Witch Doctor - Malpractice makes Perfect

NO glimmer cape, dude?

I build wand, arcane, medallion, and cape recently.

What do u guys think?

Alternative version.
I almost never use WD's third ability. It's so time consuming and really hard to hit. If you get opponents with low armor then he's ultimate is wiping everybody. First i try to max my 1st and second ability. It gives me the chance more efficiently to farm. Couple of stuns and u get the last hit-most of the time it keeps enemies away too. So i Have farmed well enough and i get me Aghanim's Scepter, even before Arcane Boots. If you do it right, you should have it before lvl 13. Then i consider to take Arcane, while other heroes are more depend on mana. I keep that strategy to farm well enough all the time, to max out abilities. Then you can more likely fight in team. But i still keep him as pushing lanes. Because he's friends are creeps. If you use stun without creeps, most likely you are dead. But 2-3 creeps help your timing always.(Enemy creeps or creep camps) After i maxed out everything, i consider about Bloodstone. It gives you really good push chance, because you can use your healing always, without losing mana. After that is shadow blade good for saving ultimates channeling.

I think this is good for leveling up and be ahead of other heroes, so you can safely walk around with no fear to die. It's little bit one sided but i keep improving that strategy :)

Very nice guide.. even though i didnt play much as a WD in competitive games, I will try on a fun game with friends with the help of this guide.

Yep, he's great with AOE lockdown heroes like Treant, Magnus, Void, Enigma, etc, especially if you have a scepter.

I think WD does actually make a good #3 in terms of farm priority - a BKB/Aghs on him is very effective, the problem is that he can't really play mid or offlane against a lot of heroes - too slow and squishy. This is why you don't see him in competitive play much.

Could you see WD going in the #3 spot, where he doesnt have to buy wards or courier upgrade, and play the hard lane? I think that with the right build he could play that role because of his fast attack animation and stun which could be used to escape.

The combination of treant protector, or anyone else with a large AoE stun, plus WD with Aghanim's specter should not be under estimated. It is realtively easily to knock 4/5 of a team down by over half (if not more) of their health with just WD's ult. Agree though, it does take significant care and attention to play WD well and is too easy to get stomped on if you get things slightly wrong.

Very nice guide. With regards to using your combo, I personally prefer using maledict first to obtain the maximum damage potential. But as said, it requires a lot of practice to make sure you timed the skill perfectly with mobile targets. +1!

Yay! Another guide from Sando!

The only reason I think he is not picked more is in high level play heroes are bursted down so fast WD's heal can not really help. Also a similar support in terms of role would be warlock, who has a better team-fight ultimate (WD has an incredible Aghems but Warlocks is better early).

Other than that you can stun him out of his ultimate and his cask is only a 1 second stun if there are creeps near unless you are lucky.

nice and i know few new things ;]

Thanks for all the nice comments guys - it does make writing these guides worthwhile! I've fixed a few typos and also added a version of Jaslam's Maledict focused build in, as it does sound viable.

The more I think about it...maybe the problem for Pro Games is that so much of his damage is DoT - generally you want people dead so they can't fight back, rather than dying slowly but inevitably. I think the other issue is that in a lot of situations he can be a square peg in a round hole - there are various encounters where his skills aren't massively suitable, and he's very reliant on team mates landing their disables correctly...this is balanced by just how good he can be when he gets a square hole to fit in to - I'd say he has a shout of being THE most damaging support given the right situation.

The randomness is right. Chance based heroes aren't that good in general. (Though WD isn't that random. It's just his stun)

I think the problem here is his skills. His stun doesn't do that much damage and the stun duration is only maximized against 2 heroes. Maledict is actually pretty good, but it's not that useful when you consider that if you can kill a guy with Maledict, you're going to be able to kill him without it. There are rare cases when this does the killing blow while other factors could not, but in that case it is only a finisher and nothing else. His heal - if you want a heal, Juggernaut gives one that doesn't cost mana per second, and is better in all aspects except for the fact that it is destroyable. Lastly his ult. His ult does astounding damage, but the problem is it's only damage - and it's channeling and deals damage over time (technically. It deals a lot of damage over time because it doesn't dish it all out at once) but nothing else.

Still love the hero though.

I don't comment on guides very often but you did a great job explaining a character I don't play very often. If I do play him I'd level stun first, like you. Looking at the comments though I think I'm going to start leveling maledict first as it's easy to see how it can become quite powerful early game. Great guide and a +1 from me.