LoD Spirit Barrage Witch Doctor BiS Gear, Gems, and Paragon Points

As this is a Legacy of Dreams setup, the rest of your gear slots will be comprised entirely of legendary items. As a rule of thumb, focus on synergistic stats like Attack Speed, Average Damage and skill bonuses, and remember the setup's requirements for ancient items, as well as its restriction on other set bonuses. You can run individual set pieces with beneficial stats, as long as they do not form any set bonus.

The Legacy of Dreams power allows you to run any legendary item combination while not losing out on the damage amplification and reduction associated with the traditional 6-piece sets. You can obtain this power in two ways; the older way is equipping the two rings — The Wailing Host and Litany of the Undaunted — as your only active set bonus. The newer (and more powerful, since it also opens your ring slots for legendary jewelry) method is the Legacy of Dreams legendary gem.

In a setup with Legacy of Dreams, you will be wearing your two best rolled rings and cubing the third between Convention of Elements, Unity, and Ring of Emptiness. Unity will cut incoming damage in half when paired with another on the follower, along with an immortality relic for him (i.e. Enchanting Favor). Ring of Emptiness greatly amplifies your damage as you spread at least one of the two DoTs associated with its power, Haunt and Locust Swarm. Convention of Elements simply provides a massive damage increase during the Cold cycle of its rotation.

The recommended amulet is The Flavor of Time, whose revised legendary power now doubles the duration of Pylons — an extremely potent power that, with careful timing, can turn the progressively harder fights in Greater Rifts greatly in your favor. The former recommendation for the slot, Hellfire Amulet of Intelligence, remains a viable option, especially if you obtain a roll with a synergistic fifth passive like Spirit Vessel.

With the changes in Patch 2.6.9, the Spectres from the Phantasm rune no longer benefit from pet bonuses, effectively ending our previous recommendation for the slot — Mask of Jeram. In its stead, we recommend that you equip Leoric's Crown for the additional Toughness with a socketed Amethyst. Rolls-wise, aim for Intelligence, Spirit Barrage %, Crit Chance and an open Socket.

In terms of gearing outside the jewelry, we can roughly divide gear into four categories: offense, defense, utility and Spirit Barrage-specific.

Your offensive armor equips will be evenly split between boosting elemental damage and pet damage, working in unison to boost your primary skill. A straightforward addition to the build, Frostburn will increase Cold damage (affecting both Phlebotomize and Phantasm), as well as bring circumstantial survivability to the build via the 50% chance to freeze affected enemies. Swamp Land Waders are a well-known addition to LoN Witch Doctors, who completely disregard the Sacrifice properties of the item for the universally useful elemental damage roll. Finally, the glass cannon staple The Witching Hour brings its unique Crit Damage and Increased Attack Speed rolls to a great benefit for Spirit Barrage.

Your two defensive items bring the bulk of the survivability in the build, requiring you to pick skills, passive and Cube choices to cater to their mechanics. Aquila Cuirass reduces damage in half as long as you do not dip below 90% of your resource pool, which is main reasoning to use Draining Spirit early on as you get used to the build. On the other hand, Lakumba's Ornament is a class cornerstone that reduces incoming damage significantly as you Soul Harvest your way through fights (see this build's skills page for more information).

As far as utility picks are concerned, you will focus on maneuverability and cheating death with Illusory Boots and Pauldrons of the Skeleton King respectively. Illusory Boots are an Act 2 cache legendary item that enables you to move through enemies (ignoring collision), as well as through Waller affixes. In a build that relies on Soul Harvest for much of its survival, this freedom of movement cannot be understated; you could, however, find temporary substitutes in similarly synergistic legendaries like Boots of Disregard (Act 3 cache item) and Ice Climbers. Lacking any truly synergistic shoulders, your best bet for the slot are the Pauldrons of the Skeleton King — an Act 1 cache legendary that gives you an independent, yet minor chance for a cheat death proc.

You have two options for the weapon slot: the Spirit Barrage-specific The Barber and the generic utility staple Sacred Harvester. Both are necessary in the setup and you will be wearing your better rolled one and cubing the other. The Barber forms a unique interaction with Spirit Barrage, turning it from a directly damaging skill to an accumulated one, where you choose when the damaging detonation actually occurs; it enforces a rather unique playstyle where you try to buff up during the accumulation phase rather than lining up buffs during the detonation. Sacred Harvester simply extends your Soul Harvest stacks to 10, and coupled with Lakumba's Ornament forms the basis of your survivability in this generally squishy build.

In your other hand, the Gazing Demise will be a crucial piece in the formation of the build; it brings the "pets" of the Phantasm rune for free and multiplies their damage for each spirit in the field. The item has an unfortunate base Life Regeneration roll and lacks a natural Crit Chance stat, making it hard to obtain with a good roll and a high priority gamble target.

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.

Bane of the Stricken is a frequent part of Greater Rift solo progression builds, as it is meant to aid strong AoE builds against their nemesis — high health, single target Champions and Rift Guardians. Its stacking damage mechanic is a mechanical guarantee for taking down bulkier enemies in high progression, making it a natural inclusion in Spirit Barrage builds.

With the changes in Patch 2.6.9, the Spectres from the Phantasm rune no longer benefit from pet bonuses, effectively ending our previous recommendation for the slot — Enforcer. In its stead, we recommend that you use Gogok of Swiftness which indirectly provides you with more damage and survivability by increasing Cooldown Reduction for Spirit Walk, Attack Speed for faster Spirit Barrage output, as well as scaling Dodge chance.

Your final slot is best occupied by the Legacy of Dreams legendary gem, which provides a scaling bonus for each legendary item equipped, as long as you have no set bonuses equipped. This bonus is multiplied for Ancient or Primal quality items, and when the gem is maxed out, it matches the Legacy of Nightmares ( The Wailing Host and Litany of the Undaunted rings) set bonus. This potent bonus allows you to play around with all your gear slots for synergistic legendary powers at the cost of a gem slot; in the older LoN setup, this socket would be occupied by Bane of the Trapped.

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

Sacred Harvester brings a deceptively simple, yet quite potent effect — extending your Soul Harvest stacks from 5 to 10. Not only does the base effect of the skill scale quite nicely with that extension, but also in conjunction with a powerful rune like Languish and the Lakumba's Ornament bracer this combo will form most of your survivability. This slot is theoretically interchangeable with The Barber depending on your better rolled item.

While a less obvious choice, a cubed Belt of Transcendence brings a stronger version of the Fetish Sycophants passive to the build (guaranteed proc on cast vs. chance based). In turn, this provides you with a sizable army of Fetish companions, who bring indirect survivability in the form of a meath shield that distracts enemies and soaks affixes and spells.

While bringing nice damage and survival buffs of their own, the true purpose of including Haunt Poisoned Spirit and Locust Swarm Cloud of Insects is to proc Ring of Emptiness — a powerful, DoT-reliant damage multiplier.

During Season 22, you are able to add Voo's Juicer and gain some nice mana and life restoration properties on your main damage dealing skill.

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.