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Build Guide

Basically the build is simple and here is the reason why this works

Jade 2 Piece (2.2 bonus)

Primary Stats: Int, Vit, % Haunt dmg, % life(or CDR for tiklandian)

Secondary Stats: Physical/Lightning resist

Allows haunt to become your primary damage dealer, the new jade 2 piece bonus does 10 seconds of your haunt's damage when u reapply haunt on a target. This damage can crit so for those who likes seeing big yellow numbers this is awesome. Attack speed is amazing for this build because the faster you can cast haunt the faster u can proc the new jade bonus, thats why I try to get as much attack speed from gems, gears and set bonus. And ofc stack haunt % dmg whereever you can, shoulder, chest, mojo

Haunting Girdle (2.2 belt)

Primary Stats: Int, vit, armor, % life

Secondary Stats: % freeze on hit > Physical/Lightning resist > Life after kill

This new belt lets your haunt cast 1 extra spirit so with the cold rune on haunt that makes for a total of 3 haunts being released, the poison rune for haunt is the most used option for other WD for the 20% dmg but in this build the cold rune will let you hit an extra target so you can have more aoe and the 20% dmg is also compensated for by the ability to run forstburn gloves for the cold dmg + the extra crowd control.

Quetzelcoatl/Tiklandian Visage

Primary Stats: Int, vit, Crit chance, socket

Secondary Stats: % fear on hit > crowd control reduction > Physical/Lightning resist

For higher GRs and ladder pushing, Tiki helm will let you lock down packs and I would say is pretty much ideal for the highest GRs as you cant really stack enough toughness to live without losing the damage required. For parties and lower GRs, a Quetzelcoatl will simply double your damage with haunt just as it does in a jade build.

Homunculus (2.2 version)

Primary Stats: High dmg range, int, Crit chance, % haunt dmg, % sacrifice dmg, Vit/CDR/% elite dmg

Secondary Stats: % stun/freeze/blind/immobilize on hit, life after kill

The new homunculus is quite frankly ridiculous, not only was it difficult to roll for good stats before, the summon dog is summoned every 2 seconds. Anyone who ran Tiki Sac builds before would understand why this thing is godly. But the current meta doesn't really allow for the sacrifice skill to be added to most high end builds. For those who didn't know, basically the mojo gives you one zombie dog every 2 seconds until you have 3 maximum dogs, the Provoke the Pack rune of sacrifice allows you to kill one of your zombie dogs to gain 20% more dmg for 5 seconds. each time you sacrifice the bonus dmg is stacked up to a total of 5 times for a total of 100% more dmg. Because you get a new dog every 2 seconds and you can refresh the dmg stacks, there is always gonna be 2 stacks up at all times for 40% dmg.

Focus + Restraint (2.2 version)

Primary Stats: Int, Crit dmg, Crit chance/attack speed

Secondary Stats: Life after kill = crowd control reduction = Physical/Lightning resist

This is the remade version of 2 terrible rings that made alot of new builds strong. Pretty much when you cast a generator you gain 50% dmg and when you cast spender you gain another 50%. So in this build we us corpse spider - medusa spider because its one of the few cold type generators worth using as it will help absorb electrified affixes and tank the RG for you and they proc your freeze really well. Absolutely necessary to prod the 50% dmg and save your butt in GRs. You could also run xephirian amulet to make yourself immune to lightening but then you lose out on the extra passive that hellfire gives which is pretty nice. But i can think of no other good options for a generator to use in place of the cold spiders.

Azurewrath/Starmetal/Sunkeeper

Primary Stats: % cold dmg, high weapon dmg, % dmg, int, socket (via ramaladni's gift)

Secondary Stats: % stun/blind/freeze/immobolize on hit > life after kill

1. Azurewrath - the best weapon for this build, the cold dmg + the fast attack speed + the chance to freeze just synergies with the rest of the build

2. Starmetal Kukri - For parties SMK is the best option to provide big bad voodoo - slam dance to whole party. You would simply drop hex + mass confusion for fetish army (cold rune) and big bad voodoo slamdance. If you wanted to run tiklandian to fearlock for your party, then drop the haunt belt for the belt of transcendence that spawns a fetish everytime you cast a mana spender (haunt) and you won't have to use fetish army.

