Zuni Gargantuan Witch Doctor BiS Gear, Gems, and Paragon Points

The build equips six of the seven available Zunimassa set pieces (skipping Zunimassa's String of Skulls, attaining the 6-piece bonus naturally and leaving the jewelry for fully offense-oriented combinations. Rolls-wise, this is a Gargantuan-centric build (see this build's skills page for more information) that benefits greatly from Skill and Area Damage affixes. You will be striving to roll Gargantuan % on the Zunimassa's Marrow, Area Damage on Zunimassa's Finger Wraps and a combination of both on your mojo, Shukrani's Triumph, and your shoulder, Pauldrons of the Skeleton King (discussed below). Zunimassa's Cloth, Zunimassa's Trail and Zunimassa's Vision can be dedicated to large toughness rolls, of course paired with Crit Chance on the latter.

As your amulet, wear Squirt's Necklace; while its "increased damage taken" penalty is harsh, its damage multiplication is practically unrivaled in the slot for the price of a single item. Try to safeguard its bonus with careful play to the best of your ability. If you absolutely dislike the glass cannon playstyle enforced by this item, a Hellfire Amulet of Intelligence is also a viable choice, rolling with one of the passives recommended for consideration in the Skills page.

Due to the necessities of set bonus completion, you will have to wear Zunimassa's Pox as one of your rings. Complete the jewelry with your better rolled ring between Ring of Emptiness and The Short Man's Finger, and cube the weaker roll. Both rings both greatly enhance your damage, with the former multiplying your effectiveness against targets affected by Haunt or Locust Swarm, and the latter — tripling the number of summons and increasing Gargantuan DPS as a whole.

For your belt slot, you will get the most DPS out of The Witching Hour. What this belt lacks in unique properties, it makes up in unique rolls: it is the only item in the slot that can roll Attack Speed and Critical Damage. Both stats are immensely beneficial to your damage output, so seek as close to the maximum 7 IAS and 50 Crit Damage as you can. A downside of this belt is its glass cannon nature, and there is a safer option for the slot: Belt of Transcendence basically offers a superior version of the Fetish Sycophants passive with a guaranteed Fetish Sycophant summon on hit, instead of chance-based. This allows you to replace Fetish Sycophants from your passive roster for another synergistic passive like Spirit Vessel.

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.

Shukrani's Triumph makes Spirit Walk last until you attack 3 times, or an elite is within 20 yards of you, resulting in outstanding mobility right until you decide to engage in a fight — putting you in a very advantageous position. It also offers a damage multiplier while you are in Spirit Walk; and while you will lose this form when you attack, you still get a grace period as if you just popped the skill on its own (2 seconds with base Spirit Walk, 3 seconds with Jaunt), giving you a brief period of extra burst potential. Try to time its use with your other sources of damage multiplication and a well prepared monster pull for maximum benefit. Note that this slot is interchangeable with the craftable Spite mojo, depending on your better rolled item.

Finally, your bracer and weapon of choice will work in unison; Sacred Harvester will extend the number of Soul Harvest stacks from 5 to 10, and 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.

For Offense stats, try to obtain Gargantuan % bonus on the Shoulders, Chest and Off-hand (maximum of 45%), Physical elemental damage on the amulet and wrists (maximum of 40%), Crit Chance and Crit Damage within a 1:10 ratio (ideally over 60% and 450%, respectively), and Area Damage of 130%+ (everywhere on gear you can reasonably get it — both Rings, Shoulders, Gloves and Off-hand). Attack speed factors into the build by scaling the damage dealt by the summons, rather than increasing their actual attack rate; specific IAS breakpoint chasing is not part of Gargantuan builds. Gargantuan only has 4 breakpoints, and they are defined by having Tasker and Theo equipped and Restless Giant active (60/48 frames per animation) or not (84/66 frames per animation). No investments in Attack Speed are particularly necessary on gear rolls outside of an Attack Speed roll on the weapon (multiplicative increase) and the innate roll of The Witching Hour.

For Defense stats, aim for a life pool of 800k-900k; dropping as much as you can for offense as you grow accustomed to the build. You will mostly sustain through the Life per Hit, with at least one roll of it on gear (i.e., the bracers).

All augmentations on gear should be done with your main stat, Intelligence.

Note that the stat suggestions below portray an ideally rolled item with stats listed in relative order of importance. The first four of them are main stats, and the latter two — secondary stats. If your item lacks and is unable to be rerolled into the primary stats outlined below, especially for a stat higher on the list, strongly consider its replacement. Perfecting Secondary stats is mostly a case of hyper-optimization and is not a case for discarding an item, except where noted.

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 changing the Gargantuan rune from Restless Giant to Big Stinker (as well as changing elemental rolls on gear from Physical to Poison). Then, aim for the Gargantuan Sanctification, which adds the following power to your build:

• Gargantuan Sanctification: You summon two Gargantuans and three Zombie Dogs periodically. Gargantuans gain the effect of the Restless Giant rune. Zombie Dogs gain the effect of all runes. Enemies hit by Sacrifice are Immolated, causing them to take 100% more damage from your Pets.

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 weapon ( Sacred Harvester) and your off-hand (either Spite or Shukrani's Triumph).

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. Points in Maximum Mana are not necessary in this build.

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

Bane of the Trapped is a potent source of additional damage, as it is its own multiplier in your total damage calculation. The gem procs itself with its level 25 property when in range, and is otherwise triggered by Languish and your follower, usually armed with Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker.

Enforcer is a pet-oriented gem that both increases Gargantuan damage and lessens the damage the summons take. This secondary bonus grows in value during Greater Rift progression, where Gargantuans start taking considerable amounts of damage and die on a regular basis.

Bane of the Stricken occupies the third and final jewelry socket in Greater Rift progression. Building up your damage multiplicatively in prolonged fights and with a level 25 bonus specifically targeting Rift Guardians, this gem is designed to assist AoE heavy builds in their struggle against single target, high HP enemies. The multitude of summons at your side attacking constantly leads to the good performance of the build against Guardians.

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

Stored in the Cube, the craftable Spite mojo gives you the cleaving and chilling powers of the Humongoid rune, allowing you to shift your skill bar Gargantuan rune choice away from AoE. Note that this slot is interchangeable with Shukrani's Triumph depending on your weaker rolled item.

Mask of Jeram is the preferred inclusion to the armor slot in the Cube, as it directly increases pet damage (additive with elemental damage on gear). Its buff in Patch 2.6.1 and the natural IAS caps of Gargantuan make it more attractive than the other pet staple, Tasker and Theo.

As previously mentioned, you will be cubing your weaker rolled item between Ring of Emptiness and The Short Man's Finger, and wear the other.

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.

For Greater Rift progression with this build, we recommend the Templar for his essential heal and cheat death abilities. The Templar is a preferable choice due to the lacking health sustain in this build.

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.