Diablo 3: Season 24 Witch Doctor Spirit of Arachyr Firebat Build for Patch 2.7.1

With the Spirit of Arachyr being the officially announced Witch Doctor set for Season 24, I figured it would be a good time to write up an updated build guide for this set.

Legendary Items

• Spirit of Arachyr set –
  • (2) – Summon a permanent Spider Queen who leaves behind webs that deal 4000% weapon damage over 5 seconds and Slows enemies. The Spider Queen is commanded to move to where you cast your Corpse Spiders. Most likely, when you get your first two pieces, you will be using Corpse Spiders. However, eventually, you will be moving over to Firebats for far better damage.
  • (4) – Hex gains the effect of the Toad of Hugeness rune. After summoning a Toad of Hugeness, you gain 50% damage reduction and heal for 10% of your maximum Life per second for 15 seconds. – You will be running two runes with the 4 set bonus. So you will want to ensure that your Hex is kept up at all times for the damage reduction and healing.
  • (6) – The damage of your creature skills is increased by 17,500%. Creature skills are Corpse Spiders, Plague of Toads, Firebats, Locust Swarm, Hex, and Piranhas. – Your main damaging skill will be Firebats but until you get a Staff of Chiroptera (or an Ethereal with the same power), you may want to try something else or perhaps use Corpse Spiders for the synergy with the Spider Queen bonus initially.
• Bakuli Jungle Wraps (belt) – Firebats deals 257% increased damage to enemies affected by Locust Swarm or Piranhas. (Witch Doctor Only) [250 – 300]% – This should either be equipped or cubed. But once you get one of these, you will want to group up enemies with Piranhas and apply Locust Swarm for maximum damage.
• Staff of Chiroptera (staff/cube) – Firebats attacks 100% faster, costs 75% less Mana, and has its damage increased by 145%. (Witch Doctor Only) [125 – 150]% – This is my first pick for an item to craft from Death Breaths and possibly the first item you will want to cube. It is also what I consider the #1 choice for an Ethereal property if you manage to discover one.
• Mantle of Channeling (shoulders/cube) – While channeling Siphon Blood, Whirlwind, Rapid Fire, Strafe, Tempest Rush, Firebats, Arcane Torrent, Disintegrate, or Ray of Frost, you deal 24% increased damage and take 25% reduced damage. [20 – 25]% – Because you will be channeling your Firebats, you will want one of these in the cube for additional damage and damage reduction.
• Ring of Emptiness (ring/cube) – You deal 279% increased damage to enemies affected by either your Haunt or Locust Swarm. (Witch Doctor Only) [250 – 300]% – Another high priority item that has huge value from being useful in a variety of builds. You can wear one if you discover it or cube it. But you will want to use this in conjunction with Locust Swarm to help buff your damage for Firebats.
• Sacred Harvester (main hand) – Soul Harvest now stacks up to 10 times. (Witch Doctor Only) – This will be a more valuable item in higher greater rifts. Also, it synergizes with Lakumba’s Ornament in providing general high damage reduction. I will discuss this other option in a separate section of the build guide.
• Vile Hive (off hand/mojo) – Locust Swarm gains the effect of the Pestilence rune and deals 47% increased damage. (Witch Doctor Only) [45 – 60]% – There really isn’t any good offhand options for Arachyr’s so this is one of the better choices since will be using Locust Swarm. In getting the Pestilence rune, you will be getting another rune choice.
• Coils of the First Spider (bracers) – While channeling Firebats, you gain 30% damage reduction and 71,752 Life per Hit. (Witch Doctor Only) [60,000 – 80,000] – This is one of the two bracer choices. It might be easier to use than Lakumba’s Ornament since you won’t have to worry about stacks falling off. But you will get less overall damage reduction.
• Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac (ring/cube) – Reduce the remaining cooldown of one of your skills by 1 second when you hit with a resource-spending attack. – I chose this ring because you will want to keep Hex on cooldown as much as possible. Also, Piranhas, Soul Harvest and Jaunt will be up more often as a result.
• Endless Walk (amulet/ring set) – Since you are channeling your damage by standing still periodically, the Endless Walk set makes for a good way to reduce damage as you are rushing through foes.
  • • While moving, damage taken is reduced by up to 50%.
    • While standing still, damage dealt is increased by up to 100%.
  • The Compass Rose (ring)
  • The Traveler’s Pledge (amulet)

There are some other high end builds that differ slightly in gear choices. So I will post a few extra items that can be taken into consideration here, especially with the Ethereal changing the legendary power game around slightly.

