ACTUALLY tested Blood Oath damage reduction (40% hidden cap, works on spells!)
https://www.reddit.com/r/diablo2/comments/1rabry7/actually_tested_blood_oath_damage_reduction_40/

Have anyone tested this online?

Yes in my initial testing I got some really odd results, with ~50% damage reduction to zombie pure physical attacks and ~25% to elemental damage from a lightning spire hitting me, and repeated a few dozen hits from each and averaged it out but it could still be somewhere around 40% who knows
Its definitely not what it says on the skill description, but I'm still unclear on what it actually does. Its possible it even depends on some more complicated factors like the resists on your demons or something stupid like that, or blood oath mixing its + sharing / +dr parameters

Ofc it not just as simple as reading the description. It never is with Diablo

So what would your recommendation be on HC?
Just keep it around lvl 19 (41%)?

I wanna be clear I have no idea how it works at all, I just know how it doesn't work
I don't even know how its actually applying % life to demons either, and presumably its recasting them with your current blood oath applied at the start of game like iron golems
no bloody idea if its even different on physical vs elemental damage or not

The demon dies as soon as you leave the game iron golem style. That I know from playing with a warlock friend.

I’m curious how it interacts w curse and decrep. Does 90% mean you go from -100% to -10%. Then could still be worth to drop many points into it

as far as anyone can tell, lets say 34 blood oath
+1310% life to demons -> multiplies its base HP from P1 stats (includes champion/unique 2x? we don't know)
+74% resists for your demon -> doesn't apply to bound demon at all, only to goat/tainted/defiler? its clearly not resulting in extra immunities even when there's only 1 prior immunity
+11% dr for your demon -> we have no idea if it applies to bound demon, but presumably 11% dr to goat/tainted/defiler, MAYBE to bound demon
+77% damage taken goes to your demon -> don't know wtf actually happens but presumably its something like "50% physical damage / 25% elemental damage taken goes to your demon"

I'm playing with 40-47% and it seems that i'm getting far more damaged than i should.

blood oath only works for base points into the skill

This post was edited by marvel. on Feb 27 2026 02:27am

How many hard points into blood oath?