Arachyr Corpse Spiders Witch Doctor BiS Gear, Gems, and Paragon Points

The build relies on the complete powers of the Spirit of Arachyr set, taking five of the six available pieces of the set and completing the full 6-piece set bonus by using Ring of Royal Grandeur in the Cube. Rolls-wise, the build makes good use of Skill and Area Damage affixes, as well as Attack Speed to reach optimal breakpoints of the Corpse Spiders attack animation. Arachyr's Carapace and Arachyr's Stride will be entirely dedicated to toughness stats, stacking up Resistances and Armor on top of bulky main stats wherever possible. Your helm (either Mask of Jeram or Arachyr's Visage) is similarly stacked on main stats, but also requires a Crit Chance roll; Arachyr's Mantle should feature Area Damage and Cooldown Reduction on top of the usual Intelligence and Vitality. Arachyr's Claws are a massive damage piece, as they should feature both Crit stats, Attack Speed, and — at high Paragon levels — an Area Damage roll to replace the Intelligence.

You have two Corpse Spiders-applicable damage multiplication items that affect the build but clash with Arachyr set pieces. Depth Diggers double the damage of Primary skills, which Corpse Spiders is categorized as. Mask of Jeram triples the damage of Pets, a sub-category of skills that is tacked onto Corpse Spiders via the 2-piece bonus of Arachyr. Both items should be included in the build; simply wear your better rolled piece and store the power of the weaker rolled one in the Cube. Adjust the worn Arachyr pieces accordingly.

Having Ring of Royal Grandeur in the Cube frees up the worn jewelry slots for the strongest possible damage multiplication pieces. The Endless Walk set — The Compass Rose ring and The Traveler's Pledge amulet — adds a unique mechanic that slowly increases your damage by up to a 100% if you remain stationary, and drains it away and increases your damage reduction while moving. This mirrors the Corpse Spiders Arachyr playstyle, which goes from extended periods of Spirit Walk movement and setting up fights with Locust Swarm and Piranhado into static Corpse Spiders spam (see this build's skills page for the proper rotation). Your remaining ring slot should be occupied by Ring of Emptiness, which brings a massive damage multiplier against enemies affected by either Haunt or Locust Swarm (you take the latter).

Two generically useful Witch Doctor legendaries will augment both your defense and offense capabilities.

• Lakumba's Ornament is a tremendous source of damage reduction, working alongside the bonuses of Sacred Harvester (discussed below). It offers a baseline of 60% DR that stacks up to 80% with an easy 10 monster harvest during the Rift clear. Note the variance in the roll of its legendary bonus — 1 to 3 Soul Harvest stacks required for the base DR to trigger. Aim for the lowest, 1 stack required roll.
• Shukrani's Triumph makes Spirit Walk last until you attack 3 times, or an elite is within 20 yards of you, resulting in outstanding mobility right until you decide to engage in a fight, putting you in a very advantageous position. It also offers a damage multiplier while you are in Spirit Walk; and while you will lose this form when you attack, you still get a grace period as if you just popped the skill on its own (2 seconds with base Spirit Walk, 3 seconds with Jaunt), giving you another short period of damage multiplication.

You complete the gear setup with two legendaries that are entirely dedicated to Corpse Spiders itself. Both The Spider Queen's Grasp and Brood of Araneae offer straight skill damage boosts that simply cannot be ignored. The Slowing effect of The Spider Queen's Grasp is also your most reliable source of Bane of the Trapped procs, since it does not rely on the Spider Queen pet from the 4-piece set bonus, nor on range-dependent triggers like the Horrify radius or the gem's own slowing field. Note that The Spider Queen's Grasp is interchangeable with Sacred Harvester depending on your better rolled item; the worse rolled one goes in the Cube.