• Captain’s Crimson Trimmings – Used for additional cooldown and resource reduction as well as generic damage reduction and increase from cooldown and resource reduction.
  • Captain Crimson’s Silk Girl (belt) – You use the cubed version of Bakuli Jungle Wraps
  • Captain Crimson’s Thrust (legs)
• Ring of Royal Grandeur – This is used if you end up going with the Captain’s Crimson Trimmings two piece. If you choose this, you’ll probably end up dropping the Ring of Obsidian Zodiac because you’ll want to keep the Ring of Emptiness. However, you will want to have as much c0oldown on your gear as possible.
• Lakumba’s Ornament – This is a popular option to use with the Sacred Harvester for the massive damage reduction. The difference is the damage reduction that requires more maintenance through re-applying Soul Harvest to keep up 10 stacks. I imagine high GR pushing requires this.

With regards to Ethereals, I have a few additional thoughts about the best choices. The main Ethereal I think will go well with this build is The Gidbinn as you gain more movement speed as you pick up health globes. I value this quite a bit because I find this build to be slow and more melee oriented, so the health globes will help greatly in farming.

For the legendary power of choice, I suggest the Staff of Chiroptera because it’s mandatory and a 2-handed item which means normally preventing you from using an offhand. So if you get an Ethereal with this power, you will have a little more flexibility in what you can use in your cube.

One interesting choice for the cube is a Wormwood to turn Locust Swarm into a passive effect that automatically applies the ability onto foes. The reason I like this idea is that it ensures with the Pestilence rune from the Vile Hive that you will be able to keep up Pestilence. Since you already will be channeling Firebats in melee range, it makes things much easier and saves you some mana as well.

Two other choices are The Furnace and Messerschmidt’s Reaver. Both weapons become an option as they are two-handers and normally would not be a possibility without sacrificing your offhand mojo. Here, you can use one or the other (similar to a Wormw0od). The Furnace would work well in high greater rift pushing situations while a Messerschmidt’s Reaver would be good for farming to keep your cooldowns up more often. However, you won’t be able to get the extra damage reduction bonuses from the Sacred Harvester and Lakumba’s Ornament so this really depends upon what you need.

Legendary Gems

• Bane of the Trapped – You will be in melee range most of the time so your enemies will be impaired for the damage bonus.
• Taeguk – As you are channeling your main ability, you will want this gem for the armor bonus.
• Bane of the Stricken – To improve your single target damage.
• Gogok of Swiftness – Farming gem for keeping your cooldowns up.

Active Skills

• Firebats: Cloud of Bats – Your primary damaging ability. Note that it uses Fire so you will want to make sure your bracers and possibly amulet also roll fire% damage.
• Locust Swarm: Cloud of Insects – Once you obtain a Vile Hive, you will swap to this rune for additional damage reduction. Otherwise, stick with Pestilence.
• Spirit Walk: Jaunt – Your main movement skill. Unless you swap to the chicken weapon set version of this build, you will be very slow, which is why I prefer using a Gogok and Obsidian Ring to further bring down your cooldown abilities.
• Piranhas: Piranhado – Use this as much as possible to group up enemies to burn them down with Firebats.
• Hex: Jinx – Increases damage against your enemies and provides a little CC. Don’t choose Toad of Hugeness though because it’s automatically provided upon using the 4 set bonus from Arachyr’s Spirit.
• Soul Harvest: Languish – Another damage reduction ability. Has a short range but can be tough to keep up if you aren’t on top of your cooldowns.

Passive Skills

• Grave Injustice – An absolute must have. Try to get this ability on an Ethereal. But this is the other major part in keeping your mana and cooldowns up.
• Creeping Death – For your Locust Swarm and Piranhas to last forever.
• Confidence Ritual – Since you will be using Firebats in melee range, this will help provide you with extra damage.
• Tribal Rites – Mostly to keep Hex going by improving its cooldown.
• Gruesome Feast – I chose this since you will be gaining a 5th Passive ability through your Ethereal. But if you manage to get The Gidbinn, this passive will synergize very well.

Followers

For the most part, I think either the Templar or Enchantress will be ideal here. The Templar will provide either regeneration or some CC while the Enchantress offers more cooldown reduction, some armor and a cheat death. I would lean more towards the Enchantress just because of the cooldown reduction.

Final Thoughts

I’ve been slowly trying to assemble the gear for this build. I’ve done it before and found it to be a decent starting build. It is a little slow for my taste and you will be pausing a lot in grouping things up to apply Pestilence, Firebats, etc. But the damage is pretty high. Also, it works very well with the Manajuma’s Way for speed runs if you need a faster version but you will need to change your Hex rune to Angry Chicken to get it to work. Because Manajuma’s Way got buffed, you can use that for higher difficulties but not upper tier but it might be good for cases like farming bounties or doing some Conquests that require speed.

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