Spirit Barrage Mundunugu WD Skills and Runes
On this page, we explain how to choose and use your skills when playing Spirit Barrage Mundunugu WD in Diablo 3. Updated for patch 2.6.10 and Season 22.
Active Skills |
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Passive Skills |
Rotation
Most of your skill selection arsenal will be reactive to the circumstances of
the Rift, as you pop Spirit Walk when needing a burst of speed,
repositioning or simply a moment of invulnerability in reaction to incoming
damage.
Big Bad Voodoo will be used pretty much on cooldown from its very
high uptime in the build due to the set 2-piece mechanics. Maintain the
Soul Harvest buff at all times, and use
Piranhado to clump up
enemies into a dense pack for the benefit of your
Spirit Barrage
explosions.
You will open engagements with a cast of Locust Swarm to draw the
attention of enemies, as well as to amplify your damage against them via the
Ring of Emptiness effect.
A Note on Group Play Rotation
Note that the Phantasm rune can only sustain three spirits at a time,
which factors into the DPS optimization of the build for group play. Like most
high-end Greater Rift builds, you will need to maximize the effects of
Convention of Elements to make the most of your damage potential. For the
Spirit Barrage WD, this means that during the Poison element part of the CoE
cycle (~2 seconds into it), you need to manually explode your triple
Phantasms once to spawn an
Oculus Ring proc (worn by your
follower). Then, quickly run to the damage-empowering circle and channel a new
triple
Phantasm stack, whose duration you will let run out normally
— but which will now include the damage amplification from the Cold CoE
cycle, as well as the Oculus proc.
Skills and Runes
Your primary damage dealer comes in the form of Spirit Barrage, a
mid-range projectile whose power is augmented by the dedicated legendary
ceremonial knife
The Barber. For solo GR pushing, you have some freedom
in your rune selection, as the one you select on your bar is mostly supplementary
and to provide additional utility. Either the extra DPS from
Manitou,
the Mana restoration of
The Spirit Is Willing or the health sustain of
Phlebotomize can all work here. Remember that the majority of the damage
in this build will come from the
Phantasm spawns, and the selected rune
can vary with comparable results.
Big Bad Voodoo is tied into the 2-piece set bonus of Mundunugu,
providing a strong incentive for its inclusion with the extended duration and
mobility convenience. With a modest investment in Cooldown Reduction, you will
have very high uptime of this strong buff, and two runes are very comparable
contenders. The general recommendation is the protective
Ghost Trance,
but very high Paragon Witch Doctors can consider the
Rain Dance rune
as well, as its Mana Regeneration bonuses tie into the mechanics of the set.
While not directly relating to Spirit Barrage,
Locust Swarm
will be included as a trigger for
Ring of Emptiness and its massive damage
increase. Despite its unassuming visuals, it will actually spread very
consistently across massive groups of enemies and affect nearly, if not all,
nearby targets — especially when taken with the Mana-efficient rune
Pestilence. Note that this skill has additional utility when used in
groups; check out the group variation page to learn more.
One of the strongest utility cooldowns of Witch Doctors, Soul Harvest
is almost universally a great addition.
Soul Harvest acts as a damage buff
by default, increasing your Intelligence by up to 15% for the reasonable
requirement of 5 harvested enemies. With the
Languish rune and the worn
Lakumba's Ornament bracers, it nets you additional crowd control and
reduces incoming damage, solidifying its place in this mid-range playstyle. The
naturally overlapping duration simply sweetens the deal.
Piranhas is taken for the solitary grouping tool of Witch Doctors —
the vortex effect of the
Piranhado rune. It is hard to argue with the
addition of a pull in a build that benefits so much from clumped up enemies, and
is a major reason to include
Grave Injustice for faster
Piranhado
cooldown resets.
Spirit Walk is the final Witch Doctor staple included in the build,
and its moderate cooldown is compensated by its versatility: it renders you
invulnerable, removes enemy collision and increases your movement speed by 50%.
The recommended rune is
Severance, whose 100% additional movement speed
will allow you to reposition in the blink of an eye. Early on in the gearing
process, you can also consider the
Honored Guest rune to add another
source of emergency Mana regeneration to the build (see this build's
gear page for more information). Regardless of
your choice, the use of this skill ties into the damage reduction from your
set 4-piece bonus, and its use at least once every 30 seconds (in practice, much
more frequently than that) is mandatory.
This concludes the overview of the active skills, now let us look through the passives.
Passives
While Rush of Essence provides the obvious damage increasing
interaction with the Mundunugu set, this is mostly a positive side effect to its
powerful Mana regeneration properties, and this passive is largely taken for its
most straightforward purpose — allowing you to cast your spells. This
passive also allows you to largely skip Mana Regeneration on gear, despite the
resource intensive nature of the build.
Confidence Ritual is taken for a very straightforward purpose —
its decent overall damage increase for mid-to-short range builds, such as this
one.
Grave Injustice is an elegant source of Cooldown Reduction, synergizing
with the mid-range playstyle of the Spirit Barrage build. For each enemy killed
in a 20-yard radius of the Witch Doctor, it not only reduces your cooldowns by a
second, but also replenishes your health and mana reserves by 1%. Take notice of
the pickup radius synergy and try to obtain that stat in the secondaries of your
gear.
Last but not least, Spirit Vessel adds a cheat death effect that is
never unwelcome in the highly damaging environments of high end GR solo
progression. Note that its proc counts as "entering the Spirit Realm" for the
purposes of the 4-piece bonus of the Mundunugu set.
Changelog
- 17 Dec. 2020: Slight revision to passive lineup.
- 19 Nov. 2020: No changes required for Season 22.
- 01 Jul. 2020: Guide revised to reflect the meta changes in passives preferences.
- 10 Mar. 2020: Guide added.
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.
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