Blood Boil WarlockI never got around to writing a full guide but I keep getting PM's asking for the build so here's the bare bones layout
https://i.imgur.com/Qy1VI79.jpegYou are basically a hammerdin that deals twice the DPS in twice the aoe, hitting everything instantly with no delay, with an infinitely tanky summon who also hits for tens of thousands.
For general purpose PvM, blood boil tends to be even
faster than echoing strike because of its far more generous AoE and lack of targeting, and ES only has an upper hand when it comes to the tankiest enemies like P8 diablo/baal or tier 5 heralds or ubers
With the fully geared setup (sac a charm for cube) you can deal about 4.8k phys + 8.1k fire in 10.3 radius before -resists, hitting monsters up to 26k HP per cast at 125 fcr or 41k with defiler, and still have a demon that deals ~20k per hit without swap/load-in gear
And because of maxed engorge its got a massive life/mana after each kill on hex siphon, giving you infinite mana in combat, FAR less mana issues than other builds (half the cost per cast of ES, twice the maek)
Its not a summoner, its not a 'sit back and let minions attack'. You teleport between mobs, cast a couple aoe spells and everything dies, repeat. I captured some footage with a 75% fcr build early on in ladder before I upgraded to 125, cba to make new footage;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJ8tL5DHZ8A
Skills- 20 blood boil (core)
- 20 blood oath (core)
- 20 engorge (core)
- 1 hex siphon (cannot be obtained on cta/tome swap, so a hard point)
- 20 bind demon
- 20 demonic mastery (dump only after bind maxed)
- 1 consume (will reach tainted cap)
- 1 sigil lethargy
That's a recommended base layout but you can make some tweaks. Bind+mastery will cap out your demon DPS, and won't max until level 98. But variants of the build COULD sacrifice bound demon damage in order to get other QoL: Most builds can get +17 to sigil lethargy and 3 hard points will increase its AoE. Maxing it out is pretty unnecessary since the sigil itself is barely usable when you already kill stuff too fast, but its one way to buff your damage vs some bosses though maybe not as much as the demon would deliver, and wasted on anything with less than 50% dr since you'll have at least -137% to everything. If you dump 19 points into consume, you get +19% max life and some FRW, but you won't gain any bonus fire skill/pierce. Points into defilers have extremely diminishing returns. Maxing out hex siphon will get you +19 life/mana after each kill on top of the potential ~57/44-50 you already have, which is very nice but still marginal compared to demon DPS, though the buff to demon from mastery is also marginal. Those are all valid builds, but the most bang for your buck per skill point comes from the 60 into core DPS, 1 into consume/siphon/sigil, and 20 into bind demon for its massive base damage. Levitation mastery and other sigils are wasted skill points, not worth 1. Psychic ward just isn't worth a point either, since you wouldn't bother to recast it if you took damage and constantly healing back life makes it onerous to keep active.
ItemsCore best-in-slot items are the same across multiple setups:
- Mang Song's Lesson (defender's fire) - 15% fire pierce best, cold/light don't matter of course
- Ars Tor'Baalos (facet) - should be +6 boil, helps to be higher %dr / mastery / consume too, though engorge and defense barely matter
- Enigma
- Magefist - yes the +1 skills affects blood boil
- Arachnid Mesh
- Rare resist boots - Wraithstep could be used but its very hard for any reasonable 125% fcr build to max resists otherwise, and you need extra strength to equip them
- CTA swap - ethereal monarch spirit only needs minor str, or a splendor/lidless if you really wanna skimp
- Torch, Anni, Demon Skillers, Life/resist small charms
- Renewed Flame Rift - Any permutation can work, but generally the +% damage will be better since you bring many monsters to -100% already, and even against immunes you have high phys and the +% still works
Recommended 125 FCR setup (more expensive, harder time to max resists):
- 2/20 rare circlet, or 3/20 magic circlet or easier option, Hellwarden's Will (facets in all)
- 2/15+ fcr crafted amulet - can hit 125 on all builds with just 15%, and being just +2 demon skills is only losing you a very tiny bonus to sigil / siphon (2 maek/laek)
- 2x Fire Opalveins , or resist FCR rings as necessary.
