Jade Harvester Witch Doctor BiS Gear, Gems, and Paragon Points

The build incorporates the complete bonuses of the Raiment of the Jade Harvester set, taking five of the six available pieces and cubing a Ring of Royal Grandeur. Crit Chance is necessary along with Intelligence and Vitality on Jade Harvester's Wisdom. Cooldown reduction is important for the Jade Witch Doctor, and it is advisable to get it on the Jade Harvester's Mercy, where it accompanies the Crit stats, as well as on the Jade Harvester's Joy. The latter will also provide you with skill damage, as Haunt % can be rolled on both the Jade Harvester's Joy and the Jade Harvester's Peace. Jade Harvester's Courage (which you likely skip) and Jade Harvester's Swiftness remain pure toughness slots, prioritizing high Vitality and Armor. Note that stacking Armor benefits you because of the balancing of sources of mitigation, as All Resistance is already abundant on an Intelligence-based character.

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.

In your jewelry slots, you will be sporting one of the 2.4 reworks, the Endless Walk set. The The Compass Rose ring and The Traveler's Pledge amulet add 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 Jade Harvester playstyle, which goes from extended periods of drawing aggro with Haunt spam into a more static Soul Harvest, Piranhado and Horrify rotation. The Ring of Emptiness will occupy your second ring slot; this legendary jewelry piece dramatically increases your damage against enemies affected by Haunt or Locust Swarm, matching the natural rotation of the build.

Introduced in Patch 2.4, Lakumba's Ornament is a targeted bracer for Jade Harvester Witch Doctors. Synergizing with the bonuses of the 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.

The appropriately named Sacred Harvester is the best-in-slot weapon for a Jade Witch Doctor in Greater Rifts, as its unique bonus extends the number of Soul Harvest stacks from 5 to 10. Considering that the build benefits from all Soul Harvest runes, the Damage, Toughness and Utility bonuses gained from this Ceremonial Knife are second to none when it comes to progression content.

Two off-hand items offer very valuable bonuses to the build, and can be worn or cubed depending on your better 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. Vile Hive increases the damage of Locust Swarm by up to 60% and grants you the Pestilence rune for free, allowing you to slot the protective Cloud of Insects on your bar. Simply wear your best rolled mojo between those two, and cube the other. There is also an all-out offense option where you equip Shukrani's Triumph, slot Pestilence on your bar, and use The Furnace in your weapon Cube slot — at the cost of a chunk of your survivability.

For Offense stats, try to obtain Haunt % bonus on the Chest, Shoulders and Off-hand (maximum of 45%), Poison (or Cold) 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). While Attack Speed is a stat that affects the overall DPS of the build due to the Jade set 2-piece bonus encouraging Haunt spam, it is not a reasonable stat to chase after during GR progression; you can settle on the 30 frame breakpoint with no IAS outside Paragons, a stacked Gogok of Swiftness and the Enchantress Focused Mind attack speed buff. Your IAS breakpoint will improve with Echoing Fury during speedruns, where you will be able to reach the 19 frame breakpoint for significantly faster Haunt spread.

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 Siphon rune of Soul Harvest, plus some incidental Life per Second via the Cpt. Crimson 2-piece and Blood Ritual bonuses.

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 Maximum Mana if you want to ease your Haunt spam, and Vitality if you feel yourself lacking.

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 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, and is otherwise triggered by Haunt and Languish.

Gogok of Swiftness offers a spread of three stats, all of which are valuable to the build; Cooldown Reduction makes your Soul Harvest available faster, the scaling Dodge chance helps with survivability, and the Attack Speed increase helps with the Haunt spam.

Introduced in Season 4, Bane of the Stricken occupies the third and final jewelry socket. 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. Jade Harvester Witch Doctors are no exception.

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. Since this build is relatively CDR dependent, you should slot a Flawless Royal Diamond in your helm. 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.

As previously mentioned, you will wear your better roll between Vile Hive and Shukrani's Triumph, and store the legendary power of your worse rolled item in the Cube.

Tucked away in the armor slot of the Cube, the Quetzalcoatl voodoo mask is a key piece that doubles the pace of your Haunt and Locust Swarm DoTs, ties into the Creeping Death passive bonus and produces the signature Jade burst.

In the Jade Harvester / 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.

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.

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.