Helltooth Gargantuan Witch Doctor Speed Farming Variation

The Helltooth Gargantuan Witch Doctor deals with Normal Rift farming and Bounty runs reasonably well. 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
Wall of Death Communing with Spirits Haunt Lingering Spirit 1 Soul Harvest Soul to Waste 2 Spirit Walk Severance 3 Gargantuan Big Stinker 4 Horrify Stalker
Passive Skills
Midnight Feast Fierce Loyalty Grave Injustice Gruesome Feast

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

For T16 farm, you will assume a similar rotation to the one you have in Greater Rifts, but greatly accelerated and more reckless. The basics remain the same; summon Gargantuan and buff up its damage by capturing packs inside Wall of Death to apply Necrosis for the Helltooth set, as well as spreading Haunt on them to trigger Ring of Emptiness. With the toughness afforded by Goldwrap you can afford to fearlessly dive into packs using Spirit Walk and re-applying your own speed buffs: Soul Harvest Soul to Waste and Horrify Stalker.

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.

• The main damage dealer of the build remains Gargantuan, but you should use the rune Big Stinker for the additional AoE over the prolonged fight-oriented Restless Giant rune.
• You still need a proc for Helltooth set's Necrosis effect, so Wall of Death remains in the build. Either stick with the protective Communing with Spirits rune, or get some extra crowd control into the mix with Surrounded by Death.
• A proc for Ring of Emptiness will also be quite helpful to cement your ability to oneshot enemies; you can replace the slower-paced and resource-intensive Locust Swarm with the immediate, auto-aiming and mobile effect of Haunt Lingering Spirit.
• You should exchange the lengthier effect of the Jaunt rune on Spirit Walk for the faster movement of Severance.
• Swapping the Soul Harvest rune from the defensive Languish to the movespeed-oriented Soul to Waste.
• While grouping monsters with Piranhas Piranhado is not without value, it is certainly a lot less than in the prolonged fights of Greater Rifts. In its place, consider using Horrify Stalker for more movement speed. Not only does it bring extra speed by itself, but it will also proc Rechel's Ring of Larceny for an additional burst of mobility.
• In your passives, replace the progression-oriented Spirit Vessel for a speed bump from Fierce Loyalty. Replace Confidence Ritual with Gruesome Feast, as it undeniably offers the strongest damage increase among its peers, provided you can keep it stacked with health globes — an easy task when farming. Keep Grave Injustice for the cooldown reduction utility, and Midnight Feast for the pet damage buff.

The foundation of the build will closely resemble the GR progression build, as you still rely on the 6-piece set bonus of Helltooth to deal damage. However, you will be wearing all 6 available set pieces, which frees up your jewelry slots for T16 farming-oriented items. You should cube Mask of Jeram as the more valuable of the two targeted pet legendaries, and leave Tasker and Theo for the GR progression build. The remainder of your major equipment slots is split between generically useful Witch Doctor items like Shukrani's Triumph and Spite, and T16-farming oriented staples like Goldwrap and Echoing Fury. Jewelry should also match your GR setup, as all three pieces — Ring of Emptiness, The Short Man's Finger and Squirt's Necklace — bring damage multiplication that will make killing monsters a breeze in this difficulty.

When doing regular Rifts, you can swap The Witching Hour out for Goldwrap, which will render you practically invulnerable when paired with an Avarice Band and Boon of the Hoarder. Finally — when doing Bounties, you can also take advantage of the Krelm's Buff Belt for its gold-independent movespeed increase.

Early on in character progression, you can keep Lakumba's Ornament for the immense damage reduction it provides to the build. When you have progressed your character and are comfortable with Goldwrap mechanics and relying on procs to survive, you can swap Lakumba's Ornament out for Warzechian Armguards, which provide you with an additional speed boost based on environmental destruction. The former favorite for the slot, Nemesis Bracers, are still quite valuable to the build; when soloing, they should be equipped on the follower however, since their power can be transferred to you via the Emanate mechanic.

