Arachyr Firebats Witch Doctor BiS Gear, Gems, and Paragon Points
Below, we detail the items and gems that you should use for your Arachyr Firebats Witch Doctor in Diablo 3 and why. We also list your paragon points and Kanai's Cube items. Updated for Patch 2.7.6 and Season 29.
Best in Slot Gear and Alternatives
The build incorporates either the complete Spirit of Arachyr set, or the
complete Helltooth set —
they are similarly successful when soloing. By taking five of the six
available pieces of the respective set you open up the jewelry for the Endless
Walk set and its damage multiplication bonuses. Rolls-wise, the build makes
good use of Skill and Area Damage affixes across gear, as well as a balanced
approach to Resource Cost and Cooldown Reduction. The BiS roll for gloves
includes double Crit stats and Area Damage, with a potential Resource Cost
Reduction roll at high Paragon levels. Area Damage and RCR are also helpful on
shoulders, with a potential roll for CDR as the fourth main stat. It is
recommended that you focus on toughness stats on the chest, as well as the
pants. The helm and boots can roll Firebats % bonus, and is advisable
to obtain it on both items.
Armor set-wise, you will also be crafting and equipping two of the three
pieces of the Captain Crimson set ( Captain Crimson's Silk Girdle, and
either the
Captain Crimson's Thrust or
Captain Crimson's Waders).
You will complete their full bonus via
Ring of Royal Grandeur in the
Cube. This set provides CDR as well as RCR bonuses, and then scales your
damage dealt and damage reduced according to both stats, respectively —
bringing a massive boon to the build.
Wearing a complete set allows you to split between offense and defense in
the jewelry slots. One of the 2.4 reworks, 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 Firebats Arachyr playstyle, which goes from
extended periods of
Spirit Walk movement and setting up fights with
Locust Swarm and
Piranhado into static
Firebats
channeling (see this build's skills page
for more information). 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.
Sacred Harvester is the best-in-slot weapon for a Firebats Witch
Doctor in GRs, as its unique bonus extends the number of
Soul Harvest
stacks from 5 to 10. With the opportunity to buff up for 30% Intelligence
(true damage multiplier) and reduce incoming damage by 60%+ from a simple
Soul Harvest, this Ceremonial Knife is hard to pass up.
Desired Stats, Breakpoints and Other Notes
For Offense stats, try to obtain Firebats % bonus on the helm, shoulders
and offhand (maximum of 45%), Fire 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 130%+. Firebats
is an Attack Speed breakpoint-dependent skill, with thresholds impacting both
your DPS and your resource management. When soloing with this build, you will
be aiming for the 8 frames per animation breakpoint, reachable via a maximized
7% Increased Attack Speed roll on the weapon (multiplicative source of IAS),
Paragons and an Enchantress follower with the Attack Speed
Focused Mind buff. In groups,
you will reach the highest possible breakpoint of 3 frames per animation at
47 stacks of
Pain Enhancer (3.75+ sheet Attacks per Second). No further
investment of Attack Speed on gear is required. Both Cooldown and Resource
Cost Reduction are valuable to the build with respect to the inclusion of the
Cpt. Crimson set, but you can achieve very respectable results with minimal
investments in both; aim for ~45% CDR (one roll on shoulder, plus
Flawless Royal Diamond in helm, Paragon points and
Prophetic Harmony) and ~45% RCR (one roll on shoulder, plus
the Cpt. Crimson set, Paragons and the
Blood Ritual passive).
For Defense stats, aim for a life pool of 700k+; 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).
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 |
|
|
Ring #1 |
|
|
Ring #2 |
|
|
Amulet |
|
|
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 Crit Damage, Crit Chance, Attack Speed 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 Resource Cost Reduction first, then finish off with Globe Radius and Life on Hit.
Slot | Paragon Points |
---|---|
Core |
|
Offense |
|
Defense |
|
Utility |
|
Season 29: Paragon Cap
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.
Season 29: Gearing Considerations
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.
Gems
Bane of the Trapped is 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 it overlaps the 15-yard channeling radius of
Firebats.
When attempting the highest tiers of Greater Rift progression, health numbers
of Elites and especially Rift Guardians will jump to near-impossible numbers.
In order to tackle the sheer health walls, you will need to use
Bane of the Stricken, a gem dedicated to this very purpose.
Taeguk is taken as a rare hybrid of defense and offense among the
legendary gem options, with continued
Firebats channeling keeping the
stacks capped from fight to fight. Mana management in order to channel
Firebats continuously until the end of a big fight will require practice,
but is well worth it — up to 80% additive damage increase and 20% Armor
from
Taeguk.
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. This build will benefit from a small
CDR investment with
Flawless Royal Diamond to make
Spirit Walk and
Horrify (or
Big Bad Voodoo) more readily available. 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
Tailored after Firebats builds,
Staff of Chiroptera will be
fixed to your weapon Cube slot; it sports a unique affix that provides a 2.5
damage multiplier, doubles the skill's attack speed (cutting the frames per
animation in half), and provides a Resource Cost Reduction multiplier that
enables its prolonged channeling.
Tucked away in the Cube, Bakuli Jungle Wraps simply provides a massive
damage multiplier for
Firebats against enemies affected by
Locust Swarm or
Piranhas.
In the Arachyr (or Helltooth) / Captain Crimson mixture you will need a
Ring of Royal Grandeur, a cache legendary ring from Act I
bounties, to tie the two sets together.
The ability to run with one full 6-piece set bonus and an additional 3-piece
bonus, dodging the undesirable guaranteed stats on the Grandeur by cubing its
power, is a tremendous boost to the build.
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 cooldown reduction buff from
Prophetic Harmony, as well as the
Focused Mind attack speed buff. The latter 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
- 13 Sep. 2023: Added Season 29 Paragon Cap and Gearing recommendations.
- 22 Feb. 2023: Added Season 28 Altar of Rites recommendations.
- 26 Aug. 2022: Added Season 27 Angelic Crucible recommendations.
- 14 Apr. 2022: Guide reviewed for Season 26.
- 06 Dec. 2021: Enriched the guide and added Season 25 Soul Shard recommendations.
- 22 Jul. 2021: Added S24 Ethereal recommendation.
- 01 Apr. 2021: Added follower recommendation.
- 19 Nov. 2020: Added Cube recommendations for Season 22.
- 01 Jul. 2020: No changes required for Season 21.
- 14 Mar. 2020: Item recommendations adjusted to reflect the changes to Ring of Emptiness.
- 22 Nov. 2019: Reviewed for Season 19.
- 23 Aug. 2019: Reviewed and approved for Season 18.
- 17 May 2019: Guide was reviewed and approved for Season 17.
- 18 Jan. 2019: Added suggestions for the baseline Ring of Royal Grandeur for Seasonal characters.
- 12 Nov. 2017: Revised gemming and Cube recommendations.
More Witch Doctor Guides
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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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