Witch Doctors are a queer breed of mages who have forsaken the rational and disciplined study of the supernatural arts for a more primal approach to sorcery. While most Witch Doctors a commoner of Tamriel will ever meet pursue their wayward path as benevolent soothsayers and curse-breakers, a select few have grown disgruntled by the civilized world and now call upon their ancient deities and long-forgotten ancestors for darker purposes.
As unpredictable as they are cruel and malevolent, these outcasts will often be seen dancing amidst carnage and bloodshed one moment, casting hexes, raising zombies, and poisoning any who get too close, only to vanish into thin air and continue their assault through the proxy of vengeful spirits mere seconds later. Indeed, aside from their insane rituals and dark bond to the spirit world, there is about as much consistency amongst Witch Doctors as there is rhyme or reason to their incoherent motives and maddening approach to magic. What can be said with certainty however is that to meet a Witch Doctor is to cross paths insanity incarnate – one never knows what to expect or quite when to expect it but, by the nine, it will not be benevolent.
- Soothsayers of Tamriel, Author Unknown
Description
At heart the Witch Doctor is a master conjurer, illusionist and healer, supported by considerable talent in alchemy and enchanting. That said however, this build intends to break conventional approach to combat in Skyrim and rely on unusual – not necessarily impractical but definitely unusual – mechanics to achieve what other builds would with a destruction spell, sword or bow.
In other words, rather than cast fireballs, you summon hell hounds. Rather than fight the enemy toe to toe, you run around poisoning, fearing and enraging people. Unless you want to fight toe to toe or cast fireballs, in which case you can do that too – to an extent. The general gist with this build is to avoid the monotony of doing the same thing every fight. So you could be sneaking one moment only to see an opportunity and go running into the fray the next and be chased away by an unexpected add and go scarpering in a frantic attempt to heal yourself, and so on. You can sneak. You can fight head to head. You will often run around trying not to die. You can summon spirits. You can raise the dead. You can solo. You can play with a follower. Hell, you can do pretty much anything you want within reason. The idea is to have fun trying to find new ways to kill enemies using a basic set of tools you probably don't use too often with other characters.
The only crux is this: due to the build's makeup, difficulties above expert until level 40 or so will be an exercise in frustration. Also levels one to about thirty will feel slow since you'll be lacking all the cool spells and perks. And don't bother with the main quest line either. Dragons are pretty much impossible to kill so no dragon shouts for this build. Not that that should be a problem – you'll have more than enough fun toys to play with.
Race
There's no set race for this build and no solid lore to support any particular choice. I would recommend Redguard due to the dark skin and poison resistance fitting the Witch Doctor cliche. In addition, they start with a high one-handed skill level and adrenaline rush, so early game will be a bit easier.
Stats
Before 400 Magicka: 2 / 1 / 0
After 400 Magicka: 0 / 1 / 0
the goal at level 50 is: 400 / 300 / 100
Standing Stones
Lover Stone: early leveling; the usual deal.
Lord Stone: my personal favorite throughout, providing much-needed armor and magic protection to a very squishy character.
Ritual Stone: not terribly useful early on since you'll be busy raising the dead into zombies for conjuration experience but, once you get Flaming Familiar, the ability to mass resurrect without sacrificing your primary source of damage is handy. Correction: casting any conjuration spell with the ritual stone active causes the ritual stone effect to end. Hardly game breaking but something to be aware of. Does not affect Ash Guardian.
Equipment
Note: the forsworn headdress seen in the images was glitched purely for artistic purposes and not used during regular play, though it does look pretty damn cool IMO.
While most of the equipment should be self-explanatory, the fortify destruction effects might seem odd at first. The reason they are applied is to allow the Eye of Melka to be used without requiring an insane amount of soul gems to recharge. This staff will be the Witch Doctor's only reliable source of ranged damage as of whenever it is acquired and using up all its charge after only a few fireballs puts a huge damper on this build's offensive capability, particularly when facing late-game enemies with poison immunity.
Weapon enchants aren't terribly important, though drain health, stamina or magicka might be good options to go with since they're affected by fortify destruction. Quite honestly, I didn't use my sword at higher levels so I just slapped on what felt right – drain magicka and soul trap in my case.
Another point worth mentioning is the Cultist Mask, which can be acquired from a respawning cultist at the Water Stone without starting the Dragonborn quest line.
