The builds are mostly identical, you're just swapping around some gear choices and one synergy choice, and they perform closely enough to each other in all areas its not that big of a difference. We're just talking about the fine tuning at the endpoint of optimization.
You're going to want a cursed + holy freeze bound demon with all setups, and even on a build that uses 2x defilers or defiler + consume in chaos, you'd still want max tainted because you'd still summon them to kill diablo
That gives you some permutations of options- mang songs + fire setup, obsession + phys setup, obsession + fire setup (mang song wasted on a phys setup). The fire setup uses max blood oath and 1 bind demon with flame rift / def fire / facets, the phys setup uses max bind demon and 1 blood oath with bone break / pro stone
And its not like there's any buildmaking marginal utility cost to use consume and/or defilers in chaos, because defiler only needs 1 point you spend anyway to get bind demon, and you don't need to spend a point in consume at all because you get it from ars baalos AND reach the +/-% fire cap.
And the phys obsession setup really doesn't want to be used without prebuffing because you'd need to keep a latent flame rift in inventory to get the sunder effect on tainted, dropping you -1 skill, -70% fire resist and whatever gc suffix (7% frw or 40+ life)
So non-prebuff really favors the fire setups either way

To put some numbers on it
Any setup can reach up to ~33.5k tainted using prebuff assuming +2/3 tome. Without prebuff but keeping just cube and no inventory space, either obsession or mang song can hit the same ~23.8 to 26.2k depending on setup. If you want to subtract 4 skillers to have a 2x4 inventory, 2x tomes and gheeds, you lose a lot more damage without prebuffing, down to ~19-20k minimum. Mang song glass cannon fire setup can hit 4910 phys / 6628 fire (7610 consume) with -50% (-65% consume) fire resist. While the obsession phys QoL setup can hit 4660 phys with -20% dr, and if it sacrifices shako/sling for 3/20 helm and sojs it can hit 5035 phys, but loses a lot of QoL in the process. The biggest hurdle in chaos is always venom lords with fire immune / 50% dr. So that could be 0x fire for the phys setup, 0.52x / 0.67x for obsession with/without consume and 0.72x / 0.87x for mang song with/without consume. 1.5x phys after amp, 1.7x for phys build with stone/break.
Which is why the phys obsession build can do ~8.0-8.5k hp per cast even though its dealing no fire damage at all, while the mang song glass cannon with maxed fire synergy deals ~12.1k without consume, ~14.0k with consume.
And defilers are giving 1.56x amp if you use them


Now pulling this back to the original point in the other thread, an infinity nova sorc gets around 8k hp to venom lords per cast. A mang song taintlock who isn't even using tainted, using consume + defiler + bound demon, can have 21.8k HP blood boils per cast on targets tagged by his defiler. And even the far more practical max QoL obsession setup that isn't trying to be a glass cannon could summon 2x defilers and use pure phys damage and still have 12.4k hp per cast on the build dropping +skills for qol, 13.4k if it used the 3/20 helm and sojs.

I clear ppl8 with no pre-buff and lvl ~43 Tainted just fine

1 pre-buff issue is that you cant cast Battle Command in town

So you have to first run/wp outside, cast BC, then go back to town to swap & pre-buff

Well the normal setup would be:
>join new game with prebuff gear equipped, go to stash, swap to summon tainted gear (swap bone break for flame rift, swap tomes)
>exit town, CTA bc/bo, cast 2x tainted
>return to town and put on runtime gear (swap flame rift for bone break, swap all prebuff gear off)
>{play 30 minutes in TZ}
>go to town, swap to bind demon prebuff gear before leaving game (put on +skills gear / bind demon tome)

I already captured footage of what it looks like for someone earlier in this thread:



as per that, it probably adds 20-30 seconds of gear swaps per game since I was already going to exit town and bo en route either way, return to stash to dump gear, have loading screens, etc

This post was edited by Goomshill on Jul 4 2026 12:15pm

I think the Tainted setup with 1 Pt bind demon is probably the easiest one to manage overall. I tried doing lvl 15 bind demon and focused on blood boiling the screen and it's just so impossible to find uniques that are good enough to justify not just dropping 5 more from Hephasto. It's a massive time investment over just rereolling TZ until you get Cursed. Plus even though there are a lot of fire immune in the game, the Tainted take out anything that isnt before you even see them so you dot have to invest in dealing with them.

