Witch Doctor Pet Build

As I’ve mentioned before, my main character is a Wizard but I am trying out a Witch Doctor as well to broaden my knowledge of the class and methods of play. Knowing the ins and outs of all the classes will help in PvE and PvP (Whenever that arrives…) and having access to all of the classes is really more of a hobby than anything else. Now, back to the Pet Build.

The Witch Doctor Pet Build focuses exactly on what it says, pets. Many players quickly disregard pets as they move further into Hell difficulty especially when they tend to die quicker than the Skill to summon them cools down. Now this will always be a problem but there is a solution to working around that. The biggest problem however is the gear and the gold required to actually achieve it.

To prevent your pets from dying prematurely, your goal will be to reduce the damage they receive. To do that, it requires you have gear which complements pets such as high Armor, resistances and Intelligence. Therefore, the better your gear, the longer your pets survive and be sustained.

I’m not here to tell you that great gear’s going to get your pets to live longer. What I’ve discovered from discussions with other Witch Doctors and forum lurking is that there is another method to increasing pet survivability other than just having amazing gear. This method of gearing up is more often called a “Witch Doctor Pet CC Build” which allows your pets to “Crowd Control” enemies to reduce the damage they receive! And although you still need a separate set of gear to achieve this, the price to pay (in gold) is much more affordable.

The stats I’m talking about from items are things like “Chance to Stun on Hit” which can be found easily on Gloves and “Chance to Freeze on Hit” from Belts. Now I know this may seem a little weird but bear with me for a little. The Burning Dogs Skill Rune and Big Stinker Skill Rune for the Zombie Dogs and Gargantuan are primarily what you’re looking at here. Each of the ticks of damage from these Skill Runes evidently have a chance to Freeze or Stun so long as the Witch Doctor has the Gloves and Belt equipped. And it doesn’t end there. There are MANY more stat affixes on items which can be added to cause the Witch Doctor’s Pets to be moving Crowd Controlling machines and you should definitely give it a go.

This doesn’t even include the Witch Doctor’s ability to perform those Crowd Controlling abilities themselves. As we’ve already picked up the gear which all have a chance of performing an additional effect, my Witch Doctor specifically picks up Skills which have a high rate of attack such as Plague of Toads (Rain of Toads) along with Firebomb (Fire pit) for added damage and CC. And it works!

That’s it for today, good hunting!