Zuni Carnevil Poison Dart Witch Doctor

[Guest Malach]

Hey, I did a little experimenting and I found locust swarm with pestilence rune spreads much better and faster than grasp, and with belt of hwoj it still acts as a slow and procs BoT, is still poison damage activating bad medicine, and since you have to be pretty close for harvesting anyway why not? Thoughts?

[Arkpit 101]

On 2017-04-05 at 9:20 AM, Guest Xephenon said:

Feeling extremely squishy with this build, not good for hardcore!

I was pushing GR65 on HC last season and that was before we got a 1000% boost to damage so I'm going same again!

[Arkpit 101]

2 hours ago, Guest Malach said:

Hey, I did a little experimenting and I found locust swarm with pestilence rune spreads much better and faster than grasp, and with belt of hwoj it still acts as a slow and procs BoT, is still poison damage activating bad medicine, and since you have to be pretty close for harvesting anyway why not? Thoughts?

The idea is good but will make you unable to use this in hardcore since the belt absolutely needs Belt of Transedence now after they nerfed the Sycophant passive to be nearly useless.

Also, if you're rolling Softcore you'll still want to keep the grasp due to the massive damage increase from WD. My 2 cents though. In lower GRs the pestilence + Hwoj will work very well however!

[Guest Guest]

On ‎4‎/‎5‎/‎2017 at 7:02 PM, mechler said:

I've noticed this exact same thing and was wondering. I made an account here just to tell you that you're not crazy. I'm noticing this exact same difference.

I second this.  It's hard to get double digits with just the passive now.

[Guest Uragaan]

On 4/6/2017 at 10:27 AM, Arkpit said:

The idea is good but will make you unable to use this in hardcore since the belt absolutely needs Belt of Transedence now after they nerfed the Sycophant passive to be nearly useless.

Also, if you're rolling Softcore you'll still want to keep the grasp due to the massive damage increase from WD. My 2 cents though. In lower GRs the pestilence + Hwoj will work very well however!

Playing this build in HC and hoping to push 60+.  Is it really necessary to have the extra dudes capped out at 15?  As mentioned before, 90%+ of our dmg comes from the 5 dudes that shoot out darts so losing a few extra ones won't really affect our overall dps.  the only loss is a couple of bodies every now and then.  Even without the belt i do hit the cap of 15 fairly often

[Guest Eredrin]

Why do you use mana generating rune on dart? It seems like the only spender of the build is grasp of the dead, and 4s cooldown of it is well enough for mana to regenerate to 100%...

[Arkpit 101]

9 hours ago, Guest Uragaan said:

Playing this build in HC and hoping to push 60+.  Is it really necessary to have the extra dudes capped out at 15?  As mentioned before, 90%+ of our dmg comes from the 5 dudes that shoot out darts so losing a few extra ones won't really affect our overall dps.  the only loss is a couple of bodies every now and then.  Even without the belt i do hit the cap of 15 fairly often

The fetish count have nothing to do with your dps since only 5 does anything noticable, the 23 total are strictly for survivability from our 4set bonus. In HC you'll want all the survivability you can get your hands on.

60+ is not that hard to do anymore with it and I'm only paragon 400 not even having a good Kukri yet so this can definitly take on the 75-80+!

[Guest Uragaan]

45 minutes ago, Arkpit said:

The fetish count have nothing to do with your dps since only 5 does anything noticable, the 23 total are strictly for survivability from our 4set bonus. In HC you'll want all the survivability you can get your hands on.

60+ is not that hard to do anymore with it and I'm only paragon 400 not even having a good Kukri yet so this can definitly take on the 75-80+!

Oh right i completely forgot about that set bonus! does the belt replace the passive or do i use it in conjunction with?

[Arkpit 101]

17 hours ago, Guest Uragaan said:

Oh right i completely forgot about that set bonus! does the belt replace the passive or do i use it in conjunction with?

The belt works together with the passive but they do not stack so max count is still 15 which makes the passive useless while using the belt.

Problem is, a lot of us have been noticing a drastic drop in the passives viability where it is hard to keep the number over 10 consistently through a rift which was not a problem before. I ended up using belt instead to keep the stacks at 15 while getting some survivability as passive instead.

