Hephasto doesn't regen, so you have to constantly engorge. Personally, were I playing HC with this build and my survival was explicitly tied to my demon being alive to soak all the damage coming to me, I would want one I didn't have to worry about dying. It seems like you're best suited to an A5 lancer.

yea depending on what mods the super unique naturally has, you can get up to 8 (maybe 9 different mods? Not sure what each super unique has. Ancient Kaa gets an extra mod, but you can't bind him lol) on a super unique. Pitspawn fouldog for example is always cursed and cold enchant, then he gets two natural mods I think in Hell TZ so that's 4. Then he gets extra strong, extra fast, spectral hit and aura from bind demon. The caveat is that his two extra mods cannot be any of the ones you give him from bind demon, or else they'll just override each other and it doesn't count as an extra mod.

This post was edited by FoldersUnite on Apr 4 2026 05:06pm

I've been waiting for something like this! After using ES to hunt for Heralds, I kept thinking to myself I want something with the clear speed of a Nova Sorc but the ability to still kill T5 Heralds without much issue. I tried a variant of this build offline and it is awesome!
I'll need to read your guide later when I have more time but I was curious if you are able to kill T5 heralds with this build? I tried a hybrid build as I stated earlier... with an eth thunder maul CTA on swap (probably would switch to something with less str requirements) and can still down a T5 Herald, albiet slower than a pure ES build.
The Hybrid variant only maxes blood boil and synergies which leaves enough points to max ES and throw some into mirrored blades. I created a profile here... ignore the bloodpact, I was just testing a more budget build than the mang song.
https://maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/sy9etq0i

I'm eventually going to respect my ES lock to Blood Boil, just collecting the gear now. I love how many different things contribute to the effectiveness of this build... such as a Cursed/Conviction Demon

Is it slow af against bosses? truth, no hope for the best answers

This post was edited by UncleBens1650 on Apr 7 2026 12:04pm

You can do about 25k hp per cast to bosses after % pierce/amp/sigil/conviction. Most don't let you have corpses/defiler, but some do
And so you're limited to about 20 casts before your demon is at critical hp (some % regen offsets so its not 19 casts to 5% hp), and maybe ~8 attacks from your demon in that time, more for spearwomen, but with ~50% block from bosses, so might only be ~72-100k from an urdar and a single CB proc.

That's why P1 bosses are trivial, you just unload your blood boils and they die. You can fart out 550-600k damage if you start the fight with a full hp demon. Andy/duriel/meph/diablo/baal have a base 60/85/94/114/494k hp. So P1 baal is well within range and the others die faster than their intro voice clips take to play.

"That's why P1 bosses are trivial"

guys forget p1, you can play bear druid on p1 and score, PRO players play p8 tz to max loot and xp always

Again its been stated like 20 times this thread, the boss HP thresholds mean you have no issue with everything up to and including p8 hell diablo (512k hp). And even against 2+ million hp heralds you have the supply of bodies to kill them easily. That leaves the only bosses in the entire game with enough hp to be prohibitive p8 baal (when solo killing in a p8 game), ubers and uber ancients. All of which are bosses that require you to go out of your way to kill when its not part of normal pvm loops. Which begs the question of why you're doing ubers in the first place, and not using a specialized uber farming char

and even then, ubers can be done because they're so close to the damage threshold and once linked by a defiler and under amp sigil conviction they die in a single unload of boil. But its hard to keep your merc alive and your demon can die. I've done full uber tristram without a town trip or engorge or demon dying by just being careful with all buffs active and hitting all 3 ubers. And here's the crazy part: If you're just willing to not be too concerned with your bound demon dying, you can very easily do ubers by just resummoning some goatmen. And its even easier to get a new demon than to make a 2nd uber char or even respec the warlock to a 2nd setup. Just resummoning goats lets you blood boil indefinitely, you just lose your demon without trips to town or engorge

This post was edited by Goomshill on Apr 7 2026 03:48pm

pls update for 3.2 ptr update ty

We have to cry hard, because this will kill this build

"
Blood Boil

Range updated to have three distinct ranges based off level thresholds:
Level 1-4: 2 yards
Level 5-9: 3 yards
Level 10+: 4 yards
"

Range 4 yards lol, useless.

Honestly, 4 yards seems pretty close to what it is now