Helltooth Gargantuan Witch Doctor Speed Farming Variation

The Helltooth Gargantuan Witch Doctor deals with Normal Rift farming and Bounty runs reasonably well. 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
Wall of Death Communing with Spirits Haunt Lingering Spirit 1 Soul Harvest Soul to Waste 2 Spirit Walk Severance 3 Gargantuan Big Stinker 4 Horrify Stalker
Passive Skills
Midnight Feast Fierce Loyalty Grave Injustice Gruesome Feast

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 Gargantuan and buff up its damage by capturing packs inside Wall of Death to apply Necrosis for the Helltooth set, as well as spreading Haunt on them to trigger Ring of Emptiness. With the toughness afforded by Goldwrap you can afford to fearlessly dive into packs using Spirit Walk and re-applying your own speed buffs: Soul Harvest Soul to Waste and Horrify Stalker.

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 a proc for Helltooth set's Necrosis effect, so Wall of Death remains in the build. Either stick with the protective Communing with Spirits rune, or get some extra crowd control into the mix with Surrounded by Death.
• 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.
• Swapping the Soul Harvest rune from the defensive Languish to the movespeed-oriented Soul to Waste.
• While grouping monsters with Piranhas Piranhado is not without value, it is certainly a lot less than in the prolonged fights of Greater Rifts. In its place, consider using Horrify Stalker for more movement speed. Not only does it bring extra speed by itself, but it will also proc Rechel's Ring of Larceny for an additional burst of mobility.
• In your passives, replace the progression-oriented Spirit Vessel 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 Helltooth to deal damage. However, you will be wearing all 6 available set pieces, which frees up your jewelry slots for T16 farming-oriented items. You should cube Mask of Jeram as the more valuable of the two targeted pet legendaries, and leave Tasker and Theo for the GR progression build. The remainder of your major equipment slots is split between generically useful Witch Doctor items like Shukrani's Triumph and Spite, 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 doing regular Rifts, you can swap The Witching Hour out for Goldwrap, which will render you practically invulnerable when paired with an Avarice Band and Boon of the Hoarder. Finally — when doing Bounties, you can also take advantage of the Krelm's Buff Belt for its gold-independent movespeed increase.

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.

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 changing the Gargantuan rune from Restless Giant to Big Stinker (as well as changing elemental rolls on gear from Physical to Poison). Then, aim for the Gargantuan Sanctification, which adds the following power to your build:

• Gargantuan Sanctification: You summon two Gargantuans and three Zombie Dogs periodically. Gargantuans gain the effect of the Restless Giant rune. Zombie Dogs gain the effect of all runes. Enemies hit by Sacrifice are Immolated, causing them to take 100% more damage from your Pets.

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 Spite.

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 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 Rechel's Ring of Larceny), 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.

Rechel's Ring of Larceny brings an additional massive movement speed bonus to the farming build due to its interaction with Horrify, making it an excellent addition for T16 runs. It should be noted that Avarice Band is a supremely useful legendary item that, in conjunction with Goldwrap and Boon of the Hoarder, will form a gold triumvirate that keeps you safe and showered in gold as you farm up T16s. When you are farming solo however, this ring can be equipped on your Follower, and its power will "Emanate" to you (meaning you gain the benefits of the item as if you wore it yourself). That being said, in group farming you will need to wear the Avarice Band yourself, replacing Rechel's, since you cannot have a Follower in parties.

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.