvest. This one is simple... hit as many as possible. It's an AE around your Witch Doctor, so just get in the middle of the group, fire Soul Harvest, and you're all set. The goal should always be to hit 5 or more mobs to get the maximum number of harvest stacks, but if you can't, it's not the worst thing... it's still a big AE nuke. The more stacks you get, the more intelligence you have which results in more damage and more all resists.
You're all stacked up, you're standing in the middle of a blob of mobs, and you're invincible... I've got a fever... and the only prescription... is MORE BEARS. Spam them like mad. Be sure to "stutter step" after every couple casts of bears to pick up health globes that drop. Each one of those globes is giving you 10% mana, 10% INT, and health (hurrr duuuuurrrrr). If you never realized it, health isn't instantly returned when you hit a globe... so if you grab 10 at once, you're insulated from damage for a few seconds... you also just gained 50% more INT... more all resists... more damage (notice a THEME?).
Mobs die...
Every mob that dies within your pickup radius +8 yards is giving you one second off the cool down of both spirit walk and soul harvest. If you get into a big enough group when you start your attack then you will have both skills back off cool down mid fight. Don't be afraid to re-cast both spirit walk and soul harvest. THAT is the core of the build. You kill things super quickly inside of your pickup radius and those kills result in a 1 second reduction in cool downs, 2% life/mana per kill, and happiness. If performed at a Monster Power that you are comfortable playing you should NEVER run out of mana vs trash mobs and should have plenty in the tank for elite packs.
Fighting Elites
Pop your Big Bad Voodoo and do your best to stay inside the radius... you'll have near infinite mana. I sit around 1100 mana with 14 extra regen. That combined with the 155 per second I get from BBV/Rain Dance means that even with the 1.4 attacks per second weapon and 20% increased attack speed I can spam bears for a long... LONG time. Way longer than any elite pack would like me to. That's the only real change from fighting trash. There are exceptions, but we'll get into that in another post. 1 size fits most for elite fights... focus on the "most" for now and we'll get back to the reflect/fast/vortex/fire chains later.
Sounds Great? What gear do I need?
You are going to want extra pickup radius on as many pieces of gear as you can get. There is no such thing as too much. At one point I was running almost 60 yards and it felt great. Everything on screen proc'd Grave Injustice. That meant that anyone killing mobs on screen was healing me, returning my mana, and reducing my cool downs... awesome. (THE "MANAGER" OF WITCH DOCTOR OPERATIONS CHIMED IN WITH: "If you have too much it's not good... especially when you're playing on high monster power because you need to leave some globes so that you can get it when you need it. MY REPLY: There is a point where this is true, but you don't pick up globes while standing still holding your "hold" command, so if you're playing alone you can just wait in one place and then move in a majority of the situations... but I totally believe he's right and you should be ready to "downgrade" pickup radius if it becomes a problem)
Most people aren't in the business of replacing all their gear because some dude told them one stat was awesome... so here's the easy alternative to all that jive. The Thing of The Deep. This mojo will give you 20 pickup radius out of the box and that is more than enough to run this build effectively. Is it a long term solution? I'd say only if you found yourself with a beast mode Thing that has max rolls on every stat... but Things like that go for more than my car, so I wouldn't bother. The better solution is to buy a reasonable Thing (mine went for 2.5mil... chump change for all the love and warmth that little froggy has brought into my life) and try out the build. If you like it, start prioritizing pickup radius on new gear purchases so when you're ready to upgrade out of a Thing of The Deep for something else you won't be stuck at base pickup radius wondering what went wrong. Ex. I found an amazing Manajuma's Gory Fetch but can't use it due to the fact that all my pickup radius is on my Thing. Grave Injustice procs even without bonus pickup, but you have to be right on top of the mobs (think the radius of Soul Harvest).
Seeing as one of our best passives is based on pickup radius you really don't want to handicap yourself at any point down the road... GET PICKUP ON YOUR UPGRADES.
Options and when to change skills
Primary:
Rain of Toads: This skill will give you the most return on Life on Hit as it's AE and has a really high proc coefficient. It also ignores walls, so you can dump toads on that punk elite hiding behind his wall. The reason I don't take it all the time is I feel it's "slow." That's mostly in my head, but it takes me a long time to get used to the animation. Take this if you have high life on hit and want to make the most of it.