For Offense stats, try to obtain Corpse Spiders % bonus on the belt, pants and offhand (maximum of 45%), Physical elemental damage on the amulet and wrists (maximum of 40%), Crit Chance and Crit Damage within a 1:10 ratio (ideally over 60% and 450%, respectively), and Area Damage of 100%+. Corpse Spiders is an Attack Speed breakpoint-dependent skill, meaning you attain better damage once you reach certain thresholds of IAS on gear. Aim for the 29 frame breakpoint base, achieavable at 2.01 Attacks per Second in the sheet (prior to Big Bad Voodoo buffs). In gear terms, this should ideally come from a maximized 7% Increased Attack Speed roll on the weapon (multiplicative source of IAS), plus 3 more rolls on gear — i.e., gloves and both rings, plus Paragons and an Enchantress follower with the Attack Speed buff.

For Defense stats, aim for a life pool of 800k+; dropping as much as you can for offense as you grow accustomed to the build. You will mostly sustain through Life per Hit on gear, with at least one high roll in your setup (i.e. bracer), and the Simplicity's Strength secondary effect.

All augmentations on gear should be done with your main stat, Intelligence.

Note that the stat suggestions below portray an ideally rolled item with stats listed in relative order of importance. The first four of them are main stats, and the latter two — secondary stats. If your item lacks and is unable to be rerolled into the primary stats outlined below, especially for a stat higher on the list, strongly consider its replacement. Perfecting Secondary stats is mostly a case of hyper-optimization and is not a case for discarding an item, except where noted.

Slot	Pieces	Stat Priority
Head	Mask of Jeram	Intelligence Socket Critical Hit Chance Vitality Physical or Lightning Resistance (Secondary Stat) Pickup Radius (Secondary Stat)
Shoulders	Arachyr's Mantle	Intelligence Area Damage Cooldown Reduction Vitality Physical or Lightning Resistance (Secondary Stat) Health Globe Healing Bonus (Secondary Stat)
Torso	Arachyr's Carapace	Intelligence 3 Sockets Vitality Armor Physical or Lightning Resistance (Secondary Stat) Melee or Missile Damage Reduction (Secondary Stat)
Wrists	Lakumba's Ornament	Intelligence Critical Hit Chance Physical % Damage Life per Hit or Vitality Reduced Damage Melee Attacks (Secondary stat)
Hands	Arachyr's Claws	Intelligence (or Area Damage at high Paragon) Critical Hit Chance Critical Hit Damage Attack Speed Physical or Lightning Resistance (Secondary Stat)
Waist	Brood of Araneae	Intelligence Corpse Spiders % Damage Vitality Armor Physical or Lightning Resistance (Secondary Stat) Life per Kill (Secondary Stat)
Legs	Arachyr's Legs	Intelligence 2 Sockets Corpse Spiders % Damage Vitality Pickup Radius (Secondary Stat) Physical or Lightning Resistance (Secondary Stat)
Feet	Arachyr's Stride	Intelligence Vitality Armor All Resistance Pickup Radius (Secondary Stat) Health Globe Healing Bonus (Secondary Stat)
Amulet	The Traveler's Pledge	Socket Critical Hit Damage Critical Hit Chance Physical % Damage Physical or Lightning Resistance (Secondary Stat) Melee or Missile Damage Reduction (Secondary Stat)
Ring #1	The Compass Rose	Socket Critical Hit Damage Critical Hit Chance Attack Speed Physical or Lightning Resistance (Secondary Stat) Life per Kill (Secondary Stat)
Ring #2	Ring of Emptiness	Socket Critical Hit Damage Critical Hit Chance Attack Speed Physical or Lightning Resistance (Secondary Stat) Life per Kill (Secondary Stat)
Weapon	The Spider Queen's Grasp	High Weapon Damage Socket (preferably from Ramaladni's Gift) Intelligence (or % Damage at high Paragons) Increased Attack Speed Area Damage
Off-hand	Shukrani's Triumph	High Damage Range Intelligence Critical Hit Chance Corpse Spiders % Damage Area Damage

To help you with farming the gear you need for your builds, we have two very useful guides that you can access by clicking the links below: a Salvage Guide to help you quickly check whether or not you can safely salvage a piece of gear and a Legendary Farming Guide to help you efficiently farm legendaries and set items.

