Helltooth Zombie Bears Witch Doctor BiS Gear, Gems, and Paragon Points
Below, we detail the items and gems that you should use for your Helltooth Zombie Bears Witch Doctor in Diablo 3 and why. We also list your paragon points and Kanai's Cube items. Updated for Patch 2.7.3 and Season 26.
Best in Slot Gear and Alternatives
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.
Desired Stats, Breakpoints and Other Notes
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.
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.
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 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.
Slot | Paragon Points |
---|---|
Core |
|
Offense |
|
Defense |
|
Utility |
|
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 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.
Slot | Gems |
---|---|
Jewelry | |
Helm |
|
Torso and Pants |
|
Weapon |
For more information about gems, please refer to our guide on gems.
Kanai's Cube
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.
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.
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
- 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: Revision of item and legendary gem recommendations, alongside advice for Season 22 changes.
- 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.
More Witch Doctor Guides
Builds from Other Classes
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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