Blood Boil Warlock

I never got around to writing a full guide but I keep getting PM's asking for the build so here's the bare bones layout



You are basically a hammerdin that deals twice the DPS in twice the aoe, hitting everything instantly with no delay, with an infinitely tanky summon who also hits for tens of thousands.
For general purpose PvM, blood boil tends to be even faster than echoing strike because of its far more generous AoE and lack of targeting, and ES only has an upper hand when it comes to the tankiest enemies like P8 diablo/baal or tier 5 heralds or ubers
With the fully geared setup (sac a charm for cube) you can deal about 4.8k phys + 8.1k fire in 10.3 radius before -resists, hitting monsters up to 26k HP per cast at 125 fcr or 41k with defiler, and still have a demon that deals ~20k per hit without swap/load-in gear
And because of maxed engorge its got a massive life/mana after each kill on hex siphon, giving you infinite mana in combat, FAR less mana issues than other builds (half the cost per cast of ES, twice the maek)
Its not a summoner, its not a 'sit back and let minions attack'. You teleport between mobs, cast a couple aoe spells and everything dies, repeat. I captured some footage with a 75% fcr build early on in ladder before I upgraded to 125, cba to make new footage;



Skills

• 20 blood boil (core)
  
• 20 blood oath (core)
  
• 20 engorge (core)
  
• 1 hex siphon (cannot be obtained on cta/tome swap, so a hard point)
  
• 20 bind demon
  
• 20 demonic mastery (dump only after bind maxed)
  
• 1 consume (will reach tainted cap)
  
• 1 sigil lethargy

That's a recommended base layout but you can make some tweaks. Bind+mastery will cap out your demon DPS, and won't max until level 98. But variants of the build COULD sacrifice bound demon damage in order to get other QoL: Most builds can get +17 to sigil lethargy and 3 hard points will increase its AoE. Maxing it out is pretty unnecessary since the sigil itself is barely usable when you already kill stuff too fast, but its one way to buff your damage vs some bosses though maybe not as much as the demon would deliver, and wasted on anything with less than 50% dr since you'll have at least -137% to everything. If you dump 19 points into consume, you get +19% max life and some FRW, but you won't gain any bonus fire skill/pierce. Points into defilers have extremely diminishing returns. Maxing out hex siphon will get you +19 life/mana after each kill on top of the potential ~57/44-50 you already have, which is very nice but still marginal compared to demon DPS, though the buff to demon from mastery is also marginal. Those are all valid builds, but the most bang for your buck per skill point comes from the 60 into core DPS, 1 into consume/siphon/sigil, and 20 into bind demon for its massive base damage. Levitation mastery and other sigils are wasted skill points, not worth 1. Psychic ward just isn't worth a point either, since you wouldn't bother to recast it if you took damage and constantly healing back life makes it onerous to keep active.

Items

Core best-in-slot items are the same across multiple setups:

• Mang Song's Lesson (defender's fire) - 15% fire pierce best, cold/light don't matter of course
  
• Ars Tor'Baalos (facet) - should be +6 boil, helps to be higher %dr / mastery / consume too, though engorge and defense barely matter
  
• Enigma
  
• Magefist - yes the +1 skills affects blood boil
  
• Arachnid Mesh
  
• Rare resist boots - Wraithstep could be used but its very hard for any reasonable 125% fcr build to max resists otherwise, and you need extra strength to equip them
  
• CTA swap - ethereal monarch spirit only needs minor str, or a splendor/lidless if you really wanna skimp
  
• Torch, Anni, Demon Skillers, Life/resist small charms
  
• Renewed Flame Rift - Any permutation can work, but generally the +% damage will be better since you bring many monsters to -100% already, and even against immunes you have high phys and the +% still works

Recommended 125 FCR setup (more expensive, harder time to max resists):

• 2/20 rare circlet, or 3/20 magic circlet or easier option, Hellwarden's Will (facets in all)
  
• 2/15+ fcr crafted amulet - can hit 125 on all builds with just 15%, and being just +2 demon skills is only losing you a very tiny bonus to sigil / siphon (2 maek/laek)
  
• 2x Fire Opalveins , or resist FCR rings as necessary.

