Jade Harvester Witch Doctor Guide

1. Do the Challenge Rift for the materials to cube Legendary Powers. You can complete this once a week for additional resources and we always update the guide for you!

2. Gather the full Raiment of the Jade Harvester set. Each piece can be gambled from Kadala for Bloodshards. Do not salvage any duplicate pieces you find! Instead convert them to another part of the set with Recipe 4 in Kanai's Cube. If you have extra materials you can use Recipe 3 to craft the remaining pieces, but this is expensive and not recommended for new players.

3. Gamble from Kadala in this order:

1. The full Raiment of the Jade Harvester set
2. Quetzalcoatl
3. Lakumba's Ornament
4. Shukrani's Triumph and Henri's Perquisition
5. Haunting Girdle
6. Convention of Elements, Ring of Emptiness and The Compass Rose

4. Craft using Recipe 3 in Kanai's Cube in this order:

1. Ceremonial Knives to get Sacred Harvester
2. Two-Handed Maces to get The Furnace
3. Rings to get Convention of Elements, Ring of Emptiness and The Compass Rose
4. Amulets to get Traveler's Pledge and Squirt's Necklace
5. Anything from the Gamble list in Step 3 that you haven't already acquired.
   
   

5. Do Bounties to acquire several important items for this build:

• Act 1: Ring of Royal Grandeur
• Bounty Turn In: Recipes for Captain Crimson's Trimmings and Cain's Destiny (for your follower)

6. At this point you can somewhat comfortably farm Nephalem or Speed Greater Rifts where you can find all the remaining items you need for different variants of the build. It's better to spend your materials improving your set pieces, getting ancient weapon etc.

7. Use Primordial Ashes in Kanai's Cube with the new Curiosity of Lorath Nahr recipe to obtain a free Crafted Primal Ancient. Since you can only equip one of them, choosing the right item to focus matters! Great candidates are Weapons, Offhands, Jewelry or any item with an important multiplier. With that in mind, we recommend getting one of the following items:

• Ring of Emptiness
• Shukrani's Triumph
• The Compass Rose

• Bane of the Trapped is the most common damage gem and as our main damage skill Haunt has a slow effect it will automatically proc this gem, providing us a flat 1.6 damage multiplier. On top of that Soul Harvest itself has a 18 yard radius so we got to get within the rank 25 effect of 15 yards anyways.
• Bane of the Stricken is needed to kill the Rift Guardian at the end of the Rift. We will mostly gain stacks by Haunting the Rift Guardian.
• Gogok of Swiftness is one of the best overall stat boosts for this build as we benefit from everything: Attack Speed for faster Haunts, Cooldown Reduction for more frequent Soul Harvesting and additional dodge chance to survive large monster pulls.
• Molten Wildebeest's Gizzard can be used to gain a shield buff in speed runs in combination with Squirt's Necklace for double damage output, some additional toughness and insane healing.

• We use Haunt as our main damage skill. This skill can be spammed on the same target to get 3,500 seconds worth of damage per cast from Raiment of the Jade Harvester (2) Bonus. You can choose between 2 viable runes here:
  The first choice is Resentful Spirits for an additional spirit cast. This helps to spread your Haunt in large monster density quickly. The second choice is Poisoned Spirit, which increases our damage output by 20%. This is especially helpful against Elites and the Rift Guardian. The damage type of Soul Harvest depends on your Haunt rune, so switch your gear to Poison or Cold damage accordingly.
• Soul Harvest is used to consume the applied DoT with the Raiment of the Jade Harvester (6) Bonus for 10,000 seconds worth of damage. Furthermore it offers us great offensive (Intelligence) and defensive (Armor from Languish and All Resistance through Intelligence) buffs.
• Piranhas Piranhado is used to group up monsters and debuff them. The debuff also stays up almost forever with the Creeping Death passive.
• Spirit Walk is mostly used for Movement Speed as well as defensive purposes but also can be used offensively by getting into an Oculus Ring damage zone.
• The last 2 skill slots are very situational: We can use Horrify Frightening Aspect for a permanent 50% Armor buff. Another good choice is the Big Bad Voodoo skill in combination with the Grave Injustice passive for buffs to Attack Speed and Movement Speed. Pick between the rune Slam Dance for additional 15% additive damage or Ghost Trance for 20% more damage reduction and insane healing.
  Locust Swarm is not mandatory anymore after the Ring of Emptiness change but is still useful to engage enemies, reduce their damage done by Cloud of Insects as well as dealing additional DoT damage consumed by Soul Harvest and the Raiment of the Jade Harvester (6) Bonus.

• Creeping Death is used to increase the duration of Haunt and possibly Locust Swarm to 120,000 seconds (2,000 minutes, or almost 1.5 days) and is mandatory for this build.
• Grave Injustice is used to reduce cooldowns of skill like Soul Harvest, Piranhas and Big Bad Voodoo.
• We can take one or even 2 defensive passives especially for solo gameplay Spirit Vessel as a "cheat death" or Swampland Attunement for an insane Resistance boost during huge monster pulls. Blood Ritual adds 25% toughness when combined with Captain Crimson's Trimmings.
• Another damage option isConfidence Ritual for a multiplicative damage increase in close range combat in which we have to engage anyways due to the Soul Harvest 18 yard range.
• In group play take in Gruesome Feast for this last passive slot as it is one of the best passives in the entire game if you have a supporter like the zBarb providing you with Health Globes using skills like Threatening Shout Grim Harvest.

¹ Add a bit of Vitality if you feel too squishy (a total of 700,000 Life is recommended).

