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Apr 20 2026 08:25am
its a tossup depending on build.

There's a premium on having a physical immune stone skin so it can't die easily.
Venom lords spread amp with inferno and with holy freeze + stone skin + cursed are immune to everything except amp/decrep (conviction can make cold/light chip them and magic damage is full power but all of those are minor damage sources)
Urdars from act 5 with holy freeze + stone skin + cursed stay physical immune even through amp/decrep and are aggressive and higher than normal damage/regen, but they can't amp small packs or bosses, and they aren't poison immune (~77% resist, but their regen will be disabled). And while venom lords are unbreakable fire immune, urdars being unbreakable phys immune is 100x better for staying alive
Spearwomen with holy freeze + stone skin + cursed hit 99% dr and aren't immune, that means amp/decrep utterly wreck them so they're vulnerable. Higher damage output but very fragile now, and definitely can't tank heralds. And same urdars, are immune to fire/cold/light without conviction, but only 92% poison resist.
Siren is a really iffy call. Its generally the best at spreading amp now, but its erratic AI means it won't tank or deal dps reliably, or even stay in range for blood boil, and even though +damage applies to blood star its damage is dinky. And they only have 91% dr with stone skin / get wrecked by cursed (but immune to fire/cold/light/poison)
Vile mothers have an extra purpose now that their vile children can soak up some hits from heralds. Vile children spawned in a TZ should have 4468 average hp and benefit from bo so maybe ~7.8k hp each. Hell I wonder what demon hp is capped at, because maybe the vile children tank more than the demon. And once that meat shield is up, it becomes a competent aggressive AI melee fighter. I think you'd need to test how well it tanks heralds because those vile children aren't something to write off.

As to above post from a couple weeks ago, WSK1 lancers are just a typo on basin wiki. They aren't 450% hp, it would be extremely obvious when you fight them if they had 2x the hp of a death lord
The wsk version has identical stat scaling to the other lancers in act 5, they just have a % of the monlvl stats, the matron's den version has totally different scaling and only appears in matron's den


I swear I've heard somewhere that for minions Amp/Conviction/LR work full strength even when immune but I can't remember much more. Think it was discussed around making Iron Golems fully immune. Still looking for more information but maybe some one else has something on it.

Basin only mentions Conviction that I can find, maybe I'm off on Amp. Time to test it I guess.

This post was edited by Swirl on Apr 20 2026 08:28am
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Apr 20 2026 08:34am
I swear I've heard somewhere that for minions Amp/Conviction/LR work full strength even when immune but I can't remember much more. Think it was discussed around making Iron Golems fully immune. Still looking for more information but maybe some one else has something on it.


I know it for sure works at full strength when monsters are given immunity by a buff, ie flickering flame will NOT keep druid summons alive in PvP against a conviction holy fire auradin.
There's a flag set when monsters are spawned that gives them an immunity for each category, set on if their base resist is 100+. Any further effects that modify their resist can make them appear as immune and take no damage, but that flag is used by conviction/lower resist/amp/decrep, not their current resist level.
So my understanding is that amp/conviction will be only 1/5 against bound demons to the types they spawned natively immune, only on their base affixes and not including blood oath / engorge / auras, or in the case of iron golem, its equipped item stats.
I might be wrong, you'd want to test if amp/conviction work at full strength on bound demons despite the actual immunity.

If that's the case, amp+conviction puts venom lords at 80 dr / 113 fr / 67 lr / 62 cr / 152 pr / 0 mr, while act 5 urdars are put at 105 dr / 45 fr / 45 lr / 45 cr / 0 mr.
(assuming stone skin unique monster in both cases)

So its really rare but heralds CAN spawn with conviction aura because their bonus herald aura only includes the vigor/conc/thorns/etc list but stacks on top of aura enchanted if they roll it and one monster can have 2 auras in that case.
With truly proposterously unlucky long odds you CAN face t5 p8 tz 96 herald pack of fire bone mage guest monsters in act 5 that spawns with conviction, I mean they only spawn in arreat plateau and pit of acheron and only with 42% chance to be picked for the area and only 1/3 chance to be picked as the herald type and only 23% chance to be aura enchanted and only 1/7 chance to pick conviction. And then they WILL kill your urdar. Hmmmm

