i think the demon dps get even higher with those auras i mentioned, of course im considering specifc fights and for general content i was considering that the 33k+ tainted + max damage demon would be enought, maybe letting the bb be physical would help even more becouse as you mentioned the biggest problem would be big group of fire imunes.

in the end i might end up with the same build im now using full blood boil but with 2 defillers and 1 spear woman lol but for sure i miss the "teleport kill all things part of tainted"

I think for any reasonable TZ build you're going to go holy freeze + cursed on the demon and infinity on merc. Applying amp to ubers is possible via gavel or whatever, but not in general PvM
And honestly with conviction applied the demon should have close to 95% chance to hit against most everything in the game save ubers, so unless you're really intending to grind ubers exclusively it seems way overkill to put points to a skill to reduce enemy defense.
Spearwoman should be level 99 with 5516 base AR with ~1125 added from mastery, +260% AR on power strike / cold strike, +100% AR on jab. A typical mob like venom lord has 1583 base defense in TZ96 and after -83% conviction that's just 269 defense. On jab hits at equal level the spearwoman should have 13282 AR and that's 98% chance to hit, which caps at 95%. Maybe it matters against Uber Baal of every monster in the game specifically because he's level 110 with chilling armor +% defense sure, but uh, that seems incredibly specific. He just dies to tainted anyway. The heralds don't pack any major bonus defense so they shouldn't be an issue either.
It is true that sigil death kinda speeds up killing big immune high HP groups with blood boil but its so barely any better than just casting another blood boil. I really can't bother, considering how sigil lethargy+holy freeze is so godly at crowd control for heralds and I'd be loath to let them regain any movespeed even for a their last few hits.

fana was more about the damage it gives to the demon, im not sure if its worth to trade it for holy freeze while i understand that holy freeze make proc curse whhay faster and yes i watched you video the tainted demon is enought to kill ubers/colossus and they werent even with barb bo/shout.

need to run some tests maybe the ideal build would be with 1 point blood oath since whatever the fire damage of blood boil kill the max tainted would kill as well in that "range"



This post was edited by m4rin1 on Jun 3 2026 02:48pm

i was running freeze on my demon for a while but I recently swapped the fanta and I think I prefer the latter. The demon attack speed is noticeable for tougher heralds with immunes/extra strong/stone skin etc. As for all the others, they die so before the amp is even applied. I think fanta affects the tainted too.

Anyway some stats from my mockup hero editor version of the physical-based taintlock variant for comparison. Using mang songs and +5 tome to prebuff, not +6's, to be realistic to ladder right now, and not including skill shrine in summon tainted, but swapping to a fire sunder instead
Summons displayed with prebuff gear active, blood boil with its runtime gear. No fire sunder, so fire damage of blood boil is simply 0 against immunes, but phys sunder and -20% dr applied to blood boil here



With the charms subbed out to open up some inventory room, you're looking at 4.7k phys boil -> 8k damage vs 50% dr monsters, 9.3k against the rest. That's still a pretty significant high DPS, certainly enough to sweep stuff like flayers and chip in major damage against heralds. If you were against a venom lord pack with 4.7k phys / 5.4k fire with -25% resist on a shako facet / fire sunder / defender fire setup, it would be 9.6k damage. So even though you're dropping 19 skill points from blood boil synergies you're still doing 83% of the DPS in that case. Less against the non-fire immunes of course, but does that matter much?

The demon only has 5% chance to apply amp with its attacks. Holy freeze on a pack of 20 monsters has a 64% chance to proc amp every 2 seconds. Once it does proc amp, its getting 2-3x the damage.
Fanat will only add 127% ed and at best something like 23 -> 22 fpa normal attacks, not entirely sure about jab speed. And 100% AR at least.
The demon already has up to ~1200% ED here, so you're maybe raising overall damage per attack by ~10% with fanat. And it has a 15 frame delay between each attack and already has 60% EIAS of the max 75% EIAS. Spearwomen have 18 base frame animation for 2HT normal attack, so breakpoints at 0/6/13/20/29/39/50/64% EIAS for 17/16/15/14/13/12/11/10 frames in their animation, +15 delay so that makes it 26->25 FPA.

Amp is by far the most important thing here and you absolutely 100% crucially need to spread it reliably.
The only reasons to skip holy freeze on demon is if you're either exclusively killing ubers, where it does nothing, or you're applying amp by some other means ie dreadfang merc. And you're using an infinity merc here, and sure aren't using gavel swap.
So its not even a comparison, holy freeze + cursed is so important that a basic TZ cursed mob upgraded to aura enchanted already has all the relevant functional affixes you could get besides maybe lightning enchanted, just so the sparks also help spread amp

i just tested my version against p2 ancients it was not even fun, lancer destroyed then with lancer + 2 defillers, i think the max tainted would be even stronger.. lol.. yea its life was not even moved, probably the 1 point blood oath is the best way to go for max damage, and yes after this test fana is not really needed for ubers/ ancients conc + conv shuld be enought, i believe holy freeze wont work on de ancients itself but.. as in the uber tristan the holy freeze can proc curse from the adds, and apply to the ubers will later find a respect token and try the 1 point blood oath build

if my Bind demon is 1 hard point (but +19 skills, so with aura) - is it better to run 3x Tainteds or 2x Tainted + the bound demon?
in general - for non fire-immunes. Which option kills non fire-immunes (including herald packs) faster?

For non-fire immunes the tainted kill faster than a spearwoman, but unless you're somehow skipping every fire immune in the game despite that being like 1/3 of all mobs, you need the spearwoman for her attacks + amp + your blood boil.
The tainted also kill non-immunes so effectively that their synced projectiles 'pierce' because the first one will kill a small aoe of monsters in one hit before the second one is allowed to collide, which also puts a bit of a cap on usefulness of the 2nd/3rd fireballs because when there are no more targets in a line they just hit a wall or end in mid-air. With 2 tainted it feels like a convenient amount of piercing, but with 3 tainted, the 3rd fireball rarely hits anything at all and is mostly redundant against anything but bosses / heralds. Or immunes.

In all reasonable pvm applications there's no reason to skip the bound demon with cursed + holy freeze, to deal massive damage of its own, of a second type to help kill immunes faster, and apply amp which helps your blood boil kill immunes and heralds.
The only real debate we have here is whether its worth maxing blood boil fire damage & blood oath life, or just have pure phys blood boil and higher demon DPS

This post was edited by Goomshill on Jun 3 2026 04:04pm

I'm almost sure after fighting ubers that the max dps 1 point blood oath is the way to go

Will be back after testing