Slot	Pieces	Stat Priority
Head	Helltooth Mask	Intelligence Socket Critical Hit Chance Vitality Physical or Lightning Resistance (Secondary Stat) Pickup Radius (Secondary Stat)
Shoulders	Helltooth Mantle	Intelligence Gargantuan % Damage Area Damage Vitality Physical or Lightning Resistance (Secondary Stat) Health Globe Healing Bonus (Secondary Stat)
Torso	Helltooth Tunic	Intelligence 3 Sockets Gargantuan % Damage Vitality Physical or Lightning Resistance (Secondary Stat) Melee or Missile Damage Reduction (Secondary Stat)
Wrists	Lakumba's Ornament (early) Warzechian Armguards (solo) Nemesis Bracers (groups)	Intelligence Critical Hit Chance Poison % Damage Life on Hit Reduced Damage Melee Attacks (Secondary stat)
Hands	Helltooth Gauntlets	Intelligence (or Cooldown Reduction at high Paragon) Critical Hit Chance Critical Hit Damage Area Damage Physical or Lightning Resistance (Secondary Stat)
Waist	Goldwrap (Rifts) Krelm's Buff Belt (Bounties)	Intelligence Vitality Life % Armor Physical or Lightning Resistance (Secondary Stat) Life per Kill (Secondary Stat)
Legs	Helltooth Leg Guards	Intelligence 2 Sockets Vitality Armor Pickup Radius (Secondary Stat) Physical or Lightning Resistance (Secondary Stat)
Feet	Helltooth Greaves	Intelligence Vitality Armor All Resistance Pickup Radius (Secondary Stat) Health Globe Healing Bonus (Secondary Stat)
Amulet	Squirt's Necklace (solo) The Flavor of Time (groups)	Socket Critical Hit Damage Critical Hit Chance Poison % Damage Physical or Lightning Resistance (Secondary Stat) Melee or Missile Damage Reduction (Secondary Stat)
Ring #1	The Short Man's Finger	Socket Critical Hit Chance Critical Hit Damage Area Damage or Average Damage Physical or Lightning Resistance (Secondary Stat) Life per Kill (Secondary Stat)
Ring #2	Ring of Emptiness	Socket Critical Hit Chance Critical Hit Damage Area Damage or Average Damage Physical or Lightning Resistance (Secondary Stat) Life per Kill (Secondary Stat)
Weapon	Echoing Fury	High Weapon Damage Socket (preferably from Ramaladni's Gift) Intelligence (or % Damage at high Paragons) Area Damage Attack Speed
Off-hand	Spite (Best in Slot) Shukrani's Triumph (Alternative)	High Damage Range Intelligence Critical Hit Chance Gargantuan % 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.

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.

Most of your legendary gem selection from GR progression retains its full value in GR speed farming as well. Both Bane of the Trapped and Enforcer still bring excellent damage multiplication value to the build while farming keys. Within the limited challenges of T16 speed farming, Bane of the Stricken should be replaced by Boon of the Hoarder. Paired with an equipped Goldwrap and an Avarice Band worn by your follower in solo play (or yourself in groups, in the place of Rechel's Ring of Larceny), this legendary gem increases your movement speed and provides near-infinite Toughness through its interaction with the aforementioned items.

Slot	Gems
Jewelry	Bane of the Trapped Enforcer Boon of the Hoarder
Helm	Flawless Royal Amethyst (Toughness)
Torso and Pants	Flawless Royal Topaz (Damage and All Resistance)
Weapon	Flawless Royal Emerald

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

Spite and Shukrani's Triumph are interchangeable for the weapon slot in the Cube; simply wear your better rolled item and cube the worse one.

Mask of Jeram is the preferred inclusion to the armor slot in the Cube, as it directly increases pet damage (additive with elemental damage on gear). Its buff in Patch 2.6.1 and the natural IAS caps of Gargantuan make it more attractive than the other pet staple, Tasker and Theo.

Rechel's Ring of Larceny brings an additional massive movement speed bonus to the farming build due to its interaction with Horrify, making it an excellent addition for T16 runs. It should be noted that Avarice Band is a supremely useful legendary item that, in conjunction with Goldwrap and Boon of the Hoarder, will form a gold triumvirate that keeps you safe and showered in gold as you farm up T16s. When you are farming solo however, this ring can be equipped on your Follower, and its power will "Emanate" to you (meaning you gain the benefits of the item as if you wore it yourself). That being said, in group farming you will need to wear the Avarice Band yourself, replacing Rechel's, since you cannot have a Follower in parties.

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 standard rift farming for keys is the Enchantress due to her numerous utility bonuses, allowing you to smooth out your speed runs even further.

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.

Your recommended potion is Bottomless Potion of the Tower, whose Armor-increasing properties complement the naturally high All Resistances stat of Witch Doctors (due to Intelligence scaling Resistances) for optimal survivability.