which offhand do you use after summoning? Thought about measured wrath but thats actually also just for summoning then...

ars baalos with a fire facet, its +6 blood boil

Same experience. And much easier to get than a well rolled Heph. Seems like lancer is the way to go for now. Defilers are best way to spread curse since it seems like a proc on any bound target spreads to all other targets.

Only was able to mess around with phys ES builds but they still feel pretty good. Uber's still doable, but needs EBODT at 75% breakpoint, didnt try 125% but EBODT felt better than fort and way way better than insight. 125% breakpoint going to be pretty expensive - 30% FCR Meph book + 15% FCR ammy. Unless swapping enigma for viper magi. P8 tz chaos was okay but definitely slower than before. ~3 minutes, did this at level 90 and didnt min/max skill try much. No skillers.

Does -res from protector's stone add to blood boil dmg? Or not since it's a minion based skill?

Blood boil is dealt from the player not the minion, so protector's stone -% dr works with. Kills made with blood boil trigger on-kill effects from the player, like life-after-kill, whereas those made by minions don't.
But generally, you'd want defender's fire because you get both the +% fire / -% enemy resist effects. The +% ed on protector's stone does nothing for blood boil

Alright I think I've settled on my new best setup
Its simple, we keep a 1 point bound demon for amp damage, use 2x tainted for max damage and skip defilers & consume. You could still mix them in if you really wanted, but it just doesn't seem practical.
This gives you the amp damage that provides by far the biggest effect at clearing out fire immunes, while the 2x tainted still give overwhelming non-immune and boss killing damage on their own.

Ran some numbers and against immunes, consume is +27% blood boil dps, amp is +70%, together they are +96%. While against a 0/0 resist mob its only 10/25/35% respectively, and against cows with 50/50 resist its 19/32/51% respectively
Consume is never a particularly big steroid, but amp is pretty gigantic vs immunes at 1.7x.
And even just 1 point bind demon is all it takes to get an effectively immortal demon who can still spread amp via a cursed TZ 96 binding trash mobs until you get holy freeze aura. You won't get multiple shots or lightning enchanted or stone skin this way, and you can't afford the 15 skill points to get uniques. So the bound demon's damage will be minor, but you could also just ignore it. It could a succubi, but honestly the non-amp curses she casts make her less reliable than a venom lord with his inferno, less evasive AI and less chance to die at low hp
Unlike a bind-demon only build, you can kill baal or other bosses without running out of blood boil hp on demons because you honestly don't even need to cast blood boil. 2x tainted kill him in 2/3 the time of 3x tainted, sure, but they're already stupidly high damage output
And since its a tainted build you can also skip flickering flame on merc, since you get fire resists back from tainted.

So overall I wind up with:

Skills:

• 20 Summon Tainted
  
• 20 Blood Boil
  
• 20 Blood Oath
  
• 20 Engorge
  
• 20 Demonic Mastery
  
• 1 Bind Demon
  
• 0 Consume (can get it from Baalos anyway, if you ever did cast it)
  
• 1 Hex Siphon
  
• 1 Sigil Lethargy

Caps out at level 98, then you have 1 leftover point

Items:

• Mang Song's Lesson (Defender's Fire)
  
• Enigma
  
• Ars Tor'Baalos (Facet)
  
• +3 Demon / 20 FCR / 2x socket magic circlet (2x Facet)
  
• +2 Warlock / 15 FCR crafted amulet
  
• Magefist
  
• 2x Opalvein
  
• Arachs
  
• Resist Boots
  
• Fire sunder, torch, anni, life/res scs, skillers in desired open inventory/cube amount
  
• CTA+Spirit swap (eth monarch)
  
• A2 merc with infinity, cure and either CoH or greyform/skin of the flayed one + protector's stone. Can be a prayer merc or might merc, since you already have HF
  
• +3 demon amulet, 2x soj, wraithstep, extra skillers, and either measured wrath (+4) or higher tome/dagger combination for swapping to prebuff spawn tainted

You keep up a cursed + holy freeze venom lord bound demon from TZ96 trash mob, which gets astronomical HP even with 1 point bind demon and still has some decent damage, in fact higher than you'd get with a maxed out bind demon build in 3.1 (even at level 27 with non-swap gear at start of each game, I'm already at +1676 base damage / +695%). Then you summon 2x tainted, no consume, no defiler. With prebuff, tainted list 34k damage per shot, but presumably get another +1 skills from battle command so probably 36k damage each. While my blood boil is at level 53 with 4070-6000 physical + 6105-9000 fire with -40% enemy fire resist and conviction on merc and amp damage from demon.

This post was edited by Goomshill on May 21 2026 01:03pm

Viable as ladder starter?

ya as long as you can get ahold of a fire sunder, infinity, and a baalos day 1

Champions path

how’s the act 1 Stony field progression looking? Dm if help needed I’ll quick jump in to help tomorrow