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Animal Courier
Tango
Healing Salve
ClarityClarity
Iron BranchIron Branch
Magic Wand
Arcane Boots
Mekansm
Drum of Endurance
Urn of Shadows
Bracer
Shadow Blade
Black King Bar
Aghanim's Scepter
Bloodstone
Orchid Malevolence
Rod of Atos
Scythe of Vyse
Veil of Discord
Ghost Scepter
Eul's Scepter of Divinity
Force Staff
Pipe of Insight
Observer Ward
Sentry Ward
Animal Courier
Observer Ward
Tango
Iron Branch
Iron Branch
Clarity
Clarity
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1 | 3 | 5 | 7 |  |
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10 | 12 | 13 | 14 |  |
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2 | 4 | 8 | 9 |  |
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6 | 11 | 16 |  |
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15 |
| 1. | Introduction |
| 2. | Strengths and Weaknesses |
| 3. | Paralyzing Cask |
| 4. | Voodoo Restoration |
| 5. | Maledict |
| 6. | Death Ward |
| 7. | Using your Combo |
| 8. | Role |
| 9. | Items |
| 10. | Good Allies |
| 11. | Bad Enemies |
Witch Doctor is a support hero with a very strong, but often misunderstood, set of skills. He has one of the best non-ultimate stuns in the game, combined with an AOE heal and two damage spells that scale extremely well into the late game.
In this guide we'll be looking at when to pick WD, and how to get the best out of his skills...
+ Good base damage
+ Nice attack animation
+ Great multi-target stun
+ Effective damage skills that scale well
+ Useful push/counter-push
+ Not item dependent
- Slightly limited range
- Very poor armour
- Limited strength and agility growth
- Spells not easy to use optimally
- Heavily relies on allies to be most effective
Paralyzing Cask is a fantastic multi-target stun, but does require some careful usage to get the most out of it. The cask will definitely hit it's first target, but after that will bounce randomly to any targets within it's radius - if there are no other targets, it will end, making it poor against lone heroes.
However, there are ways to make this work in your favour - if only one other target is available then you can be assured of getting repeat stuns on both the units present. Ideally you want the targets about 100-150 units apart, as this will allow for the best "rhythm" - i.e. with a 1 second stun time, each unit will get hit about once per second, keeping them perma-stunned for 4 seconds each at max level.
In situations like team fights sometimes you just have to cast it when the enemy are reasonably close together and hope for the best - unless there are tons of creeps present it will hopefully get a good set of bounces and cause maximum disruption.
It is also a great push/anti-push spell, stunning creeps for 5 seconds and inflicting up to 150 damage per bounce - with 8 bounces it's easily enough to give your lane serious momentum. Just be careful not to use it for pushing if you suspect an incoming gank or will need it for a team fight in the near future.
Voodoo Restoration is an AOE healing spell that trades mana for health for nearby allied units. It has a small upfront mana cost to start, and after that continues draining a small amount every second.
Many players don't like to skill VR at all early on - and it's more usual to to focus on increasing your damage output instead. However, it can still be a useful option, especially if you're babysitting or against a tough lane. I might skill it at level 4 if myself or my laning partner are running low on consumables.
Cost-wise, after the recent changes to Clarity potions and this skill, it's actually more efficient to heal with level 1 VR than to use Tangos, although that is dependent on getting the full effect of the potion.
If you get a reasonable amount of equipment as you're playing, you can probably afford to max this by level 14 - if you're getting killed a lot and struggling, it can be better to get stats instead for a while.
Maledict is quite a misunderstood skill, and also suffers from a horrendously short range, small AOE and long casting time - it isn't always easy to land against a non-static target. It's also not very effective unless followed up effectively with more damage from any source.
