the skill testing we discovered in the past couple weeks;

• Hex siphon gives its full +mana/life after kill while active for any kill you make, not just weapon attacks. Including blood boil damage which counts as damage from you, not minions.
  
• Bound demons lock in their base HP and playerscaling 1-4.5x multiplier from P8 when bound, even if you join a P1 game, and resummon with your current level of bind/mastery/oath as you join a game (not locked in at cast)
  
• Normal monsters bound in TZ zones gain the TZ affix, while minion/champ/uniques don't.
  
• Blood oath gives % damage redirection of all types of 3+2*blvl%, only for hard points (base level) so up to 43% redirected with 20 hard points
  
• Arrows/bolts from mirrored blades don't share a nextdelay and can shotgun 5 hitting the same target, including exploding arrows for 5x explosions. Throwing weapons use melee instead
  
• Miasma chain when targeted on a monster (including % chance to cast procs) will not spawn any damage DoT until the target moves, resulting in no damage vs immobile targets
  
• Flame wave hits each target with its primary damage ~3 times depending on size/angle
  
• Sigil lethargy applies -% dr which can break immunities and has 1/5 penalty vs immunes, rather than direct damage amplification
  
• Soulbind on defilers has a nextdelay that prevents an aoe hitting multiple bound targets from spreading damage more than once, so simultaneous aoe on 5 targets with +50 bind just deals 150% to each
  
• Summon tainted doesn't get its synergy from blood boil, resulting in about 1/6 the listed damage
  
• Bind demon adds its +damage as base damage to monsters, then multiplied by all sources of % ed including demonic mastery and demon skills/affixes/auras. Nothing applies to demon ranged attacks, which are all skills not attacks
  
• Echoing strikes first multiplies its skill base damage by its own skill % ed to get your added +damage listed on the skill, which is added as base damage to the attack and again multiplied by all total % ed including the skill damage (again)
  
• Consume caps out its +/- fire/magic bonuses at level 11 and gains no +/-% above that (soft points, including +skills), but the max life / frw / duration keeps scaling, and goatmen are +5% ed per skill point uncapped
  
• Blood boil lists its diameter as its radius (its half the listed value) and lists your normal attack damage in the char screen instead of its actual physical damage.

Awesome info there thanks

there is no other option right? ars diabolos or phoenix, nothing else is end game basically

and not doing 4x fire facet in monarch xd that's for bozos.

This post was edited by UncleBens1650 on Mar 7 2026 02:37pm

4x fire facet in a 4 socket monarch >> phoenix
you're comparing +20% fire damage to -8% resist and redemption aura, when you get your mana back from hex siphon
But ars diabolos is generally better, because even with apocalypse being a lackluster skill, the difference of +5 apocalypse gives diabolos the edge when +2 skills / 30% damage / -5% resists was already competitive with a +20/-20 shield.

But do you even have enough points to make siphon good? Fire skills take a good chunk, then blood oath, all demon skills... You may end up with 15 mana aek

15-18+ mana after each kill is already a huge amount of mana regen. Javazons have for years been hording items to get up to ~5-8 maek, with silkweaves and valuing it on crafted gloves over 3/20s, and now its also available on hellwardens & opalvein which fire casters will use in 125 setups (unless they have a super godly 2/20/2 circlet). Even 1 point hex siphon is already a pretty absurd effect, and a normal 125 build with mang songs might have +16 to eldritch tree, plus another point in engorge as a synergy. Its not hard for a fire caster to reach ~38 life / 30 mana after each kill and it feels like you're drinking juvs nonstop

Fire casters still have some pretty steep mana usage because of apocalypse being so stupid, but the hex siphon really instantly refills your orb each time apocalypse detonates or flame wave sweeps up a path. Blood boil builds of course gets even stupider because its got +19 more laek/maek from the engorge synergy (and half the mana per cast)

This post was edited by Goomshill on Mar 7 2026 02:52pm

Those theoretical builds are often not very playable, or annoying to play, still using pots, need to have 20 fcr amulet etc.

In terms of damage maybe +20 - 20 monarch is nice, but there are no other stats so you have to overly compensate with fcr, res etc, resulting in not very playable character. Redemption just makes the game so much smoother.

1 pt and every apocalypse cast ends up being a full juv pretty much. I imagine it's the same on a boil build

This post was edited by Dolphy on Mar 7 2026 03:43pm

You only need a +15 fcr ammy to hit 125 with a mang song build, because its 30 weapon, 20 arach, 20 rings, 20 magefist, 20 helm (which can be hellwarden). Hence only needing +15 on the ammy.
The biggest difference between the builds is that echoing strikes is consuming a high flat amount of mana drain per second and able to leech it back instantly when hits connect, fire warlocks spike down and then back up again after a delay because of the gigantic cost of apocalypse and then simultaneous deaths when the siphon kills kick in, and blood boil costs much less mana and has much higher maek so in gameplay you're basically glued to 95-100% orb capacity.

maybe I will try bit later. Now obsession, flickering flame, phoenix is just chill smooth gameplay p8 destroy all.

With 65 fcr from obs, you can work with rings, amu, more flexibility, more res.

This post was edited by UncleBens1650 on Mar 7 2026 04:02pm