Zuni Carnevil Poison Dart Witch Doctor BiS Gear, Gems, and Paragon Points

The build takes advantage of the full Zunimassa set bonuses, taking five of the seven available pieces and cubing a Ring of Royal Grandeur to reduce the number of items for set bonus completion by one. This opens up the helm and leg slots for the unique bonuses of Carnevil and the damage multiplication of the Depth Diggers pants. Rolls-wise, this pet playstyle (see this build's skills page for more information) makes good use of skill bonuses across gear. Sought after on the chest and shoulders, Fetish Army % bonus accompanies toughness stats on the Zunimassa's Marrow and Area Damage on your shoulder of choice. Fetish Army % is also a guaranteed roll on the Zunimassa's String of Skulls, where it is best accompanied by an Area Damage roll. Poison Dart % can be rolled on belt and pants, and being a direct boost to your primary damage dealer it is considered an optimal stat on both items. The ideal Zunimassa's Pox will include both Crit Stats, Attack Speed and an open Socket. While this guide will not delve into the specifics of breakpoint chasing, Attack Speed is an important stat for Poison Dart damage, and you can aim for the 29 frame breakpoint by reaching over 2.00 attacks per second in your sheet, easily achieved with maximized 7% IAS rolls on your weapon, gloves, belt and two rings.

The ability to store the powers of Ring of Royal Grandeur in the Kanai's Cube opens a powerful offensive combo in the jewelry: the Endless Walk set, The Compass Rose and The Traveler's Pledge. This 2.4 rework adds 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 dynamic fits the Zuni playstyle, as you alternate stationary Poison Dart shooting with leading your troops to the next big fight. As mentioned above, Attack Speed, Crit Chance, Crit Damage and an open Socket is desired on The Compass Rose, while the two Crit stats, Poison elemental damage and an open Socket are best for The Traveler's Pledge.

Depth Diggers increases the damage of all primary attacks by up to 100%, making it a natural inclusion in this Poison Dart-centric build. The desired stats are Intelligence, Vitality or Armor, 2 Sockets and Poison Dart %.

The most desirable belt for a Carnevil Witch Doctor is the glass cannon champion, The Witching Hour. Naturally sporting the unusual combination of Attack Speed and Crit Damage, the best-in-slot rolls would also include a Poison Dart % roll. Another viable, but noticeably weaker option for GRs is the Belt of Transcendence, allowing you to free up the Fetish Sycophants passive slot for another of your choosing.

Lakumba's Ornament will reduce incoming damage by 60% per Soul Harvest as baseline (with some variance — aim for the lowest, 1 harvested enemy requirement roll), plus additional 2% damage reduction for each stack.

With no set piece to occupy your shoulder slot, you are free to take any well-rolled legendary item for the build. A popular option when there is no mandatory piece are the Pauldrons of the Skeleton King, which come from Act I bounty caches. This legendary shoulder offers a proc-based cheat death; albeit unreliable, it is still better than no bonus at all. Still, aim for the proper gear rolls outlined below first, and worry about a legendary item later.

While it is the namesake of the build, the Carnevil voodoo mask is only sought after because of its unique property that enables the 5 closest Fetish summons to shoot Poison Darts along with you. The mask sports the standard four primary stats and is interchangeable with a Mask of Jeram — so pick your better rolled helm and store the powers of the other in Kanai's Cube. Still, a good Carnevil is much easier to obtain as it has no range to roll on the unique property (unlike Mask of Jeram), so Carnevil comes as the default recommendation.

Last but not least, the namesake of the build — The Dagger of Darts — is a mandatory inclusion in your gear setup.

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 swapping Big Bad Voodoo out for Horrify Frightening Aspect, and aiming for the following power:

• Horrify Sanctification: Horrify becomes an aura that causes enemies to receive 100% more damage and deal 15% less damage in addition to its other effects.

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, a good candidate for Sanctification is The Dagger of Darts.

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 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 Vitality if you feel yourself lacking in toughness. Adding to Maximum Mana should not be necessary.

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 Globe Radius first, then finish off with Life on Hit and Resource Cost Reduction.

Simplicity's Strength is one of the best DPS gems you can take for the build, as it was changed into a separate damage multiplication source to primary skills in Patch 2.4.1. Affecting both yours and your Fetish attacks, and upgrading with a steady pace of half a percent per gem level, it quickly becomes a priority and a fixture in your gem choices. Its buffed healing secondary effect is just icing on the cake.

Enforcer is a pet-oriented gem that both increases Fetish damage and lessens the damage the summons take. Note that the damage bonuses of this gem have been changed from additive to multiplicative in Patch 2.4.1, reinforcing it as a pet build staple.

You have some wiggle room in your final gem slot. For the absolute highest tiers of Greater Rift Progression, you will have to use Bane of the Stricken for its scaling damage bonus, in order to get you through the GR Guardian fight. For the vast majority of progression however, and even in some endgame Rift layouts and monster compositions, Bane of the Trapped will serve you better with its overall damage multiplication on targets affected by crowd control. The gem procs itself with its level 25 property in close range, and is otherwise triggered by your Piranhado, making it a natural fit for Greater Rifting.

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 is a moderately cooldown-dependent build, 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.

The power of Echoing Fury in your weapon Cube slot is highly synergistic with the Carnevil Witch Doctor, as it provides a scaling Attack Speed and Movement Speed bonuses, both of which are vital to this IAS-centric, mobility-dependent build.

The second most desirable helm for this pet centric build, Mask of Jeram only steps down to Carnevil due to the set and weapon synergy. The armor slot is interchangeable between the two, with Mask of Jeram being the usual cube occupant due to its variable unique bonus.

The final item that binds the puzzle of sets and masks together is the Ring of Royal Grandeur. The ability to run with full set bonuses, a complementary helm and strong offensive jewelry, dodging the undesirable guaranteed stats on the Grandeur by cubing its power, is a tremendous boost to the build.

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.

Both the Scoundrel and the Enchantress are viable followers for GR progression with this build. Scoundrel can be used for his powerful crit buff, allowing you brief windows of extra damage output. Enchantress offers an attack speed buff that can be useful when reaching for the attack speed breakpoints outlined 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.

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.