WD Inferno Guide

[phantom325]

( not my guide, came from Detailed Inferno Guide - Forums - Diablo III )
I know there are a ton of guides out there right now and everything has an opinion but I’ve read about a lot of people not enjoying the class or are struggling and I wanted to help out. Now I am in Inferno, I’m not saying that as a sense of entitlement but simply to explain that this build has been working for me very effectively even at that level. I’ve been pretty unfortunate with drops and my DPS is only at 8.3k but this spec/strat still works for me. If you are familiar with all of the abilities skip to the bottom about playstyle for some insight you may not otherwise have.

First of all your build needs to fit your playstyle and if you don’t identify your playstyle and find a viable build based around that you are not going to enjoy this game. I think there are multiple viable builds and you just have to find one that works for you. Up until inferno I used a really heavy support build based around cooldowns, vision quest, and spamming Spirit Barrage. The DPS wasn’t the highest but I could support my group with hex, mass confusion, grasp of the dead, big bad voodoo, and be able to do some decent damage way in the back safely out of harm’s way. When I got to inferno this didn’t work anymore and I got stomped for a bit until I found a build that worked.

I liked the playstyle of heavy cooldowns, high mana regen, and a spammable high DPS ability. After playing around with it I was able to start getting through inferno relatively easily and clear most champion packs with few or even no deaths.

Abilities Zombie Bears – Everyone pretty much knows how good this ability is. The damage is ridiculous as long as you can sustain the mana cost. The only drawback is you have to be kinda close to mobs to use it so positioning and timing is everything.

Grasp of the Dead – I use the 80% slow rune and I’ve tried substituting it out with a number of different other abilities such as Wall of Zombies but nothing seems to come close to as useful. The trick is kiting mobs in a way that the most of amount of them are forced to pass through it. Obviously some monsters this has little effectiveness against but even then slowing them down a hair can be the difference between life and death.

Hex – I honestly think this is an extremely underappreciated ability. I run it with heal but the increased damage can also be useful. Often if I am solo I run heal and if grouped I’ll switch to the 20% DPS. Nothing is more powerful then taking a mob completely out of the equation, even if just for a few seconds. It is active for 12 seconds with only a 15 second cooldown. Good timing can lead to very effective kiting and being able to have enough time to burst a pack of mobs down.

Spirit Walk – Whether you prefer the extra second of spirit walk, the mana regen, or the heal rune, just about any variation of this ability will work for you. I prefer the extra second but I think it just boils down to playstyle. This is pretty much the entire reason this build works and allows you to clear inferno so easily. It removes stuns, dots, snares, and gives you practical invulnerability for a few seconds where you can spam your bears with little to no risk. You want to use this ability often and you can waste it on non champion packs to keep Vision Quest active but during champion packs you want to use it very often but not waste it. The trick is to use it to negate a killing blow giving you extra time to DPS and “saving” your Spirit Vessel proc for as long as possible. Don’t get me wrong, you’re GOING to have Spirit Vessel proc all the time and it is part of the strategy but delaying it from going off is the key.

Fetish Army – This ability doesn’t seem all that great, however, the decent amount of DPS they provide helps but the biggest reason I use them is they draw attacks away from you. In all honesty I am not entirely sure how their health works but I know they soak up quite a few hits before “dying” and most of the time last for the entire 20 second duration. Mob behavior in Inferno is much more intelligent and they will sometimes ignore them and go for you. But more often than not these little guys soak up a few hits before mobs decide you are the bigger threat. I usually pop them on cooldown to maintain vision quest but if possible I’ll try to time it to be back up right before a champion pack.

Big Bad Voodoo – I use the mana regen rune so I can spam Zombie Bears and not run out of mana. I use this ability almost exclusively on champion packs and it is a big reason as to why you are able to burst packs down easily and quickly.

Now if you want you COULD substitute Fetish Army for Soul Harvest, it is a great ability and mana people really like it but I am just personally not a fan. I die more often trying to get the stacks than I do benefitting from the buff. Every once in a while I switch to it to try and teach myself how to make it really useful for me but the hits Fetish Army soak up seem to be much more helpful to me than a DPS buff. If I run into the problem of not having enough burst to get the packs down I may reevaluate this but for now in the middle of Act II Fetish Army is more effective for me. That doesn’t mean you can’t make use of it but it just doesn’t work for my style.

Passives Spirit Vessel – A hit that will kill you gives you near invulnerability for 3 seconds and heals you to 10%. This gives you more time to DPS freely. Probably one of the best passives in the game. 2 minutes is not a long cooldown and that cooldown resets automatically if you die.

Vision Quest – If you don’t have this Zombie Bears will OOM you in a couple seconds and you won’t be able to do anything. The 4 spells I usually keep on cooldown are Hex, Grasp of the Dead, Fetish Army, and Spirit Walk.

Jungle Fortitude – 20% DR is amazing in inferno. I’m sure with better gear you could substitute this out for something else but right now it is extremely helpful in keeping me alive. Grant it you can’t take many hits regardless in Inferno but being able to survive two hits instead of just one can make all the difference.

