Witch Doctor Zunimassa's Haunt Fresh 70 Starter Build (Patch 2.7.6 / Season 29)

The Zunimassa's Haunt initially shares some traits with the leveling and fresh 70 skill choices, but quickly adapts to the Fetish-reliant specific bonuses of the set.

The following build assumes you will assemble the build in 2-piece increments, similarly to how Haedrig's Gift would dole the set out. Haderig's Gift is a seasonal participation reward that gives you a full class-specific set as you complete Chapters II, III and IV of the Seasonal Journey (accessible via the leaf-shaped icon in the top right corner). The cadence of early natural character progression is also not too far off the listed strategy, so even if the set is not part of Haedrig's Gift, you can put the advice below to good use.

Active Skills
Haunt Resentful Spirits Locust Swarm Pestilence 1 Piranhas Piranhado 2 Soul Harvest Languish 3 Spirit Walk Severance 4 Fetish Army Fetish Ambush
Passive Skills
Fetish Sycophants Grave Injustice Rush of Essence Confidence Ritual

At the 2-piece Zunimassa's Haunt set bonus, you will deviate somewhat from the leveling and fresh 70 build by taking advantage of the Zuni power: prolonging Fetish Army until the minions' death, and cutting the massive, 120-second base cooldown of the skill by 80% (24 seconds). Coupled with the rune Fetish Ambush, this turns the skill into a mini-nuke in its own right, but you will have to rely on other sources of damage during its downtime: Haunt Resentful Spirits and Locust Swarm Pestilence form a staple combo that can be managed reasonably well with the help of Rush of Essence.

Since you have a set-induced nuke at your disposal now, you can safely drop any auxiliary damage dealers from leveling like Acid Cloud, Summon Zombie Dogs and Gargantuan, and introduce utility to the build. Soul Harvest should settle in your build, along with the defensive rune Languish. Crowd control is also a staple for endgame builds, and the only tool Witch Doctors have for the purpose is Piranhas Piranhado — but it offers a powerful pixel-pulling effect and an increase of damage taken by affected enemies to compensate.

At this point, no additional helpful legendary items are assumed. You might have lucked out during the leveling journey (especially if you followed the gambling and crafting advice in our Seasonal Guide), or in your first couple of farming sessions with items such as:

• The Dagger of Darts and/or Carnevil — this is your "best case" scenario, as you get to empower the centerpiece of the Zuni set — Fetish Army — from very early on. If you have the Voodoo Mask, replace the Mana spenders with Poison Dart Spined Dart, and never look back. The combined powers of the set and the legendaries will result in readily available, empowered Fetishes that shoot darts whenever you do, catapulting you ahead through the in-game difficulties.
• Gazing Demise and/or The Barber — These are by far the most beneficial early game upgrades a Witch Doctor can luck into. Gambling Gazing Demise and upgrading a rare Ceremonial Knife into The Barber will turn Spirit Barrage Manitou into a massive source of damage that can easily replace Locust Swarm as the hard-hitting nuke in your build.
• Scrimshaw — consider replacing Locust Swarm with Zombie Charger Zombie Bears as your supplementary nuke.

Active Skills
Poison Dart Spined Dart Piranhas Piranhado 1 Horrify Frightening Aspect 2 Soul Harvest Languish 3 Spirit Walk Severance 4 Fetish Army Legion of Daggers
Passive Skills
Fetish Sycophants Grave Injustice Spirit Vessel Gruesome Feast

At the 4-piece Zunimassa's Haunt set bonus, you gain the damage reduction bonuses usually associated with that tier. While this does not affect your rotation necessarily, it allows you to drop some (or all) of the defensive rune choices in favor of speedier utility ones.

Depending on the number of cornerstone legendary items you have obtained for the Zunimassa Darts playstyle, you can use the conservative build linked above, or adapt into its speedier version as shown below. Soul Harvest can alternate between Languish and Soul to Waste; Horrify can be swapped between Frightening Aspect and Stalker. You can use a fail safe like Spirit Vessel, or speed yourself up with Fierce Loyalty.

It is not unreasonable to assume that at the 4-piece bonus, you have attained at least one key item for Zunimassa Darts Witch Doctors. If you follow the advice in our "Get the build started" section below, this item will likely be The Dagger of Darts and/or Carnevil. Both of these items are decisive for the performance of this build — especially the Voodoo Mask, which enables the playstyle in the first place. Put a huge priority on gambling or crafting it.

Active Skills
Poison Dart Spined Dart Piranhas Piranhado 1 Horrify Stalker 2 Soul Harvest Soul to Waste 3 Spirit Walk Severance 4 Fetish Army Legion of Daggers
Passive Skills
Fetish Sycophants Grave Injustice Fierce Loyalty Gruesome Feast

At the 6-piece Zunimassa's Haunt set bonus, you and your pets gain a tremendous damage multiplier against enemies affected by your Mana spenders. In the suggested setup, you will trigger the bonus solely with Piranhas Piranhado; its cooldown should not worry you however, since you have a reliable cooldown reduction mechanic from the passive Grave Injustice. Just be cognizant of its 20-yard base range, as well as its ability to be extended by pickup radius on gear (most notably, by an Avarice Band worn by your follower).

