great write up! Blood boil is the best p1 build in the game right now and it's quite satisfying to play. Great for p8 as well! Funny that the arguably best weapon for both echo and blood boil are the same (eth archon obsession), kinda love that. You can respec and try out a different build if you want.

Really, if you want to try blood boil, you'd just need to swap your off hand to a Baalos, put on a FF helm, and make sure you have magefists on. Anything with leech swap out, and you can make it work. Obviously there's ways to optimize it and make it work better, but you can get budget versions of all of that stuff, plus a decent defender fire and flame rift sunder for under 1k total.

Wow so glad I made 2x WarLocks!

1 is an Echo strike warlock and 2nd warlock havnt decide yet, either Blood Boil or Full Summon warlock, just want a fun and unique Warlock. I already have a full summon Nec and Full summon Druid.

This post was edited by JayBomber on Apr 6 2026 07:05am

Something I've been really refining lately, and maybe one of the really key things about a build like this, is being able to manipulate the demon's location with death mark. Imagine being in a tight quarters spot when a t5 herald spawns with conc and another aura from a nearby elite, and being able to throw your demon in there while you stay in the next room over, and clean up as many mobs as you want before going in yourself. It's a level of control that other summon builds don't get to have, and makes this a really comfortable character to play.

Very nice guide and very well written
How would you compare ES to Blood boil in terms of clear speed for p8 tz games?

I'm not the best for "clear speed" discussions because my preferred method of play is to just kill every pack I come across and stop to check out way more loot than I ever should. If I were just elite hunting and going for heralds, I think there's an argument that BB would clear the packs faster, while ES would clear the heralds faster. I think BB is far far "safer" for clearing heralds. I have no concerns about running into a group of herald souls, for example.

I would say, that if your goal is to do something like clean out all 7 Tal's tombs TZ as fast as possible, I think there's no comparison that BB is going to be faster. A big part of the room is cleared out in less than a second once I tele in, and I can do so with reckless abandon knowing that my survivability/confidence in clearing my immediate radius within the second is so high. By the time the first ES would have rebounded back to you, most are boiled to death, and there's no need to "target" mobs like you do with ES. For a single target, stationary T5 herald, ES would certainly take the cake, but I have no issues with how fast I can clear out T5 heralds in P8 games, especially because my priority there is to keep my barb on the screen to increase sunder drop chance.

Done both to 99, similarly end game geared. BB has the edge for high density low hp areas like tombs or act 1 caves and the like. Echo is much faster for T5 heralds and act bosses (biggest difference is baal). If you're full clearing a game, because of the heralds and act bosses, echoing is faster overall imo. If you're just crushing tombs and flayer jungle and the like and then making ng BB has the edge imo.

We brought up a lot in the various threads that ES has an edge in those super astronomically high HP monsters like heralds/ubers/baal while BB clears other stuff ultra fast, but there's still an honest question about whether ES is even optimal in those cases. Specifically because you have to swap gear or risk dying to baal's chilling armor as an actual threatening spell, ie must wear black oak luna, and the issue where either you must use a bone break and have some significant reducing in EHP or you deal piddly damage to physical immune heralds. Though the fact bone break makes amp/sigil apply 100% of their effect means immunes will be at ~-40% dr and die fast, it is a bit of a drawback for normal pvm. Still not a big deal because of blood oath and consume and the stupid high amounts of EHP a warlock has anyway. I think these are very minor grievances for an ES build, but they are little speed bumps nonetheless
Also the mana issue is another minor gripe, BB uses half the mana per cast and regains twice as much from siphon, its so generous on mana you can get away with no insight and feel mostly fine. ES needs that meditation aura critically, and even with it, if you miss casts in a bad direction like shooting at a wall by mistake you can drain your bulb fast.

Disagree with insight, aside from my first 99 lock (who used insight weapon) - I haven't needed insight on an ES or BB lock on their journeys to 99. Siphon and a little mana leech is all that was needed to keep the blue bulb full. Occasional use of a mana pot if in an area with tons of skeletons like stony tomb or something, but even then, there were usually enough zombies to leech from.

Lumping ubers in with heralds and baal seems disingenuous (unless I'm misunderstanding your point), as ubers aren't part of a regular whole game clear (unless you get amazingly lucky with statues I suppose) - it would be every third game at the absolute luckiest, if you get a key from each boss on each game (unless you get triple key drops 3 times...then I guess you can do it in 1 game).

Furthermore, while ubers with BB is possible, and kind of fun using their summons against them, echoing makes easy work of them very quickly. Uber ancients with BB is brutal...would be faster to grush up a new ES warlock and take them down with the new char once you put on some basic equipment lol. In both cases, BB and ES, nothing more is needed for safety than the usual pre-buff and swap out some mf pieces for res/absorb gear (ie nagel for ravenfrost).

If you factor in all these other expanded content, then echoing is much better and faster, but again, if you're just clearing certain high density, low hp areas, BB has the edge.

But most importantly, at the end of the day, both are good builds! Still might want an echo lock or smiter for ubers/ancients though lol

This post was edited by FoldersUnite on Apr 6 2026 06:08pm

Well that was my original point about all those bosses- they're all a question of 'why are you doing this', baal included. BB has enough damage to kill P1 baal easily in a solo game, and easily kill P8 baal with allies in a baal game. It can't do it well solo in a P8 game, but why do it in the first place? And ubers / uber ancients aren't something you do in a normal pvm loop, you make a dedicated build for it. If you wanted to clear 50 sets of torches, it would be faster to just use 2x tokens and respec your lock to ES and back. But why do it in the first place?

Heralds are a part of that normal pvm loop, and I think BB has plenty of damage for them. The extra speed zooming around getting ire makes up for the few seconds ES might save on the tankiest tier 5 heralds.