Mundunugu Spirit Barrage 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 Mundunugu's Regalia 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 Mundunugu's Regalia set
2. Gazing Demise
3. Goldwrap and Krelm's Buff Belt
4. Nemesis Bracers, Warzechian Armguards and Lakumba's Ornament
5. Aquila Cuirass
6. Frostburn
7. Ring of Emptiness, Convention of Elements, Rechel's Ring of Larceny and The Compass Rose

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

1. Ceremonial Knives to get The Barber and Voo's Juicer
2. Swords to get In-Geom
3. Maces to get Echoing Fury
4. Amulets to get Squirt's Necklace, The Flavor of Time and The Traveler's Pledge
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
• Act 2: Gloves of Worship
• Act 3: Avarice Band
• Act 4: Can drop any bounty item from any act
• Bounty Turn In: Recipes for Captain Crimson's Trimmings, Cain's Destiny and Sage's Journey

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
• Gazing Demise
• Convention of Elements

• Bane of the Trapped is the best DPS gem and applies by default in this build, since Spirit Barrage applies its slow before the damage instance.
• The second gem will be Gogok of Swiftness (if you want a good mix of offense and defense) or Pain Enhancer (full offense especially in high-end pushing and group play).
• Other choices are Bane of the Stricken for solo pushing, Boon of the Hoarder for Torment farming and Zei's Stone of Vengeance as an extra DPS option in group Greater Rifts. Esoteric Alteration can be used for extra damage reduction when you are feeling squishy or if you are playing on hardcore. Molten Wildebeest's Gizzard is a great choice to protect your Squirt's Necklace either for speedfarming or when pushing in groups.

• Spirit Barrage Manitou is our main skill. Phantasm is given for free by Gazing Demise and will deal the bulk of the damage.
• Locust Swarm Pestilence to enable the Ring of Emptiness effect.
• Spirit Walk Jaunt or Severance for movement, survival and to activate the Mundunugu's Regalia (4) Bonus.
• Big Bad Voodoo Ghost Trance will keep you alive and provide a small damage boost.
• Soul Harvest Languish for massive damage and damage reduction buffs with Sacred Harvester and Lakumba's Ornament.
• The final slot is open and can be filled with different options. Typically Piranhas Piranhado is used to apply debuffs and pull enemies together, which synergizes well with the overall playstyle. In groups, it's possible to use Sacrifice Provoke the Pack as another additive damage buff. Zombie Dogs can be spawned by changing to Big Bad Voodoo Boogie Man or equipping Summon Zombie Dogs.

• Rush of Essence provides us with infinite resources.
• Grave Injustice reduces our cooldowns when you kill enemies, allowing a very high uptime of Spirit Walk and Big Bad Voodoo.
• Defensive choices are Swampland Attunement (very strong in high density, but leaves you vulnerable to Lightning and Arcane), Bad Medicine (could be used in groups to also help out teammates), Spirit Vessel (to help prevent deaths in tough situations).
• Other offensive and utility options include Confidence Ritual (main DPS passive), Gruesome Feast (best passive in the game).
• Finally, Creeping Death can be used to change the setup slightly. It allows you to use the Cloud of Insects on Locust Swarm for damage reduction and Pain Enhancer stacks (as any Physical DoT counts as Bleed) or apply a 20% multiplicative damage buff with Haunt Poisoned Spirit or infinite Life Regen through Haunt Consuming Spirit. Just keep in mind that the DoTs will disappear when you move too far away (around 1.5 screens) and will have to be reapplied. In large pulls, it will take a while even with multiple casts of Locust Swarm.
• Avoid Pierce the Veil when using Captain Crimson's Trimmings as the extra resource costs will increase your damage taken.

¹ Add a bit of Vitality if you feel too squishy (a total of 800,000 Life is recommended).
² Only consider if you play Aquila Cuirass and don't have enough Resource Cost Reduction.
³ Avoid any source of Area Damage as this build doesn't scale with it and it can lag the game.