Also, while I chose the Savior's Hide as chest armor, granting my Redguard immunity to poison and much-needed magic resistance, there's no reason not to go with custom-enchanted forsworn armor instead.
Additional Items:
There are a few other items you might want to consider picking up along the way:
--Forsworn Bow: if there's one damning problem the Witch Doctor has at low levels, then it's getting poisons to their target. A simple bow and a few iron arrows would be a good way to solve the issue but I honestly didn't think of that until the point became moot.
--Black Star: if you're using Eye of Melka or any other staff as ranged DPS, get the Star early and keep a soul in it so you can recharge the staff without wasting soul gems. At level 10, it took me a sizable supply of health potions, a fire resist potion and a flame atronarch to cleanse the Star without dying. Come prepared if you do that quest early.
--Skull of Corruption: while it didn't suit my needs for ranged damage, the Skull of Corruption is a lot more soul gem-efficient than the Eye of Melka and deals slightly more damage when charged with stolen dreams. The drawback is you have to get relatively close to your target to hit anything, which may or may not suit your play style.
--Black Book: The Sallow Regent: provides Seeker of Sorcery, which decreases spell costs by 10% for all schools - a must-have given this build's magicka inefficiency - and provides a 10% boost to newly applied enchantments. Killing Dukaan will be arduous but with sufficient sneak skill a steady stream of Flaming Familiars will bring him down eventually. The book can easily be sneaked through with invisibility and muffle, thereby avoiding tedious combat with seekers.
Perk Spread
The basic perk distribution for the Witch Doctor is detailed on the left (or here if you prefer Skyrim Calculator), however there is some room for adaption based on player preferences. The two variations that came to me during my playthrough are:
Spellbreaker build:
A less crafting-intensive alternative that leans toward a more traditional spellshield, enchanting would be dropped in favor of points in block and light armor. This will increase the Witch Doctor's survivability in single combat but comes at price of the Eye of Melka no longer being a viable late-game source of direct damage. Loss of magicka efficiency can be countered with potions so the lack of high-end enchants is not dramatic, though basic enchantments would still be recommended to allow more frequent use of illusion and restorations spells.
Spellsword build:
Another variant hoping to avoid tedious crafting by going the spellsword route, perk points would be shifted from enchanting into one-handed, trading late-game ranged damage with increased melee damage via a one-handed weapon of choice. This would also making early-game leveling less tedious. As with the Spellbreaker build, the loss of magicka efficiency can be covered with potions, as can any survivability issues that arise from being in melee rangemore often.
Specials
Hell Hound
The Witch Doctor summons a volatile spirit hound to attack his foes.
Requires: Flaming Familiar
Key points:
--This is the Witch Doctor's primary source of damage throughout most of the game, providing a little above 50 damage per cast for roughly 20 magicka every 2-4 seconds at near infinite ranges even with no perks in Summoner. Just remember that, if there's no enemy around, the familiar will follow you and eventually explode. So watch out for leftover familiars when combat ends.
--Pathing and targeting on behalf of the flaming familiar can be somewhat wonky and the damage detection script isn't always perfect. For best effect, use while the target is standing still or attacking the familiar and cast in open areas with clear paths to the target. I'm not certain if weakness to fire increases the explosion damage as I have not found a means to test reliably on the 360.
--With Quiet Casting you can summon familiars while in sneak, which offers a slow but reliable way to take down tough enemies without them noticing you're there and two-shotting you. Even better, combined with Twin Souls you can summon two familiars, effectively doubling damage output and chance that they will actually hit the target.
Raise Zombie
The Witch Doctor raises a corpse to fight for him as a zombie for a limited time.
Requires: Raise Dead
Key Points:
While this isn't technically a special move, it's worth noting for two reasons:
--First, in my experience it wasn't worth casting Dead Thrall unless I needed to haul items, simply because Flaming Familiar cancels Dead Thrall and the casting time was too long to use in the middle of a hectic fight that involves lot of movement. Since Dread Zombie works on all but the highest level enemies with Necromage and isn't limited to humanoids, I found it easier to stick with the temporary animate dead spells.
--Second, determining when to summon Familiars and when to raise a zombie with this build can be tricky. My rule of thumb was: if there's a high enough level corpse that can be raised it will live long enough to out-DPS Flaming Familiar, raise it. If there isn't, my familiars will do more damage over time per magicka spent. The exception was when the Familiars had pathing issues or failed to do any damage after several tries, in which case I'd go out of my way to raise corpses.
