Zuni Gargantuan Witch Doctor Speed Farming Variation

The Zuni Gargantuan Witch Doctor can deal reasonably well with Normal Rift farming all the way through the highest Torment difficulties. The build variation suffers from minor inconveniences compared to top tier speed farming builds. We have solo speed GR rankings and solo speed T16 rankings if you want to know more about which builds are best for speed farming.

Within the limited scope of regular difficulties, the necessary damage and toughness to triumph over the enemy is significantly smaller. Thus, your best course of action is to improve utility and speed.

Active Skills
Haunt Lingering Spirit Piranhas Piranhado 1 Gargantuan Big Stinker 2 Spirit Walk Severance 3 Soul Harvest Soul to Waste 4 Fetish Army Legion of Daggers
Passive Skills
Midnight Feast Gruesome Feast Fierce Loyalty Grave Injustice

When you are speed farming regular rifts, parts of your playstyle will adapt to the lowered challenge and focus more on speed and utility.

For T16 farm, you will assume a similar rotation to the one you have in Greater Rifts, but greatly accelerated and more reckless. The basics remain the same; summon Fetish Army for the Zuni set damage reduction, then summon Gargantuan and buff up its damage by spreading Haunt on enemies to trigger the Ring of Emptiness damage multiplication (as well as to satisfy the Zuni Mana spender requirement). With the toughness afforded by Goldwrap you can fearlessly dive into packs using Spirit Walk, crowd control them with Piranhado and re-apply the Soul Harvest Soul to Waste speed buff.

Parts of the skill and passive selection will overlap with the base Greater Rift progression build, but others will have to change according to the task at hand. Ability to cross over great distances faster and more efficiently take precedence.

• The main damage dealer of the build remains Gargantuan, but you should use the rune Big Stinker for the additional AoE over the prolonged fight-oriented Restless Giant rune.
• You still need to maintain the Zunimassa damage reduction buff, so Fetish Army stays in the build, along with the Legion of Daggers rune for the maximum number of summons (and damage reduced as a result).
• Keep Piranhas Piranhado in the build for a solid pull and source of crowd control for the build.
• A proc for Ring of Emptiness will also be quite helpful to cement your ability to oneshot enemies; you can replace the slower-paced and resource-intensive Locust Swarm with the immediate, auto-aiming and mobile effect of Haunt Lingering Spirit.
• You should exchange the lengthier effect of the Jaunt rune on Spirit Walk for the faster movement of Severance.
• Swap the Soul Harvest rune from the defensive Languish to the movespeed-oriented Soul to Waste.
• In your passives, replace the progression-oriented Fetish Sycophants for a speed bump from Fierce Loyalty. Replace Confidence Ritual with Gruesome Feast, as it undeniably offers the strongest damage increase among its peers, provided you can keep it stacked with health globes — an easy task when farming. Keep Grave Injustice for the cooldown reduction utility, and Midnight Feast for the pet damage buff.

The foundation of the build will closely resemble the GR progression build, as you still rely on the 6-piece set bonus of Zunimassa to deal damage. You will be wearing 5 of the 7 available pieces and maintaining the full 6-piece bonus of Zunimassa by using Ring of Royal Grandeur in the Cube. The remainder of your major equipment slots is split between generically useful Witch Doctor items like Shukrani's Triumph, and T16-farming oriented staples like Goldwrap and Echoing Fury. Jewelry should also match your GR setup, as all three pieces — Ring of Emptiness, The Short Man's Finger and Squirt's Necklace — bring damage multiplication that will make killing monsters a breeze in this difficulty.

When farming solo, your jewelry can be dedicated to offense and your shoulder slot can stay on Pauldrons of the Skeleton King (or your best rolled legendary item with the stats outlined below). This is because in solo play your Follower can wear Homing Pads, The Flavor of Time and Avarice Band and "Emanate" them to you (meaning you benefit from those items as if you wore them yourself). In group play, you will have to wear them yourself (losing Ring of Emptiness and Squirt's Necklace as a result).

Early on in character progression, you can keep Lakumba's Ornament for the immense damage reduction it provides to the build. When you have progressed your character and are comfortable with Goldwrap mechanics and relying on procs to survive, you can swap Lakumba's Ornament out for Warzechian Armguards, which provide you with an additional speed boost based on environmental destruction. The former favorite for the slot, Nemesis Bracers, are still quite valuable to the build; when soloing, they should be equipped on the follower however, since their power can be transferred to you via the Emanate mechanic.

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.

The former Season 28 theme, the Altar of Rites, has been revised and re-added to Diablo 3 as a permanent character progression mechanic. — For virtually all builds and players of all skill levels — from casual to advanced — we recommend progressing through the Altar tree using the path outlined below. The suggested path is geared towards maximum quality of life first, then amplifying damage, and then mopping up the tree with defensive and edge case utility nodes.

Note that while they require reaching them with a Seal, Legendary Potion Powers are not part of the Seal cost system; Potions unlock with a separate resource called Primordial Ashes, obtained from salvaging Legendary or Set items of Primal (red bordered) quality. Upgrade them as soon as possible, and in the order shown below (courtesy of Caleko's Altar of Rites planner).