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

• Spirit Barrage has to be used with care and not always spammed. Doing so will usually actively reduce your overall DPS.
• Activate Big Bad Voodoo when it's ready and you are engaging in a difficult fight. Usually you should be able to keep it up almost all the time when getting enough kills with Grave Injustice.
• Use Spirit Walk to move through enemies that are in the way, for defense, to dodge affixes and projectiles or similar. Don't waste the cooldown when you are not in danger.
• When making a pull, engage enemies by walking or with Locust Swarm, then group them up using Piranhas Piranhado. Make sure that Locust is applied to everything for the Ring of Emptiness effect.
• Put your 3x Phantasm on top of each other where you intend to pull enemies together.
• Stand still as much as possible to increase the offensive damage bonus from Endless Walk. Time your Spirit Walk with the incoming damage and your Phantasm explosions to reset the cooldown immediately (Grave Injustice won't work if the skill is still active).
• Pull/kite more enemies together as your initial Phantasms are ticking on the pull. Try to spawn an Oculus Ring by killing exactly one target (or as few as possible) by recasting Spirit Barrage on top of the stack of enemies until you see one.
• Run into the Oculus circle and wait there for as long as possible or until you feel like you have enough accumulated damage to finish everything off already. After 10 seconds, the Phantasm will detonate automatically, otherwise re-cast the skill 3 times.
• In longer fights: re-apply Locust Swarm regularly (at least once every 6-8 sec).
• Maximize your temporary damage buffs (Oculus Ring, The Traveler's Pledge, maybe Convention of Elements) during the accumulation phase. It's irrelevant if you have them during the detonation, which will count all individual ticks with their individually active buffs together.
• In single target situations: Position yourself close enough to stay in range for Manitou as it will deal the bulk of the DPS here.

Witch Doctor is typically not the best class to play in hardcore as you have no immunity to Crowd Control and only limited defensive utility skills with long Cooldowns. Nevertheless, the build is overall fairly tanky and should have no big issues if you are mindful about Elite affixes. Don't forget to use the Spirit Vessel passive at all times!

Check out our dedicated Hardcore Survival Guide to learn more about how to succeed in this game mode!

As incentivized in the introduction of this guide, the interactions and mechanics going on in Spirit Barrage builds are "a bit" more complicated than the average build. In order to optimize our Witch Doctor gameplay as much as possible, we must understand everything about it! Earlier in this guide, we talked about 2 different playstyles:

• Channeling Playstyle, which means holding down Spirit Barrage, continuously refreshing Phantasms and detonating the oldest one.
• Delayed Playstyle, which means letting Phantasms accumulate some damage before detonating them.

While the channeling playstyle feels like a natural choice, it needs to be avoided as much as possible due to Phantasm mechanics. The idea is that you can have up to 3 Phantasms alive at once, and if you keep casting Spirit Barrage, the oldest one will detonate for the damage accumulated by The Barber. However, Phantasm first accumulation tick happens on the first frame it is cast and then every 30 frames, regardless of your Attack Speed.

This means that depending on your Spirit Barrage Attack Speed Breakpoint, simply holding down and channeling Spirit Barrage will every now and then refresh a Phantasm only a few frames before or even on the exact frame it should have accumulated damage, losing frames towards a tick and significantly reducing your overall damage output.
The best case scenario is to refresh a Phantasm right after an accumulation tick.

This explains why you want to avoid channeling for long periods of time and why there are specific Spirit Barrage Breakpoints you absolutely want to avoid as they are "eating" Phantasm ticks extremely often, the most relevant being the 20 FPA and the 30 FPA Breakpoints. These considerations have been unraveled in this old reddit post.

Another reason to avoid the channeling playstyle at all costs is that it can effectively reduce your damage burst even more compared to a delayed detonation playstyle. Let's say you have 3 Phantasms accumulating damage on a pack of monsters.

If you detonate one of them, it would be enough to kill half of the pull; however, killing half the pull with one Phantasm would also mean your remaining Phantasms now accumulate damage on half the targets, making it more difficult to kill tougher enemies like Elite Packs. This is why you want to accumulate for as long as you can, and need to be very thoughtful about when to detonate. Monster density is by a long shot your biggest source of damage in this build.

The takeaway is to simply never channel Spirit Barrage, except on single target fights like Rift Guardians with a 21-23 FPA Breakpoint. Manitou does not require us to channel at all times and is not affected by Attack Speed in any way; holding down Spirit Barrage will simply constantly refresh its 20 second duration and Phantasms. Manitou will passively accumulate damage and stack Bane of the Stricken for us, we just need to make sure all 3 Phantasms are positioned on the Rift Guardian hitbox at all times if we don't have a proper Attack Speed Breakpoint to channel.

Another important reason to not mindlessly channel Spirit Barrage is any Phantasm spawned during Spirit Walk will not accumulate damage until Spirit Walk is over! Never touch Spirit Barrage while under the effects of Spirit Walk.

