What's your setup?

Im not sure about S tier build.

No mf.
Looks boring asf to play.
Clear speed is slow.

But nice guide

I have ~320%+ MF atm

boring = good (& fast)

its clear speed of TZs is likely the fastest in the game among all classes & builds

I get ~350% MF with a gheeds and some mf/mana scs, but never got my gheeds on ladder so closer to 300
its a single button held down for 90% of gameplay its absolutely boring yes
clear speed is the fastest build that has existed in the history of the game except maybe the stacked aura glitch on a sorc, and TZ didn't exist then to capitalize on it

Thanks for the guide, following it and enjoying it!

I have Level 42 Tainted with maxed BB -- but the fire dmg is only 15k-16k. I'm not clearing as fast as what you guys are saying... what am I missing?

I'm running.. hoto, shako, enigma, measured wrath (+3tainted), magefist, rising, 2 demon skillers, torch, anni, and mf gear (rings, war travs, and goldwrap). My merc is on infinity might.

I'm usually running cursed holy freeze lancer - but sometimes I'll run harpy if I'm lazy.

I dont have a fire sunder.. and would surely like to get more +skills from soj, arach, etc. What am I missing in my build as I don't feel I'm clearing as fast. Thanks!

Mang song and a sunder would definitely help

Well you want to be using prebuff gear and demon skillers to summon them. Its a total missing of {+2 mang song}, {+1 circlet}, {+1 ammy}, {+1-2 tome}, {+6 skillers}, {+2 sojs}, {+1 boots}, {+1 belt} and the fire sunder pretty necessary for killing fire immunes.
That's 14-15 skills missing, build hitting ~56 tainted with a full setup
The damage scales geometrically since you're increasing both mastery and tainted, with +10% overall damage per point from mastery and +26 base damage per point.
The damage formula at high levels becomes;

(1+0.1*mastery.slvl)*(1+0.2*boil.blvl)*(26.25*tainted.slvl-414.5)
Hence at 52 mastery, 20 base boil, 56 tainted you get 32721 avg damage. And another +1 skill from battle command on tainted, which if it scales the same as +1 tainted would be 33534 damage. If you had the unobtainable +3 demon / +3 tainted magic tome then it would cap at 34902 avg. And you can get another +2 if you find a skill shrine and resummon, approaching 37.7k. But per the same formula, at only level 38 mastery / 42 tainted you get 16512 avg damage, bc for 17142, assuming again that's how it works.

You don't need an expensive fire sunder either, if you're only prebuffing with it you can use an LOD sunder, even early on in the season they were cheap

/e fixed formula, I think, was rounding off the decimals

This post was edited by Goomshill on Jul 2 2026 01:21pm

okay thanks guys, makes sense, sounds like i need to get a sunder and more plus skills and focus on prebuff. Mang song and sojs are a bit pricey, but the rest are pretty obtainable. Thanks!

and bear in mind prebuff only items can be as low roll / barebones as possible on any other stats. -7 mang songs, plain +3 circlet/ammy, lod sunder, even bk rings if you don't plan to use an soj setup. But the shako + maras + fcr + sling is actually pricier, at least if you want sling TP. Guess you could just use 2x fcr rings, but good ones are also pricy. The only expensive mods that matter on prebuff items are if you want something like sockets / +strength so you can equip wraithstep without as much str statted, but eth wraithstep is only 153 strength which isn't much above a 146 for eth monarch on spirit swap, and you get nearly that from enigma/torch/anni/sunder depending on rolls

This post was edited by Goomshill on Jul 2 2026 01:30pm

according to this:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gtM3sQ1gzo8kpmTmiJ8CQAiqp7LLu0SeaWE6fUdVg6Y/edit?tab=t.0
https://www.reddit.com/r/diablo2/comments/1ufgo08/amplify_damage_proc_from_cursed_demons_is_bugged/