In the Core section, max out Movement Speed to the 25% cap. Normally this is done by dumping the first 50 Core Paragon points into Movement Speed, but if your boots have an imperfect roll with Movement Speed as a stat that you cannot replace, adjust the necessary point investment accordingly by simply subtracting your roll from the 25% max. After that, dump as much as you comfortably can into Intelligence, but feel free to invest into Vitality if you feel yourself lacking in toughness. Investing into Max Mana should not be necessary.

In the Offense section, max out Attack Speed, Crit Damage, Crit Chance and Cooldown Reduction in that order. In Defense, prioritize Armor, then Life %, then All Resistance, and finish off with Life Regeneration. In Utility, build up Area Damage and Life on Hit first, then finish off with Resource Cost Reduction and Globe Radius.

Slot	Paragon Points
Core	Movement Speed up to 25% cap Intelligence Vitality (up to personal preference) Maximum Mana
Offense	Attack Speed Critical Hit Damage Critical Hit Chance Cooldown Reduction
Defense	Armor Life % All Resistance Life Regeneration
Utility	Area Damage Life on Hit Resource Cost Reduction Globe Radius

Season 29 introduces a season-specific cap to stat benefits from Paragon levels, all while updating how Paragon point distribution is handled. For the duration of this Season, you can only assign 800 Paragon stat points to your character, removing the long-standing practice of main-stat stacking (with some gearing implications — see below) after you reach Paragon 800.

On top of that, you could only allocate 50 Paragon stat points to each of the four stats in a given Paragon category (Core, Offense, Defense, and Utility). In Season 29, you can allocate up to the full 200 points per category into any attribute, allowing you to more easily reach necessary build breakpoints (as outlined in the Gear page of the guide) for Cooldown Reduction, Resource Cost Reduction, etc.

With the changes to Paragon in mind, we recommend using the following Paragon distribution for this build:

• Core: Movement Speed: 200 points.
• Offense: Attack Speed: 200 points.
• Defense: Life and All Resistance: Allocate points to maximize survivability; for Witch Doctors, this is usually achieved by evenly splitting 100 points into Life (directly increasing your Health pool) and Armor (to complement the naturally high All Resistance stat of Intelligence-based characters).
• Utility: Area Damage: 200 points.

In terms of gear, keeping the Paragon cap in mind is paramount, as it stymies the traditional endless supply of main stat after Paragon 800. This means re-rolling mainstat off your gear is no longer desirable, and full equipment augmentation with your main stat is even more critical. Additionally, you should take a careful look at your build and consider if you can fit the following changes to strengthen your damage and survivability:

• Guardian's Jeopardy: This is a craftable armor set, and the recipe for its creation drops from Bounty farming. Guardian's 2-piece provides a decent damage reduction bonus, but the true powerhouse of the set is the 3-piece bonus, which nets you an additional 100% of your main stats from equipped items. This is a tremendous benefit in an 800 Paragon capped Season. If the Guardian set can fit into the build with minimal sacrifices (other craftable sets, tertiary damage multipliers, etc.), consider its implementation. The available pieces are Guardian's Aversion (Wrists), Guardian's Case (Waist), and Guardian's Gaze (Head). Of course, you can wear 2 pieces of the set and complete the full 3-piece bonus with a Ring of Royal Grandeur (found from Act I bounty caches).
• Endless Walk:This is a jewelry set consisting of The Traveler's Pledge (Amulet) and The Compass Rose (Ring), and is randomly found through farming, gambling Blood Shards, and/or Kanai's Cube recipes. The Endless Walk set is a nice compromise between damage bonuses (building up while stationary) and defensive bonuses (building up while moving). It can replace glass cannon choices like the Bastions of Will set ( Focus and Restraint) and Squirt's Necklace with acceptable losses to DPS.
• Unity: A character wearing this ring, along with another Unity on their follower plus an immortality relic for them (i.e., Enchanting Favor), will reduce their damage taken by 50%. Unity can roll excellent offense-oriented stats and has an innate Extra Damage to Elites roll, which somewhat offsets losing all-out offense jewelry.