Dust Devil
The Witch Doctor summons a vengeful dust devil to attack friend and foe alike.
Requires: Summon Ash Guardian (without Heartstone)
Key Points:
--If the Ash Guardian doesn't detect the player (e.g.the player is in stealth or has used invisibility + stealth to disappear), it will go after the next best target – plan so that this will be an enemy. This useful mechanic negates the need to constantly keep a supply of Heartstones around and keeps in tune with this character's insanely unreliable summons.
--Even at level 50, an Ash Guardian will do a sizable amount of damage so you'll have to get rid of it after combat somehow. Either kill it, run away, or dual-cast Pacify with Master of the Mind to deal with the nuisance.
--Since Ash Guardian doesn't count against a summon slot, this is essentially a free source of DPS when in a clinch. Provided you can keep it from attacking you, that is.
Jinxed Infusion
The Witch Doctor is infused by a jinxed spirit that perpetually resuscitates him.
Requires: Heal + Respite + 1h Weapon (ideally w. poison)
Key Points
--Unless you've opted to put perks in 1h, you'll do minimal damage with any weapon, meaning your poisons will be your main source of damage when whacking enemies over the head. Still, even if you can't poison the enemy, a steady stream of power attacks and healing means you'll be able to take down most mid-level mobs and some high-level ones without serious risk of death due to repeated staggers keeping them from doing damage.
--This 'special' tends to only end well in one-on-one encounters. You can get off 3-4 hits between heals most of the time, with two hits being power attacks, meaning you'll be at zero stamina when respite fills the bar back up. Against multiple enemies however, it's almost always easier to muffle + invisibility + stealth and adopt a different tactic before you're overwhelmed.
Noxious Possession
The Witch Doctor hexes his foes with a noxious spirit that enrages or intimidates them.
Requires: Poison Rune (ideally w. Fortify Restoration Potion) + Fear or Enrage
Key Points:
--While not useful against anything immune to poison, one poison rune does 90 damage over 30 seconds, which will steadily tick away while you cast other spells. Three or four runes will outright kill most low-level enemies if given time and the same number drain a significant amount of health of anything mid or high-level. Slap weakness to poison on something before applying the rune and you can push the damage up a notch. Unfortunately, since Poison Rune is not exactly magicka efficient at the best of times, you'll have to judge how many you can risk casting with your given magicka pool - with lvl 50 enchantments around ten are possible without risking lack of mana for fear, enrage or other spells.
--Without destruction perks, rune cast range is atrociously low, meaning you have to risk getting close to poison the enemy. Combined with Enrage, it's easiest to enrage, then run up once the enemies are busy clopping each other. Combined with Fear, it's usually best to cast the runes first (preferably while running away, cackling like the mad hexxer you are) and then fear once you've stacked up the poison. On the upside, having to get close gives you a chance to whack a weakness to poison effect on too. Common sense really but worth mentioning none the less.
Master of Madness
Overcome by the joy of pure madness, the Witch Doctor falls into a delirious trance as he hexes, summons, raises and slaughters anything and everything.
Requires: Ritual Stone + Any combinations of Specials
Key Points:
This is, in essence, the purest expression of the Witch Doctor's insanity. Works best by slaughtering a group of enemies, pulling a second group to the first, resurrecting the dead, and going bonkers with all the tools at your disposal. Fear, enrage, summon everything you can, stab and poison anything you see, and generally wreak havoc – especially fun in towns.
Note: for some inexplicable reason, summoning anything except an Ash Guardian while the Ritual Stone power is active causes all the Ritual-Stone resurrected zombies to die. Unfortunate but not game-breaking provided one is aware of the fact.
Character Progression & Feel
The greatest issue I had with this character, besides not running out of magicka, was getting a grasp on where the character was headed and how the Witch Doctor would play in practice since I'd never build a mage quite this way before. To help everyone reading this understand what playing the Witch Doctor feels like, I've broken my experience down into five segments…
Level 1 to 10: The Bumbling Idiot
Early on, you'll be the character with all the wrong skills for the job. Your sword does no damage. You can't use illusion on undead. You don't have strong enough potions. You'll struggle to find corpses to resurrect and you don't have any damaging abilities. You can't really enchant your armor either and, to add insult to injury, light armor barely provides the protection you need to outlast the enemy. Basically, if Skyrim were an MMO, you'd be the guy who's getting laughed at for having picked all the wrong talents for all the wrong reasons.