The Altar of Rites is a tree that grants tremendous powers to your entire account in exchange for sacrifices. It requires you to farm Bounties, kill the Ubers, craft the Staff of Herding, and more. Completing all 26 of these tasks, along with sacrificing 6 Primal Ancients grants you extra Damage, Defense, Quality of Life, Increased Drops and 3 Potion Super Powers. Read the full guides on Unlocking the Altar and the Altar Mechanics by Raxxanterax and Chewingnom to learn everything about this fantastic mechanic!

Optimal Path

Patch 2.7.0 revamped the follower system giving all 3 hirelings new powers and the emanate system. The first thing you should do is read our complete follower guide and remember the key takeaways:

1. The emanation system allows followers to share certain legendary and set powers with you. The most important ones are: The Flavor of Time, Nemesis Bracers, Avarice Band, Sage’s Journey and Cain’s Destiny. Click the guide above for the full list.
2. Follower’s powers are based on their main stat (maxed at 25,000, but they have a 2.5x multiplier so you only need 10,000). This means we stack Intelligence on the Enchantress, Dexterity on the Scoundrel and Strength on the Templar.
3. Guardian's Jeopardy (3) Bonus works for followers by improving their inherent stat multiplier from x2.5 to x3.5, making it slightly easier to hit the 25,000 main stat threshold if needed.
4. Followers share 20% of their Experience, Magic and Gold Find stats with you.
5. Legendary gems do not work on followers, except Esoteric Alteration and Mutilation Guard.
6. Cooldown Reduction does not work for any follower skill except the Templar’s Heal.
7. Followers never deal significant damage; you’re on your own to clear the content.

Select Follower

Always keep Horrify Frightening Aspect up for the permanent 50% Armor buff. When you enter a map, start off by using Spirit Walk to run towards enemies and use Soul Harvest to get the offensive and defensive buffs up. Cast your Haunt to DoT up monsters and group them up by using your Piranhas Piranhado. Use Locust Swarm to pull enemies and apply another DoT-effect.

Always keep Soul Harvesting whenever you are close and the skill is off cooldown. For maximum damage output keep on Haunting the enemies to proc Raiment of the Jade Harvester (2) Bonus. This can also be used to spawn an Oculus Ring in which you will move by using Spirit Walk for the additional damage buff before your next Soul Harvest.

This build is very squishy and it's difficult to add a lot of toughness. If you want to play it regardless, make sure to take all defensive passives (Blood Ritual, Grave Injustice and especially Spirit Vessel) and add more Vitality through Paragon. Otherwise it's possible to play with Unity and Haunting Girdle instead of the Captain Crimson's Trimmings. Check out our dedicated Hardcore Survival Guide to learn more about how to succeed in this game mode!

• Makes your Haunt and Locust Swarm last 120,000 seconds (2,000 minutes, or almost 1.5 days), which is a necessity for this build to deal any significant damage.
• This passive is useful for keeping up buffs such as Ring of Emptiness and Haunt Poisoned Spirit / Consuming Spirit or simply the Piranhas damage amplification.
• The DoTs will drop when you move too far away (around 1.5-2 screens) and will have to be reapplied.
• Also, for Locust Swarm runes other than Pestilence, the visual animation will likely bug out after a medium amount (around 20-30) of targets have been affected, the effects will still be applied however.

• Haunt cannot critically hit but it still benefits from Critical Hit Damage and Critical Hit Chance as the DoT damage is increased accordingly (1 + CHC * CHD).
• Haunt snapshots intelligence and additive damage buffs on cast, while multiplicative buffs stay dynamic.
• Raiment of the Jade Harvester (2) Bonus can critically strike but using non-critical DoT damage as a base. There’s no crit double dipping!
• Raiment of the Jade Harvester (6) Bonus cannot critically strike as DoT damage is already affected by your critical multiplier.
• As separate damage multipliers like Power Pylon, Convention of Elements or Oculus Rings stay fully dynamic, they are applied at the moment when you consume the DoT with either Haunt or Soul Harvest. If you hit the enemies within the Cold Convention of Elements for example all damage consumed by the Raiment of the Jade Harvester (2) Bonus and (6) Bonus will get the full 3,500 and 10,000 seconds damage bonus with the 200% damage amplification applied.
• Don't forget Quetzalcoatl is mandatory for this build, because it is essentially a 2.0 separate damage multiplier as it makes your DoTs deal their full damage in half their duration only.

• The 100% Damage bonus while in the Spirit Realm from Shukrani's Triumph is an additive damage buff, meaning its effect is additive with other buffs such as Pierce the Veil.
• You are in the Spirit Realm when in Spirit Walk and when Spirit Vessel procs.
• After the initial duration of Spirit Walk (2 seconds or 3 with Jaunt), you stay indefinitely under Spirit Walk until you attack 3 times or until you have any Elite enemy within 20 yards.
• A very interesting property of Spirit Walk is that you do not generate aggro under this effect, which means you are invisible to all monsters. This mechanic can be used at your advantage on some Rift Guardians which need a target to perform some abilities (Bloodmaw's Jump for instance).

• This ability is one of the few ways in the game to pixelpull enemies.
• If used on top of enemies, it pulls them close together but does not pixelpull most of them. In order to get the best pull possible, it has to be used on a spot with no other nearby enemies.

• Each stack, received upon picking up a Health Globe, has its own duration.
• You need 5 globes every 15 seconds or one Health Globe every three seconds to keep it at full power.
• The Intelligence bonus stacks additively with Soul Harvest's bonus.