Diablo 3: Patch 2.7.2 PTR Witch Doctor Spirit of Arachyr Corpse Spider Build

With the changes coming to the Spirit of Arachyr set as well as what looks to be a new support item, I wanted to do a blog to write what I think the build will look like for season 25 with patch 2.7.2. This will be something I test when the PTR goes live on Thursday.

Legendary Items

• Spirit of Arachyr (5 pieces, Shoulders, Helmet, Chest, Hands and Boots)
  • 2 piece bonus – Corpse Spiders now spawns with health and attacks twice as fast.
  • 4 piece bonus – Summon a permanent Spider Queen who leaves behind webs that lasts for 15 seconds and Slows enemies. You take 75% reduced damage while in the web. The Spider Queen is commanded to move to where you cast your Corpse Spiders.
  • 6 piece bonus – 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. This aspect of Spirit of Arachyr has not changed.
• Depth Diggers (Pants) – Primary skills that generate resource deal 87% additional damage. [80 – 100]%. We are boosting our generator damage from Corpse Spiders so this is a must have item.
• Spider Queen’s Grasp​ (Weapon) – Corpse Spiders deals an additional 600-800% damage and releases a web on impact that Slows enemies by 80%. This is another major change that will boost your Corpse Spiders damage (currently it’s only a 45-60% boost). Also, they will be issuing out webs in addition to the Spider Queen’s from the 4 piece bonus. However, I don’t think you gain the benefit of damage reduction from your normal Corpse Spiders’ webs.
• Brood of Araneae (Mojo?) – Corpse Spiders deals an additional 75-100% damage, and each spider bite causes the target to take an additional 1% damage from Corpse Spiders for 5 seconds. I talked with some people about what this item could be. At the moment, I’m guessing it sounds as though this item will be a mojo (rather than a belt as I had guessed). It also could be a weapon but a new Mojo would be nice and allow you to choose a different weapon for the Cube or main hand. Otherwise, I think most people would use the Vile Hive, which has less synergy with this build.
• The Witching Hour (Belt) – I’m picking this belt because of the increase in attack speed, which should aid your Corpse Spider attacks. Belt of Transcendence would be an alternate belt but Fetishes don’t synergize as well with Spirit of Arachyr.
• Lakumba’s Ornament – Reduce all damage taken by 60% if your Soul Harvest stack is at least (1-3), and an additional 2% for each stack of Soul Harvest. The change here is massive and will allow you to use Soul Harvest against only one enemy without being forced into using Sacred Harvester for maximizing your stacks of Soul Harvest. You probably still want to get at least 5 stacks of Soul Harvest but you won’t be as gimped in terms of raw damage reduction and everything else is just butter.
• The Endless Walk (Ring/Amulet) – You will be moving around a lot while tossing out Corpse Spiders so this is the perfect set jewelry for this build.
• Ring of Emptiness (Ring) – You deal 279% increased damage to enemies affected by either your Haunt or Locust Swarm. (Witch Doctor Only) [250 – 300]%. This will probably be a must have and you’ll probably be using Locust Swarm with Pestilence to spread this effect.
• Ring of Royal Grandeur (Ring/Cube) – This will allow you to use Depth Diggers
• Mask of Jeram (Voodoo Mask/Cube) – Pets deal 157% increased damage. (Witch Doctor Only) [150 – 200]%. I think with Corpse Spiders gaining a health bar, they should be classified as Pets. So this is just another damage boost.
• Tasker and Theo (Gloves/Cube) – Increase attack speed of your pets by 45%. [40 – 50]%. This is an alternative to Mask of Jeram. I’m not positive which will be better at the moment but with Corpse Spiders staying alive, this option might be better. This is something I need to experiment with.
• Echoing Fury (Weapon/Cube) – Slaying enemies engulfs the wielder into a Frenzy. I put this here because I think boosting your attack speed will be key with Corpse Spiders and being able to clear areas quickly.
• The Furnace (Weapon/Cube) – Increases damage against elites by 40%. [40 – 50]%. This will probably be the choice for GR pushing.
• Wormwood (Weapon/Cube) – Locust Swarm continuously plagues enemies around you. (Witch Doctor Only). I put this as a quality of life item so that you won’t to actively cast Locust Swarm and pretty much guarantees that your damage boost from the Ring of Emptiness will be 100%. But it does mean you’ll need to be in range of your enemies.

