Do you have a character planner for that I can see?
Demon machine or brand xbow (some people don't like brand, I do, it's a preference)
Enigma
Hellwarden's with a guardian's light jewel
Highlord's if you need the IAS (from using brand), something else if you don't - a 2/15 gets you to the 75 fcr breakpoint if you're using demon machine and arach's
Horazon's gloves/boots combo
Opalvein magic
Sling (because to hell with town portals)
Razortail (if you're not using demon machine), arach's/gheed's (if you are, the -res and all resist on gheeds is very nice, the skill point and slow on arach is too)
Black cleft sunder, torch, anni, a few eldritch skillers, enough +res charms to get you to at least 10-15 of each
I like prebuffing with an ondals/random meph book, but you can use things like voids/obsessions if you want to for single target fights
Some people go for bind demon for their builds, and they're entitled to do so but I don't think it's necessary at all and really gimps your dps because it's at the cost of the synergies.
I max hex: bane and its synergies (mirrored blades, hex: purge, and consume). 1 point into the 3 sigils (you can get by with just sigil: lethargy for slowing down heralds, but sigil death is nice for the minions), 1 point into goat/tainted/defiler, 1 point into death mark, 10 into demonic mastery, and the rest into blood oath.
You will only possibly die to things like t5 herald packs with ridiculous combos that get a chance to target you after deleting your mercenary, so just make your merc as tanky as possible. I go with an insight, bulwark, and GA with a protector's stone for my mercs, and they rarely if ever die during full p8 clears.
Your dps is 95% the magic damage from hex: bane, so things people seem to hunt for to make their physical damage go up are not necessary. You don't need fanat with this build to get to max frames, and while even 1 point in bind demon can get you a DPS monster, it's definitely less than you get from just emptying screens out from having 2 defilers summoned with one consumed.
I've played around with using mist for the conc/+skills/100% pierce, but if you do that you're putting a lot of your resources into buffing physical damage for a build that doesn't deal a lot of physical damage. If you do that, then it makes sense to use a bound demon, but you'll do less dps overall because of how much you miss that extra defiler spreading the damage around, and the hard points you put into bind demon (if you don't want to go through a ridiculous prebuff process every game) come from your synergies, which at 35% +damage per point, is a meaningful loss.
Resists are overrated for this build, I only usually ever take meaningful damage when I play lazy around t5 p8 heralds with serious mod combinations and ranged attacks, because blood oath is so helpful.
This post was edited by jimmycongo on May 28 2026 10:52am