Budget 75 FCR setup (maxs resists with cheaper gear more easily, but is slower):

• Flickering flame
  
• Maras
  
• 1x FCR/resist ring or Opalvein, 1x Soj/bk

For the Mercenary + Demon, you can use a few different setups. You can either get a holy aura + cursed demon and have infinity on merc, or use a conviction + cursed demon and have insight on merc.
There are tradeoffs either way:

• Flickering Flame or Cure
  
• Chains of Honor or 15/15 Skin of the Flayed One (upgrade 1x) or Protector's Stone in Greyform (upgrade 2x)
  
• Infinity or Insight
  
• Might or Holy Freeze

• Urdar from TZ Cursed Tal Rasha's Tombs recommended
  
• Cursed
  
• Holy Freeze or Conviction or Holy Fire
  
• Stone Skin and/or Lightning Enchanted very helpful on a unique, but not required

Might gives a big damage boost to your demon, which could already have holy freeze. Even the basic attacks with 75% curse spread amp fast enough, so a conviction demon can work reasonably enough, but its definitely a bit slower / less reliable compared to the AOE of holy auras. Using infinity on your merc means losing the QoL of meditation aura so you'll need to chug mana pots if you teleport around without killing anything for hex siphon, that's the real tradeoff to deal with, besides the increased cost of infinity. Flickering flame can help offset the fire resist you miss from sunder, but keep in mind that in some dangerous TZ setups, if your merc dies you will instantly lose all your fire resist and become very vulnerable, so its dangerous around fire mages / venom lords / flayer shamans / etc with high fire output. If you can max your fire resist otherwise, cure is the best. Holy fire/shock on the demon instead of holy freeze is a small tradeoff, holy freeze doesn't hit act bosses and thus doesn't proc amp on them, and you might actually prefer enemies running into your AoE faster and not care about the %slow as a defense. Holy fire has slightly higher aoe than shock, so its better.

Hunting a proper demon can be tough. Demons lock in their base HP when spawned, and your +skills when you capture them don't matter beyond having 20+ bind demon for added affixes. Your +damage and +% damage from bind demon/mastery are recalculated as you join new games, with the gear equipped on joining. Same with the +% resists/dr on blood oath, however blood oath doesn't add % HP to bound demons at all. They simply lock in their base HP when spawned in the original game, and you can increase it with battle orders and that's it. Monster HP scales 100-450% with playercount, and another 200% for uniques multiplied on top of that. Urdars are highest recommended as the best, because their higher HP regen offsets the costs of blood boil, giving you more of a buffer of extra casts. Act 2-4 urdars have 55% dr, 180-220% of monlvl HP (60320-73725 in TZ96 P8) and 1 immunity, and 2x 50% resist with 2.44% regen per second. Act 5 guest urdars have 75% dr, 200-260% HP (67023-87129), 33% resists and 1.82% regen. I recommend the Tal's variant as its easiest to obtain and has higher regen. After the +16% dr and +76% resists on oath+engorge, all the variants become immune to fire/cold/light and have 71%/91% DR so they are nearly infinitely tanky, but all variants in all acts are 0% poison resist and can't become immune so poison WILL disable their regen, which you can only mitigate a bit with cure merc.

Ideally you can get a natural unique with its 2x hp and get cursed, the aura you want and even additional affixes like stone skin (phys immune on all variants) or lightning enchanted (will release bolts on both being hit AND casting blood boil that spread amp damage, making it even work for a conviction merc to spread it fast). But this is extraordinarily rare to find the one you want. And if a monster is not terrorized, not only will it have slightly lower HP/damage but its chance to hit will be MUCH lower even after the -resists on conviction, because level penalties in TZ are a big % cth loss. The far easier and workable solution is to get a basic urdar upgraded to the aura you want, which you can do with a simple process;

• Join P8 games like baal runs until you find "Cursed" terrorized affix and TZ 96 (or your char level if lower)
  
• Either scout a large area like Durance to make sure Urdars exist, or just pop an A2 shard and check tombs until you find one (99%+ chance urdars will be in at least one tomb)
  
• Prespawn a bunch of normal urdars before people leave the game so they stay at P8 hp, then bind them one by one until you get the cursed + aura combo you want
  
• Normal urdars will keep the Cursed terrorized affix when bound, minions/uniques/champions will not

Yeah didn't put as much effort into this guide as much as I did guides of old, any other questions we can follow up

Nice

thank

-What are other alternative pets. Pro's and Con's?

-Lets say you die or lose pet because skill, how difficult is it to find an ideal/temporary bind as a Blood Boil build? be honest.

-How does it do against bosses, ie, baal/diablo/ubers in P8 and P8+tz in general?