During this phase, the Bumbling Idiot is all about bludgeoning your way through fights as best you can with the ill-suited tools you have. There will be a lot of running away and frantic hopes to revive a single corpse before you're cornered and killed. It's a good idea to get the Eye of Melka around level eight as even a few fireballs will make a huge difference at low levels. Sadly the soul gem cost of keeping the weapon charged is horrendous so you'll probably need the Black Star too, which is almost as annoying to acquire. Still, the Eye of Melka is better than being limited to whacking things and healing yourself up like a badly gimped spellsword.
Level 10 to 20: The Lunatic Mage
Around level 10 you'll have a barely fleshed out set of illusion spells, bound sword and quick heal, all the things you need for a spellsword. The problem is, once again, you're not specced to use any of those tools correctly and the Witch Doctor is not a spellsword. Cue lots of being out of magicka and squirming your way through battles due to lack of potions. It's probably a good idea to join the College around this time too – and maybe grab a follower to help things along until you're a little better off.
Most of your time will be spent trying to figure out how to approach a fight and how to deal the damage you need to. Illusion's a great help by now so try to fight things that aren't immune to it. If you have to fight something else, go for enemies you can raise as zombies or poison. All Dwarven automatons will be a pain in the ass to kill and should be avoided at this point in time.
Level 20 to 30: The Outcast
Somewhere around level twenty you'll be getting longer lifetime for zombies, better potions, more or less viable sneak with muffle, quiet casting and a few odds and ends, enough to make your life a little easier and provide you with some steady income when you need it. Enchanting should be taking off too. At around level 25 you can grab a follower and do A Scroll for Anska, which will be a pain ass because the Dragon Priest hits hard but can be done with heals and a good supply of potions – or a bugged dragon priest. The reward however is well worth the pain, as Flaming Familiar will open up a world where you can actually strike back with a vengeance.
Expect to spend the next few levels figuring out how to use Flaming Familiars as your main source of damage and what enchantments you need most (illusion spell cost reduction would be a priority to look into). Flaming Familiar also opens up a simple if slightly tedious way to get past the Tel Mithryn Ash Guardian, giving you access to your very own Ash Guardian – though be careful using it at this point as you can't really get away from it yet and we won't cheat by using Heartstones, will we?
It'd also be a good idea to level restoration up to 40 if you haven't got there already, as Respite will give you a chance to survive in melee combat and bring your poisons to bear. Plus, if you're at restoration 40, you can get up to 50, which will give you your second damage spell: Poison Rune. A good stack of invisibility potions won't hurt either since you won't be able to cast the spell yet without draining all your magicka.
Level 30 to 40: The Witch Doctor
By now you're getting a taste of what the Witch Doctor feels like: unstable summons, unreliable damage, poisons, bad swords, an inefficient staff and lots of madness and running around like complete loony. You might not have all the skills yet – Twin Souls and Master of the Mind being the big ones - but you're getting close. At least you have all your spells and a few good enchants on your awesome looking gear. Plus your potions are starting to kick in, providing you with more ways to make money and survive combat.
You'll still be sitting in the shadows most of the time though, casting what you can and only breaking stealth when you're detected or need additional damage. When stuff gets dicey, you run away and use your newly-found invisibility spell to disappear. Combat is mostly hit and run or stealthy. Flaming Familiar is still your main source of damage due to its magicka efficiency but you've also got poison rune and the odd stab of concentrated poison to help along. If only your magicka wouldn't run out after every dual-cast illusion spell…
Level 40 to 50: The Master of Madness
In the final stages, forty to fifty and onwards, you're looking at the Witch Doctor in all his glory with all the nifty tricks unlocked and available. Enchanting and Conjuration will hit 100. Master of the Mind is yours, as is Twin Souls. Sure, you still don't do tremendous damage and survival is an issue, but at least you aren't resigned to hiding in the corners all the time.
Most likely you'll be used to the character's quirks by now and know what works and what doesn't. This is where the Witch Doctor really starts to shine. You're more or less free to kill what you want, how you want, where you want – usually. A few nasty buggers will still haunt you (Draugr Death Lords for example) but with all the right perks and spells plus the knowledge of how to use them you can handle anything that comes your way on YOUR terms. Gameplay becomes less about leveling, skilling or trying to survive against all odds and all about inflicting as much cruelty and causing as much mayhem as you can with the skills at your disposal.
