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Mundunugu Spirit Barrage Witch Doctor Guide

Last Updated:July 7, 2024|Change Log

Introduction

Mundunugu Spirit Barrage Solo Push
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Introduced with Season 20, the Mundunugu's Regalia is the most recent addition to the Witch Doctor's repertoire and, despite its funny name, the set itself is no joke at all. It focuses around releasing huge AoE bursts with specific setup and timings. As such, it is a very potent Trash Killer, especially when paired with a proper zBarb stacking enemies tightly together, allowing you to unleash devastating damage combos, one-shotting whole Elite packs even all the way up to Greater Rift 150.

The main damaging mechanic in this build Spirit Barrage Phantasm paired with The Barber originated from the old LoD Spirit Barrage theorycrafted during Season 10. While the mechanics are quite complicated, the overall idea is simple: make a pull, place three Phantasms on the ground, wait a few seconds, and then cast three more to instantly release the accumulated damage of the previous Phantasms. The more enemies are in the area and the longer you wait, the stronger the resulting explosions will be.

The build is quite tanky due to Spirit Walk and Grave Injustice in combination. Luckily, you have Big Bad Voodoo Ghost Trance following you around most of the time, thanks to the Mundunugu's Regalia (2) Bonus, to provide valuable healing and defense! This setup is also great for speed content, competing with top tier builds in Nephalem Rifts and Bounties. Keep in mind that this build has an exceptional scaling with monster density, which however requires a lot of Greater Rift fishing to reach the highest tiers.

Unfortunately, Season 21 brought a significant nerf to the build by removing the ability for Phantasm to benefit from Mask of Jeram and Enforcer. Season 23 further nerfed Spirit Barrage by lowering the Gazing Demise damage multiplier. Yet, the setup was stronger than ever in Season 24 with Ethereals (Arioc's Needle). In Season 25 Witch Doctors received additional buffs to Lakumba's Ornament, making the build more tanky and thus a bit stronger again. With Season 28, the build gets a slight buff with Manitou dealing more than twice the damage it did previously.

Unlike most others, this is not an Area Damage (AD) build, since all your damage comes from The Barber explosions which cannot proc it. It does replicate it though by redirecting the damage done by Spirit Barrage to all targets within 15 yards. This setup relies on many interactions between Phantasm and Manitou with The Barber, which makes it hands down one of the most complicated builds to fully understand in the entire game (see Mechanics). This guide will steer you through all the mechanics behind Spirit Barrage!

Unique Playstyle ✔
Insane AoE damage ✔
Rewarding Explosions ✔
Rewards Excellent Gameplay ✔

❌ Difficult Execution
❌ Sensitive to Fishing
❌ Complicated Mechanics
❌ Low Single Target Damage

Core Setup

Core Item Build

Items

  • The Mundunugu's Regalia set provides upwards of 20,000% separate damage multiplier to Spirit Barrage, your main damage ability.
  • Ring of Royal Grandeur in the cube will allow to wear the Captain Crimson's Trimmings set using the Belt and another piece of your choosing (Pants or Boots).
  • The Barber is the main item behind the special mechanics of the build, as well as giving a huge 500% damage bonus. Playing around its effect is the key aspect of the build.
  • Gazing Demise provides us with a 150% separate damage multiplier, makes Phantasms last twice as long and increases Manitou Attack Rate.
  • Ring of Emptiness activated by Locust Swarm Pestilence for another 300% separate damage multiplier.
  • Lakumba's Ornament goes along with Sacred Harvester and Soul Harvest Languish for a total of 30% bonus Intelligence, 100% Armor and 60% damage reduction, constituting your main source of toughness.