-Is the Urdar always topped regardless of blood boil usage?

-I'd imagine i would get bored of death marking. Can lock survive tele-stomp on Lord De'seis packs?

-What are the all resists look like after gear? Any other notable stats to highlight?

-What if someone want to MF with the build? What changes/updates there are?

-Is there a cap on blood boil radius/yard skill or is it capped at 10.3 radius?

This post was edited by GforceUSA on Mar 25 2026 06:17pm

I pfefer battle made Serena as my demon because big poker pike use jab big crush ing blow is gg. Nice guide gg!

I wouldn't recommend the others. The only demon with 2.44% regen is urdar so its just the best, and its got aggressive AI, large size to block projectiles / not get unstacked while teleporting, high resists / damage and % ed on smite.
All superunique monsters (and rest of council), like hephasto, ismail & achmel have 0 regen so while you can get very high base HP they are inferior for blood boil
Overseers can have 1.82% regen but a really lousy AI that doesn't melee much
All the rest have the base 1.22% regen. Spearwomen unclump when teleporting and have extremely high speed, more DPS and procs of amp from jab, but have low enough HP/regen/dr they can die in PvM, especially to anything with high damage like lilith, heralds, frenzytaurs, etc. Vile mothers spawn a set of extra meat shields and can have high 66% dr, but aren't as aggressive attacking as they waste time on resummoning and just use normal attacks. Lister is just an inferior urdar, no crushing blow and lower regen, but you can get high HP and a set of unique affixes if you farm him in TZ baal runs when they're available, though its not always easy to get a chance to bind him before he dies.



If you follow the method to get a basic Tal's tomb urdar it can take about 5 minutes, with the vast majority of the time spent just joining/leaving pub games looking for P8 + cursed TZ + 96 tz zone before you crack a shard.
Once you get the TZ96+Cursed game, you're virtually guaranteed urdars and it only takes a few seconds to teleport between tombs to get them. Each tomb has 42.8% chance to spawn urdars and you've got 7 tombs to check with 97.9% chance to get it off a shard, and hell if they don't, you've got 4 levels of harem/palace cellar.



In P1 games you easily have enough damage output to kill diablo, and baal is manageable but within reach of a full unload of max HP
In P8 games you just manage to kill diablo as a manageable boss same as P1 baal, but P8 baal and ubers are where the HP of monsters exceeds the damage output you'll get from a full unload of blood boils before your demon is sub 5%. You can't just resummon a defiler and use it to finish the boss because even if that would kill the boss in a few seconds, your demon will die as it regens to 5.05% hp and then goes to 0.05% hp and dies to some boss aoe. So either you need to do town trips, or better yet- just don't be fighting P8 baal on your own, or ubers.

That's where the build falls short. You can kill tier 5 heralds very comfortably and pretty fast, though significantly slower than an echoing strikes build as you get to TZ P8 T5 heralds with high dr/fr- because it might take 30+ seconds of spamming in the worst cases of insanely tanky mobs but you can do it while your demon tanks and keep feeding him engorged bodies to full heal, something you can't do vs baal. In fact even ubers are far more manageable than P8 baal, just a risk of your demon dying if you're incautious and don't do 1-2 town trips, but ubers have 655k hp in P1 and after all buffs and -resists you get about 23.7k hp per cast against diablo/baal, so it takes 2-3 full rounds between engorges or town trips to kill them (and your demon hitting them outpaces their regen on its own).



its just the best, pure melee AI that doesn't fuck around, high regen, extremely high hp and mitigation and 2nd highest damage after spearwomen because %ed from smite is pretty substantial
other monsters all have some drawback like wasting time on pointless skills like venom lords, or evasive AI like venom lords/overseers, or slow attack animations like goatmen, low hp and slow speeds like hell buzzards, or they just don't work at all like blowdart fetish
I would not recommend a ranged mob since you're forfeiting about 80-90% of the DPS of an urdar, but a multshot succubus can add its ~1300 bind demon physical to each shot, its still garbage by comparison, low dps/hp/regen and can cast worthless curses over its amp.



Blood boil radius increases with each skill point (+0.333 yards/slvl), and lists its diameter on the skill description, so it says 20.6 radius on the skill but actually has 10.3333 radius, which is still gigantic, bigger than nova (~8 yards, hence boil covers 66.8% more area)
A 75 fcr build can perhaps have higher radius, hell even using a 3/10 ammy and 2x sojs is a possibility if you're nuts but I wouldn't recommend that over 125 builds.