A relative damage output comparison of the possible playstyles can be seen here:

• Spectres from Phantasm are treated as pets and obey to very specific rules, often acting like a pet and sometimes not, which leads to several unique interactions.
• Like other pets, Attack Speed is a separate damage multiplier for Phantasms.
• Similarly, Spirit Barrage damage affix on your equipment is counted as a separate damage multiplier for Phantasm. This reason alone makes Voo's Juicer a solid item choice due to its fifth affix that grants 45-60% Spirit Barrage damage.
• Surprisingly, Ring of Emptiness, an item specifically designed to work with non-pet abilities only, does buff Spirit Barrage Phantasm damage.
• Mask of Jeram and Enforcer do not increase Spirit Barrage Phantasm damage anymore since the Season 21 launched alongside the patch 2.6.9.
• Frostburn's legendary affix granting "Cold skills deal 15-20% increased damage" double dips on Phantasm damage, for a total of 40% additional Cold damage.

• You can have 3 Phantasms at a time.
• They last for 5 seconds (10 seconds with Gazing Demise), ticking once every 0.5 seconds (30 frames).
• With The Barber equipped, they will deal no damage while on the ground. Instead, they will accumulate that damage (as in: add up / remember what they would have done) and then release it in the final explosion at the end of the duration (with the extra damage multiplier).
• Casting Spirit Barrage while you have 3 Phantasms active will detonate the oldest one (with its accumulated damage).
• Each tick is scaled by Attack Speed (sheet APS being a separate damage multiplier), making Pain Enhancer your strongest DPS gem by far in high density situations.
• The Attack Speed multiplier snapshots for each Phantasm individually upon cast. Moving out of the pull and therefore losing Pain Enhancer stacks will not reduce the Attack Speed multiplier of already placed Phantasms.
• Intelligence is snapshot by each Phantasm upon cast, including Soul Harvest and Gruesome Feast bonuses.
• All damage buffs are dynamically calculated for each tick during the accumulation phase with the exception of additive buffs like Sacrifice Provoke the Pack or Big Bad Voodoo Slam Dance, which are snapshot upon Phantasm cast. This means that you accumulate (wait) during DPS buffs like Oculus Ring or Convention of Elements and detonate afterwards. You won't need to have those buffs when the Phantasms explode.
• The explosions from The Barber cannot proc Area Damage as they have proc coefficient of 0, hence why it's not taken as a stat and actively removed from Paragons to reduce lags.

• Casting Spirit Barrage once will activate Manitou, an eerie ghost sentry hovering above your head.
• Manitou lasts 20 seconds and shoots 2 projectiles per second (for up to 40).
• With Gazing Demise, Manitou's Attack Rate is improved by 450%, going from 2 projectiles per second to around 11 projectiles.
• Manitou's Attack Rate is fixed, it does not have Attack Speed Breakpoints, hence adding more Attack Speed does not improve damage any further.
• In conjunction with Voo's Juicer, the numerous projectiles from Manitou are effectively triggering the effects of The Spirit is Willing and Phlebotomize runes.
• Not accumulating for 1.5 second will release the explosion, which means running out of range as you can't stop Manitou Attacks otherwise... or dying but the explosion lacks most damage multipliers in this case.
• Manitou will immediately explode as soon as enough damage has been accumulated to finish off the target, so no time can be lost by waiting too long. You cannot overkill a target (accumulate for too long).
• When accumulating for long periods of time on the same target (especially Rift Guardians), you won't see any damage done to the enemy until The Barber explosion is released.
• If there is more than one nearby enemy, Manitou will randomly switch between targets within 40 yards and create tiny The Barber explosions all the time. In high group Greater Rifts, you should avoid using this rune to reduce lag since all of your damage will come from Phantasm.

• 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 to your advantage on some Rift Guardians which need a target to perform some abilities (Bloodmaw's Jump for instance).

• When applied, Locust Swarm jumps to another nearby enemy once every second. With Creeping Death, this effect stays permanently as long as you are in range. It fades when you move ~1.5 screens away.
• The Cloud of Insects rune can be used to apply bleed to enemies for Pain Enhancer, as any Physical DoT effect provides the extra Attack Speed effect.

• This ability is one of the few ways in the game to pixelpull enemies.
• If used on top of enemies, it will pull them close together but 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.