You can read more on the Altar of Rites, Seals and Legendary Potion Powers in our dedicated Altar of Rites Mechanics guide.

Most of your legendary gem selection from GR progression retains its full value in GR speed farming as well. Both Bane of the Trapped and Enforcer still bring excellent damage multiplication value to the build while farming keys. Within the limited challenges of T16 speed farming, Bane of the Stricken should be replaced by Boon of the Hoarder. Paired with an equipped Goldwrap and an Avarice Band worn by your follower in solo play (or yourself in groups, in the place of Ring of Emptiness), this legendary gem increases your movement speed and provides near-infinite Toughness through its interaction with the aforementioned items.

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

Spite and Shukrani's Triumph are interchangeable for the weapon slot in the Cube; simply wear your better rolled item and cube the worse one.

Mask of Jeram is the preferred inclusion to the armor slot in the Cube, as it directly increases pet damage (additive with elemental damage on gear). Its buff in Patch 2.6.1 and the natural IAS caps of Gargantuan make it more attractive than the other pet staple, Tasker and Theo.

Lastly, in order to maintain the valuable 6-piece bonus of Zunimassa set, you will need to cube a Ring of Royal Grandeur in the jewelry slot.

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.

The recommended follower for this build during standard rift farming for keys is the Enchantress due to her numerous utility bonuses, allowing you to smooth out your speed runs even further.

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.

This Season revives the Pandemonium Kill Streak buff from Season 19. Each stack grants a bonus to movement speed and damage, capping at +50% movement speed and +100% damage at 1000 kills. Hitting specific kill thresholds unleashes powerful effects. Read more in our dedicated Season of the Eternal Conflict Mechanics Guide!

While speedfarming sees limited use from this theme, Greater Rift pushing benefits significantly. Effects like Geysers (150), Meteors (400), and Angels (500) can clear elites and Rift Guardians instantly. Players may reset streaks after 150 kills to repeatedly trigger Geysers or push for 500+ kills near boss fights, often using Nemesis Bracers to spawn extra enemies.

Because the most potent effects (Geysers, Meteors, Angels) can obliterate Rift Guardians instantly up to GR150, players can retool builds for efficiency and comfort. Here’s how:

Since you can rely on killstreak procs to clear the Rift Guardian, Bane of the Stricken can be safely omitted in favor of:

• Another generic damage-scaling legendary gem ( Bane of the Trapped for builds with any form of crowd control and/or melee range, Zei's Stone of Vengeance for far ranged builds, Taeguk for channeling builds, Simplicity's Strength for primary attack-focused builds, Enforcer for pet-oriented builds, etc.)
• A survivability-oriented legendary gem ( Esoteric Alteration, Molten Wildebeest's Gizzard), or additional utility ( Gogok of Swiftness for CDR-reliant builds, Pain Enhancer for attack speed-heavy builds, or Wreath of Lightning for extra movement speed).

Adjust your equipment to items that favor durability, health sustain, and ease of movement. Consider adjusting non-essential skills for the build to ones that pull, reposition, or otherwise displace enemies to facilitate large pulls of enemy packs. In more concrete terms, this means:

• For class-specific items, Witch Doctors should consider Lakumba's Ornament; this is a powerful damage reduction item that incentivizes you to be mindful of maintaining stacks of Soul Harvest. This synergizes well with the killstreak theme by improving survivability while in the middle of large enemy packs.
• For additional options that balance between defense and offense, the class-specific offhand Shukrani's Triumph greatly extends the duration of Spirit Walk, giving you the freedom to reposition optimally. Other helpful cross-class jewelry includes Unity (combined with the same ring on the follower plus a follower immortality token), and the Endless Walk set ( The Traveler's Pledge and The Compass Rose).
• Situational items that can bolster your defenses include Stone Gauntlets, the drawbacks of which are negated via CC-immunity effects like Ice Climbers, or the Altar of Rites CC-immunity node. The class-agnostic Aquila Cuirass is a powerful and popular choice for low Mana-spending builds, especially ones built around generators like LoD Poison Dart. Niche options for protection are found in Vile Hive, allowing for an easy spread of Locust Swarm Cloud of Insects, or the incidental tanking of the Belt of Transcendence meat shield summons.
• Utility items like Nemesis Bracers are essential as more elites mean more killstreak maintenance and faster progression. When soloing, they should be equipped by your follower; in groups, at least one party member should commit to wearing them. Edge cases will see the inclusion of Warzechian Armguards or Krelm's Buff Belt (more speed for easier scouting and pulls), Strongarm Bracers (extra damage vs. displaced enemies), and Rechel's Ring of Larceny in speedfarming builds that employ Horrify. To facilitate large pulls, consider using a Follower equipped with The Ess of Johan, a proc-based analogue to an enemy-pulling skill (albeit outside your control).
• Skill-wise, make sure to include at least one movement skill tool like Spirit Walk, ideally in conjunction with an Shukrani's Triumph, and an enemy-pulling tool like Piranhas Piranhado.Take a look if you can include passives like Spirit Vessel (for a cheat-death), Grave Injustice (for cooldown reduction and resource regeneration on kill), or enemy density-beneficiaries like Confidence Ritual and Gruesome Feast.