I spend some time tooling around with the builds and it sure felt to me like Taintboiler >> Purge-ES > Physical ES
not sure how bind-demon variant stacks up against those latter, but tainted just feels better even in high immune areas like chaos, the runs were just noticeably faster and easier and bosses died instantly

waiting for that full build guide

Damn they gave you d2 pros enough time to theorycraft and optimize before ladder

Where's the struggle at lol

This

Also ladder start variants please

This post was edited by Druidika on May 21 2026 01:18am

https://old.reddit.com/r/diablo2/comments/1tixp3w/reaching_over_40000_damage_with_bound_demons_now/on0cgs3/?context=3

we got someone who bothered decompiling the code and seeing what actually happened

Bind Demon used to give
+damage = 7+(slvl-1)*29
While trying to change the % chance to bind demons, they copy/pasted the wrong parameters and set the +damage scaling to the intended % chance to bind values
now it uses
+damage = 12+(slvl-1)*64
where 12 is supposed to be the base % chance to bind, and 64 is supposed to be the maximum cap on % chance to bind
they copy/pasted the parameters into the wrong buffers

Both of which are slightly different than the displayed values, but nearly accurate to the tooltip, hence the massive damage buff was unintentional and not in the patchnotes
Level 57 bind demon used to have +1631 added base damage, now it has +3596

This post was edited by Goomshill on May 21 2026 06:39am

Interesting, I feel like purge is smoother. Are you running your tainted setup with extensive pre buffing? Or is this a comparison between good to go setups, which can start the game right away?

I've done tainted setup with and without prebuff but its only a few extra clicks for a full game since I never have to respawn them normally. It's a pretty substantial damage buff for just swapping rings/ammy/boots/shield, though rearranging charms might not be worth the effort for +1, nor trying to get a +6 dagger over mang songs.
The minimal prebuff is just so smooth its worth doing for TZ, while if you were grinding some fast runs like chaos or baal you wouldn't bother

I'm still on the fence about physical vs purge ES, and I haven't tried purge with extensive prebuffing yet either. Just standard obsession/meph/gheeds/slings/etc.
It does feel like the purge setup lacks both sustain and single target DPS for bosses / heralds. Its still reasonably high dps against them, and you still have an insight merc, but you don't have lifesteal, manasteal or hex siphon's LAEK/MAEK.
But it sure does comparable aoe damage to the 3.1 ES warlock, shredding everything in a couple chucks. Still, noticeable when you clear chaos fast and then reach diablo and have to grind away at him significantly slower than the other builds.
I don't know how a prebuff setup would compare for that

Also the same sources datamining claim that blood oath indeed now multiplies demon HP, unlike patch 3.1. Unclear if this is scaled only at the moment of binding or at the start of each new game, so I need to test that (ie a +99 skill setup and bring norm smith to get paddled in hell)
Demon base HP should be capped somewhere around 12-20k, before % playercount (so 54-90k in p8), and before blood oath (so 1.5 million+ after it)
Monsters in TZ96 start with 7447 HP scaling from monlvl so a spearwoman with ~97.5% avg vs an urdar with ~200% can still be about double the HP for an urdar, but unique mobs with 2x HP will probably reach the cap either way and once you get into the millions of HP the regen will outpace any possible monster damage, even in ubers or T5 heralds

What's your quick prebuff setup for tainted, could you share? Ty!

well since I'm already using a +3/20/2 circlet, magefist, arach, mang song, enigma, the only slots to quick swap are shield, ammy, 2x soj. All I've got at the moment is a +4 splendor but ideally you could have a +6 tome. You could also have a +6 dagger over mang songs, and rearrange charms to fit in an extra skiller (must keep sunder while summoning, however). But that's extra ornery. And you already have to manually swap the 2nd soj on, since shift clicking only swaps your left ring slot