Legendary Gems

• Bane of the Trapped – Pretty much your 4 piece bonus and the Spider Queen’s Grasp will guarantee that everything will be hit by some form of a slow. So you’ll gain bonus damage here.
• Enforcer – This is speculation but with Corpse Spiders gaining a health bar, it pretty much should imply that Enforcer will give them not just a boost for pet damage, but keep them alive with 90% damage reduction. I would definitely get this gem to at least level 25 for the secondary effect. Not sure if this also means that your Corpse Spiders will stay alive the entire time nor if there will be a cap on the number of Corpse Spiders. But it should be interesting to see what happens when these two combos occur (server crash from too many?)
• Simplicity’s Strength – This will have a nice double effect of not just boosting your Corpse Spiders’ damage but healing you at the same time.
• Bane of the Stricken – I’m only putting this here because we have yet to see how Enforcer influences this set. However, I think that the single target damage won’t be great here so we might keep this as an alternate option to Bane of the Trapped or Enforcer depending on how things work out.

Active Skills

• Corpse Spiders: Widowmakers – Throw a jar with widowmaker spiders deal a total of 700% weapon damage as Physical. The bread and butter of your damage. From what I can tell, this is the best damaging ability for Corpse Spiders.
• Locust Swarm: Pestilence – Locust Swarm has a 100% chance to jump to two additional enemies instead of one. You will want this to buff your Corpse Spiders’ damage in conjunction with the Ring of Emptiness. If you run a Wormwood, you can just put it on a slot like 3 on the action bar and rune it. But you won’t have to cast it. You just need to get in range, which might be a problem.
• Spirit Walk: Jaunt — Your movement ability.
• Soul Harvest: Languish – You won’t need 10 stacks like before just one will be good enough with the rest being gravy.
• Piranhas: Piranhado – Besides helping to boost up your damage alongside Locust Swarm, this ability will be good for gathering up large groups of enemies so your Corpse Spiders can whittle them down quickly.
• Hex: Jinx – Hex no longer really is great with this build since Arachyr’s does not provide the Toad of Hugeness rune. Nonetheless, you still gain some increased damage through this rune.
• Summon Zombie Dogs: Leeching Beasts – I’m putting this here as a passive healing ability since Hex won’t provide that aspect anymore. You can exchange Hex for this. Also, since we’re using Enforcer, your Zombie Dogs should stay alive for the most part and help clean up some monsters. But they do not benefit from the set.

Passive Skills

• Grave Injustice – Used for the cooldown for Spirit Walk and Piranhas.
• Pierce the Veil – Since you’re using Corpse Spiders for the bulk of your damage, you won’t need mana as much. This will give you a fair damage boost.
• Confidence Ritual – More damage but you need to be in close range. Assuming that your Spider Queen is dumping her webs near enemies, these two abilities go together quite well.
• Spirit Vessel – Cheat death, although we can get another from our Follower.
• Jungle Fortitude – Damage reduction. You can replace Spirit Vessel for this.
• Fierce Loyalty – Mostly used for the bonus to movement speed. This build doesn’t seem fast compared to others so this could be used as an alternative to Spirit Vessel, especially with Adventure Mode and if you choose to use Zombie Dogs.

Followers

I would go with the Templar here just for the life regeneration/healing and the cheat death. You could also go for a Scoundrel for increasing your damage and the cheat death. I don’t think the Enchantress would be that great. You could use a Hand of the Prophet to gain all of her abilities (especially the highly valuable attack speed and cheat death) but you would need to find ways to boost her survivability in higher Greater Rifts.

Final Thoughts

One thing about this build is that it’s similar in some way to Zunimassa’s. You’re very pet focused with the Spider Queen and Corpse Spiders being spawned with a limited range. It’s to be seen how the area effect of this build is especially with your Corpse Spiders last longer. The difference though is that your defense ought to be better than Zunimassa’s just because of the change to Lakumba’s as well as the Spider Queen’s web.

However, in looking at the changes to the Spirit of Arachyr set, I do think Firebats is pretty much a dead build. Also, I’m not sure if the Chicken Bomber build will be a thing since Hex no longer is the ability to act as a defensive mechanism. In both cases, you’ll be forced to use Corpse Spiders to build up additional defense initially, which might be awkward given the button mashing intensive play of both. I’ll have to revisit Firebats at least because I feel that Wormwood would become a de facto standard in that build to help eliminate some of that button mashing.

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