However, it can be an incredibly damaging spell with excellent scaling into the late game. It does a small amount of damage per second (totalling 60/120/180/240 damage - pretty respectable on it's own once levelled), but more importantly, every 4 seconds they take bonus damage for every 100 hp the target has lost since the start of the curse. Be aware that any heals (e.g. Magic Wand or Mekansm) will reduce this bonus damage.
This gives % based extra damage scaling, potentially for multiple enemies - even in the late game where conventional nukes will have dropped off. It's damage can be temporarily be blocked by magic immunity, but it cannot be purged or debuffed once active, and enemies under it's influence cannot be denied by team mates.
To give you an example of how effective Maledict can be, we'll do some maths: (please note, this is how I think it should be worked out, I would like to test this properly ingame!)
You cast Maledict on an enemy being attacked by your carry. Your carry is inflicting say 500 damage (after reductions) over 4 seconds.
After 4 seconds the first of your bonus damages activates. The curse damage has inflicted 4 x 20 = 80 damage, plus 500 from your carry. This activates 5 instances of bonus damage, 5 x 40 = 200.
After 8 seconds the enemy will have taken a total of 1000 damage from your carry, 160 from the curse, plus 200 from the last bonus = 1360. This means another 13 instances of bonus damage, 13 x 40 = 520.
After 12 seconds they take the final curse hit, 1500 from the carry, 240 from the curse, plus 720 from the previous bonus damages, 24 x 40 = 960.
So in total, your carry has inflicted 1500 damage, while Maledict has added 1920 (minus 25% magic resistances).
Death Ward is your ultimate, a channelled damage spell that can be incredibly effective when used correctly. It can initially target a single enemy hero within it's range, gaining an additional bounce at level 3, and up to 4 with Aghanim's Scepter (i.e. you can hit most of their team at the same time). The cooldown is short enough that you can use it for important ganks or skirmishes as well as full on team fights.
It inflicts Physical Damage, so is unaffected by magical immunity such as 
Repel or Black King Bar, but can be blocked by Ghost Scepter and 
Guardian Angel.
You can manually target the ward by selecting it, but you cannot reposition it once cast, so make sure use it at the correct time and location (ideally slightly back from the "centre fo gravity" of the fight). As it's a channelling spell, you also need to try to wait out enemy stuns, have your team disable them, or have suitable equipment to avoid your channelling being broken.
This could be 
Shadow Amulet, Shadow Blade or Black King Bar. Most pub Witch Doctor's prefer Shadow Blade as it gives you an extra escape, and means you won't be focused down while channelling. However, any detection equipment, or even just ground targetable stuns can still disrupt you. Black King Bar is a more reliable option.
In a standard team fight, your combo is to first of all throw out Paralyzing Cask, and then try to land a Maledict on a nearby enemy (especially tanks and other high HP heroes). Once you think you can get away with it, throw down Death Ward and try to inflict as much damage as possible.
As you can see, there is some synergy and a rough plan there, but it can be difficult to execute with your low casting ranges and the fact the enemy will want you focused down quickly.
This is why Witch Doctor works so well with the right allies. If they can supply AOE disables with the likes of 
Chronosphere and 
Black Hole then you can land Maledict, follow up with Death Ward and still have Paralyzing Cask available to mop up. 
Ravage, 
Overgrowth, 
Stone Gaze, 
Kinetic Field and 
Vacuum are also very useful, to a slightly lesser degree.
Reverse Polarity is absolutely the dog's cogs for Witch Doctor though - it makes it really easy to hit almost their whole team with Maledict and gives you an ideal setup for your other spells. Just be careful that your 
Magnus doesn't get too excited and charge them out of range of your Death Ward.
Witch Doctor's role is pretty straight forward - he's a semi-support who acts as a lane support. He's not the ideal hard support, as he is more useful with a chunk of extra equipment, but he can do a job here if absolutely necessary. He works well with another support who is sharing the load on warding, utility, etc.