Witch Doctors are a queer breed of mages who have forsaken the rational and disciplined study of the supernatural arts for a more primal approach to sorcery. While most Witch Doctors a commoner of Tamriel will ever meet pursue their wayward path as benevolent soothsayers and curse-breakers, a select few have grown disgruntled by the civilized world and now call upon their ancient deities and long-forgotten ancestors for darker purposes.
As unpredictable as they are cruel and malevolent, these outcasts will often be seen dancing amidst carnage and bloodshed one moment, casting hexes, raising zombies, and poisoning any who get too close, only to vanish into thin air and continue their assault through the proxy of vengeful spirits mere seconds later. Indeed, aside from their insane rituals and dark bond to the spirit world, there is about as much consistency amongst Witch Doctors as there is rhyme or reason to their incoherent motives and maddening approach to magic. What can be said with certainty however is that to meet a Witch Doctor is to cross paths insanity incarnate – one never knows what to expect or quite when to expect it but, by the nine, it will not be benevolent.
- Soothsayers of Tamriel, Author Unknown
Description
At heart the Witch Doctor is a master conjurer, illusionist and healer, supported by considerable talent in alchemy and enchanting. That said however, this build intends to break conventional approach to combat in Skyrim and rely on unusual – not necessarily impractical but definitely unusual – mechanics to achieve what other builds would with a destruction spell, sword or bow.
In other words, rather than cast fireballs, you summon hell hounds. Rather than fight the enemy toe to toe, you run around poisoning, fearing and enraging people. Unless you want to fight toe to toe or cast fireballs, in which case you can do that too – to an extent. The general gist with this build is to avoid the monotony of doing the same thing every fight. So you could be sneaking one moment only to see an opportunity and go running into the fray the next and be chased away by an unexpected add and go scarpering in a frantic attempt to heal yourself, and so on. You can sneak. You can fight head to head. You will often run around trying not to die. You can summon spirits. You can raise the dead. You can solo. You can play with a follower. Hell, you can do pretty much anything you want within reason. The idea is to have fun trying to find new ways to kill enemies using a basic set of tools you probably don't use too often with other characters.
The only crux is this: due to the build's makeup, difficulties above expert until level 40 or so will be an exercise in frustration. Also levels one to about thirty will feel slow since you'll be lacking all the cool spells and perks. And don't bother with the main quest line either. Dragons are pretty much impossible to kill so no dragon shouts for this build. Not that that should be a problem – you'll have more than enough fun toys to play with.
Race
There's no set race for this build and no solid lore to support any particular choice. I would recommend Redguard due to the dark skin and poison resistance fitting the Witch Doctor cliche. In addition, they start with a high one-handed skill level and adrenaline rush, so early game will be a bit easier.
Stats
Before 400 Magicka: 2 / 1 / 0
After 400 Magicka: 0 / 1 / 0
the goal at level 50 is: 400 / 300 / 100
Standing Stones
Lover Stone: early leveling; the usual deal.
Lord Stone: my personal favorite throughout, providing much-needed armor and magic protection to a very squishy character.
Ritual Stone: not terribly useful early on since you'll be busy raising the dead into zombies for conjuration experience but, once you get Flaming Familiar, the ability to mass resurrect without sacrificing your primary source of damage is handy. Correction: casting any conjuration spell with the ritual stone active causes the ritual stone effect to end. Hardly game breaking but something to be aware of. Does not affect Ash Guardian.
Equipment
Note: the forsworn headdress seen in the images was glitched purely for artistic purposes and not used during regular play, though it does look pretty damn cool IMO.
While most of the equipment should be self-explanatory, the fortify destruction effects might seem odd at first. The reason they are applied is to allow the Eye of Melka to be used without requiring an insane amount of soul gems to recharge. This staff will be the Witch Doctor's only reliable source of ranged damage as of whenever it is acquired and using up all its charge after only a few fireballs puts a huge damper on this build's offensive capability, particularly when facing late-game enemies with poison immunity.
Weapon enchants aren't terribly important, though drain health, stamina or magicka might be good options to go with since they're affected by fortify destruction. Quite honestly, I didn't use my sword at higher levels so I just slapped on what felt right – drain magicka and soul trap in my case.
Another point worth mentioning is the Cultist Mask, which can be acquired from a respawning cultist at the Water Stone without starting the Dragonborn quest line.