Firebomb/any rune besides pyrogeist - Use Firebomb when you are doing "too much damage" with darts and want to speed up trash clears. My personal favorite is Ghost Bomb, but I've seen WD friends get a lot out of every rune... except pyrogeist.
Corpse Spiders - These don't miss. They also don't "overkill" mobs. They move from target to target as they die, so this would be the most 'efficient' use of your primary. I like more "direct damage" abilities, but all the runes (minus spider queen) have a very compelling reason to choose them. Leaping Spiders is my personal favorite, but I use this way less than firebomb/rain of toads. Mana spiders really do help your regen between out of mana and full. I am still awkward with them, but I have friends who use them to great effect.
Acid Cloud/Acid Rain - This is a tricky one. You won't have the mana to spam this like you would darts/toads/firebomb/spiders, but there is a point where you can replace your primary with acid cloud and use it like "an improved Rain of Toads" as Joebo and DonBukka put it. Don't expect to do this without monster regen from either max stats on helm/knife/mojo + 4 piece zuni set bonus and keep any sort of mana in the bank.
Zombie Charger/Zombie Bears:
MOREBEARSMOREBEARSMOREBEARSMOREBEARSMOREBEARSMOREBEARSMOREBEARSMOREBEARSMOREBEARSMOREBEARSMOREBEARSMOREBEARSMOREBEARSMOREBEARSMOREBEARSMOREBEARSMOREBEARSMOREBEARSMOREBEARSMOREBEARSMOREBEARSMOREBEARSMOREBEARSMOREBEARSMOREBEARSMOREBEARSMOREBEARSMOREBEARSMOREBEARSMOREBEARSMOREBEARSMOREBEARSMOREBEARSMOREBEARSMOREBEARSMOREBEARS... srsly... They are the best as you're building up. Only replace these at your own risk. Remember: When a question comes up... the answer is alwasys "MOREBEARSMOREBEARSMOREBEARSMOREBEARSMOREBEARSMOREBEARSMOREBEARSMOREBEARSMOREBEARSMOREBEARSMOREBEARSMOREBEARSMOREBEARSMOREBEARSMOREBEARSMOREBEARSMOREBEARSMOREBEARS"
Spirit Walk/Soul Harvest:
NEVER TAKE THESE OFF. The only scenario where I'll look the other way is losing Soul Harvest for Uber fights where you're not going to be keeping stacks up very well. Other than that... you can swap runes on spirit walk if you REALLY want more mana... but you'll lose the ability to POWER REZ your friends with jaunt... because jaunt lasts long enough to pull of a regen while un-targetable. You'll also only be gaining a very tiny bit of utility on paper while losing a lot of mobility and utility in the "unmeasurable" real game situation.
Zombie Dogs:
You can lose the dogs at the point you don't need their tankiness. I typically don't bring them anymore and do monster powers where I can blow up mobs fast enough to refesh my cool downs. There are a lot of options in this place, so I'll just give you a few of my favorites.
Horrify/Stalker - This gives you a big move speed buff in between fights. This will speed you up... and that's about it. It does fear everything around you and can be used that way, but if you need CC, this isn't my goto... it's just for speed... and has its cool down reduced by Spirit Vessel as well. You'll be shocked how quickly it comes up.
Haunt/Draining Spirit (mana return) - This gives a little bit of damage and 20 mana per second (the same as the 4 piece zuni set). Keeping this up on one mob the whole time you're playing is easy and the mana returned is nice. I bring this in group situations often when dealing with high monster hit points (aka more mana needed).
Mass Confusion/Paranoia - This rune makes all enemies inside its radius take 20% more damage. Pair this with slam dance and a hard hitting friend and elites will be reduced to a fine pink mist faster than you can say "OMG SET PIECE."
That's about it for this piece. Next we will focus on gearing your level 60 Witch Doctor and taking on those pesky affixes that keep us all up at night. Stay tuned, and be sure to check out the stream! http://twitch.tv/t6srof
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