Arachyr Corpse Spiders Witch Doctor Nephalem Rift Speed Farming Variation

The Arachyr Corpse Spiders Witch Doctor can deal reasonably well with Nephalem Rift Speed Farming, managing to retain the core strengths of the GR progression build but also able to adapt numerous movement speed adjustments in the setup. We have solo speed GR rankings and solo speed T16 rankings if you want to know more about which builds are best for speed farming.

Within the limited scope of regular difficulties, the necessary damage and toughness to triumph over the enemy is significantly smaller. Thus, your best course of action is to improve utility and speed.

Active Skills
Corpse Spiders Widowmakers Locust Swarm Pestilence 1 Horrify Stalker 2 Spirit Walk Severance 3 Soul Harvest Soul to Waste 4 Summon Zombie Dogs Life Link
Passive Skills
Fierce Loyalty Confidence Ritual Gruesome Feast Grave Injustice

When you are speed farming regular rifts, parts of your playstyle will adapt to the lowered challenge and focus more on speed and utility.

While playing standard Nephalem Rifts for key farming, the build still retains similarities to the GR solo rotation, but pretty much every aspect of the build is reworked for extra speed an utility, throwing you from fight to fight with reckless abandon. You still try to maintain Soul Harvest stacks, at least up to the baseline damage reduction of Lakumba's Ornament (if you decide to wear it at all), but the skill itself is flipped into a movement speed boost with the rune Soul to Waste — much like what happens with Horrify, with the rune Stalker. Shukrani's Triumph keeps you flying through Rifts at high speeds with near-permanent Spirit Walk, and during T16 keyfarm you can be a lot more frivolous with how you spend its buff — usually at the nearest clump of enemies, where you blast away with Corpse Spiders as Pestilence auto-spreads around from Wormwood and guarantees you the Ring of Emptiness damage bonus. You will Summon Zombie Dogs once at the start of your runs in order to obtain the movement speed buff of Fierce Loyalty.

Parts of the skill and passive selection will overlap with the base Greater Rift progression build, but others will have to change according to the task at hand. Ability to cross over great distances faster and more efficiently take precedence.

• Your main damage dealer remains Corpse Spiders, taken with the hard hitting Widowmakers rune.
• Ring of Emptiness remains a valuable source of damage multiplication, meaning Locust Swarm Pestilence still finds its spot in the build during GR speed farming. You will be free of the concern to manually cast it however, as a cubed Wormwood can take care of that for you.
• Due to the lightning-fast kill speed in T16 keyfarm, the staple grouping tool from GR progression and farming Piranhas Piranhado will give way to Summon Zombie Dogs. They are simply taken for the movement speed buff of Fierce Loyalty, but you can add some damage reduction utility from the rune Life Link.
• The duo of protective skills from GR progression, Soul Harvest and Horrify, keep their value during T16 key farm as well. Protection from Lakumba's Ornament can still be very helpful in T16s if your gold-related buffs (see below) drop, but even if you decide against this extra defensive layer, you get a decent chunk of movement speed with the Soul to Waste buff. Horrify retains some defensive value due to its base effect, but it doubles down on movement speed utility through the rune Stalker and the skill interaction with Rechel's Ring of Larceny.
• With its immense movement speed power and added offensive angle because of Shukrani's Triumph, Spirit Walk remains in the build during T16 key farming. Adjust to the rune Severance for even more speed.
• Parts of your passive lineup retains its value during GR speed farming; Confidence Ritual still matches your fighting range, while Grave Injustice offers invaluable cooldown and regenerative bonuses. Due to Wormwood autocasts, you can drop Creeping Death and insert another movement speed boost with the interaction of Fierce Loyalty with Summon Zombie Dogs. Another good adjustment is replacing the additive Pierce the Veil damage buff with the stronger, but clear speed reliant Gruesome Feast — a trivial buff to maintain during T16 key farming.

The foundation of your gearing will match the GR progression build, as you still rely on the 6-piece set bonus of Arachyr to deal damage and continue to wear 5 of the 6 available pieces, swapping Arachyr's Visage for Mask of Jeram (you will be losing Depth Diggers from the progression build, so this will be your only viable Arachyr swap). You will retain the full 6-piece bonus of Arachyr by using Ring of Royal Grandeur in the Cube. The remainder of your major equipment slots is split between Corpse Spiders-synergistic items with The Spider Queen's Grasp and Brood of Araneae, and generically useful Witch Doctor items with Lakumba's Ornament and Shukrani's Triumph.