Also, while I chose the Savior's Hide as chest armor, granting my Redguard immunity to poison and much-needed magic resistance, there's no reason not to go with custom-enchanted forsworn armor instead.
Additional Items:
There are a few other items you might want to consider picking up along the way:
--Forsworn Bow: if there's one damning problem the Witch Doctor has at low levels, then it's getting poisons to their target. A simple bow and a few iron arrows would be a good way to solve the issue but I honestly didn't think of that until the point became moot.
--Black Star: if you're using Eye of Melka or any other staff as ranged DPS, get the Star early and keep a soul in it so you can recharge the staff without wasting soul gems. At level 10, it took me a sizable supply of health potions, a fire resist potion and a flame atronarch to cleanse the Star without dying. Come prepared if you do that quest early.
--Skull of Corruption: while it didn't suit my needs for ranged damage, the Skull of Corruption is a lot more soul gem-efficient than the Eye of Melka and deals slightly more damage when charged with stolen dreams. The drawback is you have to get relatively close to your target to hit anything, which may or may not suit your play style.
--Black Book: The Sallow Regent: provides Seeker of Sorcery, which decreases spell costs by 10% for all schools - a must-have given this build's magicka inefficiency - and provides a 10% boost to newly applied enchantments. Killing Dukaan will be arduous but with sufficient sneak skill a steady stream of Flaming Familiars will bring him down eventually. The book can easily be sneaked through with invisibility and muffle, thereby avoiding tedious combat with seekers.
Perk Spread
The basic perk distribution for the Witch Doctor is detailed on the left (or here if you prefer Skyrim Calculator), however there is some room for adaption based on player preferences. The two variations that came to me during my playthrough are:
Spellbreaker build:
A less crafting-intensive alternative that leans toward a more traditional spellshield, enchanting would be dropped in favor of points in block and light armor. This will increase the Witch Doctor's survivability in single combat but comes at price of the Eye of Melka no longer being a viable late-game source of direct damage. Loss of magicka efficiency can be countered with potions so the lack of high-end enchants is not dramatic, though basic enchantments would still be recommended to allow more frequent use of illusion and restorations spells.
Spellsword build:
Another variant hoping to avoid tedious crafting by going the spellsword route, perk points would be shifted from enchanting into one-handed, trading late-game ranged damage with increased melee damage via a one-handed weapon of choice. This would also making early-game leveling less tedious. As with the Spellbreaker build, the loss of magicka efficiency can be covered with potions, as can any survivability issues that arise from being in melee rangemore often.
Specials
Hell Hound
The Witch Doctor summons a volatile spirit hound to attack his foes.
Requires: Flaming Familiar
Key points:
--This is the Witch Doctor's primary source of damage throughout most of the game, providing a little above 50 damage per cast for roughly 20 magicka every 2-4 seconds at near infinite ranges even with no perks in Summoner. Just remember that, if there's no enemy around, the familiar will follow you and eventually explode. So watch out for leftover familiars when combat ends.
--Pathing and targeting on behalf of the flaming familiar can be somewhat wonky and the damage detection script isn't always perfect. For best effect, use while the target is standing still or attacking the familiar and cast in open areas with clear paths to the target. I'm not certain if weakness to fire increases the explosion damage as I have not found a means to test reliably on the 360.
--With Quiet Casting you can summon familiars while in sneak, which offers a slow but reliable way to take down tough enemies without them noticing you're there and two-shotting you. Even better, combined with Twin Souls you can summon two familiars, effectively doubling damage output and chance that they will actually hit the target.
Raise Zombie
The Witch Doctor raises a corpse to fight for him as a zombie for a limited time.
Requires: Raise Dead
Key Points:
While this isn't technically a special move, it's worth noting for two reasons:
--First, in my experience it wasn't worth casting Dead Thrall unless I needed to haul items, simply because Flaming Familiar cancels Dead Thrall and the casting time was too long to use in the middle of a hectic fight that involves lot of movement. Since Dread Zombie works on all but the highest level enemies with Necromage and isn't limited to humanoids, I found it easier to stick with the temporary animate dead spells.
--Second, determining when to summon Familiars and when to raise a zombie with this build can be tricky. My rule of thumb was: if there's a high enough level corpse that can be raised it will live long enough to out-DPS Flaming Familiar, raise it. If there isn't, my familiars will do more damage over time per magicka spent. The exception was when the Familiars had pathing issues or failed to do any damage after several tries, in which case I'd go out of my way to raise corpses.
