Arachyr Corpse Spiders Witch Doctor BiS Gear, Gems, and Paragon Points
Below, we detail the items and gems that you should use for your Arachyr Corpse Spiders Witch Doctor in Diablo 3 and why. We also list your paragon points and Kanai's Cube items. Updated for Patch 2.7.3 and Season 26.
Best in Slot Gear and Alternatives
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.
Desired Stats, Breakpoints and Other Notes
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 |
|
|
Shoulders |
|
|
Torso |
|
|
Wrists |
|
|
Hands |
|
|
Waist |
|
|
Legs |
|
|
Feet |
|
|
Amulet |
|
|
Ring #1 |
|
|
Ring #2 |
|
|
Weapon |
|
|
Off-hand |
|
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.
Paragon Points
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 |
|
Offense |
|
Defense |
|
Utility |
|
Gems
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 | |
Helm |
|
Torso and Pants |
|
Weapon |
|
For more information about gems, please refer to our guide on gems.
Kanai's Cube
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.
Follower
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.
Legendary Potion
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.
Changelog
- 14 Apr. 2022: Guide reviewed for Season 26.
- 06 Dec. 2021: Guide revised according to the latest changes to the Arachyr set.
- 07 Nov. 2021: Guide added.
More Witch Doctor Guides
Builds from Other Classes
Farming Guides
This build is presented to you by Deadset, one of the very few professional Diablo 3 players. Deadset regularly publishes video guides on Youtube and streams on Twitch, where you can see how this and other builds play out in practice.
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