With a well geared character, +19 all skills (1 hard point okay in bind, sigil, & demon mastery), what skills do you max out after blood boil and synergies?

in current patch or ptr build

in current patch, deathmark goatmen tainted defiler all give basically nothing per point, and tainted are bugged and synergy doesn't work
in ptr, deathmark goatmen defiler lethargy all basically nothing per point, and lethargy is bugged and does nothing but change monster colors lmao
in current patch you can dump points into bind demon/demonic mastery to pump your bound demon's damage sky high, getting 15-25k phys per attack and even have jab
in ptr, you are REQUIRED to max demonic mastery to have 3 demon slots and bound demons die too easily for how hard they are to get and aren't as reliable at amp damage so you need to use one like venom lord or succubi to spread it via skills, which means they aren't melee attacking for that massive damage anymore either
and also in ptr, tainted are """"fixed"""" and deal the astronomically high damage they list on the skill, so a max tainted build gets ~34k damage per fireball, up to ~46k with prebuff gear

consume always just gives +1% max life and duration per point, frw scales with diminishing returns but still matters since its super high
each point in siphon is just +1 maek/laek, when engorge was giving you +1 maek/laek, synergy bonus, heal % to demon and the other bonuses on it. Its worse than consume imo
points in bind demon adding base damage does more than mastery adding % damage
the difference of 1 point defiler vs 20 points is something like 56 vs 60% amp
1 point vs 20 points death mark is something like 0 vs 0 added damage, it does diddly squat

lethargy is also a viable skill to max in current patch, its -1% dr per skill point, and it pays to get it to soft level 20 for the extra aoe which might be ~3 skill points invested. Getting it above -50% dr isn't as useful though, since most monsters cap at 50% dr, so with amp damage + 50 sigil you get them to -100%. And against physical immunes your fire damage kills them faster. I guess physical+fire immunes it can kinda help, but sigil gets the 1/5 penalty of amp so the difference between -37% sigil and -56% sigil is actually -7% vs -11%, taking a monster from 73% dr to 69% dr
If you didn't care about bound demon damage as much, lethargy might speed up your kill speed more in current patch.


In PTR its very straight forward because you don't have skill points to waste
20 summoned tainted, 20 demonic mastery, 20 blood boil, 20 blood oath, 20 engorge, 0 consume (get it from baalos), 0 bind demon, 1 defiler, 1 siphon, and you can get 1 sigil death if you really want but you need level 98 just to reach it with max skills and have ONE leftover point at 99, so you can finally put a hard point in consume and get +1% life / +1% frw on a skill you won't be using most of the time anyway since a lot of the time you have 3x tainted summoned.

Thanks this was very thorough.

Are tainted + flickering flame despawn bug fixed in PTR? If they aren't, would you dump into bind instead?

just don't wear flickering flame

Without consuming a tainted AND not wearing flickering, you lose 30% -EFR. And bound demons can't have conv, so you choose between insight and infinity on merc, maybe another -17 for immunes. What do you do about fire immunes? Pump physical and rely on (now slow) cursed application?

3/20/2 circlet has +10/-10, hellwardens has +5/-13.what you really lose is cure on merc
For a pre-infinity build you probably want a dreadfang a5 merc, once you have infinity, your best way through fire immunes is to just blast them. Tainted get heavily nerfed but they still deal enough

There's no good way to keep a bound demon alive on PTR because even if you get a stone skin 116% dr phys immune venom lord to spread amp, he'll die to the first cursed herald you fight, no penalty to amp it takes him to 16% dr and he dies.
otherwise you can just smash fire immunes with your own native 40-55% pierce with or without consume, if its a hefty pack of high hp immunes you're probably best off with 1 tainted, 1 defiler, 1 consumed tainted, for the rest you go 3x tainted or 2x tainted+defiler