Helltooth Gargantuan Witch Doctor BiS Gear, Gems, and Paragon Points

This build incorporates the complete Helltooth set bonuses, taking five of the six available pieces and cubing a Ring of Royal Grandeur to reduce the number of items for set bonus completion by one. Rolls-wise, this pet-centric playstyle (see this build's skills page for more information) makes good use of skill bonuses across gear. Gargantuan % bonus is sought after on the Helltooth Tunic, alongside Toughness stats; on the Helltooth Mantle, it is ideally paired with Area Damage. The Helltooth Leg Guards and Helltooth Greaves should be devoted purely to Toughness stats. The remaining set pieces — Helltooth Mask and Helltooth Gauntlets — might be replaced with a legendary item depending on your itemization choices (see below), but the optimal stats remain the same: Intelligence, Vitality and Crit Chance for the helm; Intelligence, both Crit stats and Area Damage for the gloves.

Depending on your best rolled items and set pieces, you will either wear Mask of Jeram and cube Tasker and Theo, or vice versa (and substitute the appropriate Helltooth set pieces). Both items are without equal in pet-oriented builds, as Mask of Jeram increases pet damage (additive with elemental damage on gear, making elemental damage roll bonuses on the rest of your gear of relatively lower value), while Tasker and Theo increases pet attack speed by up to 50% (multiplicative bonus).

As your amulet, wear Squirt's Necklace; while its "increased damage taken" penalty is harsh, its damage multiplication is practically unrivaled in the slot for the price of a single item. Try to safeguard its bonus with careful play to the best of your ability. If you absolutely dislike the glass cannon playstyle enforced by this item, a Hellfire Amulet of Intelligence is also a viable choice, rolling with one of the passives recommended for consideration in the Skills page. Complete the jewelry with Ring of Emptiness and The Short Man's Finger. Both rings both greatly enhance your damage, with the former multiplying your effectiveness against targets affected by Haunt or Locust Swarm, and the latter — tripling the number of summons and increasing Gargantuan DPS as a whole.

The best-in-slot belt for the build when pushing Greater Rifts is the glass cannon favorite, The Witching Hour. What this belt lacks in unique properties, it makes up in unique rolls: it is the only item in the slot that can roll Attack Speed and Critical Damage. Both stats are immensely beneficial to your damage output, so seek as close to the maximum 7 IAS and 50 Crit Damage as you can.

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 a brief period of extra burst potential. Try to time its use with your other sources of damage multiplication and a well prepared monster pull for maximum benefit. Note that this slot is interchangeable with the craftable Spite mojo, depending on your better rolled item.

Finally, your bracer and weapon of choice will work in unison; Sacred Harvester will extend the number of Soul Harvest stacks from 5 to 10, and Lakumba's Ornament will reduce incoming damage by 60% per Soul Harvest as baseline (with some variance — aim for the lowest, 1 harvested enemy requirement roll), plus additional 2% damage reduction for each stack.

For Offense stats, try to obtain Gargantuan % bonus on the Shoulders, Chest and Off-hand (maximum of 45%), Physical 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%+ (everywhere on gear you can reasonably get it — both Rings, Shoulders, Gloves and Off-hand). Attack speed factors into the build by scaling the damage dealt by the summons, rather than increasing their actual attack rate; specific IAS breakpoint chasing is not part of Gargantuan builds. Gargantuan only has 4 breakpoints, and they are defined by having Tasker and Theo equipped and Restless Giant active (60/48 frames per animation) or not (84/66 frames per anmiation). No investments in Attack Speed are particularly necessary on gear rolls outside of an Attack Speed roll on the weapon (multiplicative increase) and the innate roll of The Witching Hour.

For Defense stats, aim for a life pool of 800k-900k; dropping as much as you can for offense as you grow accustomed to the build. You will mostly sustain through the Life per Hit, with at least one roll of it on gear (i.e., the bracers).

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.

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. Points in Maximum Mana are not necessary in this build.

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

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, and is otherwise triggered by Humongoid (provided by Spite), Communing with Spirits, and Languish.

Enforcer is a pet-oriented gem that both increases Gargantuan damage and lessens the damage the summons take. This secondary bonus grows in value during Greater Rift progression, where Gargantuans start taking considerable amounts of damage and die on a regular basis.

Introduced in Season 4, Bane of the Stricken occupies the third and final jewelry socket in Greater Rift progression. Building up your damage multiplicatively in prolonged fights and with a level 25 bonus specifically targeting Rift Guardians, this gem is designed to assist AoE heavy builds in their struggle against single target, high HP enemies. Helltooth Gargantuan Doctors are no exception.

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

Stored in the Cube, the craftable Spite mojo gives you the cleaving and chilling powers of the Humongoid rune, allowing you to shift your skill bar Gargantuan rune choice away from AoE. Note that this slot is interchangeable with Shukrani's Triumph depending on your weaker rolled item.

As previously mentioned, you should cube your weaker rolled item between Mask of Jeram and Tasker and Theo for the armor slot.

The final item that binds the setup together is the Ring of Royal Grandeur. The ability to run with full set bonuses, a complementary legendary item and full offense jewelry, dodging the undesirable guaranteed stats on the Grandeur by cubing its power, is a tremendous boost to the build.

In Season 33, where you get a 4th slot for the Kanai's Cube, you can introduce additional elemental damage to the build by slotting Convention of Elements there.

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.

For Greater Rift progression with this build, we recommend the Templar for his essential heal and cheat death abilities. The Templar is a preferable choice due to the lacking health sustain in this build.

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.