Season 32 Ethereals

Ethereals are powerful rare weapons that can only be found during Season 32. They were initially the Season 24 Theme. They have incredible stats, a random Legendary power, and a free passive for your class. Read our Ethereal Mechanics Guide for full details on how they work and our Ethereal Farming Guide to learn how to acquire them. What you should prioritize on them is the following:

  1. The Legendary Power
    This build requires The Barber. Voo's Juicer Legendary power and 60% Spirit Barrage Damage affix cannot be rolled on Ethereals so we focus on Sacred Harvester instead. We need our Ethereal to roll one of these powers so we can cube the other. We also want a good roll on our Legendary power if it has a range. For speed content it is always helpful to have Ethereals with Echoing Fury, In-geom or Messerschmidt's Reaver powers, so keep those if you find them.
  2. The Ethereal Itself
    There are 3 different weapons available to us, each with its own benefits:
    • Arioc's Needle - This is the Ethereal we absolutely want as it is the only one granting 200% damage to Decay Skills, which includes Spirit Barrage. Its Critical Hit Chance & Damage and Average Damage affixes are very beneficial to us as well.
    • Ghostflame and The Gidbinn - These are better than normal Weapons but they're not giving 200% damage to Spirit Barrage, hence they are both tremendously weaker than Arioc's Needle.
  3. The Ethereal Stat Rolls
    Each Ethereal comes with its own fixed set of powerful affixes. While some have a static value, many have a wide stat range. This means the difference between good and bad rolls is significant and something you should look for.
  4. A Useful Passive
    This is just icing on the cake because a fifth passive is not going to make or break your build. You're better off hunting for the things above. Check out the Passives section down below to see which ones you're looking for.

Global Stat Priorities

You want to stack damage stats wherever possible, especially Critical Hit Chance and Damage, Attack Speed as well as Cold Damage and Spirit Barrage Damage. Area Damage is useless in this build (and actively avoided in groups including in Paragon Points) as we only deal damage with The Barber explosions.

You want to stack a decent amount of Cooldown Reduction (CDR) to ensure a good uptime of Spirit Walk and Big Bad Voodoo, as these two skills will keep you alive. Grave Injustice will do most of the work, especially with some Pickup Radius. It is also a great offensive stat due to Captain Crimson's Trimmings (3) Bonus. Stack this stat as much as you feel comfortable with in Greater Rift Solo Push.

Spirit Barrage Attack Speed Breakpoints

Attack Speed is a good stat as it is a separate damage multiplier for Phantasms and it helps us out stacking Bane of the Stricken. Manitou does not scale with Attack Speed in any way while Phantasm cast rate depends on Attack Speed Breakpoints when holding down Spirit Barrage, hence it is important to stay away from some Spirit Barrage Breakpoints (see Mechanics). In Solo you want to end up at the 21 FPA Breakpoint of Spirit Barrage, which requires you to play 7% Attack Speed on your Weapon and an additional 52% Increased Attack Speed from other sources (Paragon Points, Affixes on your gear as well as Gogok of Swiftness). In groups, 7% Attack Speed on your Weapon is enough; the rest of the Attack Speed will be granted via Pain Enhancer.

For toughness, we prioritize Armor on Pants, Boots, and Chest mixed in with some Vitality and perhaps Elite Damage Reduction on Chest. Resource Cost Reduction is also a good defensive option due to Captain Crimson's Trimmings (3) Bonus. Physical, Lightning or Arcane Resistances as a Secondary Affix are generally useful to have as Arcane Enchanted, Orbiter and Mortar Elite Affixes are your worst enemies by a long shot. Life Regeneration & Life per Hit are not useful as most of your healing is coming automatically from Big Bad Voodoo Ghost Trance. Mana Regeneration, despite being included in the Mundunugu's Regalia (6) Bonus, is neither useful for resources nor as an actual damage increase (around 0.3% per roll).

Crowd Control Reduction is an incredibly valuable secondary Affix to roll on both Rings, Amulet and Helmet as we are very sensitive to Hard Crowd Control effects and mitigating these will ease up our gameplay significantly. Make sure to get the Primary Affixes locked in before attempting to get CCR though.

