LoD Spirit Barrage Witch Doctor Group Progression Variation

This variant is archived, meaning that we are leaving it on the site for documentation purposes, but it will no longer be actively updated.

The Spirit Barrage LoN build is the top tier group Greater Rift pushing build for the Witch Doctor class. This variation is no longer the preferred AoE DPS spec for groups, but you can still build it and play it in your group with a reasonable degree of success.

Active Skills
Haunt Poisoned Spirit Locust Swarm Pestilence 1 Grasp of the Dead Death Is Life 2 Sacrifice Provoke the Pack 3 Spirit Barrage Phlebotomize 4 Soul Harvest Languish
Passive Skills
Confidence Ritual Creeping Death Rush of Essence Gruesome Feast

The following skill selection alterations will be necessary:

• Changing Piranhas Piranhado and Spirit Walk Severance from the soloing build into Grasp of the Dead Death Is Life and Sacrifice Provoke the Pack. The former two are a monster grouping and a survival tool respectively, and both these tasks are taken care of by Support teammates in groups. The latter combination will net you a nice 20% increase of damage.
• Changing Grave Injustice (mainly a reset tool for your soloing invulnerability cooldown, Spirit Walk) into Gruesome Feast — a staple DPS passive that gets fed by globe spawning support teammates.

You will simply need to exchange The Barber for Voo's Juicer. This is the other Spirit Barrage-related legendary that only gets overlooked when soloing due to the power of Sacred Harvester in keeping you alive. Voo's Juicer has a natural Spirit Barrage damage roll however, edging over the competition when survival is no longer a concern. You will still retain the powers of The Barber in the Cube.

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 substituting the rune on Piranhas from Piranhado to Bogadile, and 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 your equipped weapon (either The Barber or Voo's Juicer), or the Gazing Demise.

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.

In a group Greater Rifting setup, your role will be the AoE damage dealer. Since killing the Rift Guardian will no longer be your concern, you need to exchange Bane of the Stricken for Pain Enhancer. Due to Spirit Barrage's excellent scaling with Attack Speed and the clumps of monsters created by Support teammates, this "APS per bleeding enemy in radius" gem will net you the highest DPS gain.

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

As previously mentioned, you will be cubing The Barber in order to retain the damage accumulating powers of the ceremonial knife.

Due to the numerous stuns and freezes available to your Support teammates, you can take advantage of one of the strongest damage reduction sources in the game by cubing Ancient Parthan Defenders.

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.

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.