Zuni Carnevil Poison Dart Witch Doctor BiS Gear, Gems, and Paragon Points (2024)

The build takes advantage of the full Zunimassa set bonuses, taking fiveof the seven available pieces and cubing a Ring of Royal Grandeur toreduce the number of items for set bonus completion by one. This opens up thehelm and leg slots for the unique bonuses of Carnevil and the damagemultiplication of the Depth Diggers pants. Rolls-wise, this petplaystyle (see this build's skills page formore information) makes good use of skill bonuses across gear. Sought after onthe chest and shoulders, Fetish Army % bonus accompanies toughness stats onthe Zunimassa's Marrow and Area Damage on your shoulder of choice.Fetish Army % is also a guaranteed roll on the Zunimassa's String of Skulls, where it is best accompanied by an AreaDamage roll. Poison Dart % can be rolled on belt and pants, and being a directboost to your primary damage dealer it is considered an optimal stat on bothitems. The ideal Zunimassa's Pox will include both Crit Stats, AttackSpeed and an open Socket. While this guide will not delve into the specificsof breakpoint chasing, Attack Speed is an important stat for Poison Dartdamage, and you can aim for the 29 frame breakpoint by reaching over 2.00attacks per second in your sheet, easily achieved with maximized 7% IAS rollson your weapon, gloves, belt and two rings.

The ability to store the powers of Ring of Royal Grandeur in theKanai's Cube opens a powerful offensive combo in the jewelry: the Endless Walkset, The Compass Rose and The Traveler's Pledge. This 2.4 reworkadds a unique mechanic that slowly increases your damage by up to a 100% ifyou remain stationary, and drains it away and increases your damage reductionwhile moving. This dynamic fits the Zuni playstyle, as you alternatestationary Poison Dart shooting with leading your troops to the nextbig fight. As mentioned above, Attack Speed, Crit Chance, Crit Damage and anopen Socket is desired on The Compass Rose, while the two Crit stats,Poison elemental damage and an open Socket are best for The Traveler's Pledge.

Depth Diggers increases the damage of all primary attacks by up to100%, making it a natural inclusion in this Poison Dart-centric build. Thedesired stats are Intelligence, Vitality or Armor, 2 Sockets and Poison Dart%.

The most desirable belt for a Carnevil Witch Doctor is the glass cannonchampion, The Witching Hour. Naturally sporting the unusual combinationof Attack Speed and Crit Damage, the best-in-slot rolls would also include aPoison Dart % roll. Another viable, but noticeably weaker option for GRs isthe Belt of Transcendence, allowing you to free up the Fetish Sycophants passive slot for another of your choosing.

Lakumba's Ornament will reduce incoming damage by 60% per Soul Harvest as baseline (with some variance — aim for thelowest, 1 harvested enemy requirement roll), plus additional 2% damagereduction for each stack.

With no set piece to occupy your shoulder slot, you are free to take anywell-rolled legendary item for the build. A popular option when there is nomandatory piece are the Pauldrons of the Skeleton King, which come fromAct I bounty caches. This legendary shoulder offers a proc-based cheat death;albeit unreliable, it is still better than no bonus at all. Still, aim for theproper gear rolls outlined below first, and worry about a legendary itemlater.

While it is the namesake of the build, the Carnevil voodoo mask isonly sought after because of its unique property that enables the 5 closestFetish summons to shoot Poison Darts along with you. The mask sportsthe standard four primary stats and is interchangeable with a Mask of Jeram — so pick your better rolled helm and store thepowers of the other in Kanai's Cube. Still, a good Carnevil is mucheasier to obtain as it has no range to roll on the unique property (unlike Mask of Jeram), so Carnevil comes as the defaultrecommendation.

Last but not least, the namesake of the build — The Dagger of Darts — is a mandatory inclusion in your gearsetup.

To help you with farming the gear you need for your builds, we have two veryuseful guides that you can access by clicking the links below: a Salvage Guide tohelp you quickly check whether or not you can safely salvage a piece of gear anda Legendary Farming Guide to help you efficiently farm legendaries and set items.

The former Season 28 theme, the Altar of Rites, has been revised andre-added to Diablo 3 as a permanent character progression mechanic. — Forvirtually all builds and players of all skill levels — from casual toadvanced — we recommend progressing through the Altar tree using the pathoutlined below. The suggested path is geared towards maximum quality of lifefirst, then amplifying damage, and then mopping up the tree with defensive andedge case utility nodes.

Note that while they require reaching them with a Seal, Legendary PotionPowers are not part of the Seal cost system; Potions unlock with a separateresource called Primordial Ashes, obtained from salvaging Legendary or Setitems of Primal (red bordered) quality. Upgrade them as soon as possible, andin the order shown below (courtesy of Caleko's Altar of Rites planner).

