Witch Doctor Helltooth Harness Fresh 70 Starter Build (Patch 2.7.6 / Season 29)

Active Skills
Wall of Death Fire Wall Acid Cloud Acid Rain 1 Soul Harvest Soul to Waste 2 Spirit Walk Severance 3 Summon Zombie Dogs Burning Dogs 4 Gargantuan Humongoid
Passive Skills
Spirit Vessel Fierce Loyalty Grave Injustice Midnight Feast

The Helltooth starter build will be fairly similar to the leveling and fresh 70 build, keeping its rotation and general strategy with minor adjustments.

Parts of the skill and passive selection will overlap with the Leveling and Fresh 70 Build, but others will have to adapt to the set you are currently equipping. Abilities that synergize with set bonuses and complementary items take precedence.

• You will be swapping out Haunt for the Helltooth centerpiece, Wall of Death. Wall of Death is one of the abilities that apply the Necrosis effect of the set, in turn DoTing and slowing enemies from the 2-piece Helltooth bonus and reducing incoming damage by 60% from the 4-piece bonus. More importantly, Wall of Death alone triggers the 6-piece bonus of the set, empowering a good deal of your summons and Mana spenders to a point that will trivialize most in-game difficulties. You have two viable rune choices: Fire Wall will deal the highest damage, which is preferable early on; when you push against your gear's limits, or at any point that you feel lacking Toughness, you can change to the rune Communing with Spirits for another 25% reduction of enemy damage.
• You have considerable freedom choosing the damaging skill that will make use of the Helltooth 6-piece damage augmentation, coming from the cast Wall of Death. A starter's recommendation is to use the massive AoE of Acid Cloud Acid Rain. Aside from that, you will keep the start build's summons, Summon Zombie Dogs Burning Dogs and Gargantuan Humongoid; both pets are among the skills augmented by the Helltooth set bonus.
• Mobility is important from the earliest stages of character progression and all the way into the endgame, and any Witch Doctor would do well to include Spirit Walk Severance in his build for that purpose.
• Soul Harvest is a versatile and universally useful buff in the Witch Doctor's arsenal; early on in character progression, you can use the rune Vengeful Spirit for some extra damage, but consider its transition to utility as soon as possible, i.e. the speed of Soul to Waste, or the protection of Languish.
• In your passive lineup, Spirit Vessel will keep you safe with a cheat death, and Grave Injustice will provide you with both life, resource and cooldown reduction in one neat package. Use the duo of pet-oriented passives: Fierce Loyalty for its speed utility, and Midnight Feast for the extra damage, to bolster a beginner Helltooth in its earliest stages.

The build above is specifically created not to require any additional sets or legendary items. In order to transition to a late game-oriented spec using the same set, we have a rough list of high priority items to obtain, as well as a link to the build they pertain to.

• Sacred Harvester — is a universally useful legendary ceremonial knife whose unique bonus extends the number of Soul Harvest stacks from 5 to 10. The opportunity to buff up for 30% Intelligence (true damage multiplier) and reduce incoming damage in half from a simple Soul Harvest, this bonus is hard to pass up in builds without mandatory weapon bonuses.
• Mask of Jeram — this voodoo mask offers simple and straightforward increase to Witch Doctor pet damage, making it a staple in such builds.
• The Short Man's Finger — this ring is a mandatory inclusion in Gargantuan-focused setups, as it triples the number of summons and magnifies their individual damage.
• As a final side note, use Spite as your weapon (easier to roll well, because it's a craftable ceremonial knife) if you decide to lean into a Gargantuan-based build, since the free Humongoid rune is a nice boost to the build.

The mini-guide above is simply meant to acquaint you with the set and how a build with just the Haedrig's Gift (or a newly found set), and no supporting legendaries would play out. We have the following endgame-oriented builds that use the set, and encourage you to explore these much stronger playstyles!

• Helltooth Gargantuan Witch Doctor Build
• Helltooth Acid Cloud Witch Doctor Build
• Helltooth Grasp Witch Doctor Build
• Helltooth Zombie Bears Witch Doctor Build