How to play the build This build isn’t all that difficult to execute but if you don’t time things properly it may not work out for you. The main drawback is you do not have a cheap “auto attack” ability so breaking objects can be annoying but creativity will help you there. Often I will just use Grasp of the Dead to break up a group of objects when needed. The trick to this build is to get groups into clusters and throw up Grasp of the Dead, Hex, Fetishes, and use Spirit Walk to run into the appropriate range and Spam Bears. If done correctly most packs will be dead in a couple seconds and you are at no risk of dying. Ranged mobs were an issue at first but kiting them into a group and using Spirit Walk to run into their faces and blowing them up with bears solved that problem.

Champion packs are just like any other group of mobs, you want to try and kite them into a decent group, pop all of your cooldowns and unload with bears. When you are at 50% life you pop Spirit Walk (try not to blow it right off the bat as you want as much free DPS time as possible, you want to use it to avoid an otherwise killing blow). You should still be unloading bears while in Spirit Walk and don’t worry about trying to escape. The mobs will deal you a killing blow and force you to enter Spirit Walk again and you will continue to DPS. Now if the pack looks like it isn’t going to die before Spirit Walk breaks you can try to kite until Spirit Walk is up again using Hex and Grasp of the Dead. A well timed potion can also assist you in your ability to get away alive. Most packs will die in a round of two of this but sometimes you may encounter a particularly difficult champion combination.

Now I have yet to run into a pack of mobs I wasn’t able to kill, this doesn’t mean I haven’t run into a difficult pack yet as I’ve spent 10+ deaths on a couple of them but it is all in your execution and how you approach them. You don’t have to kill every pack, skip some if you choose to not want to spend the time on a more challenging one. If you are someone like me who simply has to kill everything a rather cheese tactic is to run the pack to a checkpoint and die there. If you have already died a few times and your death timer is rather high, run around and do something else until that timer is back to a couple seconds. Now with that pack at a checkpoint go back in, do the strategy above, die, quickly rez, rinse and repeat. This should work with even the most brutal of packs. Like I said, I have yet to run into a pack where I didn’t find a way to kill it. Some purists out there may not like this but Inferno is a very punishing difficulty and until you have much better gear you may have to resort to these tactics just to progress.

Strategies for Specific Abilities Obviously I can’t make a guide for every single possible combination. But I can list the particularly challenging ones for a witch doctor and you can apply specific tips for those abilities against whatever combo you happen to come up against. I’m going to try and list the ones I have more difficulty with first and go down from there. I won’t list every ability and may add more to this depending on how well this post is received.

Mortar – I absolutely hated this ability for a long time. I loved to kite mobs and these guys are darn near impossible to do it with. They are actually part of the reason I developed my strat to begin with. If possible get in their face, use your combo, and burst them down. Sometimes depending on the comp it may be necessary to kite. It is possible and just takes a lot of practice and timing. If you have played a heavy skill shot champion in league of legends this will be easier for you to pick up on. It is all about being able to bait your enemy into launching the mortar where you want it to go and dodging accordingly.

Waller – These guys can be brutal because bears don’t go through the walls. The only real solution is to try and get in their face and burst them down. Sometimes you can kite them in enclosed spaces and use their own walls against them. Again this is done with practice and timing.

Shielding – Another huge pain to deal with because they can make you completely waste your cooldowns. Spirit Walk…on man my free DPS was wasted on a shield. Kite them, bait em into shielding, and when it falls off use your combo. Rinse and repeat if needed.

Arcane Enchanted – The strategy is pretty much the same but you try and time your Spirit Walk a bit differently. Since kiting isn’t always an option you may be face with a situation where you have to take a beam hit, if possible use Spirit Walk for when those beams are going to hit you. Obviously you may have to use it beforehand so don’t die trying to save your abilities. Do what you gotta do but when if at all possible save it for those beams.

Frozen – Now this isn’t particularly hard to dodge but it is a very good example of using Spirit Walk optimally. Most people try to simple dodge the frozen orbs but if you are confident in being able to get a pack down you can stay in for as long as possible dishing out DPS and use Spirit Walk at the last second to negate the damage and stun done from the orb. Or if you happen to get caught and not die you can use it to break the stun.

Closing Well I think I’ve written a large enough wall of text for today. Let me know what you guys think and if you have any requests, suggestions or comments please let me know.

[gacki]

very good guide, i played almost the same build long time
but the problem with this build is the better gear u get... i have much ias (2,7 attacks/s) and with that high speed u will run out of mana in group games before the mobs are dead
i tried to compensate with mana reg gear so that the 300%reg is much much more but it also doesnt work... so now in act4 i switched to a different style...

[IvresseMB]

If you like hex because it takes one mob completely out of the equation, you should try out Mass Confusion (rune of Mass Hysteria, or the one that lowers the CD). It really gives quite a bit of additional time to spam bears (maybe instead of Grasp of the Dead, which is sometimes absolutely useless, and sometimes a lifesaver).
Also, where are you in Inferno ? That exact build was the one I used all through A1, but in A2 I'm pretty much stuck (it is also a matter of stuff, as I haven't had any luck and spent all my gold on unlocking Hell Whimsyshire).

[gacki]

this is me killin a4 iskatu btw

[nejevoli]

nice do you mind if u post your build gacki?

[gacki]

no problem

Witch Doctor - Game Guide - Diablo III

e: this build is especially for iskatu, for normal solo u can play like op
but as i said above in group games this build isnt that good