Helltooth Zombie Bears Witch Doctor BiS Gear, Gems, and Paragon Points

This build incorporates the complete Helltooth set bonuses, taking five of the six available pieces and cubing a Ring of Royal Grandeur. Rolls-wise, this spender-heavy playstyle makes good use of skill bonuses and Area Damage across gear. Zombie Charger % is the perfect fourth primary on the Helltooth Greaves and Helltooth Mask, while Area Damage is desired on both Helltooth Mantle and Helltooth Gauntlets. With the current class design, secondary stats have become quite important for Witch Doctors, and Helltooth builds are no exception: try to offset your Swampland Attunement weaknesses with Lightning or Arcane Resists in your secondaries.

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 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.

The ability to store Ring of Royal Grandeur in the Cube to obtain the full Helltooth set bonus allows you to split between offense and defense in the worn 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 Zombie Bears playstyle, which goes from extended periods of drawing aggro into static Zombie Charger Zombie Bears channeling (see this build's skills page for more information).

The Ring of Emptiness will occupy your second ring slot; while seemingly an odd addition to the set, this ring dramatically increases your damage against enemies affected by either Haunt or Locust Swarm.

Lakumba's Ornament will reduce incoming damage by 60% per Soul Harvest as baseline (with some variance — aim for the lowest, 1 harvested enemy requirement roll), plus additional 2% damage reduction for each stack.

The reworked Scrimshaw legendary spear has been tailored for Zombie Charger builds, eclipsing any potential competition with a naturally high skill damage multiplier and a massive skill-specific resource cost reduction value. The situation is similarly locked in the offhand, where the dedicated Zombie Charger Zombie Bears mojo Ursua's Trodden Effigy will assist you with both a damage multiplier and a skill-enhancing effect. Note that your offhand is interchangeable with Shukrani's Triumph, which 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. Simply wear your best rolled mojo between those two, and cube the other.

For Offense stats, try to obtain Zombie Charger % bonus on the Helm, Boots and Off-hand (maximum of 45%), Poison 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%+ (everywhere on gear you can reasonably get it — both Rings, Shoulders, Gloves and Off-hand). While Attack Speed is a helpful stat, especially in single target situations (i.e., Rift Guardians), it is not a stat worth pursuing in this build outside of baseline gains from Paragons, a fully stacked Gogok of Swiftness, and the Enchantress Focused Mind attack speed buff.

For Defense stats, aim for a life pool of 800k-900k; dropping as much as you can for offense as you grow accustomed to the build. You will mostly sustain through the Life per Hit, with at least one roll of it on gear (i.e., the bracers).

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.

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.

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 Maximum Mana if you want to ease your Zombie Bears spam, and Vitality if you feel yourself lacking.

In the Offense section, max out Attack Speed, Crit Damage, Crit Chance 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.

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 when in range, and is otherwise triggered by Languish and the Wall of Death necrosis effect from the Helltooth set.

Gogok of Swiftness indirectly provides you with more damage and survivability by increasing Cooldown Reduction for Spirit Walk, Attack Speed for faster Zombie Bears output, as well as scaling Dodge chance.

Introduced in Season 4, Bane of the Stricken occupies the third and final jewelry socket. Building up your damage multiplicatively in prolonged fights and with a level 25 bonus specifically targeting Rift Guardians, this gem is designed to assist AoE heavy builds in their struggle against single target, high HP enemies. While Zombie Bears WDs do well in 1v1 combat, it is a testament to the quality of the gem that it still comes out as the biggest damage increase for the setup.

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. Since this build is very heavy on resource spending, you should slot a Flawless Royal Topaz in your helm. In your weapon, use a Flawless Royal Emerald for the Crit Damage boost.

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

As previously mentioned, you will wear your better roll between Ursua's Trodden Effigy and Shukrani's Triumph, and store the legendary power of your worse rolled item in the Cube.

You have two viable options for the armor slot of the Cube. Belt of Transcendence is the default recommendation, as the Fetish spawns provide an indirect survivability increase with their sheer number, and the "meat wall" they distract your enemies with; this option is easier to play with, since it does not require resource management. A comparable, but harder to maintain defensive bonus can come from Aquila Cuirass, but you need to be extremely careful with your Mana management to not drop below the 90% baseline for the damage reduction effect.