[Arkpit 101]

23 hours ago, Guest Eredrin said:

Why do you use mana generating rune on dart? It seems like the only spender of the build is grasp of the dead, and 4s cooldown of it is well enough for mana to regenerate to 100%...

The mana generating rune is for the legs "Depths Diggers" that gives you additional dmg with "Resource generating" abilities and that rune is the only thing for Poison Dart that triggers the effect. Else the legs won't give you anything.

[Guest Eredrin]

On 18.04.2017 at 1:17 PM, Arkpit said:

The mana generating rune is for the legs "Depths Diggers" that gives you additional dmg with "Resource generating" abilities and that rune is the only thing for Poison Dart that triggers the effect. Else the legs won't give you anything.

Right, totally foolish of me to not have noticed that. But, another question - not sure if I'm crazy, or my perception is just totally different than anybody's... I'm playing zuni WD first time now in season 10, and the damage of poison dart (with carnevil and dagger of darts) is completely negligible compared to damage of pets themselves... to the point that I'm thinking if the time they spend shooting darts isn't just wasted time they could use to dps... to be exact, a single hit from a fetish (procced with 6-piece bonus) is on average 10-20 times bigger than damage from a single dart use... am I doing something wrong?

[Arkpit 101]

On 2017-04-20 at 8:50 PM, Guest Eredrin said:

..the damage of poison dart (with carnevil and dagger of darts) is completely negligible compared to damage of pets themselves... 

Here is how it works in the background of the description:

Carnevil makes 5 fetishes shoot a dart everytime you do but what it doesn't say is that those darts does 250% of your own dart damage which is why basically it's their darts that hurts, not yours. So that is your primary damage of the build combines with Depths Diggers and the Simplicity gem.

The reason you might not see the damage you expect from all the hits is that if you hit anything outside the targets affected by your Grasp of the Dead you do basically nothing at all so it is vital that you keep shooting the correct targets. Also, unless you Grasp things, your Bane of the Trapped is also not triggered. You get used to it but watch the difference in hitting targets within the Grasp and compare to whatever you shoot outside it.

[Shifthappen1 1]

First off, i'd like to say a big thank you to whoever suggested to use Locust Swarm with pestilence rune and the hwoj belt, it has been a GREAT source of mana spender + slow for enemies, it spreads extremely well and it speeds up my clears like none other, it's great!

Second, from testing it a bit, just having Locust swarn spreading means i have a chance to create a fetish already, so it works fine for fetish creation. I swarn once, then poison dart and before i know it, i'm at 15 fetish and it stays there unless i run out of monsters to attack and wander aimlessly.

In general, i like this build a lot, but i feel quite squishy and vulnerable in general, and even with bad medicine and most of the defensive choices available, i feel too vulnerable, to the point where i'm thinking of ditching slam dance for ghost trance, and possibly ditching the endless walk set to get a unity, and anything that could work for defenses in an amulet, like an hellfire amulet with jungle fortitude.

[Valks 2,375]

On 5/3/2017 at 3:38 AM, Shifthappen1 said:

First off, i'd like to say a big thank you to whoever suggested to use Locust Swarm with pestilence rune and the hwoj belt, it has been a GREAT source of mana spender + slow for enemies, it spreads extremely well and it speeds up my clears like none other, it's great!

Thanks for coming back to share your experience with it! I wasn't the person that suggested it, but I'm glad to see that it worked for you :)

On 5/3/2017 at 3:38 AM, Shifthappen1 said:

In general, i like this build a lot, but i feel quite squishy and vulnerable in general, and even with bad medicine and most of the defensive choices available, i feel too vulnerable, to the point where i'm thinking of ditching slam dance for ghost trance, and possibly ditching the endless walk set to get a unity, and anything that could work for defenses in an amulet, like an hellfire amulet with jungle fortitude.

Definitely could work - if you do make the swap, let us know how it goes!

[Guest Truth]

I found this build to be fairly weak compared to a straight Zuni, HT, or Arachyr. Using all of the pieces listed my clear times were a couple minutes slower than a comparatively geared Zuni garg build. One of the difficult parts is trying to land your mana spenders on things (grasp of the dead in this case), because of the cool down and smallish radius. Compared to those other builds it was a lot more work just to kill things and that's not mentioning the survivability. 

Anyway just my observations, I think it could definitely use some improvements if it's going to compete with the other more common builds.

