Spirit Barrage Mundunugu WD BiS Gear, Gems, and Paragon Points
Below, we detail the items and gems that you should use for your Spirit Barrage Mundunugu WD in Diablo 3 and why. We also list your paragon points and Kanai's Cube items. Updated for Patch 2.7.6 and Season 29.
Best in Slot Gear and Alternatives
The build takes advantage of the full 6-piece Mundunugu's set bonus,
incorporating five of the six available items and completing the requirements
via a Ring of Royal Grandeur in the Cube. Rolls-wise, you will be aiming
to obtain Spirit Barrage skill bonuses on both the
Mundunugu's Headdress
and
Mundunugu's Dance, alongside the usual Crit and Intelligence
recommendations for the former and the toughness staples on the latter.
Mundunugu's Descendant will ideally feature both Cooldown and Resource
Cost Reduction stats, while
Mundunugu's Rhythm needs to have both Crit
stats as a baseline, Cooldown Reduction for a trifecta, and will replace
Intelligence for Attack Speed at very high Paragons.
Mundunugu's Robe
and
Mundunugu's Decoration (or your other set pants — see below)
will be dedicated purely to toughness stats.
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.
For your jewelry, you will be splitting between defense and offense with a
combo of the Endless Walk set and Ring of Emptiness. The Endless Walk
set —
The Compass Rose 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 dynamic mimics the Spirit Barrage WD playstyle,
as you alternate between
Spirit Walk bursts of movement in search of
the next important fight with extended periods of stationary
Spirit Barrage spam. Seek double Crit stats, Cooldown Reduction and an
open Socket for
The Compass Rose and double Crit stats, Cold elemental
damage and an open Socket on
The Traveler's Pledge amulet.
Your other ring slot will be taken by Ring of Emptiness; this
legendary item provides a massive damage multiplier as long as you affect
targets with either
Haunt or
Locust Swarm. The latter will be
included in this build, so you will have an easy proc to the ring's tremendous
damage increase.
In your bracer slot, Lakumba's Ornament is a class cornerstone that
reduces incoming damage significantly as you regularly use
Soul Harvest, that can be further empowered by a cubed or worn
Sacred Harvester.
You have three options for the weapon slot: the
Spirit Barrage-specific
The Barber and
Voo's Juicer, and
the generic utility staple
Sacred Harvester.
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. We
generally recommend wearing the
Sacred Harvester due to its fixed
power, and extracting
The Barber to enjoy its maximized legendary power
in the Cube. Lastly,
Voo's Juicer adds to the
Spirit Barrage
damage and nets you the
Phlebotomize and
The Spirit Is Willing
runes for free; it should be considered over
Sacred Harvester when you
reach a higher Paragon level and comfort with handling the build, as you will
gain a tier or two worth of extra damage by including it in the setup.
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.
Desired Stats, Breakpoints and Other Notes
For Offense stats, try to obtain Spirit Barrage % bonus on both the helm,
boots and offhand (maximum of 45%), Cold elemental damage on both the amulet
and wrists(maximum of 40%) and Crit Chance and Crit Damage within a 1:10 ratio
(ideally over 60% and 450%, respectively). This build attempts a careful
balance between Attack Speed, Cooldown and Resource Cost Reduction stats. A
suggested (but not mandatory — test and see what split you are
comfortable with) setup would be to reach 55%+ CDR (achieved through Paragons,
Flawless Royal Diamond in the Helm, the Cpt. Crimson set bonus, as well
as CDR on your Offhand, Shoulders, and Gloves); 47% Resource Cost Reduction
(Paragons, Cpt. Crimson bonus,
Blood Ritual and Shoulders); and
reaching the 2.31 Attack Speed breakpoint with two Attack Speed rolls on
Rings, Paragons, active
Big Bad Voodoo, and a stacked
Gogok of Swiftness. Area Damage is useless in this build.
For Defense stats, aim for a life pool around 850-900k; dropping as much as
you can for offense as you grow accustomed to the build. Your sustain will
come from Life per Hit rolls on your bracer or weapon (or both), as well as
the Grave Injustice passive effect and
Ghost Trance, should you
pick it as your
Big Bad Voodoo rune.
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 Vitality if
you feel yourself lacking in toughness (very likely). Investing points into
Maximum Mana should not be necessary, but can be considered if you decide to
play with a cubed Aquila Cuirass instead.
In the Offense section, max out Crit Damage, Crit Chance, Attack Speed and CDR in that order. In Defense, prioritize Armor, then Life %, then All Resistance, and finish off with Life Regeneration. In Utility, build up Resource Cost Reduction and Life on Hit first, then finish off with Globe Radius. Skip Area Damage, especially if you intend to play in groups.
Slot | Paragon Points |
---|---|
Core |
|
Offense |
|
Defense |
|
Utility |
|
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 and Critical Hit Damage: Allocate enough
points to reach the 2.27 Attack Speed breakpoint as displayed in your Character
Details sheet, which puts you at the desirable 21 Frames-per-Animation
breakpoint for
Spirit Barrage. Spend the rest on Crit Damage.
- 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: Resource Cost Reduction: 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.
Gems
Bane of the Trapped is a potent source of additional damage, as it is
its own multiplier in your total damage calculation. You will easily proc this
gem with the slows from
Spirit Barrage and
Soul Harvest
Languish,
as well as the gem's own level 25+ effect in short ranges.
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.
Pain Enhancer can also be considered in
this slot for high end pushing and group play, as Attack Speed is a massive
multiplier to your damage output.
Introduced in Season 4, Bane of the Stricken occupies the third and
final jewelry socket in GR progression. Building up your damage
multiplicatively in prolonged fights and with a level 25 bonus specifically
targeting Rift Guardians, this gem is tremendously helpful even in single
target-heavy builds such as this one.
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 noted, the weapon slot is interchangeable between
The Barber and
Sacred Harvester; you will wear your better roll,
and cube the other. We generally recommend having
The Barber here due
to its variable legendary power. If you choose to run
Voo's Juicer,
equip it in your hand (the skill bonus roll cannot be extracted), and run
The Barber in the Cube.
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, you
have several options that bring up various aspects of the build. To bolster
your damage, use the
Frostburn power in this slot (our general
recommendation); to bolster defenses, you can swap to
Aquila Cuirass.
In this Mundunugu / 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
For Greater Rift progression with this build, we recommend the Templar for his essential heal and cheat death abilities. The Templar is a preferable choice due to the lacking sustain in this build, as well as the general squishiness of Witch Doctors.
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.
- 04 Jul. 2020: Slight revision to Cube recommendations.
- 01 Jul. 2020: Guide revised to reflect the changes in pet damage calculation.
- 10 Mar. 2020: Guide added.
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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