Jade Harvester Witch Doctor Speed Farming Variation

Jade Harvester is a capable speed farming build for both T16 key farm as well as bounties. 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
Haunt Resentful Spirits Locust Swarm Searing Locusts 1 Soul Harvest Soul to Waste 2 Spirit Walk Severance 3 Piranhas Piranhado 4 Horrify Stalker
Passive Skills
Pierce the Veil Grave Injustice Gruesome Feast Creeping Death

When you are speed farming regular rifts, parts of your playstyle will adapt to the lowered challenge and focus more on speed and utility.

While playing standard Nephalem Rifts for key farming, the build still retains similarities to the GR solo rotation, but pretty much every aspect of the build is reworked for extra speed an utility, especially when it comes to spreading DoTs. You zip from fight to fight in Spirit Walk form with the powers of Shukrani's Triumph, spreading your Locust Swarm automatically via Wormwood and spamming Resentful Spirits. You should have a Piranhado pull up for every fight with the Grave Injustice reset, and you simply follow up with a Haunt, dive in and Soul Harvest the pack. This will more than likely nuke the entire pull, resetting your Spirit Walk movement and readying up Piranhado for the next one. Do not forget to Horrify your enemies regularly for the movement speed boost from Stalker and Rechel's Ring of Larceny.

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.

• Soul Harvest is still your main damage dealer, attaining all the runes via the Jade set 4-piece bonus and turning from a utility skill into a nuke via the 6-piece bonus.
• Haunt is still a major DoT for your rotation, but it is recommended that you use the faster spread of the Resentful Spirits rune.
• Swap progression-oriented Locust Swarm runes like Pestilence and Cloud of Insects for the superior damage of the Searing Locusts rune, spreading automatically around with a cubed Wormwood.
• The protective Frightening Aspect rune on Horrify should be replaced by the movement speed boost of Stalker.
• Just like in progression, the movement speed and invulnerability utility from Spirit Walk and the monster pull from Piranhado retain their value in speed runs.
• Change Confidence Ritual to 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. Use Pierce the Veil over progression-oriented passives like Blood Ritual or Spirit Vessel. Maintain Creeping Death (for the lengthened DoT duration, directly increasing your DPS via the Jade set mechanics) and Grave Injustice (for the kill-based Cooldown Reduction) as build staples.

The basics of your gear setup remain the same; however you will equip the full 6-piece Jade Harvester set and drop the Cpt. Crimson plus Ring of Royal Grandeur combo from the GR progression setup. This opens up the jewelry slots for all-out damage and utility items to assist you in speed farming in the fastest way possible. Stat-wise, the T16 Jade Harvester refocuses from Haunt damage into Locust Swarm damage, and changes from Poison (or Cold, depending on your progression rune of choice) into Fire elemental damage. The remaining adaptation and changes will happen in your jewelry, where you need to swap from the slow paced, rotation-oriented combo of the Endless Walk set ( The Compass Rose and The Traveler's Pledge) into more speedfarm-appropriate gear.

You will keep Ring of Emptiness from the GR progression build, as it provides a time- and pacing-agnostic damage bonus at the mere cost of including Locust Swarm in the build, attained via the cubed Wormwood. Another great ring for GR speed farming is Rechel's Ring of Larceny, whose movement speed bonus will be triggered constantly via Horrify. The third suggested ring for the setup is a Cold damage Stone of Jordan, which provides a consistent elemental and elite damage bonus. You should have the SoJ equipped, since its elemental and elite bonuses cannot be extracted in the Cube; pair it with your better rolled item between Ring of Emptiness and Rechel's Ring of Larceny, and cube the worse one.

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 the SoJ, since you cannot have a Follower in parties.

Finish off the jewelry with the powerful damage multiplication from Squirt's Necklace. Take heed of its downside (increase in damage taken, as well as loss of the damage buff as you take hits) and try to safeguard its bonus with Goldwrap, as well as crowd controlling monsters prior to engagements with Horrify, rendering them unable to retaliate.

Weapons-wise, early on you can stay on Sacred Harvester to bolster the benefits of Lakumba's Ornament. The latter however quickly become survivability overkill once you get the hang of Goldwrap mechanics; a good alternative for the weapon then becomes In-geom, as it allows you to chain cast Spirit Walk from elite to elite, clearing the rift lightning-fast. Another source of additional speed will be found in Warzechian Armguards, which provide an environment destruction-based speed boost. Note that the former favorites in the slot, Nemesis Bracers, are still quite valuable to the build. In solo play however, they should be equipped on the follower, and their power will carry over to you via the Emanate mechanic. Nemesis Bracers should still be equipped by you in group play.

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 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, Shukrani's Triumph, and Ring of Emptiness.

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.

Gogok of Swiftness retains its usefulness in T16 farming, as an increase of both Attack Speed and Cooldown Reduction is universally valuable for Jade Harvester builds. Offense-oriented, damage multiplication gems should be replaced by utility; Bane of the Trapped should be replaced by Boon of the Hoarder, whose interaction with the Avarice Band and Goldwrap will keep you rich, safe and sped up throughout the run. Bane of the Stricken should give way to Molten Wildebeest's Gizzard, whose shielding mechanics will safeguard your Squirt's Necklace damage bonus.

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

In the weapon slot of the Cube, we recommend running Wormwood — it casts free Locust Swarms on a regular basis and allows you to focus on Haunting and pure speed.

You need to maintain Quetzalcoatl in the armor slot of the Cube, as it is a cornerstone legendary piece for the mechanics of the Jade Harvester build.

Your jewelry Cube slot will be occupied by your worse rolled item between Rechel's Ring of Larceny (massive speed boost whenever you Fear an enemy with Horrify), and Ring of Emptiness (massive damage multiplication against enemies affected by either Haunt or Locust Swarm).

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 T16 key farming is the Enchantress due to her cooldown reduction buff from Prophetic Harmony, as well as the Focused Mind attack speed buff.

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.