He provides a very useful set of ganking, pushing and team fight abilities - cask especially is an incredibly flexible skill that works well in almost any situation except fighting a lone hero. Generally you want to for slightly more specific items rather than the generic utility items which work well on all intel supports ( Eul's Scepter of Divinity, Force Staff, etc) unless you need them for a very specific reason.
Find the right balance in the early laning phase - you're pretty squishy and your base armour is almost non-existant. However, you hit quite hard and have a nice animation for denying - don't soak up too much damage, but inflict harassment when you can safely.
Starting Items:
A pretty standard set of regen and GG branches, plus either Observer Ward or Animal Courier. There's not really a lot to say here, we need a bunch of regen and as many cheap stats as we can get.
Core Items:
Since you might be warding, and almost definitely won't be farming, we've gone for a very simple core of Magic Wand and Arcane Boots. This gives us some additional survivability and mana regeneration. Sometimes you might even want to just get 
Boots of Speed to let you grab a survival item first.
Extention Options: (take 1-2)
You have pretty poor starting strength and growth, so some additional survivability is a necessity (you might even want to get this before your Arcanes, if required). You have a few choices here, between the humble Bracer, extra heals from Urn of Shadows, or heading for utility items like Drum of Endurance or Mekansm. Be aware that against teams full of nukers a Mek alone is not enough, and you'll need one of the others too.
Ultimate/Survivability:
Once you have some cheap survivability sorted, you'll either need to get more team utility/situational items, or might be able to head straight on to getting more out of your ultimate.
If your team has lots of AOE disable, you can be more utility focused as you won't need these items so much to get off a good ult, or you might go straight for Aghanim's Scepter to boost it's damage output.
If not, either a Shadow Blade or Black King Bar are very helpful to fully utilising your ult, as discussed above.
Luxury:
I find it's rare to reach the point where you're overloaded with gold on Witch Doctor, but it can happen, so we'll look at the options. Usually I'm very happy if I get to Mekansm/ Black King Bar/ Aghanim's Scepter, the other options noted are fairly standard intel hero luxuries. A special note on Veil of Discord - it mainly provides a boost to team damage or Maledict, it doesn't offer anything to Death Ward - hence why it's not a standard pickup.
A Good Sample Setup:
There's two main categories of good ally for Witch Doctor - AOE disablers (most of the list) are your most important - I'd almost say you shouldn't pick him without at least one of these guys on your team to maximise your ult.
The second (smaller) cateogory is big armour reducers - they can make your ultimate much more damaging, especially in the later stages of the game. Ideally you still want some disable to keep enemies in range however.
Special Mentions:
Magnus - his ultimate Reverse Polarity combines perfectly with your spells, everything you could want in an ally.
Medusa - her ultimate Stone Gaze slows enemies and can potentially turn them to stone too...for bonus physical damage!
Faceless Void - again, a great ultimate in Chronosphere provides you with time to fire off Death Ward.
Warlock - bizarre as it sounds, these two make great laning buddies! Between 
Shadow Word, 
Fatal Bonds and Maledict you have a lot of DoT, and even if they run out of the lane, they still can't avoid a bunch of damage. 
Upheaval and Death Ward is also a great combo, provided you don't get stunned out of them.
Illusion Heroes:
These guys are a real pain as they soak up your single target damage and bounces from Cask. They also tend to carry 
Diffusal Blades which can mean very bad news for you. If at all possible, try to get an Aghanim's Scepter ASAP for those extra bounces - it will really help thin them out.
Gankers:
The usual suspects (
Pudge, 
Night Stalker, 
Nyx Assassin, etc) provide a range of horrible ways to pwn your poor squishy doctor in the early game. You're very reliant on good map information and positioning here.
Special Mentions:
Omniknight - if he uses Repel on himself he can use Guardian Angel to make your Death Ward damage totally ineffective. Can also break up your stuns and reduce the effectiveness of Maledict.
Naga Siren - not only an illusion hero, but she can also easily stop your Death Ward.
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