Zuni Gargantuan Witch Doctor Skills and Runes

Table of Contents

• +Introduction
  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. Quick Reference
    • 2.1. Skill Setup
  • 3. Builds
    • 3.1. Gear Setup
    • 3.2. Legendary Gems
    • 3.3. Kanai's Cube
  • 4. Role in the Current Meta
  • 5. Reading Further
  • 6. ChangeLog
• ×Skills and Runes
  • 1. Rotation
  • 2. Skills, Runes and Passives
• +Gear, Gems, and Paragon Points
  • 1. Best in Slot Gear and Alternatives
  • 2. Paragon Points
  • 3. Gems
  • 4. Kanai's Cube
  • 5. Follower
• +Speed Farming Variation
  • 1. Speed Farming
  • 2. Adapting Skills
  • 3. Adapting Gear
  • 4. Adapting Gemming
  • 5. Adapting Kanai's Cube

General Information

Below, we explain how to choose and use your skills when playing Zuni Gargantuan Witch Doctor in Diablo 3. Updated for patch 2.6.1 and Season 13.

The other pages of our Zuni Gargantuan Witch Doctor guide can be accessed from the table of contents on the right.

Active Skills
Firebats Vampire Bats Piranhas Piranhado 1 Gargantuan Humongoid 2 Spirit Walk Honored Guest 3 Soul Harvest Languish 4 Fetish Army Legion of Daggers
Passive Skills
Midnight Feast Confidence Ritual Spirit Vessel Grave Injustice

1. 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 Humongoids 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 every 8 seconds; you also have a nice opening in your gear to attain the bonuses of Mantle of Channeling. To maximize the bonuses of both, you will be using Firebats — channeling for 8 seconds at a time, and then recasting to reapply the set bonus. Rounding out your skill selection, you will take the powerful Soul Harvest buff and strive to keep it at the maximum 10 stacks, and you will also take the repositioning tool Spirit Walk.

2. Skills, Runes and Passives

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. The preferred rune is the cold Humongoid, whose consistent damage output and ability to cleave simply outperforms the other options. 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 resummon 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, the Zuni set does not have a shoulder piece, leaving a suitable opening for the powerful Mantle of Channeling legendary — even more attractive, considering that WDs arguably have the strongest channeling skill of any class: Firebats. In this case, you will only take it for the long reach and added life sustain angle of the Vampire Bats rune. Remember that you will have to stop channeling and recast at least every 8 seconds in order to reapply the Zuni set bonus

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 barebones 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).

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%. It even has a Mana restoration angle from the rune Honored Guest, allowing you to quickly build reserves back up after prolonged Firebats channeling.

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.

This concludes the overview of the active skills, now let us look through the passives.

Spirit Vessel is 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. An alternative for the slot if you are comfortable with the playstyle and are in need of more damage is Pierce the Veil.

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.

About the Author

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.