Anyway from a 20+ year old LL post by nefarious I found some details on AI parameters and what they do


Urdars in melee range he has 97% chance to attack, 3% to delay for 7 frames. At range 95% chance to walk to target, 5% to delay for 5 frames. And he has 70% chance to use smite instead of normal attack
Lister in melee range has 90% chance to attack, 10% to delay for 17 frames. At range 85% chance to walk to target, 15% to delay for 17 frames. And he has 50% chance to use smite instead of normal attack
This still doesn't really explain everything, and maybe a followup post does;



I'm not entirely sure how this works. There's no stall parameter as a general column in the data files (sand raiders have nothing different than other monsters), all monsters have aidel and its usually 15/14/13 in norm/nm/hell (true for urdars, minions, sand raiders) but I understood this to be disregarded, hence the 15 frame delay, which is like he said.
but if lister's AI works this way, it might use the aidel value for baalminions, maybe it uses the 13 delay instead of 15? That still doesn't explain lister's apparently faster attack, since it sure looks like ~16 fpa but that would make it ~20 fpa
The best guess would be that its from the latter part: minions have a hardcoded delay value that isn't in the game files, just in the code directly and overrides the normal attack delay and makes them attack more rapidly
If lister has something like an ~8 frame delay instead of 15 frame delay, then he could be hitting at ~15-16 fpa but have a 10% chance to pause for 25 frames on each attack, while urdars have just a 3% chance to pause for 22 frames on each attack.

Unless something is overriding lister's ai delay I don't see how he could attack that fast, and maybe I just got unlucky with him pausing a lot more than expected

I dunno about which bind offers the highest dps, but when I did colossal ancients with a p8 tzone holy freeze urdar-style monster its hp didn't seem to budge once the entire time. I used one of the ones from dura 3 (Mauler), so it read as fire+light immune with the tainted spawned. He was completely safe the entire time, never saw the hp budge downward... no life tap, either (seemed totally unnecessary since I was full healing off mirrored blades + amp with some life steal).


Anywho, I was looking at this https://www.theamazonbasin.com/wiki/index.php/Consume

Pit Lord (megademon6) Conviction Aura When Equipped 15


Anyone bother to see this in action? Or is that pre patch? Seems like a nice easy way to get a "free" conv aura for an early ladder tainted build if it still works...

Well ancients don't have cursed or conviction. In normal PvM, anything that doesn't have amp damage is never going to kill you or your demon anyway, and the %dr on your demons can become very high or fully physical immune, but amp damage is glitched right now and gives -100% DR to enemies and summons that are immune and -200% dr if you have bone break vs immunes (including bound demon amp damage, hence prebuffing with bone break helps). But this also means even a 116% dr stone skin venom lord will have 16% dr after amp. If you're using an urdar from act 3, it has 55% base dr so 71% dr after engorge/blood oath, and immune to fire/cold/light. A lancer would have 49% dr and immune to fire/cold/light. Of course, all this begs the question of why you'd be doing uber ancients in the first place with a taintlock instead of a smiter or mirrored blades or whatever setup, because its pretty much one of the few niche things in the game where tainted aren't the best build.

Those megademons are only the ones in furnace/ubers, so its not a very 'free' way to do anything unfortunately :S you can get +4 all skills and holy fire / %dr from hephasto consuming too. But its quite impractical, all it lets you do is get the highest possible tainted damage prebuffing if you were on a 3x tainted build with no bound demon, but you need 20 points bind demon to get it. Then you could bind hephasto, get a skill shrine, and get up to level 63 tainted on a mang song setup. So unless you're being a sneaky bastard in a dueling game its not too useful, since nobody would put 20 bind demon and then not use a bound demon.

The wiki is still using 3.1 numbers afaik, its definitely +4 skills on hephasto now and +0 in 3.1 (since it was glitched not to work, but fixed and buffed in 3.2)

This post was edited by Goomshill on Jun 22 2026 06:03pm

Also just for weirdness- the google AI when asked about it claims:
>Baal’s minions (the Minions of Destruction in Wave 5) have a built-in AI delay of 0.28 seconds (7 frames) between their melee strikes. Because these Council-type minions possess a "stunlock" feature, they can chain-hit you relentlessly unless you utilize crowd control.
and
>In Diablo II and Diablo II: Resurrected, the AI delay represents the interval (measured in game frames) before a monster reacts, changes targets, or attempts its next attack/skill. For standard "Baalminions" (Minions of Destruction), this delay is hard-coded to 7 frames.Monster AI MechanicsAction Calculation: Every AI tick (7 frames), the minion's code runs a check to evaluate its current state, distance to the player, and available abilities.Next Hit Delay: This is not to be confused with Next Hit Delay, which is the short period of invulnerability a target receives after being hit by certain piercing or multi-projectile skills (like Lightning Fury).Crowd Control Impact: Because their base AI check is 7 frames, abilities like a 7-frame attack speed or cast rate allow you to attack them precisely within their decision-making loop. While immune to direct mind-control/confusion, they are highly susceptible to being chilled, frozen, or stunned, which drastically disrupts their AI cycle.For tips on how to handle their dangerous melee attacks and AI stunlocks in Hell difficulty:
and
>In Diablo 2, monsters have an assigned artificial intelligence delay—referred to in the game files as aidel. This hardcoded mechanic forces a mandatory pause between a monster's actions. While many standard minions have longer pauses (e.g., 15 frames), Baal's Minions have an exceptionally fast AI delay of just 7 frames.
and then the insanity of;
>In Diablo 2 (including Diablo II: Resurrected), the hardcoded Artificial Intelligence (AI) delay for Baal's minions is 10 to 20 frames (0.4 to 0.8 seconds) between standard attacks and actions.
and
>In Diablo II, the aidel (AI Delay) parameter controls the number of frames a monster pauses between its attacks or actions. For the Minions of Destruction (Baal's fifth wave of minions), the hardcoded aidel value is typically 0 for all difficulties, allowing them to attack with minimal delay
>The exact values hardcoded in the MonStats.txt file for these minions across difficulties are:Normal: 0Nightmare: 0Hell: 0
yeeea