Also I have to note the part where Hellwarden's Will enables 125 fcr builds with pretty achievable non-trophy gear
2/20/x circlets are only really better when you can get 2 sockets in them and/or some good resists.
If you can only put 1 facet in a circlet, you're weighing +2 skills / +5% / -5% against +1 skills / +5% / -13%, and the hellwardens will deal more DPS, on top of the 6 MAEK, 3% life on bo, -1 tele cost
But circlets with 2 sockets, or even a 3/20/2 circlet can be +10% / -10% and that stacks up better than +5/-13%

The problem is that you can wind up with no resists on your weapon, shield, helm, gloves or belt slot, and -70% from sunder. And a crafted fcr ammy with resists is expensive, opalveins aren't much resists, boots need to do some heavy lifting

Nice guide, it's a good build! Probably the best p1 build in the game right now. P8 echoing is faster/better/safer, but this build is a nice change of pace and easy to play aside from remembering to engorge once in a while! Highly recommended!

Urdar is the best minion if you use conviction merc, but if you use conviction minion, I suggest pitlord, tainted, spearwoman or heph. Pitlord and tainted have the ability to stack but their ranged attacks proc amp reliably. Heph or spearwoman do not stack and therefore run and hit things to proc amp quite reliably as well. I find the urdar without pulse aura does not proc amp as reliably. And reliable amp is essential for your kill speed.

This post was edited by FoldersUnite on Mar 25 2026 07:12pm

hmmm

Anyway for reference numbers, with a fully maxed out setup and godly gear (resists on helm/ammy and near 3x 40% boots and 9x 5% scs and max torch/anni) you should hit about:

5.6k hp, 125% fcr, 75% fire/cold/poison resists without aura, maybe skimp on cold, 3870-5700 phys / 6579-9690 fire boil in 20.66 radius with -55% enemy resist, + conviction/might/meditation/cleansing auras. 56% defiler, -37-39% sigil, 43% blood oath damage negation, +1283 / +775% bound demon base damage added at start of game (without swap gear) and 76% resists / 11% dr oath and another 5% dr on engorge. And that HP includes the +35% on consume, with another +35% efrw on top. And with ~57 life after each kill and 44 mana after each kill (hellwardens setups get ~49). Granted this setup only has 18% dr but with such stupid amounts of life and regen there's truly no reason to max it.

On battle.net in the first few weeks of ladder I was able to get about these numbers, only missing a ton of life, some +/-% on stuff like defender's fire and renewed sunder rolls and having to compensate with flickering flame merc to max fire resist

This post was edited by Goomshill on Mar 25 2026 07:15pm

I can see the advantage of the monsters using skills to proc amp if you are using an insight merc, but you're sacrificing a lot of damage output for that QoL because having ~20k attacks on a melee demon that actually hits stuff is a substantial bonus on top of your dps, and especially huge against bosses.
Its a viable choice, and maybe leans towards a build that tries to ignore demon DPS entirely and use them as an aurabot, and then max sigil / hex siphon (really don't think consume is worth it by comparison). But they are just marginal effects compared to a big 20k+ damage demon.

Having a lightning enchanted unique of any of those kinds is another way to get mileage for a conviction aura setup. They'll spread curse as you spam blood, sometimes faster than holy auras would because the first blood boil cast can spawn lightning bolts at melee range. Its somewhat unreliable for unexplained reasons, sometimes blood boil always spawns bolts, sometimes it deactivates and spawns no bolts. Its unclear why. But finding lightning enchanted adds an extra hurdle, and if you use ismail or hephasto you get 0% regen.
If your goal was to have higher life/mana after each kill and max possible blood boil output from a -56% sigil lethargy on bosses (most bosses have 50% dr so anything past -50% on sigil is usually wasted), I guess you could be best served by one of the more reliably fast spamming demons like venom lords- they launch more projectiles per cast and the 75% chance to amp is more reliable on them than on tainted.

I played a week or two of the early ladder with a conviction + cursed urdar setup to save having to buy an infinity and I think even without lightning enchanted, just from its 75% chance to cast on attack, it procs plenty reliably for normal usage. Its only a bit less reliable than the aura+curse setup, its not like its a gamebreaking handicap. I think the holy freeze + cursed setup is the best, but I can see reasons for all the permutations being viable.