How is this with mid gear. Say level 80ish week 1

ty info

good enough to lead solo p8 chaos using a tele staff, since that's what I did last season
within a week, probably have ondals, authority, +3 helm, +3 ammy, magefist, arachs, baalos. we'll see how annis drop this season, they were free last time. Torch was mighty expensive for a while, sunder was almost unobtainable and I made like 10k selling sunders alone, but now they drop like candy and I just gave away a couple that dropped in that pub game where I was just playing to record that video

Got ya. Tyty good luck bro

Another thing worth considering is how a flayer shaman stacks up against a venom lord
Flayer shamans seem to cast inferno way more than venom lords, since after all its their only attack. They have a bit erratic and defensive AI as a downside, unlike venom lords rushing in to tank, but they will spam inferno more frequently
With a maxed out build you're forfeiting a huge chunk of melee DPS that the bound demon can chip in even with just 1 point, but flayer shamans spread amp more consistently from inferno, and can be brought to flayer jungle or an act 5 guest area like WSK and start reviving extra bodies. They are way less useful at this than vile mothers who spit out their babies in any area, but if you do pass through flayer jungle TZ early on, its a nice way to keep extra bodyblocking. Also I think you need a minimum 5 soft points to lock in a TZ affix, since a monster won't upgrade to unique otherwise and won't carry the TZ affix when you bind with 1 point demon- it should work with 1 hard point and +4 skills or more at the time of binding.

Trying to decide on best skill order as I level in the new ladder. Seems like you want to get to 10 mastery first, then max tainteds, then blood boil, then tossup on blood oath vs engorge before maxing mastery

highly recommend going engorge first, just because that's the boil synergy for physical, and the only "annoying" period for this build is when you just start hell and there are fire immunes. So you want the physical component of boil first imo.

Why bind demon?
Explain?

I'd say you want mastery with goatmen 1-11 and 12+ you're pumping tainted and a few extra points from quests to finish 10 mastery. Not sure at what points blood boil synergy is more damage than another hard point in tainted but after norm it won't matter. 10 mastery - 20 tainted - 20 blood boil, then return to max mastery, then engorge. Blood oath won't be more than one point until levels 78-97 or so. You need that max engorge to kill immunes in hell.

On a fresh ladder you can use leaf, authority, magefist, rising sun, measured wrath and a tele staff and you're already at 9000+ tainted before charms, torch, anni, cta, enigma, etc.



The damage is too lopsided towards fire with low % piercing on summon tainted. A bound demon can provide amp damage, which is often tripling the physical portion of blood boil, your main tool to kill immunes. About 2x overall depending on target and setup. Hence by using 2x tainted and 1x bound demon you get both the instant kills on non immunes from tainted as well as fast clearing of immunes.

In an early ladder with just 1 point bind you can simply take a siren from frozen river and it will spam amp on its own. Once you're more confident about not dying a lot and have level 20 bind after +skills and swap gear (ex +4 on bloodpact shard, +3 circlet/ammy) then you can upgrade to the TZ cursed holy freeze demon. And the first recommendation was venom lord but I do think a flayer shaman could be an interesting alternative

2026/10 😅