Arachyr Angry Chicken Witch Doctor Nephalem Rift Speed Farming Variation

The Arachyr Angry Chicken Witch Doctor is excellent at Nephalem Rift Speed Farming, managing to retain the core strengths of the GR progression build but also able to adapt numerous movement speed adjustments in the setup. 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
Horrify Stalker Fetish Army Legion of Daggers 1 Hex Angry Chicken 2 Piranhas Piranhado 3 Spirit Walk Severance 4 Soul Harvest Soul to Waste
Passive Skills
Gruesome Feast Confidence Ritual Grave Injustice Pierce the Veil

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

While playing standard Nephalem Rifts for key farming, the build still retains similarities to the GR solo rotation, but pretty much every aspect of the build is reworked for extra speed an utility, throwing you from fight to fight with reckless abandon. You still try to maintain Soul Harvest stacks, at least up to the baseline damage reduction of Lakumba's Ornament (if you decide to wear it at all), but the skill itself is flipped into a movement speed boost with the rune Soul to Waste — much like what happens with Horrify, with the rune Stalker. Angry Chicken keeps you flying through Rifts at high speeds alongside Spirit Walk, and during T16 keyfarm you can be a lot more frivolous with your detonations — they're pretty much guaranteed to oneshot enemies and reset your cooldowns through Grave Injustice. Instead of waiting for Fetish Sycophants to stack up, you will summon minions proactively by spawning Fetish Army Legion of Daggers for additional burst.

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.

• Your main damage dealer remains Hex Angry Chicken, its detonation now guaranteed to oneshot enemy packs.
• Due to the low detonation radius of Angry Chicken, the staple grouping tool from GR progression and farming Piranhas Piranhado retains its value in T16 keyfarm.
• A duo of protective skills, Soul Harvest and Horrify, hold excellent value during T16 key farm as well. Protection from Lakumba's Ornament can still be very helpful in T16s if your gold-related buffs (see below) drop, but even if you decide against this extra defensive layer, you get a decent chunk of movement speed with the Soul to Waste buff. Horrify retains some defensive value due to its base effect, but it doubles down on movement speed utility through the rune Stalker and the skill interaction with Rechel's Ring of Larceny.
• With its immense movement speed power, Spirit Walk remains in the build during T16 key farming. Adjust to the rune Severance for even more speed.
• Parts of your passive lineup retains its value during GR speed farming; Confidence Ritual still matches your fighting range and Pierce the Veil is still a decent overall damage increase. In place of the Fetish Sycophants, you should use Grave Injustice for its invaluable cooldown reduction and regenerative bonuses. And since Ring of Emptiness-based damage amplification will be too slow for T16 farm, you can drop Creeping Death for the true damage multiplier of Gruesome Feast — a trivial buff to maintain during T16 key farming.

The foundation of your gearing will somewhat match the GR progression build, as you still rely on the 6-piece set bonus of Arachyr to deal damage; however, you will only wear 5 of the 6 available pieces, swapping out a set piece for a utility item to better match the T16 circumstances. One of the possibilities (and our recommendation) is exchanging Arachyr's Claws for St. Archew's Gage, whose protective bubble helps with the first impact with elites and allows you to retain the valuable Squirt's Necklace buff. You will retain the full 6-piece bonus of Arachyr by using Ring of Royal Grandeur in the Cube. The remainder of your major equipment slots is split between Angry Chicken-synergistic items with Manajuma's Carving Knife and Manajuma's Gory Fetch, and generically useful T16 items like Goldwrap (endless Toughness from picking up gold) and Warzechian Armguards (environment destruction-based speed boosts, fueled by your Angry Chicken mayhem).

The major adaptation and changes will happen in your jewelry, where you need to swap from the slow paced, rotation-oriented combo of the Endless Walk set ( The Compass Rose and The Traveler's Pledge) into more speedfarm-appropriate gear.

Instead of the cyclical buff of Convention of Elements used in GRs, you should use the smaller, but constant buff of a Poison damage Stone of Jordan. Another great ring for GR speed farming is Rechel's Ring of Larceny, whose movement speed bonus will be triggered constantly via Horrify. The third required ring for the setup is Ring of Royal Grandeur, but due to its weaker innate primary rolls it is recommended as a Cube item; nevertheless, if your Rechel's Ring of Larceny rolls badly on its legendary property, it is quite viable to equip the RoRG and cube Rechel's due to the former's uniform legendary power.

Finish off the jewelry with the powerful damage multiplication from Squirt's Necklace. Take heed of its downside (increase in damage taken, as well as loss of the damage buff as you take hits) and try to safeguard its bonus with Goldwrap, as well as crowd controlling monsters prior to engagements with Horrify, rendering them unable to retaliate.

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.

This Season comes with the theme of Angelic Crucibles — consumable items that empower Legendary items with perfected Ancient-level stats, as well as infuse them with one of three unique, powerful, class-specific abilities at random. For this build, we recommend aiming for the Haunt Sanctification, which adds the following power to your build:

• Haunt Sanctification: Enemies affected by Locust Swarm are also Haunted. When you cast Piranhas, all Haunted enemies within 60 yards are pulled into the pool. A lesser enemy stunned by Bogadile is instantly killed. Elites and Bosses stunned by Bogadile take massive damage.

Use Angelic Crucibles on an item that crosses over most (if not all) variants of a build, and is also an item that is relatively harder to perfect than other slots (since sanctifying an item maximizes its stats). In the case of this build, good candidates for Sanctification are the Sacred Harvester, Vile Hive, and Ring of Emptiness.

You can read more on Angelic Crucibles and the sanctification process in our dedicated Angelic Crucible Mechanics guide.

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 will be overkill for key farming in standard Nephalem Rifts. Both Enforcer and Bane of the Stricken are overkill for such limited difficulties, albeit for different reasons. Bane of the Trapped on the other hand, remains a staple damage amplification gem. Complement it with Boon of the Hoarder; paired with a worn Goldwrap, and an Avarice Band worn by your follower in solo play (or yourself in groups, in the place of Rechel's), this legendary gem increases your movement speed and provides near-infinite Toughness through its interaction with the aforementioned items. Finish off legendary gems with Bane of the Powerful for the solid, all-around damage and toughness buff.

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

Cluckeye remains a cornerstone piece of the build, bringing irreplaceable damage multiplication to Hex Angry Chicken.

Lakumba's Ornament is still a very decent protective piece, massively reducing incoming damage as you Soul Harvest your way through Rifts. Note that this slot is interchangeable with Warzechian Armguards; simply wear your better rolled item, and cube the other. Another notable option for the slot are the St. Archew's Gage gloves. They require a bit more effort to play with effectively (paying attention to the absorption shield uptime), at least at first; but once you get into the groove, they can be even more effective at keeping up the tremendous Squirt's Necklace damage bonus.

Your jewelry Cube slot will be occupied by your worse rolled item between Ring of Royal Grandeur (necessary to maintain the 6-piece bonus of Arachyr while only wearing 5 pieces), and Rechel's Ring of Larceny (massive speed boon).

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 T16 key farming is the Enchantress due to the myriad of helpful buffs from all her skills, which you will attain by equipping her with Hand of the Prophet and then decking her out in survivability gear.

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.

The preferred potions for this build are Bottomless Potion of Kulle-Aid (allowing you to break down Waller affixes that impede your positioning) and Bottomless Potion of the Tower (whose Armor-increasing properties complement the naturally high All Resistances stat of Witch Doctors). Pick whichever you feel helps you out the most.