Zuni Gargantuan Witch Doctor Skills and Runes
On this page, we explain how to choose and use your skills when playing Zuni Gargantuan Witch Doctor in Diablo 3. Updated for Patch 2.7.7 and Season 32.
Active Skills |
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Locust Swarm Pestilence Piranhas Piranhado 1 Gargantuan Restless Giant 2 Spirit Walk Jaunt 3 Soul Harvest Languish 4 Fetish Army Legion of Daggers |
Passive Skills |
Rotation
Like any self-respecting summoner build, the Zuni Garg build begins runs with an activation of the pets at your disposal — both Fetish Army, whose uptime the Zuni set bonuses hinge upon, and Gargantuan that will deliver the bulk of your damage. Make a mental note of their numbers and strive to keep them capped, resummoning if their numbers thin out or even to reposition them nearer to a fight (if the previous minions get foolishly stuck on a meaningless skirmish). In order to create density for the Gargantuans to cleave down, you will be using Piranhas Piranhado. In order to trigger the Zuni 6-piece, you will have to affect targeted enemies with a Mana spending skill at least once every 8 seconds; you also have a to find a way to trigger the damage multiplication from Ring of Emptiness. To kill two birds with one stone, you will weave in regular casts of Locust Swarm in your rotation. Rounding out your skill selection, you will take the powerful Soul Harvest buff and strive to keep it at the maximum 10 stacks.
Due to the powers of Shukrani's Triumph, you have near limitless mobility and safety in your Spirit Walk state, so you can pick and choose where and when to fight. Even better, you gain a damage multiplier while you are in Spirit Walk form. While you will exit the form when you attack or approach an elite (as per the offhand legendary power), you have an additional grace period that will be as long as your default cast of Spirit Walk, which we can lengthen via the Jaunt rune. Make sure you have the pull prepared to maximize the length of the damage bonus from the mojo.
Skills and Runes
The overwhelming majority of damage in this build comes from Gargantuan, augmented by dedicated pet legendary items like The Short Man's Finger and Mask of Jeram. With the passive cleave coming from the rune Humongoid (provided by the cubed or worn Spite), you should pick the rune Restless Giant for its superior single-target damage potential. Since you will be relying largely on these summons, make a point to check their current number and keep it at the cap of three, or even re-summon them if they get sidetracked into a minor fight.
The other half of your summons, Fetish Army delivers some damage of their own — but their true purpose lies elsewhere. With the Zuni 4-piece bonus increasing your damage reduction for every Fetish out on the battlefield, your main goal is to swell their numbers to their absolute max — and this will be aided by the rune Legion of Daggers. Bear in mind that the Fetishes also form a sizable meat wall in front of you, further reducing damage indirectly by attracting enemy attacks and affixes.
On one hand, you have to include a Mana spender in order to attain the Zunimassa 6-piece bonus — a massive damage increase against affected enemies. On the other, you have the massive damage multiplication coming from Ring of Emptiness, which also applies to your non-Fetish summons. You can viably choose between Haunt and Locust Swarm to trigger both bonuses; our default recommendation is Locust Swarm for the superior spread with Pestilence.
With many baseline utility bonuses to make it attractive, Soul Harvest becomes downright irresistible for Witch Doctors that use a Sacred Harvester as their weapon of choice. Using the Ceremonial Kinfe's stack extension, even the bare-bones Soul Harvest is able to increase your Intelligence by 30% (a true damage and toughness multiplier) for the modest requirement of harvesting 10 enemies. When layered with the Languish rune and Lakumba's Ornament bracers, it also gains additional crowd control and damage reduction properties. Add to all this the naturally overlapping cooldown and the quality of life buff refresh mechanic (you only need 10 enemies for the first stacking, the bonus can be renewed even with just 1 enemy after that), and it becomes a natural inclusion in your build.
The place for a movement skill in any endgame build is practically uncontested, and Witch Doctors make no exception with the inclusion of Spirit Walk. The skill is on the upper end of mobility cooldown lengths, but compensates by packing utility: briefly rendering you invulnerable, removing enemy collision and increasing movement speed by 50%. You have some freedom in your rune of choice. With the default recommendation of Jaunt, you have a lengthier period of safety and extra damage from your Shukrani's Triumph power. An alternative for the slot is the rune Severance, whose 100% additional movement speed will allow you to reposition more easily and skip entire unfavorable GR floors with ease.
Ever since the Area Damage mechanics revision that enabled it for pets, enemy grouping skills grew tremendously in value. Witch Doctors' take on that type of utility is found in the Piranhas skill, using the vortex effect of the Piranhado rune. Considering the great damage increase Gargantuans get from cleaving down closely grouped monsters, Piranhado is almost an automatic inclusion and greatly incentivizes taking Grave Injustice as well, in order to reset the vortex cooldown faster.
Passives
Fetish Sycophants is a signature passive for Zunimassa builds, spawning additional Fetishes as you naturally go through your rotation. Capping at an impressive 15, this ability solidifies the meat shield in front of you and significantly increases the damage reduction benefits of the Zunimassa 4-piece set bonus. If you choose to wear Belt of Transcendence for a tankier version of this build, you can drop this passive for Spirit Vessel: a mainstay for Greater Rift pushing, being the Witch Doctor cheat death passive. It saves you from the death screen once every minute, healing you back to 50% of your maximum Life and puts you in a Spirit Walk-like state, allowing you to quickly reposition.
Midnight Feast is a straightforward addition to any Garg-based Witch Doctor build, enhancing the damage of your minions by 50%.
Confidence Ritual is another no-brainer inclusion, increasing your damage by 25% against enemies within 20 yards — arguably a dangerous bonus to keep up, but relatively easy to maintain due to your close proximity behind the Gargantuan and Fetish Army frontline.
Grave Injustice is an elegant source of Cooldown Reduction, synergizing with the mid-range playstyle of the Zunimassa Gargantuan 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%. Notice the pickup radius synergy and try to obtain that stat in the secondaries of your gear.
Changelog
- 10 Jul. 2024: Skills and passives reviewed for Season 32.
- 10 Apr. 2024: Skills and passives reviewed for Season 31.
- 10 Jan. 2024: Skills and passives reviewed for Season 30.
- 13 Sep. 2023: Skills and passives reviewed for Season 29.
- 22 Feb. 2023: Skills and passives reviewed for Season 28.
- 26 Aug. 2022: Skills and passives reviewed for Season 27.
- 14 Apr. 2022: Guide reviewed for Season 26.
- 06 Dec. 2021: Added Season 25 Soul Shard recommendations.
- 22 Jul. 2021: No changes required for Season 24.
- 01 Apr. 2021: No changes required for Season 23.
- 19 Nov. 2020: No changes required for Season 22.
- 01 Jul. 2020: No changes required for Season 21.
- 12 Mar. 2020: No changes necessary for Season 20.
- 22 Nov. 2019: Reviewed for Season 19.
- 23 Aug. 2019: Skill recommendations are revised for Season 18.
- 17 May 2019: Guide was reviewed and approved for Season 17.
- 18 Jan. 2019: Information was reviewed and approved for Season 16 with no changes required.
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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