Poisonous voodoo magic and terrifying companions are both signatures of the Witch Doctor. In this week's Play Your Way Thursday, Thibbledorf#1559 capitalizes on those traditions with a build that ensures the floor is not only slathered with acid, but spiders as well. Horrible, horrible spiders.

About the Build:

The core of Thibbledorf's "Venomous Horde" build is in summoning a variety of temporary allies and leveraging them to keep your squishy Witch Doctor (and his teammates) safe! While accomplishing this, it does its fair share of amplified damage by taking advantage of the powerful Legendary affix from The Grin Reaper.

It's already pretty terrifying to face a master of voodoo armed with creepy crawlers and various poisons. When you double or even triple it? Let the nightmares begin.

Spiders. Why'd it have to be spiders?

While the build truly shines with a couple of key items, they aren't completely necessary and this build is worth trying out even if you've only acquired a smattering of Legendaries. Be prepared to keep an active eye on cooldowns, though. There's a lot to micromanage with so many spiders, acid blobs, zombie walls, and pirhanados on the battlefield!

The Skills:

Some of the skills in the Venomous Horde build will be better utilized by the Mimics that spawn from The Grin Reaper. They're all strong choices regardless, whether they are providing high damage output or crowd control.

Active Skills:

• Plague of Toads (Addling Toads)
  • Primary Signature spell
  • Great Crowd Control
  • Provides high chance to spawn Mimics from The Grin Reaper
• Spirit Walk (Jaunt)
  • Ultimate defensive skill for most Witch Doctors
• Piranhas (Piranhado)
  • Applies an excellent bonus damage debuff, especially for groups
  • Superior crowd control
  • Helps gather up enemies for better area of effect damage distribution
• Acid Cloud (Lob Blob Bomb)
  • Main damage source from the player
  • Spammable with a small fire-and-forget component
  • Synergizes well with the gather effect from Piranhas (Piranhado)
• Wall of Zombies (Wrecking Crew)
  • Third crowd control ability to taunt enemies and keep them grouped up
  • Offers substantial damage once your Helltooth Harness set is completed
• Corpse Spiders (Spider Queen)
  • Excellent free-cost source of damage
  • Mimics from The Grin Reaper will conjure these relentlessly, creating an army of massive spiders (eww) at your beck and call

Passive Skills:

• Gruesome Feast
  • Provides more static damage to make up for a lack of burst
• Grave Injustice
  • Easy to fully utilize with a high crowd control build
  • Creates a symbiotic effect with the high cooldown abilities that allow you to group up enemies
• Fetish Sycophants
  • Great source of damage
  • Collision provided by the fetishes offer even more battlefield control
• Pierce the Veil
  • Straight forward boost to damage

Alternative Skills:

• Mass Confusion (Paranoia)
  • Replaces Corpse Spiders (Spider Queen)
  • Exchanges some thematic flavor in for more crowd control and damage

The Items:

There are certainly a few items you're going to want to prioritize in your search to make the most of this build. Try spending your Blood Shards on a helm and a solid weapon first before moving on to collecting the individual pieces of your Helltooth Harness set.

Helltoofguud's Helltooth set is, well, pretty good!

Required Items:

• The Grin Reaper
  • Massively increases the damage capabilities of this build
  • Makes abilities like Corpse Spiders (Spider Queen) really shine
• Helltooth Harness (6-Piece Bonus)
  • Changes Wall of Zombies from a simple crowd control to a substantial damage dealer
  • Ensures Wall of Zombies is much more consistently available, if not spammable
• Ring of Royal Grandeur
  • Necessary to acquire both the 6-Piece Helltooth Harness bonus while utilizing The Grin Reaper

Complementary Items:

• Thing of the Deep
  • Massive amount of Increased Pickup Radius provides consistent bonuses from Grave Injustice
• Rhen’ho Flayer
  • Improves the crowd control and damage reliability of Plague of Toads
  • Consistent hits from Plague of Toads increases the uptime of Fetish Sycophants

Recommended Legendary Gems:

• Gem of Efficacious Toxin will compliment your Poison skills nicely, applying a beefy damage over time to every enemy you engage.
• Enforcer benefits all pets, regardless of their temporary nature; this provides a boost to your numerous Spider Queens and Lob Blob Bombs from The Grin Reaper's Mimics, as well as your Fetish Sycophants.
• Pain Enhancer can be applied by your pets, so with great Critical Hit Chance comes great additional damage when using this gem.

Recommended Stats:

• There are a lot of cooldown-reliant skills in this build, so your primary focus will certainly want to be Cooldown Reduction. This will increase not only your damage, but your ability to maintain valuable crowd control.
• Poison Damage is a natural go-to with this skill selection. However, there's no room to fit in an Andariel’s Visage or Swampland Waders, so keep an eye out for this valuable stat on your Ring and Amulet slots.
• Bonus Gold and Health Pickup will increase the effectiveness of Grave Injustice and allow you to more consistently benefit from its buff, making this a nice Secondary property to hunt.

Recommended Difficulty and Game Mode:

At the time of submission, Thibbledorf was tackling Torment VI in both group and solo play in Normal mode. This build really sings in a group setting, however, and can make you the master of battlefield control in your party for both regular Nephalem Rifts and Greater Rifts.

Because of this excellent crowd control, this could be a Hardcore viable build. However, you’d definitely want to work Spirit Vessel in exchange for another passive.

Why We Like This Build:

There's a lot going on here, and the Venomous Horde build creates the kind of gameplay where there's always something to do. Juggling cooldowns and managing when your temporary allies are available can be a lot of fun, especially if micromanagement is your preferred play style.

The best thing about the spiders is their short duration. Did I mention I don't like spiders?

It also takes a less commonly used Set and makes the best of it by going all out on crowd control. Having an adept at keeping enemies at bay is welcome in any group, and if you don't mind playing a little supportively while still dealing out some respectable damage, this might just be a good change of pace for your Witch Doctor!

Tell Us What You Think!

What kind of voodoo do you do? Do you use an arsenal of temporary friends to dish out your punishment? Are you a master of crowd control? What would you do to improve on this build? Join the discussion in the comments below and let us know!

We'll be taking a break next week as we've got this convention coming up you may have heard about. Be sure to stay tuned to diablo3.com for information from the convention, or pick up the Virtual Ticket to tag along from home! In the meantime, don't forget to send in your builds and we'll see you again November 13^th when we embrace our inner Harmony with the Monk!