The -10% dr on bone break shouldn't apply to your bind demon nor should sunder be harmful to him afaik. That affix should only apply to you. All sunder should do is give your bound demon 2x damage vs physical immunes with amp, 200% instead of 100% (and 5% without). Likewise, maxing blood oath doesn't really do anything but give fire damage to blood boil and some very minor HP to tainted. Blood oaths +% hp doesn't apply to bound demons, so you're just getting a very small bonus to the % redirection. That's still the case in 3.2, I think during the PTR they put a changelog briefly that claimed they changed it, or someone did, but nope blood oath still doesn't give any % hp to bound demons same as 3.1. But the resists/dr/etc does work. And engorge still doesn't give any % lifesteal to bound demons either, if it says 111% lifesteal its actually +111 direct hp removal / +1.4 hp gained per hit instead (uses 'life drain' with 1/80 rate)

I know I'd never trade QoL and clear speed for stacking % mf beyond incidental amounts. If you're slowing yourself down to get more % mf you're getting less drops overall. And since you can already slot in obsession, enigma, shako, sling, fcr ring, rare boots, gheeds, sunder and have 300%+ mf with very little sacrifice, not much reason to go above that. Going from 300->600 mf is 236% -> 276% unique droprate, so +17% uniques but at what cost in gear slots?

In fire immune areas like chaos which is the worst of the worst areas to be a taintlock, its still generally as fast or faster than a hammerdin or most other A-S tier builds, particularly those that would be slowed down vs p8 diablo since you kill him very fast even with no-prebuff tainted. You can do ~90 second runs while killing all unique/champ packs. Remember, blood boil alone is already like a better nova sorc, and you've got instant boss killing and passive damage on top of that. And if all you wanted to do was fast chaos runs with no prebuff, you can still do that- even with the physical setup with 1 point blood oath- by simply using 2x defilers instead, and only using bound demon/boil, then summon the tainted at diablo. But its like all the discussion earlier about ubers, it begs the question of why. Going into 30 minute TZ P8 games, or at a minimum tomb runs / a5 runs, is simply more rewarding beyond the first day or two of a new ladder when chars are low level and undergeared.

As the math posts said, a fire sunder / blood oath build can get around ~20% higher DPS vs fire immunes in areas like chaos than a pure phys build, while the pure phys build has ~55% higher bound demon DPS. And even a glass cannon fire build that trades off QoL and uses mang song and has low resists / mf / etc and chugs mana pots still only gets ~40% higher DPS blood boil vs fire immunes.
https://forums.d2jsp.org/topic.php?t=109307912&f=148&p=691023343
Even that 1 point blood oath build could be doing 12k physical damage per cast to fire immune 50% dr venom lords, when an infinity nova sorc does ~8.8k to non-immunes, ~5k to immunes

So even when you build pure phys build with 1 point blood oath, you can summon 2x defilers and go chaos at about 83% of the dps of a max blood oath / fire sunder / defender's fire build, but still have that stronger bound demon
but again I have to stress this part about- don't do this. I mean, why would you, when TZ exists and is better. Maybe if its TZ chaos and you have 7x loader accounts to rapidly join new games, otherwise, why bother. Even when its TZ chaos its not worth doing pubs with 7 people splitting XP around you when you could be soloing 8 player TZ games by zooming through act 5 getting 450% xp with a faster kill speed when tainted can kill non-immunes as fast as you teleport

soo this is the update best version right?
you probably can squeeze a bit more of mf trading gcs for mf scs?
if you run a bo barb alone you can have on swap a 280 mf gear for boss kill
and why cham on shako?
probably can run colossal 30+mf on shako and horazon boots and use wraistep as prebuff

This post was edited by N1ck0 on Jul 20 2026 10:10am

-12k physical damage assuming if amplify damage procs or is this without amplify damage? It's not like it's on demand 100% of the time. Damage/Time is also lost when it's not vs. fire immunes particularly. Even worse if physical/stone skin also spawns.

-Realistically, in P8 baal/chaos (tz/non-tz) games, games end fast enough to make pre-buff worthwhile? To some those are the only ways they can get P8 games for example.

-Can 15k damage tainted unbuffed get by in P8 tz/non-tz?