You can read more on the Altar of Rites, Seals and Legendary Potion Powersin our dedicated Altar of Rites Mechanics guide.

In the Core section, max out Movement Speed to the 25% cap. Normally thisis done by dumping the first 50 Core Paragon points into Movement Speed, butif your boots have an imperfect roll with Movement Speed as a stat that youcannot replace, adjust the necessary point investment accordingly by simplysubtracting your roll from the 25% max. After that, dump as much as youcomfortably can into Intelligence, but feel free to invest into Vitality ifyou feel yourself lacking in toughness. Adding to Maximum Mana should not benecessary.

In the Offense section, max out Attack Speed, Crit Damage, Crit Chance andCooldown Reduction, in that order. In Defense, prioritize Armor, then Life %,then All Resistance, and finish off with Life Regeneration. In Utility, buildup Area Damage and Globe Radius first, then finish off with Life on Hit andResource Cost Reduction.

Simplicity's Strength is one of the best DPS gems you can take forthe build, as it was changed into a separate damage multiplication source toprimary skills in Patch 2.4.1. Affecting both yours and your Fetish attacks,and upgrading with a steady pace of half a percent per gem level, it quicklybecomes a priority and a fixture in your gem choices. Its buffed healingsecondary effect is just icing on the cake.

Enforcer is a pet-oriented gem that both increases Fetishdamage and lessens the damage the summons take. Note that the damage bonusesof this gem have been changed from additive to multiplicative in Patch 2.4.1,reinforcing it as a pet build staple.

You have some wiggle room in your final gem slot. For the absolute highesttiers of Greater Rift Progression,you will have to use Bane of the Stricken for its scaling damage bonus,in order to get you through the GR Guardian fight. For the vast majority ofprogression however, and even in some endgame Rift layouts and monstercompositions, Bane of the Trapped will serve you better with its overalldamage multiplication on targets affected by crowd control. The gem procsitself with its level 25 property in close range, and is otherwise triggeredby your Piranhado, making it a natural fit for Greater Rifting.

When it comes to gear gems, you will start out progression by slotting thehighest available level of Topazes in the chest and pants sockets. Ideally,these will all be Flawless Royal Topazes as soon as possible. As yougrow in Paragon (bulking up Intelligence in the Core section) and aim forhigher tier and more dangerous GRs, you will transition those gems into thedefensive Flawless Royal Ruby, scaling the lacking Armor of anIntelligence-based character (Intelligence scales Resistances). There is nospecific breakpoint where you do that; the rule of thumb is to make the changeas soon as you feel the lack of toughness impede your progress. Since this isa moderately cooldown-dependent build, slot a Flawless Royal Diamond inyour helm. In your weapon, use a Flawless Royal Emerald for the CritDamage boost.

For more information about gems, please refer to our guide on gems.

The power of Echoing Fury in your weapon Cube slot is highlysynergistic with the Carnevil Witch Doctor, as it provides a scaling AttackSpeed and Movement Speed bonuses, both of which are vital to this IAS-centric,mobility-dependent build.

The second most desirable helm for this pet centric build, Mask of Jeram only steps down to Carnevil due to the set andweapon synergy. The armor slot is interchangeable between the two, with Mask of Jeram being the usual cube occupant due to its variable uniquebonus.

The final item that binds the puzzle of sets and masks together is the Ring of Royal Grandeur. The ability to run with full set bonuses, acomplementary helm and strong offensive jewelry, dodging the undesirableguaranteed stats on the Grandeur by cubing its power, is a tremendous boost tothe build.

The Kanai's Cube can be used for much more than simply extracting Legendary powers from items. Pleaserefer to our Kanai's Cube guide for more information.

The seasonal theme for Season 31 will be completely flexible slots forKanai's Cube, which means you can use anypiece of gear in any slot of the Cube.

This is one of the builds where we don't recommend making any changes, sincethe options presented in the default build already make up the strongestKanai's Cube composition possible for the setup.

Both the Scoundrel and the Enchantress are viable followers for GRprogression with this build. Scoundrel can be used for hispowerful crit buff, allowing you brief windows of extra damage output.Enchantress offers an attack speed buff that can be useful whenreaching for the attack speed breakpoints outlined above.

For more information regarding followers, we advise you to read our FollowerGuide, which contains detailed advice for choosing the skills and the gear ofyour follower.

Your recommended potion is Bottomless Potion of the Tower, whoseArmor-increasing properties complement the naturally high All Resistances statof Witch Doctors (due to Intelligence scaling Resistances) for optimalsurvivability.