Dust Devil
The Witch Doctor summons a vengeful dust devil to attack friend and foe alike.
Requires: Summon Ash Guardian (without Heartstone)
Key Points:
--If the Ash Guardian doesn't detect the player (e.g.the player is in stealth or has used invisibility + stealth to disappear), it will go after the next best target – plan so that this will be an enemy. This useful mechanic negates the need to constantly keep a supply of Heartstones around and keeps in tune with this character's insanely unreliable summons.
--Even at level 50, an Ash Guardian will do a sizable amount of damage so you'll have to get rid of it after combat somehow. Either kill it, run away, or dual-cast Pacify with Master of the Mind to deal with the nuisance.
--Since Ash Guardian doesn't count against a summon slot, this is essentially a free source of DPS when in a clinch. Provided you can keep it from attacking you, that is.
Jinxed Infusion
The Witch Doctor is infused by a jinxed spirit that perpetually resuscitates him.
Requires: Heal + Respite + 1h Weapon (ideally w. poison)
Key Points
--Unless you've opted to put perks in 1h, you'll do minimal damage with any weapon, meaning your poisons will be your main source of damage when whacking enemies over the head. Still, even if you can't poison the enemy, a steady stream of power attacks and healing means you'll be able to take down most mid-level mobs and some high-level ones without serious risk of death due to repeated staggers keeping them from doing damage.
--This 'special' tends to only end well in one-on-one encounters. You can get off 3-4 hits between heals most of the time, with two hits being power attacks, meaning you'll be at zero stamina when respite fills the bar back up. Against multiple enemies however, it's almost always easier to muffle + invisibility + stealth and adopt a different tactic before you're overwhelmed.
Noxious Possession
The Witch Doctor hexes his foes with a noxious spirit that enrages or intimidates them.
Requires: Poison Rune (ideally w. Fortify Restoration Potion) + Fear or Enrage
Key Points:
--While not useful against anything immune to poison, one poison rune does 90 damage over 30 seconds, which will steadily tick away while you cast other spells. Three or four runes will outright kill most low-level enemies if given time and the same number drain a significant amount of health of anything mid or high-level. Slap weakness to poison on something before applying the rune and you can push the damage up a notch. Unfortunately, since Poison Rune is not exactly magicka efficient at the best of times, you'll have to judge how many you can risk casting with your given magicka pool - with lvl 50 enchantments around ten are possible without risking lack of mana for fear, enrage or other spells.
--Without destruction perks, rune cast range is atrociously low, meaning you have to risk getting close to poison the enemy. Combined with Enrage, it's easiest to enrage, then run up once the enemies are busy clopping each other. Combined with Fear, it's usually best to cast the runes first (preferably while running away, cackling like the mad hexxer you are) and then fear once you've stacked up the poison. On the upside, having to get close gives you a chance to whack a weakness to poison effect on too. Common sense really but worth mentioning none the less.
Master of Madness
Overcome by the joy of pure madness, the Witch Doctor falls into a delirious trance as he hexes, summons, raises and slaughters anything and everything.
Requires: Ritual Stone + Any combinations of Specials
Key Points:
This is, in essence, the purest expression of the Witch Doctor's insanity. Works best by slaughtering a group of enemies, pulling a second group to the first, resurrecting the dead, and going bonkers with all the tools at your disposal. Fear, enrage, summon everything you can, stab and poison anything you see, and generally wreak havoc – especially fun in towns.
Note: for some inexplicable reason, summoning anything except an Ash Guardian while the Ritual Stone power is active causes all the Ritual-Stone resurrected zombies to die. Unfortunate but not game-breaking provided one is aware of the fact.
Character Progression & Feel
The greatest issue I had with this character, besides not running out of magicka, was getting a grasp on where the character was headed and how the Witch Doctor would play in practice since I'd never build a mage quite this way before. To help everyone reading this understand what playing the Witch Doctor feels like, I've broken my experience down into five segments…
Level 1 to 10: The Bumbling Idiot
Early on, you'll be the character with all the wrong skills for the job. Your sword does no damage. You can't use illusion on undead. You don't have strong enough potions. You'll struggle to find corpses to resurrect and you don't have any damaging abilities. You can't really enchant your armor either and, to add insult to injury, light armor barely provides the protection you need to outlast the enemy. Basically, if Skyrim were an MMO, you'd be the guy who's getting laughed at for having picked all the wrong talents for all the wrong reasons.
