Thank you. Can tell you are detail-oriented.

This post was edited by GforceUSA on Mar 25 2026 07:50pm

and maybe it should be obvious but I should run through the mechanics and usages

Blood boil takes 5% of your monster's max HP when maxed and can't be mitigated, %dr/resists don't mitigate that. It won't kill demons at 5% or less HP, it just won't deal damage around them. If all your demons have 5% or less HP, it simply fails to cast. Blood boil has a nextdelay and won't hit the same target multiple times from multiple demons, they can only increase the area effected by each cast not overlap for extra damage. It casts regardless of range and requires no line of sight, so putting your demon on the other side of a door/wall with deathmark lets you kill rooms full of stygian dolls /etc before you even see them. Deathmark should always be hotkeyed or put on left click, since it acts as your second 'teleport' to teleport just your demon instead of you and pick off monsters or deal aoe from a range when you don't need to stomp everything point blank.
Blood boil incorrectly lists your physical normal attack damage in its physical damage field on the char screen, but this is just a display glitch, it actually deals the correct amount (on the skill tooltip / skill tree). It also lists its diameter as radius, so the actual radius is half the value on the skill, which is still huge.
You need to cast engorge to keep topping off your demon's HP, which isn't too frequent especially with urdar regen, but enough that you should be popping a corpse every few packs, which also keeps its engorge buff active permanently
Sigil Lethargy is just applying a -% DR equal to its value, with the same 1/5 penalty when applied to physical immunes without a bone break sunder, which isn't worth using. And since most monsters have at most 50% dr, sigil can be worth getting up to -50% dr, but is a real waste above that, and you kill so fast without it anything beyond 1 point is dubious.
Blood oath redirects 43% incoming damage of all types when maxed, it only cares about hard points into the skill, and the damage redirected is usually negligible to the demon so its basically just a free permanent passive 43% all types damage negated
Hex Siphon applies its +life/mana after each kill to all your kills by any source, not just attacks that apply the hex. It won't apply to kills by your minions, but blood boil counts as damage from you, not your minions.
Defilers cause any damage applied to a soulbound target to deal a % of that damage to all other linked targets. That damage includes all types, physical/fire all shared prior to targets %dr/fr, so each enemy has its value modified separately. But that damage has a nextdelay that stops aoe spells from hitting the same targets in soulbind more than once per damage instance, so when blood boil hits 5 targets all soulbound for +56% damage, they each take 1.56x the damage (not 3.24x). The defilers will only tag new units once the previous soulbinds either die or have the debuff removed by getting out of range / duration expiring. And they use monster AI to randomly cast at their own leisure, so its not a very reliable buff, but spreads fast and often enough its easily worth using
Bound demons have their HP locked in when they are spawned in the game you bind them, before you bind them. Which can be modified by terror zone scaling, monster type, normal vs minion/champion/unique and players 1-8 difficulty. Once bound, all you can add is +% life from battle orders that multiplies it. Blood oath has no +% hp to demons either at the point of binding nor when you join new games. The effects of +damage, +% damage, +resists, etc from bind demon & demonic mastery & blood oath are applied when you join each game, using the +skills on your equipped gear (which you can swap on/off as you leave games if you care). The +damage adds to base damage and is multiplied by the +% ed on the demon from mastery, any auras, +99% from extra strong and any skills like smite. Spectral hit adds +20% fire/cold/light resist, and the +% resists on blood oath will make demons immune to elements without displaying it when you select them.
Consume caps its bonus from consuming a tainted at a pretty low level, and only adds +1% life/lvl after that (and some duration/diminishing frw).
The %IAS given by engorge and demonic mastery can easily reach the 75% max EIAS cap units can have in Diablo II, so any fanat speed above that is wasted. Monster still have a 15 frame delay added between every attack no matter the %ias, you only speed up the swing animation

vouch this men

bboil > es

Isnt lister is better than Udar?

I tried hell P8 baal with p8 udar died but lister didnt die (non stop casting blood boil and resummon tainted or goatman when their health low)

Btw -fire res sunder charm is better since fire immune monsters are harder to kill/ especially p8 herald,

Dont use consume for extra fire damage /-res ,,as u got 1 less monster means 1 less hit per cast which is huge (33.33%) and especially the physical damage part

This post was edited by RTZS on Mar 25 2026 10:27pm

I'm not an expert at all on this, and typing from my phone, but here's how I vary. I might be doing it wrong relative to this build, but I've tried different things and this is what I've arrived at.

Skills:

I didn't think that the demons would do enough damage to be viable against t5 heralds in p8, so I wanted to supplement with some fire skills. I maxed apoc with the rest in the flame wave synergy. Against huge packs I can precast apoc and then tele in with boil. Against heralds if I don't have enough bodies to engorge, I can use it to take them down too. I want to try out the urdar though, looks fun!