Assembling the Build

Item Stat Priorities

Gems

Skills

Passives

Paragon Points

Altar of Rites

Follower

Gameplay

Hardcore

Variants

Nephalem Rifts
Bounties
GR Solo Push
GR Speeds
GR Group Trash Killer
Echoing Nightmare
Nephalem Rifts

Concept
Mundunugu's Regalia constitutes one of the best Nephalem Rift farmer for the Witch Doctor class. Spirit Barrage Manitou continuously attacks for you even while you are moving; all the multipliers from Gazing Demise, the set itself as well as Squirts Necklace provide such a massive damage boost that it's not necessary for you to worry for the accumulation mechanics of The Barber. You can use Phantasms to accumulate extra damage on Elites and the Rift Guardian, however, while moving Manitou will do most of the work. Molten Wildebeest's Gizzard protects Squirts Necklace.

Gameplay
Keep up Big Bad Voodoo and Soul Harvest at all times, spam Horrify when near enemies and use Spirit Walk for extra mobility. You will run at an insane pace due to all the Movement Speed buffs, effectively making you fly through Nephalem Rifts, while Goldwrap with Boon of the Hoarder and Avarice Band will grant you invincibility. On tough elite enemies and the Rift Guardian, use Locust Swarm to apply Ring of Emptiness.

When you do longer Torment 16 sessions, you can kill the first few monsters with Big Bad Voodoo active, summon some Zombie Dogs from the Boogie Man rune and then swap the rune to either Slam Dance or Ghost Trance. The dogs will stay permanently and keep your Fierce Loyalty active.

While playing in groups when you can't have the Cain's Destiny effect from your follower, it's possible to kill the boss yourself by accumulating some damage with Phantasm, then swapping items to get the set bonus and detonating them. Even without the Munudunugu's Regalia (6) Bonus active at that moment they will explode for their entire accumulated damage that includes the big multiplier. Be aware that even with great execution, it will not always work and requires a bit of practice to do well.

Setups
When you play in groups, replace Warzechian Armguards with Nemesis Bracers and Stone of Jordan with Avarice Band.

If you don't want to deal with Locust Swarm, you can drop it for Sacrifice Provoke the Pack. This way you can improve your overall AoE-DPS when rushing through the rift at the cost of slightly lower nuke potential on the elites.

Bounties

Concept
Mundunugu's Regalia constitutes one of the best Bounty setups for the Witch Doctor class. Spirit Barrage Manitou continuously attacks for you even while you are moving; all the multipliers from Gazing Demise, the set itself as well as Squirts Necklace provide such a massive damage boost that it's not necessary for you to worry for the accumulation of The Barber's mechanics.

Gameplay
Keep up Big Bad Voodoo and Soul Harvest at all times, spam Horrify when near enemies and use Spirit Walk for extra mobility. You will run at an insane pace due to all the Movement Speed buffs, effectively making you fly through Bounties.

If you want to optimize your runs, you can kill the first few monsters with Big Bad Voodoo active, summon some Zombie Dogs from the Boogie Man rune and then swap the rune to either Slam Dance or Ghost Trance. The dogs will stay permanently and keep your Fierce Loyalty active.

Setups
If you feel too squishy, you can replace Gogok of Swiftness with Boon of the Hoarder and Lakumba's Ornament with Goldwrap and run a version similar to the Torment 16 setup. This will leave you very vulnerable against bosses, which should preferably be completed by someone else. For more consistent toughness at the cost of mobility, you can replace Shukrani's Triumph with Sacred Harvester.

Mundunugu Solo Push

Concept
This is the setup described in the main sections of the guide. While the potential of this build is very high, you can expect to plug-in a lot more keys than most other builds before you get a playable rift to push very close to your GR limit, but once all the stars align, it will be smooth sailing.

Gameplay
The most common mistake newer players commit in this setup is attempting to kill monsters while simply holding down Spirit Barrage continuously. The playstyle requires you to pull monsters via Locust Swarm Pestilence and herd them via Piranhas Piranhado and afterwards place Phantasms on top of the pull.

You must use Spirit Walk in a well-timed fashion, while accumulating, and reset its cooldown immediately via Grave Injustice. Getting the above standing rotation and timings down properly is key in terms of survivability. Simply mindlessly spamming Spirit Barrage not deal enough damage and get you killed.