In the 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.

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.

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 revives the Pandemonium Kill Streak buff from Season 19. Each stack grants a bonus to movement speed and damage, capping at +50% movement speed and +100% damage at 1000 kills. Hitting specific kill thresholds unleashes powerful effects. Read more in our dedicated Season of the Eternal Conflict Mechanics Guide!

While speedfarming sees limited use from this theme, Greater Rift pushing benefits significantly. Effects like Geysers (150), Meteors (400), and Angels (500) can clear elites and Rift Guardians instantly. Players may reset streaks after 150 kills to repeatedly trigger Geysers or push for 500+ kills near boss fights, often using Nemesis Bracers to spawn extra enemies.

Because the most potent effects (Geysers, Meteors, Angels) can obliterate Rift Guardians instantly up to GR150, players can retool builds for efficiency and comfort. Here’s how:

Since you can rely on killstreak procs to clear the Rift Guardian, Bane of the Stricken can be safely omitted in favor of:

• Another generic damage-scaling legendary gem ( Bane of the Trapped for builds with any form of crowd control and/or melee range, Zei's Stone of Vengeance for far ranged builds, Taeguk for channeling builds, Simplicity's Strength for primary attack-focused builds, Enforcer for pet-oriented builds, etc.)
• A survivability-oriented legendary gem ( Esoteric Alteration, Molten Wildebeest's Gizzard), or additional utility ( Gogok of Swiftness for CDR-reliant builds, Pain Enhancer for attack speed-heavy builds, or Wreath of Lightning for extra movement speed).

Adjust your equipment to items that favor durability, health sustain, and ease of movement. Consider adjusting non-essential skills for the build to ones that pull, reposition, or otherwise displace enemies to facilitate large pulls of enemy packs. In more concrete terms, this means:

• For class-specific items, Witch Doctors should consider Lakumba's Ornament; this is a powerful damage reduction item that incentivizes you to be mindful of maintaining stacks of Soul Harvest. This synergizes well with the killstreak theme by improving survivability while in the middle of large enemy packs.
• For additional options that balance between defense and offense, the class-specific offhand Shukrani's Triumph greatly extends the duration of Spirit Walk, giving you the freedom to reposition optimally. Other helpful cross-class jewelry includes Unity (combined with the same ring on the follower plus a follower immortality token), and the Endless Walk set ( The Traveler's Pledge and The Compass Rose).
• Situational items that can bolster your defenses include Stone Gauntlets, the drawbacks of which are negated via CC-immunity effects like Ice Climbers, or the Altar of Rites CC-immunity node. The class-agnostic Aquila Cuirass is a powerful and popular choice for low Mana-spending builds, especially ones built around generators like LoD Poison Dart. Niche options for protection are found in Vile Hive, allowing for an easy spread of Locust Swarm Cloud of Insects, or the incidental tanking of the Belt of Transcendence meat shield summons.
• Utility items like Nemesis Bracers are essential as more elites mean more killstreak maintenance and faster progression. When soloing, they should be equipped by your follower; in groups, at least one party member should commit to wearing them. Edge cases will see the inclusion of Warzechian Armguards or Krelm's Buff Belt (more speed for easier scouting and pulls), Strongarm Bracers (extra damage vs. displaced enemies), and Rechel's Ring of Larceny in speedfarming builds that employ Horrify. To facilitate large pulls, consider using a Follower equipped with The Ess of Johan, a proc-based analogue to an enemy-pulling skill (albeit outside your control).
• Skill-wise, make sure to include at least one movement skill tool like Spirit Walk, ideally in conjunction with an Shukrani's Triumph, and an enemy-pulling tool like Piranhas Piranhado.Take a look if you can include passives like Spirit Vessel (for a cheat-death), Grave Injustice (for cooldown reduction and resource regeneration on kill), or enemy density-beneficiaries like Confidence Ritual and Gruesome Feast.