Overall after a few hundred TZs with both I do think max bind/bloodboil/defiler is slightly less fun and takes so much more time to make it work than the tainted build.

No success shopping the right prebuff dagger or finding a good book though :/

This post was edited by inkanddagger on Jul 4 2026 12:25pm

Right now my no-prebuff no-enchant Hex Bane Mirrored Blades Mist Bowlock is doing 9k magic per bolt, so gonna try out a no prebuff Demon build and see the power level. I've always been a fan for QOL over sheer killing, kind of why I hate playing javazon.

Is this accurate?
https://maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/as28vc0x

This post was edited by ahyp on Jul 4 2026 01:02pm

Now mind on the chaos clearing part we're getting into the kind of pointless theorycraft where we're optimizing over a few seconds difference in run speed in one specific area, when a generalized build can do it just fine
I did P8 TZ96 chaos often enough on my regular phys-only / obsession setup with the same prebuffed demon/2x tainted that I used in every other area. Not bothering to resummon or swap, not using fire damage at all. And it clears it just fine

but if you were really demented and DID want to focus on a chaos-heavy build and grind a bunch of TZ chaos games in a row, no prebuff- you still could do it very fast with a phys taintlock using obsession setup. And you could speed it up by simply putting an eth dreadfang in your stash, go to act 5 and swap your mercs gear and hire a barb merc, stash your infinity, put dreadfang on a barb merc. Then instead of prebuffing or using tainted, you simply join the game, summon 2x defilers and spam blood boil. No consume since you're still doing pure phys damage build. You'll proc amp even more reliably on chaos mobs from both bind demon & dreadfang merc (though he overwrites some with battle cry- you COULD use reapers a2 instead and not have to rehire and lose a merc level, but then it overwrites amp). When you summon 2x tainted vs diablo, you'll kill him slower with tainted because 50% resist instead of -35%, but your bound demon will instakill him anyway because merc amps him for -55% dr instead of 45%. Demon on its own only has 5% chance to amp diablo, so that merc compensates

so with all that in mind, you could build 1:1 the most optimal high-QoL setup I was already recommending, and STILL clear chaos-only runs efficiently even if you eschewed all the much more rewarding TZ areas like act 2/3/5

When prebuffing/summoning, what is best for the bone break and flame rift, is it better to have - resist or +dmg?

The best prebuff is a latent charm. You can't have 2 renewed sunders in inventory and it freezes the ones in your stash until your inventory one is picked up, so its very inconvenient to have a 2nd renewed sunder
If you're using the phys build, use a -10% dr bone break (+%ed does absolutely nothing) and then have a latent flame rift in stash that you swap in for summoning tainted, then swap the bone break back
The stats on renewed sunder all do absolutely nothing for prebuffing. Well unless the +stats can help you equip wraithstep. +%/-% fire don't apply to tainted.

If you're using the fire build with max blood oath, you want to have latent bone break and renewed flame rift, swapping bone break only on for bind demon (and that's not very necessary either, but very powerful against the few phys immunes you do fight)
And for that build, +15% fire and -10% resist are actually pretty evenly stacked. In the case a few posts earlier with a -10% charm its 4910 phys / 6628 fire / -50%. But with +15% charm its 4910 phys / 7365 fire / -35%. Against a venom lord in chaos that's 12137 vs 11563 damage, and against a ghoul lord in tombs that's 21603 vs 22119. The -% resists one probably slightly better since blood boil is mostly used on fire immunes anyway, but its a pretty small difference. +/-5% overall

Build is insane. Tried it with the recommended runtime/prebuff gear and seems sooo good. Obsession Shako is great for mf and the qol is top notch.

I get that on mang Song / blood oath build you get some more damage but it’s super hard to cap resists/keep mana up.

But is it possible to build a mang Song Build that doesn’t have to use pots?

Like if you can get super bis stuff like a 2/20 2 socket rare circlet with mana/res , a sick 2/15+ amu with mana/res and some gg caster boots with high mana/res. Get mana roll on your sunder, depending on resist maybe on small charms. One 10fcr 100+ mana res ring + one opal.

Wouldn’t this be enough to keep your mana up even without obsession build ? Is this worth chasing or is the damage increase to minimal ?