[Valks 2,375]

14 hours ago, Guest Truth said:

Anyway just my observations, I think it could definitely use some improvements if it's going to compete with the other more common builds.

The sad thing is, sometimes certain builds simply can't push beyond a certain point or are straight up worse than alternatives. This is one of those times - there are definitely better builds available for WD than this one. I'd definitely agree on what you've said.

[Arkpit 101]

On 2017-05-03 at 3:38 AM, Shifthappen1 said:

First off, i'd like to say a big thank you to whoever suggested to use Locust Swarm with pestilence rune and the hwoj belt, it has been a GREAT source of mana spender + slow for enemies, it spreads extremely well and it speeds up my clears like none other, it's great!

I went ahead and tried this as well seeing as the passive Sycophants simply isn't effective anymore by just spamming darts so my option was Belt of Trancendence which leaves out the Witching Hour anyway.
I too was pleasantly suprised withhow effective it was seeing as the fetish count indeed goes up extremely quickly and your survivability is even greater than Grasp because of the 80% slow on everything compared to the small radius of grasp and pestilence rune also applying set bonus, Bad Medicin and trigger BoTrapped!

On 2017-05-03 at 3:38 AM, Shifthappen1 said:

i'm thinking of ditching slam dance for ghost trance, and possibly ditching the endless walk set to get a unity, and anything that could work for defenses in an amulet, like an hellfire amulet with jungle fortitude.

This is exactly what I do on hardcore, I don't play with Endless Walk set unless I play with a group. The Unity+Hellfire will do close to same value but a more constant survivability thing. The rune on BBV is the first thing I change in the build depending on if things aren't dying fast enough or if I feel scared of dying and I've ended up using Ghost Trance more than Slam for hihger GRs (65+).

Edited May 9, 2017 by Arkpit

[Arkpit 101]

On 2017-05-08 at 1:53 AM, Guest Truth said:

I found this build to be fairly weak compared to a straight Zuni, HT, or Arachyr. Using all of the pieces listed my clear times were a couple minutes slower than a comparatively geared Zuni garg build.

What Blainie said really, no one will argue in favor of this build surpassing almost all alternatives to Zuni or any other set in general but part reason that it is listed is that it used to be very popular back in earlier seasons and kinda stayed ever since but it also offers a very unique playstyle to the WD for those of us that have played WD every single season and want something new for a change! Also a challange to run up the ladder as an "underdog" is always appealing to me ^_^

The Grasp range is a problem for sure but there is an alternative as listed above, try the Hwoj Wrap with Swarm Pestilence and Sycophant passive. Works wonders actually if you can live without the Witching Hour!

Edited May 9, 2017 by Arkpit

[Guest Sogar]

This build would be so much better if carnevil was a shoulder piece instead ...

 

Quick question though, does everyone knows if ring of emptiness works with the poison dart? In theory, your fetishes' darts scale with your own darts so it should work eventhough pet damage does not work directly with it. I'm usure though. Any idea? (and yeah I know you would need to change a lot of things to be able to add the ring but it's definetly possible sacrificing big bad voodoo)

[Guest Hello]

On 21/01/2018 at 10:55 PM, Guest Sogar said:

This build would be so much better if carnevil was a shoulder piece instead ...

 

Quick question though, does everyone knows if ring of emptiness works with the poison dart? In theory, your fetishes' darts scale with your own darts so it should work eventhough pet damage does not work directly with it. I'm usure though. Any idea? (and yeah I know you would need to change a lot of things to be able to add the ring but it's definetly possible sacrificing big bad voodoo)

I believe your darts would be 400% because of RoE, but the fetish darts are still only 250%.

[Guest Question]

Would it be better to replace The Dagger of Darts with Sacred Harvester and just hunt for elites? The build is quite squishy without it, which I believe is mostly why it performs so much worse than other Witch Doctor builds. Then Confidence Ritual could replace Bad Medicine or Pierce the Veil because it'd have to be a close range build without piercing darts.

Frozen Piranhas could also replace Desperate Grasp as the spender for its damage buff, since skipping trash would consequently not require a low cooldown spender. If more toughness is still required to survive, then Jungle Fortitude could replace Fetish Sycophants, and the Belt of Transcendence could replace The Witching Hour.