Arachyr Firebats Witch Doctor Group Progression Variation

With minor adaptations from the solo GR progression build, Arachyr Firebats can be adapted to handle the highest tiers of group play. Its role in a 2-DPS setup is to take care of AoE damage, clearing large packs of trash and elite enemies. This variation is no longer the preferred AoE DPS spec for groups, but you can still build it and play it in your group with a reasonable degree of success.

Active Skills
Firebats Cloud of Bats Haunt Draining Spirit 1 Hex Jinx 2 Spirit Walk Severance 3 Soul Harvest Languish 4 Locust Swarm Cloud of Insects
Passive Skills
Creeping Death Confidence Ritual Gruesome Feast Pierce the Veil

The most important changes in the skills happen in the passive selection, where solo-oriented utility choices like Grave Injustice and Spirit Vessel give way to pure damage increases: Gruesome Feast and Pierce the Veil. During group Greater Rifting, your safety is guaranteed by support teammates and no investment in the cooldown reduction passive Grave Injustice will be needed; this opens up the passive slot for the additive damage increase of Pierce the Veil, whose additional Mana costs should be a non-issue with a properly spread Draining Spirit. For similar reasons, the cheat death of Spirit Vessel can be dropped and this slot is best left to Gruesome Feast. The strongest damage passive for Witch Doctors due to its true multiplier, it grants you a 10% increase of Mana and Intelligence when you pick up a health globe, stacking up to five times.

The only change necessary in gear is to adapt your ring selection; if you are wearing Unity in your soloing variation, exchange it for the damage increase of Convention of Elements. If your Unity was cubed, the change will occur there. Ring of Emptiness and the Endless Walk set remain a fixture to the build.

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.

When grouped with a single target DPS teammate, you can omit any Guardian-killing concerns from the build and focus on improving your AoE DPS. To that end, you will be dropping Bane of the Stricken from the soloing setup and replacing it with Pain Enhancer — the attack speed scaling of the gem works wonders in high density, leading to your overwhelming performance against trash packs.

The weapon Cube selection remains the same as the soloing spec — Staff of Chiroptera. The armor Cube slot needs to be occupied by Mantle of Channeling, similarly to how it was suggested for high end soloing (there is even less of a need for the Coils of the First Spider sustain when grouped with a healing Monk). Finally, the jewelry Cube slot needs to be taken by your weaker rolled item between Convention of Elements and Ring of Emptiness.