On the Rift Guardian, you can spam Spirit Barrage as much as you want, as the benefit of accumulating is too small to outweigh the possibility of the boss moving/teleporting out of the area. Just make sure to dodge dangerous attacks, keep up Locust Swarm and stay in range for Manitou. Don't be surprised when the boss "suddenly" explodes at some point - that's the accumulation of Manitou dealing potentially minutes worth of damage all in one hit once it's able to finish off the target.

Be aware that due to a bug Phantasms spawned while you are in Spirit Walk will not accumulate any damage until the effect ends, so avoid this as much as possible.

Setups
If you are feeling too squishy, change Confidence Ritual to a defensive option such as Swampland Attunement or Jungle Fortitude. If you feel comfortable, you can replace Blood Ritual with Rush of Essence to not run into any Mana issue ever.

At lower Paragon (below 2,000) you can swap Voo's Juicer with Sacred Harvester. This will result in a massive toughness boost and lower your damage potential by around 2 tiers. You will also have to replace a passive for Rush of Essence in order to sustain Mana.

For very high endgame pushes, you can also replace Endless Walk with Convention of Elements and Squirt's Necklace.

Speed Greater Rift Setup

Concept
This setup can be both run in solo as well as in groups. When in Solo GR speeds make sure to run the Manitou rune on Spirit Barrage. In groups speeds, you can also use that rune as long as the game is not lagging. Gameplay wise there is no difference. Speed GRs with this build are typically running slightly slower and slightly higher Tiers than most other builds due to the slow-paced nature of the build.

Gameplay
Keep up Soul Harvest and Big Bad Voodoo at all times, apply Locust Swarm to all enemies and don't worry too much about accumulating damage for too long. In solo runs or without supporters doing it for you, group enemies with Piranhado and spam Phantasms into the pull. You need to get a feel for how much damage you need to blow up elites depending on the pull size, timing is everything!

Setups
If you want to speed things up, Echoing Fury will grant 75% Attack Speed after killing only 5 enemies, giving your newly spawned Phantasms a beefy damage boost.

You can also replace Piranhado with Sacrifice Provoke the Pack and change to Big Bad Voodoo Boogie Man to continuously spawn Zombie Dogs, which you'll immediately explode and turn into 100% additional additive damage. This is usually the preferred choice in groups when you have additional defensive buffs and supporters grouping up enemies for you.

For even faster, lower Tiers you can go with Rechel's Ring of Larceny and Horrify Stalker instead of Convention of Elements and Piranhado.

4man Trash Killer

Concept
Mundunugu's Regalia is likely one of the best, if not the best, scalable group build in the game; the additional power potential is granted via extraordinary team coordination and execution. Extremely well executed Pixelpulls by the zBarb will create amazing density and your Pain Enhancer supplies you with an incredible amount of Attack Speed.

Playing the full setup described below is one of the most difficult things you can do in Diablo 3. For a much easier version of this build drop Summon Zombie Dogs, Sacrifice and Swampland Attunement for Big Bad Voodoo Ghost Trance, Haunt Poisoned Spirit and Creeping Death. The setup does comparable damage given that Haunt is applied to all targets (you will have to spam as much as possible during downtime) but is more likely to lag out on larger pulls.

Gameplay
The tricky part in this setup is the timing with Sacrifice Provoke the Pack and Summon Zombie Dogs. You want to preferably have 5 stacks of the damage buff before casting your three Spirit Barrage Phantasms that will detonate the pull. You can achieve this via clever scheduling of events to reset your cooldowns via Grave Injustice:

  1. Cast Summon Zombie Dogs.
  2. Wait for Summon Zombie Dogs to cool down while moving to a new position and let the supports set up a new pull.
  3. Cast Locust Swarm and start weakening the monsters with a few careful Phantasm casts. You don't want to kill anything just yet, you just want to get ready to spawn an Oculus Ring at the right moment later. Make sure to replace the Phantasms inside of the pull early enough by recasting them far away and don't kill all the small trash monsters or you will sabotage own DPS!
  4. As your Convention of Elements Physical cycle approaches its end, apply Locust Swarm again and place a Phantasm into the middle of the pull.
  5. Cast Sacrifice three times (granting 3 stacks). Cast Summon Zombie Dogs immediately afterwards. Cast Sacrifice twice (granting additional 2 stacks).
  6. Place three Spirit Barrage Phantasms, which snapshot your 5 stacks granting you +100% additive damage for the entire duration and detonate the Phantasm from step 4.
  7. At this point you should be close to finishing the Poison cycle and most likely see an Oculus Ring. Move into it with Spirit Walk and stand still as much as possible for Endless Walk to accumulate the most damage during the Cold cycle.
  8. After the end of the Cold cycle, recast a single Phantasm to blow up most of the pull. DON'T detonate the remaining two just yet - give your zBarb a second or two to pull in more enemies with Grond Stomp Wrenching Smash before you do so! This way you can expand the AoE-effect and clear more monsters in one go.
  9. Once the Phantasms explode, make sure you are in range with Grave Injustice to reset Summon Zombie Dogs. Immediately recast Summon Zombie Dogs.
  10. Either move to a new position and start from 2. or you immediately continue to DPS starting from 3. yet again.

Generically speaking you want to create an Oculus Ring before your main accumulation phase. You don't actually require to have it active for the detonation, as all ticks of every individual Phantasm are calculated and stored with all buffs/debuffs present as they accumulate.

Setups
The standard setup includes Frostburn and Zei's Stone of Vengeance and is supported by a zBarb and a zDH. Keep in mind that Zei's grants its first stage at 0 yards (not 10) and its last stage at 40 yards (not 50). It's safe to assume that you'll usually be able stay at 20 yards range for most targets, granting you stage 3. Additionally, there is a bug where Frostburn applies it's Cold bonus twice for Spirit Barrage Phantasm yielding 40% additional Cold damage.

If you want to add more toughness to the setup, you have the option to replace either Frostburn with Aquila Cuirass, Zei's Stone of Vengeance with Esoteric Alteration or the (typical) zDH with a zMonk (going by order of impact for both damage loss & toughness gain). Especially for groups starting out with the Witch Doctor or at low Paragon (2000 or less) one of these options can make sense. Having a very offensive setup is no use if you don't get to finish your rotations properly.

Echoing Nightmare Setup

Concept
For more information, check out our full Echoing Nightmare Guide and take a look at our Echoing Nightmare Build Tier List and our META post for the best builds and strategies! This build is good for this game mode. Typically we utilize a Greater Rift pushing build with a few tweaks.

Changes

  • Swap Bane of the Stricken for Zei's Stone of Vengeance since we are fighting hordes of enemies.
  • Convention of Elements and Squirt's Necklace replace Endless Walk.
  • We use Big Bad Voodoo Boogie Man together with Sacrifice Provoke the Pack for more damage.

Gameplay

  1. Click Speed Pylon instantly to boost your mobility and dodge Green Meteors.
  2. Around Wave 90, click Channeling Pylon and Power Pylon.
  3. After Wave 100, use Conduit Pylon.
  4. At Wave 122, stop attacking and run to the corner to let the timer run out.

In the early waves, run around and let Manitou do the work. When enemies grow tougher, pull them together and place Phantasm under them. Let them accumulate for a few seconds, then detonate them by recasting the skill. Make sure to keep up Locust Swarm Pestilence for Ring of Emptiness and use Sacrifice before you start a rotation for more damage. Try to use Spirit Walk in a well-timed fashion, while accumulating, and reset its cooldown immediately via Grave Injustice to stay alive.

Video Guide

Mechanics

In-Depth Explanation

Spirit Barrage Phantasm & Pets Mechanics

Spirit Barrage Phantasm

Spirit Barrage Manitou

Shukrani's Triumph

Locust Swarm

Piranhas Piranhado

Summary

  • Put together the core items and acquire the full Mundunugu's Regalia set.
  • Don't stand still and simply channel Spirit Barrage.
  • Timing your rotations is key and incredibly rewarding.
  • Use Spirit Walk when it's truly needed.
  • Wait for your group to correctly setup a dense pull for you to kill.
  • Enjoy this powerhouse of a Witch Doctor build!

Good Luck!

Credits

Written by sVr, wudijo & Chewingnom.
Updated by wudijo & Chewingnom.

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