Helltooth Gargantuan Witch Doctor Speed Farming Variation
Speed Farming
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 |
---|
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Passive Skills |
Adapting Rotation
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.
Adapting Skills
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.
Adapting Gear
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 |
|
|
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.
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.
Adapting Gems
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 | |
Helm |
|
Torso and Pants |
|
Weapon |
For more information about gems, please refer to our guide on gems.
Adapting Kanai's Cube
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.
Follower
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.
Legendary Potion
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.
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.
- 12 Mar. 2020: No changes necessary for Season 20.
- 22 Nov. 2019: Reviewed for Season 19.
- 23 Aug. 2019: Flavor of Time is now the recommended amulet.
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.
- Icy Veins Launches Genshin Impact Guides Section
- Upcoming Dev Campfire Chat: November 30th
- Player Gathers All Uber Uniques and Asks “Did I Beat the Game?”
- Diablo 4 Steam Discount and Free Trial
- Diablo 4 Patch 1.2.2 Hotfixes: November 20th
- Diablo 4 Mother’s Blessing XP and Gold Buff Bugged, to Be Increased and Live This Week
- Diablo 4 Patch 1.2.2 Hotfixes: November 17th
- Mother’s Blessing Returns to Sanctuary (November 20-27)