Max boil, engorge, oath. One point into the rest except consume which we get with baalos. Then max apoc and put the rest into flame wave.

Gear:

I'm a sucker for obsession, and the fcr and res let's me be very flexible with the rest of my gear. We differ in that I think -res is critical compared to +damage. My sunder is -res, and I run with a flickering flame because it boosts boil and apoc, and gives me the reliable aura. 125 fcr cones from magefists, arach, ammy, and ring. I use the defender fire in my baalos book. I like Horazon boots for the cbf.

I tried hellwarden, and feel that the damage is better p8 with the flickering.

Minions:

Using boring old conviction/curse hephasto. I've tried plague a5 merc to proc lower resist, and I feel that amp is still crucial. Still settling on what I want to do, but a2 might is working well. I consume a tainted for the boost, and carry a defiler with me.

This post was edited by jimmycongo on Mar 25 2026 10:34pm

so the next question is ..is maxing Bind Demon needed?

Tested it. It's only nice to farm things in P1, there it's the best.
You need FAR more items than echoing to get going, even more if you plan to kill just a p1 baal without going to kiss akara and then going back because you can't do enough damage to kill him. You can use the slow way, that is let amplify damage and crushing blow from urdar do somethint, but that's slow. And time is money when TZ last only 30 min and you are farming them again and again. And since worusk statues have a great value, that's a critical bad point.
Since a lot of heralds have an insane number of life, he is not the best killer, but at least there you should have enough bodies to not run to akara again. But they do insane damage, so you must be very carefull with the life of your demon and use engorge a lot, you don't want to waste two hoyrs again until you find a TZ cursed one.
Mana sucks, if your merc use insight, you need conv demon, and lose a lot of amplify. But if you are teleing a lot you need it or you are going to scrap the floor for mana potions or stop to kill something. Defilers add a lot of damage, BUT they will make you not getting mana back from syphon, that's maybe the thing i most hate from this build.
You will be casting engorge A LOT, a bad pack that doesn't die soon can make you distracted, and when you take a look at your demons life OH SHIT i nearly killed him.

QRD: best P1 killer, expensive items needed, not comfy gameplay

This post was edited by cantero on Mar 25 2026 11:26pm

Are you keeping a 5% hp lister sitting afk next to bosses? That's a 'choice'. Not one I'd recommend. He won't be at risk of instant dying by regen to 5.01% and go to 0.01%... because he doesnt regen at all. He could still just die to damage. A regen monster lets you get off far more casts in normal play without getting to a sliver of hp, between engorges.

The better way to deal with p8 baal or ubers is to ask yourself why you feel compelled to solo p8 baal or do ubers at all. Every lesser boss has low enough hp to be manageable, and baal was never worth farming, and still dies easily in team games. Why solo baal in p8? Just don't. You can do ubers clumsily if you have to, but why? Its not an ideal torch farmer. These are 'doctor my arm hurts when I twist it like this' issues. Yeah you can kill p8 baal with any setup by either tripping to town or just letting your demon dps him down, but why?

The difference in -% vs +% fire isnt that big against immunes and against most monsters one is a big buff and the other does nothing. You should be hitting +45/-55% fire + conviction before the sunder, with 4.8k base (+4.8k phys). So you can either have 8.1k with -55%, or 7.4k with -65%. If a monster is reduced to -100/-100 thats 25.8k vs 24.4k damage. If the monster was fire immune 50% dr its 15.2k vs 15.4k.
As such I think the +% fire setup is pretty clearly better overall.

And having more demons active does not increase blood boil damage per cast, just extends its aoe.. Each target can only get hit by each cast of blood boil once, even if 3 demons were in range. Its very clearly dealing same dps whether 1 demon or 3. A defiler can multiply it by 56%+ from its soulbind, but having a tainted summoned instead of consumed lowers your damage considerably. Its a free +20% / -15% fire and max life/efrw.

Nice guide , thanks

This is what led me to my build. I honestly never thought to max demon mastery and bind because it didn't seem to scale well enough. If 38 hard skill points can't accomplish the goal of making the character kill things that blood boil can't, then I don't think they're really points that are needed. With apoc and flame wave I can kill baal without it taking too long, and take down heralds when I don't want to risk boil. I've also never lost my Hephasto in p8 tz clearing as fast as I can.

As for -res, my argument is that you don't need extra killing speed on mobs that have no immunities, but it's a real slog when they are inherently immune, so I go for -res on my sunder and prioritized that on my defenders fire. -res is the primary reason to use mang song, I just can't quit the qol from obsession.