Zuni Carnevil Poison Dart Witch Doctor BiS Gear, Gems, and Paragon Points

The build takes advantage of the full Zunimassa set bonuses, taking five of the seven available pieces and cubing a Ring of Royal Grandeur to reduce the number of items for set bonus completion by one. This opens up the helm and leg slots for the unique bonuses of Carnevil and the damage multiplication of the Depth Diggers pants. Rolls-wise, this pet playstyle (see this build's skills page for more information) makes good use of skill bonuses across gear. Sought after on the chest and shoulders, Fetish Army % bonus accompanies toughness stats on the Zunimassa's Marrow and Area Damage on your shoulder of choice. Fetish Army % is also a guaranteed roll on the Zunimassa's String of Skulls, where it is best accompanied by an Area Damage roll. Poison Dart % can be rolled on belt and pants, and being a direct boost to your primary damage dealer it is considered an optimal stat on both items. The ideal Zunimassa's Pox will include both Crit Stats, Attack Speed and an open Socket. While this guide will not delve into the specifics of breakpoint chasing, Attack Speed is an important stat for Poison Dart damage, and you can aim for the 29 frame breakpoint by reaching over 2.00 attacks per second in your sheet, easily achieved with maximized 7% IAS rolls on your weapon, gloves, belt and two rings.

The ability to store the powers of Ring of Royal Grandeur in the Kanai's Cube opens a powerful offensive combo in the jewelry: the Endless Walk set, The Compass Rose and The Traveler's Pledge. This 2.4 rework 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 fits the Zuni playstyle, as you alternate stationary Poison Dart shooting with leading your troops to the next big fight. As mentioned above, Attack Speed, Crit Chance, Crit Damage and an open Socket is desired on The Compass Rose, while the two Crit stats, Poison elemental damage and an open Socket are best for The Traveler's Pledge.

Depth Diggers increases the damage of all primary attacks by up to 100%, making it a natural inclusion in this Poison Dart-centric build. The desired stats are Intelligence, Vitality or Armor, 2 Sockets and Poison Dart %.

The most desirable belt for a Carnevil Witch Doctor is the glass cannon champion, The Witching Hour. Naturally sporting the unusual combination of Attack Speed and Crit Damage, the best-in-slot rolls would also include a Poison Dart % roll. Another viable, but noticeably weaker option for GRs is the Belt of Transcendence, allowing you to free up the Fetish Sycophants passive slot for another of your choosing.

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.

With no set piece to occupy your shoulder slot, you are free to take any well-rolled legendary item for the build. A popular option when there is no mandatory piece are the Pauldrons of the Skeleton King, which come from Act I bounty caches. This legendary shoulder offers a proc-based cheat death; albeit unreliable, it is still better than no bonus at all. Still, aim for the proper gear rolls outlined below first, and worry about a legendary item later.

While it is the namesake of the build, the Carnevil voodoo mask is only sought after because of its unique property that enables the 5 closest Fetish summons to shoot Poison Darts along with you. The mask sports the standard four primary stats and is interchangeable with a Mask of Jeram — so pick your better rolled helm and store the powers of the other in Kanai's Cube. Still, a good Carnevil is much easier to obtain as it has no range to roll on the unique property (unlike Mask of Jeram), so Carnevil comes as the default recommendation.

Last but not least, the namesake of the build — The Dagger of Darts — is a mandatory inclusion in your gear setup.

