Zuni Carnevil Poison Dart Witch Doctor Skills and Runes

Active Skills
Poison Dart Spined Dart Piranhas Piranhado 1 Big Bad Voodoo Slam Dance 2 Spirit Walk Jaunt 3 Soul Harvest Languish 4 Fetish Army Legion of Daggers
Passive Skills
Grave Injustice Pierce the Veil Fetish Sycophants Spirit Vessel

The build focuses on the interaction between the Carnevil helm, allowing for your 10 closest Fetish summons to shoot empowered Poison Darts alongside you, and the projectile piercing property of The Dagger of Darts. You begin runs by summoning your Fetish Army, and over the course of the run their numbers will swell through the Fetish Sycophants passive. Nevertheless, keep an eye on your Fetish counter, and resummon accordingly. The majority of your time will be spent alternating between your primary damage dealer, Poison Dart, and the crowd control staple Piranhas Piranhado. Although this is a mid range spec, you will have to close the distance to the enemy occasionally to get the benefits of the powerful Soul Harvest buff. To position for harvesting, escape deadly affixes or simply get to safety, the build adopts another staple: Spirit Walk. Finally, the build has a spot open for a powerful damage buff: Big Bad Voodoo, which is to be saved for key fights due to its troublesome downtime.

Your main damage dealer is found in Poison Dart, a primary skill supported by two powerful legendary items, Carnevil and The Dagger of Darts, and a dedicated legendary gem — Simplicity's Strength. While its potential is already considerable with those items in mind, it gains an extra multiplicative damage increase from Depth Diggers. Though it no longer requires the use of a Mana-generating attack and works with any primary, there is still value in using the traditional Spined Dart rune — this way you always have resources for Piranhas despite the Mana cost increase from Pierce the Veil. Still, you can consider altering to other runes entirely; just keep utility in mind, since it will be your Fetishes' darts that deal the actual damage of the build.

The foundation of your mobile unit, Fetish Army is a centerpiece of the build: turned indefinite through the Zunimassa set and modified to poisonous turrets through the Carnevil mask. Since the Fetish darts do poison damage regardless of the selected rune, and your damage reduction is based on the Fetish count, Legion of Daggers is regarded as the best rune for the slot.

When it comes to damage buffs, you have some options to consider. For very high-end pushing, Big Bad Voodoo will provide not only a massive and relatively long lasting attack speed buff, but also a straight damage bump with the rune Slam Dance. The downside, of course, is its equally impressive downtime, forcing you to use it in key engagements and really plan ahead when it comes to its use. An easier alternative to play with is Haunt, which is a cheap and consistent way to proc your Zunimassa 6-piece bonus, and even get some extra damage out of it through the rune Poisoned Spirit. A third option is to use Horrify for the additional protection of Frightening Aspect; this will bring you the most survivability, but will cost you some of your damage potential.

A mobility and all around safety mainstay in the Witch Doctor arsenal, Spirit Walk finds its place in yet another build. Its moderate cooldown is compensated by its versatility: it renders you invulnerable, removes enemy collision and increases your movement speed by 50% — all for the generous 3 seconds of Jaunt.

One of the strongest utility cooldowns of Witch Doctors, Soul Harvest is a great addition to the build. It acts as a damage buff by default, increasing your Intelligence by up to 15% for the modest requirement of 5 harvested enemies. With the Languish rune and Lakumba's Ornament bracers, it attains additional crowd control and toughness buff properties, solidifying its place in this mid-range playstyle. The naturally overlapping duration simply sweetens the deal.

Ever since the Area Damage mechanics revision that enabled it for pets, enemy grouping skills grew tremendously in value. Witch Doctors' take on that type of utility is found in the Piranhas skill, using the vortex effect of the Piranhado rune.

Fetish Sycophants is a signature passive of the build, spawning additional Fetishes as you naturally go through your rotations. Capping at an impressive 15, this ability solidifies the meat shield in front of you and significantly increases the damage reduction benefits of the Zunimassa 4-piece set bonus.

A well-rounded DPS increase for Greater Rifting, Pierce the Veil provides a guaranteed 20% additive damage bonus at the cost of a 30% increase in Mana costs. The drawback is hardly noticeable in this build, as it is mostly primary- and cooldown-centric and the chosen spender is cheap and effective.

Among the most dynamic and interesting passives in the game, Grave Injustice is a Cooldown Reduction engine that fuels the damage output and survivability of the build. It delivers a neat package of CDR, health and Mana regeneration upon killing an enemy within a starting radius of 20 yards, extendable by Pickup Radius on gear.

Spirit Vessel is a mainstay for Greater Rift pushing, being the Witch Doctor cheat death passive. It saves you from the death screen once every minute, healing you back to 50% of your maximum Life and puts you in a Spirit Walk-like state, allowing you to quickly reposition. An alternative for this passive slot is Confidence Ritual, which provides a considerable damage bonus (25%) and has no Mana drawbacks, but forces you to play in close quarters in order to gain its benefits — a riskier 20 yard distance.