Helltooth Acid Cloud Witch Doctor Speed Farming Variation

The Helltooth Acid Cloud 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 (needing specific weaponry setup, depriving the build of speedrunning Manajuma set options). 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
Poison Dart Spined Dart Acid Cloud Slow Burn 1 Wall of Death Fire Wall 2 Spirit Walk Severance 3 Piranhas Piranhado 4 Haunt Poisoned Spirit
Passive Skills
Swampland Attunement Fierce Loyalty Grave Injustice Gruesome Feast

In the skill selection, you will accomplish that by:

• Replace Spirit Vessel for the movement speed increase of Fierce Loyalty — it will be procced by the Fetish summons from the worn Belt of Transcendence.
• Exchange Confidence Ritual for 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.

In the jewelry, the damage scaling mechanics of the Bastions of Will set will be unfit for speedruns; you should use Avarice Band and a Stone of Jordan of your chosen elemental damage instead. Avarice Band is an Act III cache legendary item that increases pickup radius as you collect gold, all the way to the generous 30 yards. When complemented with Boon of the Hoarder, it becomes a utility engine feeding into your speed, toughness (with a cubed Goldwrap) and damage (for Gruesome Feast). Stone of Jordan simply provides a consistent elemental and elite damage increase. Optimally, you will pair these rings with a Squirt's Necklace for an additional damage multiplier.

When doing regular Rifts, you can swap this slot out for Goldwrap, which paired with Avarice Band and Boon of the Hoarder will render you practically invulnerable. Finally, when doing Bounties, you can also take advantage of the Krelm's Buff Belt for its gold-independent movespeed increase.

In Season 24, your ideal weapon during any form of speed farming will be The Gidbinn, whose unique movement speed increasing mechanic and unrivaled skill and pure stat bonuses will outperform any other alternatives. It needs to be rolled with the weapon power of SuWong Diviner, and will ideally have the Jungle Fortitude passive. Learn more about Ethereal weapons in our Ethereal mechanics guide, and read up on how to farm them in the Ethereal farming guide.

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.

In speed farming, Bane of the Stricken's damage buildup mechanic is too slow to matter, and it is best replaced by the well-rounded damage and toughness increase of Bane of the Powerful. In Torment runs, the Esoteric Alteration slot from progression is best taken by Boon of the Hoarder, whose interaction with the worn Avarice Band (and potentially worn Goldwrap, depending on your preference) will keep you rich, safe and sped up throughout the run.

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

During speedrun, swap The Furnace out of your weapon Cube slot for In-geom and its massive cooldown reduction boon at every elite kill.

During solo play, add Krelm's Buff Belt for extra movement speed throughout the rift runs ( Nemesis Bracers should be equipped on your follower and their power Emanated to you.). In group play, you will have to take Nemesis Bracers here.

The Ring of Emptiness takes a firm slot as your jewelry in the Cube, dramatically increasing your damage against enemies affected by Haunt or Locust Swarm. The former is part of your rotation, making the ring an easy inclusion in 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 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.