Slot	Pieces	Stat Priority
Head	Carnevil	Intelligence Socket Critical Hit Chance Vitality Crowd Control Reduction (Secondary Stat)
Shoulders	Pauldrons of the Skeleton King	Intelligence Fetish Army Damage % Area Damage Cooldown Reduction Pickup Radius (Secondary Stat) Health Globe Healing Bonus (Secondary Stat)
Torso	Zunimassa's Marrow	Intelligence 3 Sockets Fetish Army Damage % Vitality Melee or Missile Damage Reduction (Secondary Stat) Physical or Lightning Resistance (Secondary Stat)
Wrists	Lakumba's Ornament	Intelligence Critical Hit Chance Poison Damage % Vitality Melee or Missile Damage Reduction (Secondary Stat) Physical or Lightning Resistance (Secondary Stat)
Hands	Zunimassa's Finger Wraps	Intelligence (replaced by Area Damage at High Paragons) Critical Hit Damage Critical Hit Chance Attack Speed Physical or Lightning Resistance (Secondary Stat) Pickup Radius (Secondary Stat)
Waist	The Witching Hour	Intelligence Poison Dart % Damage Attack Speed (if The Witching Hour) Critical Hit Damage (if The Witching Hour) Pickup Radius (Secondary Stat) Life per Kill (Secondary Stat)
Legs	Depth Diggers	Intelligence 2 Sockets Poison Dart % Damage Vitality Armor Life per Kill (Secondary Stat)
Feet	Zunimassa's Trail	Intelligence Vitality All Resistance Armor Pickup Radius (Secondary Stat) Health Globe Healing Bonus (Secondary Stat)
Amulet	The Traveler's Pledge	Socket Critical Hit Damage Critical Hit Chance Poison Damage % Melee or Missile Damage Reduction (Secondary Stat) Physical or Lightning Resistance (Secondary Stat)
Ring #1	The Compass Rose	Socket Critical Hit Chance Critical Hit Damage Attack Speed or Area Damage Life per Kill (Secondary Stat) Physical or Lightning Resistance (Secondary Stat)
Ring #2	Zunimassa's Pox	Socket Critical Hit Chance Critical Hit Damage Attack Speed or Area Damage Life per Kill (Secondary Stat) Physical or Lightning Resistance (Secondary Stat)
Weapon	The Dagger of Darts	High Weapon Damage Intelligence Socket (preferably from Ramaladni's Gift) Attack Speed Increase Area Damage Life per Kill (Secondary Stat)
Off-hand	Zunimassa's String of Skulls	High Damage Range Intelligence Fetish Army % Area Damage Vitality Health Globe Healing Bonus (Secondary Stat)

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.

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. Adding to Maximum Mana should not be necessary.

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 Globe Radius first, then finish off with Life on Hit and Resource Cost Reduction.

Slot	Paragon Points
Core	Movement Speed up to 25% cap Intelligence Vitality Maximum Mana
Offense	Attack Speed Critical Hit Damage Critical Hit Chance Cooldown Reduction
Defense	Armor Life % All Resistance Life Regeneration
Utility	Area Damage Globe Radius Life on Hit Resource Cost Reduction

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: Critical Hit Chance and Critical Hit Damage: Allocate points so they are as close to the desirable 1:10 ratio between the two stats, as displayed in your Character Details sheet. For weapon-and-offhand builds, this is usually achieved with the full 200 points spent into Critical Hit 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: Area Damage: 200 points.

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.

Simplicity's Strength is one of the best DPS gems you can take for the build, as it was changed into a separate damage multiplication source to primary skills in Patch 2.4.1. Affecting both yours and your Fetish attacks, and upgrading with a steady pace of half a percent per gem level, it quickly becomes a priority and a fixture in your gem choices. Its buffed healing secondary effect is just icing on the cake.

Enforcer is a pet-oriented gem that both increases Fetish damage and lessens the damage the summons take. Note that the damage bonuses of this gem have been changed from additive to multiplicative in Patch 2.4.1, reinforcing it as a pet build staple.

You have some wiggle room in your final gem slot. For the absolute highest tiers of Greater Rift Progression, you will have to use Bane of the Stricken for its scaling damage bonus, in order to get you through the GR Guardian fight. For the vast majority of progression however, and even in some endgame Rift layouts and monster compositions, Bane of the Trapped will serve you better with its overall damage multiplication on targets affected by crowd control. The gem procs itself with its level 25 property in close range, and is otherwise triggered by your Piranhado, making it a natural fit for Greater Rifting.

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 is a moderately cooldown-dependent build, slot a Flawless Royal Diamond in your helm. In your weapon, use a Flawless Royal Emerald for the Crit Damage boost.

Slot	Gems
Jewelry	Simplicity's Strength Enforcer Bane of the Stricken Bane of the Trapped (alt)
Helm	Flawless Royal Diamond (Cooldown Reduction)
Torso and Pants	Flawless Royal Topaz (Damage and All Resistance)
Weapon	Flawless Royal Emerald

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

The power of Echoing Fury in your weapon Cube slot is highly synergistic with the Carnevil Witch Doctor, as it provides a scaling Attack Speed and Movement Speed bonuses, both of which are vital to this IAS-centric, mobility-dependent build.

The second most desirable helm for this pet centric build, Mask of Jeram only steps down to Carnevil due to the set and weapon synergy. The armor slot is interchangeable between the two, with Mask of Jeram being the usual cube occupant due to its variable unique bonus.

The final item that binds the puzzle of sets and masks together is the Ring of Royal Grandeur. The ability to run with full set bonuses, a complementary helm and strong offensive jewelry, 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.

Both the Scoundrel and the Enchantress are viable followers for GR progression with this build. Scoundrel can be used for his powerful crit buff, allowing you brief windows of extra damage output. Enchantress offers an attack speed buff that can be useful when reaching for the attack speed breakpoints outlined above.

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.

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.