Bane of the Trapped is the staple gem of the build; a potent source of additional damage, as it is its own multiplier in your total damage calculation. The gem procs itself with its Level 25 property, as well as various other sources of crowd control in the build — i.e., The Spider Queen's Grasp, Spider Queen summon and Languish slows, the Immobilization from Horrify (if present in your setup), and others.

Enforcer is a pet-oriented gem that multiplicatively increases Corpse Spiders damage, since they get re-classified as pets via the 2-piece bonus of Arachyr.

Simplicity's Strength is one of the best DPS gems you can take for the build, as it brings another separate damage multiplication source to primary skills. Upgrading with a steady pace of half a percent per gem level, it quickly becomes a priority and a fixture in your gem choices. Its healing secondary effect is just icing on the cake.

When it comes to gear gems, you will start out progression by slotting the highest available level of Topazes in the chest and pants sockets. Ideally, these will all be Flawless Royal Topazes as soon as possible. As you grow in Paragon (bulking up Intelligence in the Core section) and aim for higher tier and more dangerous GRs, you will transition those gems into the defensive Flawless Royal Ruby, scaling the lacking Armor of an Intelligence-based character (Intelligence scales Resistances). There is no specific breakpoint where you do that; the rule of thumb is to make the change as soon as you feel the lack of toughness impede your progress. Since this build is easy on both cooldowns and resource spending, you can either stack survivability with Flawless Royal Amethyst, or invest a little into CDR with Flawless Royal Diamond to make Spirit Walk and Big Bad Voodoo more readily available (our default recommendation). In your weapon, use a Flawless Royal Emerald for the Crit Damage boost.

Slot	Gems
Jewelry	Bane of the Trapped Enforcer Simplicity's Strength
Helm	Flawless Royal Diamond (Cooldown Reduction)
Torso and Pants	Flawless Royal Topaz (Damage) Flawless Royal Ruby (Toughness)
Weapon	Flawless Royal Emerald (Crit Damage)

For more information about gems, please refer to our guide on gems.

Your weapon Cube slot will be occupied by your worse rolled item between The Spider Queen's Grasp and Sacred Harvester. Sacred Harvester is a universally useful Witch Doctor legendary weapon, whose unique power extends the number of Soul Harvest stacks from 5 to 10 — with all the respective bonuses from the skill, rune, and worn equipment enhanced by it.

As previously mentioned, you will be wearing your better rolled item between Depth Diggers and Mask of Jeram, and extracting your weaker rolled one in the armor slot of the Cube.

In order to maintain the full 6-piece Arachyr set bonus and get a synergistic legendary on top, you will need to use the Act I bounty cache legendary Ring of Royal Grandeur in the jewelry slot of the Cube.

The Kanai's Cube can be used for much more than simply extracting Legendary powers from items. Please refer to our Kanai's Cube guide for more information.

The recommended follower for this build during solo GR progression is the Enchantress due to her elemental Amplification boost and Focused Mind attack speed buff, the latter of which is very helpful in reaching the attack speed breakpoints described above.

For more information regarding followers, we advise you to read our Follower Guide, which contains detailed advice for choosing the skills and the gear of your follower.

The preferred potions for this build are Bottomless Potion of Kulle-Aid (allowing you to break down Waller affixes that impede your positioning) and Bottomless Potion of the Tower (whose Armor-increasing properties complement the naturally high All Resistances stat of Witch Doctors). Pick whichever you feel helps you out the most.