Playstyle-wise, you will come to an endgame-approximate rotation of zipping from fight to fight with Spirit Walk Severance, clumping up enemy packs with Piranhas Piranhado, and making quickly Horrifying and Soul Harvesting them, and bursting them down with Poison Dart Spined Dart.

It is not unreasonable to assume that at the 6-piece bonus, you have attained at least two more key items for Zuni Darts Witch Doctors. If you follow the advice in our "Get the build started" section below, these items should be Lakumba's Ornament and Mask of Jeram. Lakumba's Ornament is a cornerstone piece for the survivability of most Witch Doctor builds, and its powers hinge on using Soul Harvest — tying nicely with the newfound powers of your build. Mask of Jeram is simply a straight damage buff to pet-oriented Witch Doctors like this one.

Please refer to our endgame Zuni/Carnevil DoD Witch Doctor guide to get an in-depth explanation of the necessary rotation, skills, passives, gear and gems, as well as details like stat priorities and breakpoints that will get this beginner Zuni Darts Witch Doctor build into endgame Greater Rift pushing.

In this section, we will briefly go over how to kickstart this build into reality; which items you should aim for with priority when farming and gambling, and what is their relative priority for the functioning of this spec. Note that these suggestions are exclusively aimed at getting you up and running into endgame farming, and might not reflect the gear you need to wear for high-end Greater Rift solo or group pushing. This section also assumes a fresh Season's start, which usually is the point where most players work on assembling their first build with a particular set.

If the Zunimassa set is part of the Haedrig's Gift for the Season, your simplest and most straightforward path to assembling the build is to complete the Seasonal Journey chapters up to Chapter IV. The Seasonal Journey chapters will gradually give you a complete class-specific set, giving 2-3 pieces for Chapters II, III and IV.

From the pre-game menu, choose and do this week's Challenge Rift. When successfully completed, this weekly event will grant you 5,1 million Gold, 475 Blood Shards, 370 Reusable Parts, 350 Arcane Dust, 125 Veiled Crystals, 35 Death's Breaths, and 15 of each Bounty cache material: Khanduran Rune, Caldeum Nightshade, Arreat War Tapestry, Corrupted Angel Flesh, and Westmarch Holy Water. This will allow you some early Seasonal leeway to extract and reforge items in Kanai's Cube, speeding up the assembly of this build with the items recommended below.

Having some materials at your disposal, either from farming or the Challenge Rift, is particularly important when you get duplicate pieces of your desired set. When you do, you can use Kanai's Cube Skill of Nilfur recipe (10x Forgotten Souls, 10x Death's Breaths, 1x Set item) to convert into another item from the same set. You should never salvage duplicate pieces of a desired set before you have it assembled.

In order to assemble a Zunimassa Darts Witch Doctor, you should do the following.

• Gather the full 6-piece Zunimassa set using the advice above, or by spending Blood Shards at Kadala. In order of gamble chance, you should spend for: Boots, Pants, Gloves, Mojo, Chest, and Helm. Do not gamble for the Ring, as jewelry gambling is prohibitively expensive. A trick you can also use is to gamble for duplicate pieces with an easier gamble chance (i.e., Boots) and convert them into another piece from the same set using the Skill of Nilfur recipe in Kanai's Cube.
• Gamble helmets or upgrade rare Witch Doctor Voodoo Masks for Carnevil and Mask of Jeram. Carnevil is a build-defining legendary item that enables the "Fetish duplicate your Dart shots" playstyle to begin with; Mask of Jeram is simply a massive damage multiplier for pets.
• Gamble or upgrade rare (Hope of Cain recipe in Kanai's Cube) Bracers for Lakumba's Ornament, a massive source of damage reduction and a staple for almost all Witch Doctors and types of gameplay. Gambling/upgrading rares in the Bracer slot can also net you other valuable pieces like Nemesis Bracers or Warzechian Armguards.
• Craft lvl 70 Ceremonial Knives at the Blacksmith and use the "upgrade rare" recipe to obtain The Dagger of Darts, a cornerstone legendary weapon for the Zuni Darts Witch Doctor, as it allows the projectiles to pierce. Gambling is also possible, but undesirable due to the high Blood Shard costs of weapons.
• Do Act I bounties to attain the act-specific Ring of Royal Grandeur from Bounty caches. This will be helpful either in completing the basic set bonus, or mixing other helpful legendaries in ( Depth Diggers) as described in the Zuni Darts Witch Doctor Gear page. Bounties will also net you craftable set recipes, so you will be killing two birds with one stone. Bounties will also net you Avarice Band (Act III), another farming-oriented staple for most builds and classes, this one included.
• While largely undesirable due to high costs, gambling or upgrading rare Jewelry is also possible; the Endless Walk set ( The Compass Rose and The Traveler's Pledge) will bring a massive damage bump to the build, with other standout pieces that can also substitute or be temporarily helpful in the face of Squirt's Necklace, Convention of Elements, Unity, or Oculus Ring and The Flavor of Time for your Follower.