3. Sunkeeper - if you are just starting and cant find those two above items, sun keeper is ok but will do overall less damage due to the slower attack speed.

Frostburn Gloves

Primary Stats: % Cold dmg, Int, Crit dmg, Crit chance

Secondary Stats: % Stun on hit > Physical/Lightning resist

nothing much to say here, the only glove that gives cold % dmg and it also provides a high chance to freeze in combination with the azurewrath everything will be pretty much frozen which would then proc the dmg reduction from the ancient parthan defenders. This combo of azure, frostburn and parthans makes this build amazing for the highest GRs where everything will wreck you. this will allow you to try to freeze any dangerous mobs that may me slightly out of range of your fear and maybe burst them down before they can destroy you (those who does 45+ using tiklandian knows how painful they are)

Ancient Parthan Defenders

Primary Stats: % Cold dmg, Int, Vit, Crit chance

Secondary Stats: Ranged reduction > Melee reduction > Physical/Lightning resist

As mentioned above, the 10-12% damage reduction you get from this will save you in higher GRs cause you won't be able to fear everything all the time and there will always be mobs throwing stuff at you and one shotting you.

Boots

Primary Stats: Int, Vit, armor, movement (or All resist)

Secondary Stats: % immobilize on hit > Physical/Lightning resist

Illusory boots - will significantly improve your ability to fear things when spirit walk is down, this is very important because if the pack manages to cast, you can try to walk out of things while still fearing mobs around you + wallers suck.

Ice Climbers - great for the cold boss and packs with frozen affixes.

Cains boots - you can run this if you dont have good frostburns so you can wear cains gloves with it to get the 8% attack speed.

Talrasha Chest

Primary Stats: Int, Vit, Attack speed, % haunt dmg, 3 sockets

Secondary Stats: ranged reduction > melee reduction > Physical/Lightning resist

fairly easy to obtain if you just gamble some shards on a Wizard, used for the extra attack speed, generally comes well rolled.

Amulet

Primary Stats: Cold % dmg, CD, CC, socket

Secondary Stats: ranged reduction > melee reduction > % blind on hit > Physical/Lightning resist

hellfire - extra passives: grave injustice = tribal rites > jungle fortiude > fierce loyalty. This just depends on what you prefer, nothing is that game changing for the build

xephirian or eye of etlich should be used if you dont have a good hellfire as they are both awesome and viable choices as well.

Playstyle

So now that you threw together the gear which is honestly probably easier to obtain than SMK pet builds (another reason to play this =p)

So you run into a group of mobs with your fear up, start spamming your sacrifice for crazy dmg boost, cast spiders for the 50% dmg buff(no need to spam, cast it every 5 seconds so the ring buff doesnt fall off), cast haunt to trigger another 50% dmg buff, then haunt haunt haunt all day long to proc that jade 2 piece burst while spamming sacrifice refresh the spiders every 5 seconds.

for electrified mobs i recommend casting a few extra spiders so you can use them to soak up the lightening, the same way that a pet WD's fetishes would.

for RGs you do the exact same thing and just keep distance, move around while haunting so you are not an easy target and hope that the freeze procs at awesome times. This build has slightly less single target dmg as pet builds so i recommend using the dps templar build that quin69 has posted on youtube.

Season 3 (in progress)

This build will also be interesting to see with the new ice blink gem in season 3 which lets you have 10% more Crit Chance against frozen enemies

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In summary, this build is unique, fun, and makes good use of all the new things for WD in 2.2, every piece of gears works so well with each other and is completely different from the usual WD builds which can get repetitive and boring at times.

I haven't made any gameplay videos yet since i just created this build today and it is in its early stages, I will be doing more tests and coming up with updates, changes and additional information as I play more with this build.

Feel free to leave any suggestions, ideas or w/e and if you would like to see it in action in game my btag is DeckardCain#1624

Enjoy and hopefully this was helpful and maybe a new build that you guys can enjoy playing!