Budget 75 FCR setup (maxs resists with cheaper gear more easily, but is slower):
- Flickering flame
- Maras
- 1x FCR/resist ring or Opalvein, 1x Soj/bk
For the Mercenary + Demon, you can use a few different setups. You can either get a holy aura + cursed demon and have infinity on merc, or use a conviction + cursed demon and have insight on merc.
There are tradeoffs either way:
- Flickering Flame or Cure
- Chains of Honor or 15/15 Skin of the Flayed One (upgrade 1x) or Protector's Stone in Greyform (upgrade 2x)
- Infinity or Insight
- Might or Holy Freeze
- Urdar from TZ Cursed Tal Rasha's Tombs recommended
- Cursed
- Holy Freeze or Conviction or Holy Fire
- Stone Skin and/or Lightning Enchanted very helpful on a unique, but not required
Might gives a big damage boost to your demon, which could already have holy freeze. Even the basic attacks with 75% curse spread amp fast enough, so a conviction demon
can work reasonably enough, but its definitely a bit slower / less reliable compared to the AOE of holy auras. Using infinity on your merc means losing the QoL of meditation aura so you'll need to chug mana pots if you teleport around without killing anything for hex siphon, that's the real tradeoff to deal with, besides the increased cost of infinity. Flickering flame can help offset the fire resist you miss from sunder, but keep in mind that in some dangerous TZ setups, if your merc dies you will instantly lose all your fire resist and become very vulnerable, so its dangerous around fire mages / venom lords / flayer shamans / etc with high fire output. If you can max your fire resist otherwise, cure is the best. Holy fire/shock on the demon instead of holy freeze is a small tradeoff, holy freeze doesn't hit act bosses and thus doesn't proc amp on them, and you might actually prefer enemies running into your AoE faster and not care about the %slow as a defense. Holy fire has slightly higher aoe than shock, so its better.
Hunting a proper demon can be tough. Demons lock in their base HP when spawned, and your +skills when you capture them don't matter beyond having 20+ bind demon for added affixes. Your +damage and +% damage from bind demon/mastery are recalculated as you join new games, with the gear equipped on joining. Same with the +% resists/dr on blood oath, however blood oath doesn't add % HP to bound demons at all. They simply lock in their base HP when spawned in the original game, and you can increase it with battle orders and that's it. Monster HP scales 100-450% with playercount, and another 200% for uniques multiplied on top of that. Urdars are highest recommended as the best, because their higher HP regen offsets the costs of blood boil, giving you more of a buffer of extra casts. Act 2-4 urdars have 55% dr, 180-220% of monlvl HP (60320-73725 in TZ96 P8) and 1 immunity, and 2x 50% resist with 2.44% regen per second. Act 5 guest urdars have 75% dr, 200-260% HP (67023-87129), 33% resists and 1.82% regen. I recommend the Tal's variant as its easiest to obtain and has higher regen. After the +16% dr and +76% resists on oath+engorge, all the variants become immune to fire/cold/light and have 71%/91% DR so they are nearly infinitely tanky, but all variants in all acts are 0% poison resist and can't become immune so poison WILL disable their regen, which you can only mitigate a bit with cure merc.
Ideally you can get a natural unique with its 2x hp and get cursed, the aura you want and even additional affixes like stone skin (phys immune on all variants) or lightning enchanted (will release bolts on both being hit AND casting blood boil that spread amp damage, making it even work for a conviction merc to spread it fast). But this is extraordinarily rare to find the one you want. And if a monster is not terrorized, not only will it have slightly lower HP/damage but its chance to hit will be MUCH lower even after the -resists on conviction, because level penalties in TZ are a big % cth loss. The far easier and workable solution is to get a basic urdar upgraded to the aura you want, which you can do with a simple process;
- Join P8 games like baal runs until you find "Cursed" terrorized affix and TZ 96 (or your char level if lower)
- Either scout a large area like Durance to make sure Urdars exist, or just pop an A2 shard and check tombs until you find one (99%+ chance urdars will be in at least one tomb)
- Prespawn a bunch of normal urdars before people leave the game so they stay at P8 hp, then bind them one by one until you get the cursed + aura combo you want
- Normal urdars will keep the Cursed terrorized affix when bound, minions/uniques/champions will not
Yeah didn't put as much effort into this guide as much as I did guides of old, any other questions we can follow up
And this build got butchered by a ptr because of 4 yards radius and bind demon having a health cap