obvious hallucination in saying its 'council type' and the last two and the page it links as its source on the 'other' wiki has nothing at all to support that claim, no field or text about monster delay or the number 7 anywhere on the page

Now maybe somewhere on the internet is a source that establishes that there's a 7 frame AI delay instead of 15 frame for baalminions exclusively. If so, that would explain what we see in-game and make the numbers accurate.
But every attempt I make to find its source claims that wiki page which definitely says nothing of the sort, and even if the blasted AI was reading this thread and hallucinating based on it, it would figure the delay is ~8 frames.
Maybe the AI is reading some game files in depth in a way I'm not, because its truly weird it keeps insisting the value is exactly 7. Maybe the wiki has an edited out section on its history, can't access without making an account and CBA
But even if its reading from the aidel parameter, it should think the AI delay is set to 13 instead of 15, because that's the case in monstats.txt. Most monsters are set to 13 and afaik the game just ignores it and uses 15 instead, so it has to be a hardcoded override in the ai code, which you can't get without parsing through compiler code like a madman. So uh, still can't really be sure.

If anyone can figure out where the AI is pulling that seven from, let me know, it seems hyperspecific and showed up in many attempts

But to just estimate it with math from that example clip, 17.46 second clip including the extra bit of attacking after urdar finished, 4 pauses in attacks, 22 attacks (2 in that last bit)
Should be about 437 frames, 26 actions, 22 using a 7-8 frame animation, 4 using a 17 frame delay. Tried to count how many of each but its a pain so lets just pretend 11 of each though I think it might have been 9:13
it should be a longer than 17 frame stop each time it rolls, which is the apparent case, because it goes ai delay -> idle delay -> ai delay -> attack
so there should be 26x ai delay, 22x 7.5 attack anims, 4x 17 idle delay. That puts the supposed AI delay at 7.84, within the margin of error of an ai cooldown of 8 (looking at 60 fps footage of a 25 fps game and approximating heavily)

So with that I think lister's advantage is an 8 frame ai delay instead of 15 like other monsters. Maybe some classes also have different values. All the other ones I tested sure seemed to be 15ish, and urdars fit about 1:1 with predicted speed.
Which would mean lister hitting at 16-17 fpa when an urdar is hitting 24 fpa. A pretty huge difference, and the +33% speed I estimated earlier. But also neutered heavily by him having that 10% chance to go afk on every swing

/e when I chop up the video going frame by frame I see about ~1 second of pause for lister each time, from first repeated idle animation frame to first frame of the attack after the delay
So I'd guess that the ai delay doesn't trigger after a failed attack roll delay, and is used instead. Thus it should be 22x ai delay, 22x 7.5 attack anims, 4x 17 idles, which would be ~9 frame animation delay. And if that's the case, then 9 frames delay + 17 idle would indeed look about 1 second of pause, +/- a few frames. Which would be a 17-18 fpa attack. Bear in mind this is me just trying to figure out the black box mechanics from the example footage, working backwards

This post was edited by Goomshill on Jun 22 2026 09:34pm

all t5 herald are fine until i met cow , mayb i should just skip cow t5 with spear girl

cows, frenzy bulls, urdars, archers etc.
all phys dmg heavy mobs

can all be pretty bad at t5 with conc/fata/cursed

what is the max +to teleport lvl you can get while keeping 125 FCR?
+15? (16 with BC)

+2 Enigma
+2 Shako
+2 Mara
+7 Obsession
+1 Arach
+1 Anni

thats +15 from items
so lvl 16 Teleport (17 with Battle Command)


you cant use SoJs with Shako+Mara if you want to keep 125 FCR

Will a sorc torch work? Summon with lock torch and swap to sorc? lol

Coven / maras / sojs is +5 while the shako/maras/fcr rings and shako/fcr ammy/soj setups are +4. But I think the shako maras fcr setup gets the most QoL overall with more mf, resists, an open slot, higher potential mana. The sojs actually arent the best mana setup after all, but honestly coven is a very decent option and near full potential

But its also 4/5/6 to blood boil. So 2/20 ammy setup might be better in the end, not as nice qol as having sling, but a good 2/20/mana ammy is super prohibitive

This post was edited by Goomshill on Jun 23 2026 07:51am