Arachyr Firebats Witch Doctor BiS Gear, Gems, and Paragon Points

The build incorporates either the complete Spirit of Arachyr set, or the complete Helltooth set — they are similarly successful when soloing. By taking five of the six available pieces of the respective set you open up the jewelry for the Endless Walk set and its damage multiplication bonuses. Rolls-wise, the build makes good use of Skill and Area Damage affixes across gear, as well as a balanced approach to Resource Cost and Cooldown Reduction. The BiS roll for gloves includes double Crit stats and Area Damage, with a potential Resource Cost Reduction roll at high Paragon levels. Area Damage and RCR are also helpful on shoulders, with a potential roll for CDR as the fourth main stat. It is recommended that you focus on toughness stats on the chest, as well as the pants. The helm and boots can roll Firebats % bonus, and is advisable to obtain it on both items.

Armor set-wise, you will also be crafting and equipping two of the three pieces of the Captain Crimson set ( Captain Crimson's Silk Girdle, and either the Captain Crimson's Thrust or Captain Crimson's Waders). You will complete their full bonus via Ring of Royal Grandeur in the Cube. This set provides CDR as well as RCR bonuses, and then scales your damage dealt and damage reduced according to both stats, respectively — bringing a massive boon to the build.

Wearing a complete set allows you to split between offense and defense in the jewelry slots. One of the 2.4 reworks, the Endless Walk set — The Compass Rose ring and The Traveler's Pledge amulet — 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 mirrors the Firebats Arachyr playstyle, which goes from extended periods of Spirit Walk movement and setting up fights with Locust Swarm and Piranhado into static Firebats channeling (see this build's skills page for more information). Your remaining ring slot should be occupied by Ring of Emptiness, which brings a massive damage multiplier against enemies affected by either Haunt or Locust Swarm (you take the latter).

Two generically useful Witch Doctor legendaries will augment both your defense and offense capabilities.

• Lakumba's Ornament is a tremendous source of damage reduction, working alongside the bonuses of Sacred Harvester (discussed below). It offers a baseline of 60% DR that stacks up to 80% with an easy 10 monster harvest during the Rift clear. Note the variance in the roll of its legendary bonus — 1 to 3 Soul Harvest stacks required for the base DR to trigger. Aim for the lowest, 1 stack required roll.
• Shukrani's Triumph makes Spirit Walk last until you attack 3 times, or an elite is within 20 yards of you, resulting in outstanding mobility right until you decide to engage in a fight, putting you in a very advantageous position. It also offers a damage multiplier while you are in Spirit Walk; and while you will lose this form when you attack, you still get a grace period as if you just popped the skill on its own (2 seconds with base Spirit Walk, 3 seconds with Jaunt), giving you another short period of damage multiplication.

Sacred Harvester is the best-in-slot weapon for a Firebats Witch Doctor in GRs, as its unique bonus extends the number of Soul Harvest stacks from 5 to 10. With the opportunity to buff up for 30% Intelligence (true damage multiplier) and reduce incoming damage by 60%+ from a simple Soul Harvest, this Ceremonial Knife is hard to pass up.

For Offense stats, try to obtain Firebats % bonus on the helm, shoulders and offhand (maximum of 45%), Fire elemental damage on the amulet and wrists (maximum of 40%), Crit Chance and Crit Damage within a 1:10 ratio (ideally over 60% and 450%, respectively), and Area Damage of 130%+. Firebats is an Attack Speed breakpoint-dependent skill, with thresholds impacting both your DPS and your resource management. When soloing with this build, you will be aiming for the 8 frames per animation breakpoint, reachable via a maximized 7% Increased Attack Speed roll on the weapon (multiplicative source of IAS), Paragons and an Enchantress follower with the Attack Speed Focused Mind buff. In groups, you will reach the highest possible breakpoint of 3 frames per animation at 47 stacks of Pain Enhancer (3.75+ sheet Attacks per Second). No further investment of Attack Speed on gear is required. Both Cooldown and Resource Cost Reduction are valuable to the build with respect to the inclusion of the Cpt. Crimson set, but you can achieve very respectable results with minimal investments in both; aim for ~45% CDR (one roll on shoulder, plus Flawless Royal Diamond in helm, Paragon points and Prophetic Harmony) and ~45% RCR (one roll on shoulder, plus the Cpt. Crimson set, Paragons and the Blood Ritual passive).

For Defense stats, aim for a life pool of 700k+; dropping as much as you can for offense as you grow accustomed to the build. You will mostly sustain through Life per Hit on gear, with at least one high roll in your setup (i.e. bracer).

All augmentations on gear should be done with your main stat, Intelligence.

Note that the stat suggestions below portray an ideally rolled item with stats listed in relative order of importance. The first four of them are main stats, and the latter two — secondary stats. If your item lacks and is unable to be rerolled into the primary stats outlined below, especially for a stat higher on the list, strongly consider its replacement. Perfecting Secondary stats is mostly a case of hyper-optimization and is not a case for discarding an item, except where noted.

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 substituting the rune on Piranhas from Piranhado to Bogadile, and 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 and Shukrani's Triumph.

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.

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. Investing into Max Mana should not be necessary.

In the Offense section, max out Crit Damage, Crit Chance, Attack Speed 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 Resource Cost Reduction first, then finish off with Globe Radius and Life on Hit.

Bane of the Trapped is a potent source of additional damage, as it is its own multiplier in your total damage calculation. The gem procs itself with its level 25 property, as it overlaps the 15-yard channeling radius of Firebats.

When attempting the highest tiers of Greater Rift progression, health numbers of Elites and especially Rift Guardians will jump to near-impossible numbers. In order to tackle the sheer health walls, you will need to use Bane of the Stricken, a gem dedicated to this very purpose.

Taeguk is taken as a rare hybrid of defense and offense among the legendary gem options, with continued Firebats channeling keeping the stacks capped from fight to fight. Mana management in order to channel Firebats continuously until the end of a big fight will require practice, but is well worth it — up to 80% additive damage increase and 20% Armor from Taeguk.

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. This build will benefit from a small CDR investment with Flawless Royal Diamond to make Spirit Walk and Horrify (or Big Bad Voodoo) more readily available. In your weapon, use a Flawless Royal Emerald for the Crit Damage boost.

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

Tailored after Firebats builds, Staff of Chiroptera will be fixed to your weapon Cube slot; it sports a unique affix that provides a 2.5 damage multiplier, doubles the skill's attack speed (cutting the frames per animation in half), and provides a Resource Cost Reduction multiplier that enables its prolonged channeling.

Tucked away in the Cube, Bakuli Jungle Wraps simply provides a massive damage multiplier for Firebats against enemies affected by Locust Swarm or Piranhas.

In the Arachyr (or Helltooth) / Captain Crimson mixture you will need a Ring of Royal Grandeur, a cache legendary ring from Act I bounties, to tie the two sets together. The ability to run with one full 6-piece set bonus and an additional 3-piece bonus, 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.

The recommended follower for this build during solo GR progression is the Enchantress due to her cooldown reduction buff from Prophetic Harmony, as well as the Focused Mind attack speed buff. The latter is very helpful in reaching the attack speed breakpoints described 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.

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.