During this phase, the Bumbling Idiot is all about bludgeoning your way through fights as best you can with the ill-suited tools you have. There will be a lot of running away and frantic hopes to revive a single corpse before you're cornered and killed. It's a good idea to get the Eye of Melka around level eight as even a few fireballs will make a huge difference at low levels. Sadly the soul gem cost of keeping the weapon charged is horrendous so you'll probably need the Black Star too, which is almost as annoying to acquire. Still, the Eye of Melka is better than being limited to whacking things and healing yourself up like a badly gimped spellsword.
Level 10 to 20: The Lunatic Mage
Around level 10 you'll have a barely fleshed out set of illusion spells, bound sword and quick heal, all the things you need for a spellsword. The problem is, once again, you're not specced to use any of those tools correctly and the Witch Doctor is not a spellsword. Cue lots of being out of magicka and squirming your way through battles due to lack of potions. It's probably a good idea to join the College around this time too – and maybe grab a follower to help things along until you're a little better off.
Most of your time will be spent trying to figure out how to approach a fight and how to deal the damage you need to. Illusion's a great help by now so try to fight things that aren't immune to it. If you have to fight something else, go for enemies you can raise as zombies or poison. All Dwarven automatons will be a pain in the ass to kill and should be avoided at this point in time.
Level 20 to 30: The Outcast
Somewhere around level twenty you'll be getting longer lifetime for zombies, better potions, more or less viable sneak with muffle, quiet casting and a few odds and ends, enough to make your life a little easier and provide you with some steady income when you need it. Enchanting should be taking off too. At around level 25 you can grab a follower and do A Scroll for Anska, which will be a pain ass because the Dragon Priest hits hard but can be done with heals and a good supply of potions – or a bugged dragon priest. The reward however is well worth the pain, as Flaming Familiar will open up a world where you can actually strike back with a vengeance.
Expect to spend the next few levels figuring out how to use Flaming Familiars as your main source of damage and what enchantments you need most (illusion spell cost reduction would be a priority to look into). Flaming Familiar also opens up a simple if slightly tedious way to get past the Tel Mithryn Ash Guardian, giving you access to your very own Ash Guardian – though be careful using it at this point as you can't really get away from it yet and we won't cheat by using Heartstones, will we?
It'd also be a good idea to level restoration up to 40 if you haven't got there already, as Respite will give you a chance to survive in melee combat and bring your poisons to bear. Plus, if you're at restoration 40, you can get up to 50, which will give you your second damage spell: Poison Rune. A good stack of invisibility potions won't hurt either since you won't be able to cast the spell yet without draining all your magicka.
Level 30 to 40: The Witch Doctor
By now you're getting a taste of what the Witch Doctor feels like: unstable summons, unreliable damage, poisons, bad swords, an inefficient staff and lots of madness and running around like complete loony. You might not have all the skills yet – Twin Souls and Master of the Mind being the big ones - but you're getting close. At least you have all your spells and a few good enchants on your awesome looking gear. Plus your potions are starting to kick in, providing you with more ways to make money and survive combat.
You'll still be sitting in the shadows most of the time though, casting what you can and only breaking stealth when you're detected or need additional damage. When stuff gets dicey, you run away and use your newly-found invisibility spell to disappear. Combat is mostly hit and run or stealthy. Flaming Familiar is still your main source of damage due to its magicka efficiency but you've also got poison rune and the odd stab of concentrated poison to help along. If only your magicka wouldn't run out after every dual-cast illusion spell…
Level 40 to 50: The Master of Madness
In the final stages, forty to fifty and onwards, you're looking at the Witch Doctor in all his glory with all the nifty tricks unlocked and available. Enchanting and Conjuration will hit 100. Master of the Mind is yours, as is Twin Souls. Sure, you still don't do tremendous damage and survival is an issue, but at least you aren't resigned to hiding in the corners all the time.
Most likely you'll be used to the character's quirks by now and know what works and what doesn't. This is where the Witch Doctor really starts to shine. You're more or less free to kill what you want, how you want, where you want – usually. A few nasty buggers will still haunt you (Draugr Death Lords for example) but with all the right perks and spells plus the knowledge of how to use them you can handle anything that comes your way on YOUR terms. Gameplay becomes less about leveling, skilling or trying to survive against all odds and all about inflicting as much cruelty and causing as much mayhem as you can with the skills at your disposal.