Thanks. Lets hope blizz don't send more nerf bat to taints by next season. ^^

This post was edited by GforceUSA on Jul 20 2026 10:23am

Cham is for simply the QoL of moving faster when you pick up items / town / use exits, and its even worth using % frw skillers instead of vita since its just so immortal by default anyway
You really can't avoid frost novas from cold enchanted and even with 75% resist they still last 25 seconds. And you can hit as much as 300% mf before counting scs, I used life/mana scs. You can get up to 75/70/70/70 resists from obsession/maras/torch/anni/tainted alone, then have rare ring, boots & scs for more resists, so resist on charms can be pretty overkill if boots/ring cap your resists, and cold resist is pretty pointless especially if you have a cham. Horazon's boots is really just 30% frw / CBF, the other stats don't matter and there's almost no magic damage in pvm, so you're better off with cham in shako, colossal jewel in baalos and rare boots. Can't get the resists/mf in a socket that boots can give.



You actually deal more damage to stone skin physical immunes with amp damage + bone break active due to the glitch, since amp damage from a bound demon becomes -200% dr vs physical immunes when sunder is active.
A heavier blood boil build for chaos lends itself to the fcr ammy setup for +2 skills, and even dropping some skillers to have extra inventory space you can hit 4800 physical on blood boil (5200 full skillers, 5500 glass cannon setup). Then you have -120% dr with amp, bone break & stone pierce, so those 50% dr venom lords become -70% for 1.7x damage, and you get another 1.56x from defiler soulbind, so that 4800/5200/5500 damage per boil becomes 12700/13800/14600 per cast. And that's just against the fire immune 50% venom lords, doom knights take more, storm casters have dinky hp and take more.
Both chaos & baal runs are a bit better served by defiler blood boil setups anyway, because of the mass immunes in chaos and how few monsters you actually kill in throne. You wouldn't bother prebuffing in those scenarios, but again I have to stress how they are so unrewarding and compared to P8 TZ split games, where you SHOULD prebuff and SHOULD hit 34k tainted before BC with prebuff.

I mean what really matters here is that P8 split TZ gives 450% xp and you take 100% of 85.71% drops. While P8 chaos/baal if everyone is the same level, same chance of grabbing that jah and keeping in range you'd only get 190% xp and 12.5% of 100% drops
Unless you're using loaders, its pretty pointless

/e typos

This post was edited by Goomshill on Jul 20 2026 11:10am

-So this build is better played with prebuff. k.

-So there's also the defiler + blood boil route as an option ok. So does that mean they can go to more places albeit slower speed vs. tainted for non-immunes because of the tele/dmg at the same time

-Yea for some they dont' join chaos/baal games to join the parties but to MF in other active tz area's or whatever area's they desire for example. but yes it'd be hard to grab some good items if many are in same area.

if you dont run a 3 tele staff you can still go without insight? your bb kills get the bonus from siphon right?
the only motive i dont convert to the build its becouse im running a lockbow with enchantress with max sipphon and bind demon/defillers, using demon machine, run 500 mf and 800 on boss
but again its a 3 account build ( lock bo barb enchantress)
even then im tempted to back to tainted lock to finish chronicle.. ( have all the gear but tele obsession, only normaal obssesion )

I just restarted d2 after 3y break. And leveling a warlock (lvl 59).

Is this build playable with budget gear or would you recommend other builds?

It takes getting just about max teleport possible and ~900-1000 mana before you really get to the point you don't need mana pots. If you sacrifice +teleport and don't use insight, you will need to spam mana pots in normal pvm as you teleport around TZ areas. Blood boil can't even get kills on a lot of non-fire immunes when you teleport into a pack and tainted kill them before you can cast a spell. Hex siphon simply isn't a reliable mana source when in normal pvm, only really helping offset blood boil costs for the immunes you'd normally cast blood boil against.

I went most of this past season with a budget build using insight staff + kiras helm on a shoestring budget and I'd much prefer that to the onerous mana pot usage of a higher MF setup. And you can shop a +3 teleport insight staff base in act 2 norm drognan in a few minutes, granted the teleport becomes overkill there anyway

depend how much budget it is, tainted scale exponentially soo its not really strong with low level skills, but get ultra strong at high level skill if you get a good cursed bind demon and with tainted shuld be able to kill things

or if ultra budget, start with a demon machine magic lock using demon/2 defiller and try to move into tainted lock