The actual adaptation and changes will happen in your jewelry, where you need to swap from the slow paced, rotation-oriented combo of the Endless Walk set ( The Compass Rose and The Traveler's Pledge) into more speedfarm-appropriate gear.

You will keep Ring of Emptiness from the GR progression build, as it provides a time- and pacing-agnostic damage bonus at the mere cost of including Locust Swarm in the build. Another great ring for GR speed farming is Rechel's Ring of Larceny, whose movement speed bonus will be triggered constantly via Horrify. The third required ring for the setup is Ring of Royal Grandeur, but due to its weaker innate primary rolls it is recommended as a Cube item; nevertheless, if your Ring of Emptiness rolls badly on its legendary property, it is quite viable to equip the RoRG and cube the RoE due to the former's uniform legendary power.

Finish off the jewelry with the powerful damage multiplication from Squirt's Necklace. Take heed of its downside (increase in damage taken, as well as loss of the damage buff as you take hits) and try to safeguard its bonus with Goldwrap, as well as crowd controlling monsters prior to engagements with Horrify, rendering them unable to retaliate.

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.

The former Season 28 theme, the Altar of Rites, has been revised and re-added to Diablo 3 as a permanent character progression mechanic. — For virtually all builds and players of all skill levels — from casual to advanced — we recommend progressing through the Altar tree using the path outlined below. The suggested path is geared towards maximum quality of life first, then amplifying damage, and then mopping up the tree with defensive and edge case utility nodes.

Note that while they require reaching them with a Seal, Legendary Potion Powers are not part of the Seal cost system; Potions unlock with a separate resource called Primordial Ashes, obtained from salvaging Legendary or Set items of Primal (red bordered) quality. Upgrade them as soon as possible, and in the order shown below (courtesy of Caleko's Altar of Rites planner).

You can read more on the Altar of Rites, Seals and Legendary Potion Powers in our dedicated Altar of Rites Mechanics guide.

Most of your legendary gem selection from GR progression retains its full value in GR speed farming as well. Both Enforcer and Simplicity's Strength still bring excellent damage multiplication value to the build while farming keys. While Bane of the Trapped is also quite usable, you should drop its superfluous damage multiplication for Boon of the Hoarder. Paired with a worn Goldwrap, and an Avarice Band worn by your follower in solo play (or yourself in groups, in the place of Rechel's), this legendary gem increases your movement speed and provides near-infinite Toughness through its interaction with the aforementioned items.

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

You will replace the staple Sacred Harvester from progression in this slot for the automated convenience of Wormwood, which casts Locust Swarm on its own and procs Ring of Emptiness for you.

The ultimate protective piece in T16 key farming is Goldwrap, which is part of the triumvirate of gold bonuses with Avarice Band (on your follower in solo play, or in Rechel's place in groups), and a socketed Boon of the Hoarder. Note that this slot is interchangeable with Brood of Araneae; simply wear your better rolled item, and cube the other.

Your jewelry Cube slot will be occupied by your worse rolled item between Ring of Royal Grandeur (necessary to maintain the 6-piece bonus of Arachyr while only wearing 5 pieces), and Ring of Emptiness (massive damage multiplication).

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 T16 key farming is the Enchantress due to the myriad of helpful buffs from all her skills, which you will attain by equipping her with Hand of the Prophet and then decking her out in survivability gear. Her most important buff remains Focused Mind, since it is very helpful in reaching the attack speed breakpoints described in the GR progression build.

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.

This Season, your helm and weapon sockets will be taken over by the supremely powerful Soul Shards. For this variant, we recommend the following:

• Helm — Shard of Hatred with "Your movement speed is increased by 50%" as its Rank 3 power. For optimization benefits, aim for Intelligence or Melee/Ranged Damage Reduction on its Rank 2 roll.
• Weapon — Essence of Anguish with "Every time you deal Poison damage to an enemy you increase your CDR and Movement Speed" as its Rank 3 power. For optimization benefits, aim for Physical Skills % Increase or Weapon Damage Increase on its Rank 2 roll.