This post was edited by Goomshill on Apr 20 2026 08:41am
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Apr 20 2026 08:49am
I know it for sure works at full strength when monsters are given immunity by a buff, ie flickering flame will NOT keep druid summons alive in PvP against a conviction holy fire auradin.
There's a flag set when monsters are spawned that gives them an immunity for each category, set on if their base resist is 100+. Any further effects that modify their resist can make them appear as immune and take no damage, but that flag is used by conviction/lower resist/amp/decrep, not their current resist level.
So my understanding is that amp/conviction will be only 1/5 against bound demons to the types they spawned natively immune, only on their base affixes and not including blood oath / engorge / auras, or in the case of iron golem, its equipped item stats.
I might be wrong, you'd want to test if amp/conviction work at full strength on bound demons despite the actual immunity.

If that's the case, amp+conviction puts venom lords at 80 dr / 113 fr / 67 lr / 62 cr / 152 pr / 0 mr, while act 5 urdars are put at 105 dr / 45 fr / 45 lr / 45 cr / 0 mr.
(assuming stone skin unique monster in both cases)


I just imported a tz Frigid Highlands Stone Skin Blunderbore bind and had him get Amped, no longer says phys immune when hovered with unsummon.

Maxroll stats claims he has 136% DR

75 base
11 skill
50 Stone Skin

If Amp is only working at 1/5 that would put him well above 100 and still immune, but he is definitely losing the immune tag.

Just threw him at a pack of Urdars while Amped. Iirc they don't have any elemental damage and his health bar is moving so definitely not phys immune.

This post was edited by Swirl on Apr 20 2026 09:00am
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Apr 20 2026 09:03am
I just imported a tz Frigid Highlands Stone Skin Blunderbore bind and had him get Amped, no longer says phys immune when hovered with unsummon.

Maxroll stats claims he has 136% DR

75 base
11 skill
50 Stone Skin

If Amp is only working at 1/5 that would put him well above 100 and still immune, but he is definitely losing the immune tag.

Just threw him at a pack of Urdars while Amped. Iirc they don't have any elemental damage and his health bar is moving so definitely not phys immune.


well that is a shame, so yeah it would be the difference between a venom lord having 16% dr after amp and an urdar having 41% dr (11% oath / 5% engorge for +16)
It does mean there's really nothing you can do to keep a demon alive while cursed against heralds. Its also a big mark against using bound demons at all on the blood boil build now, when tainted are the better option

This post was edited by Goomshill on Apr 20 2026 09:04am
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Apr 20 2026 09:08am
well that is a shame, so yeah it would be the difference between a venom lord having 16% dr after amp and an urdar having 41% dr (11% oath / 5% engorge for +16)
It does mean there's really nothing you can do to keep a demon alive while cursed against heralds. Its also a big mark against using bound demons at all on the blood boil build now, when tainted are the better option


you think it is possible for a bb build with just goatman?
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Apr 20 2026 09:17am
you think it is possible for a bb build with just goatman?


I mean you could use anything if all the minions do is tank and center the aoe, but 2x defiler + consumed tainted is better for requiring no extra points, though they do fidget around a bit between teleports
If we can't really keep a bound demon alive consistently, at least not relative to how much time it takes to replace, then tainted are obvious winners. I think they're probably the winner even if you could have an immune-to-everything demon with 25k dps and reliable amp right now

The goatmen do about 3.5k phys if you max them, they can do some splash hits with cleave or magic with berserk, mostly its 3.5k phys vs 33-50% dr monsters and phys immunes they don't hurt at all. Tainted do about 30-36k with no prebuff and hit a similar aoe to cleave, except on every shot not 1/3 of attacks, and go as high as ~46k with prebuff. And most monsters will have between -85 and -35% fire resist after conviction, with immunes at 78%. And tainted don't fidget around as much as defilers do.

When bound demons could hit for 25k phys and be 175k hp, they were the best dps option and never died. Now bound demons die enough to matter and tainted can deal 48k fire aoe and if they die or get low hp with no bodies around, you just resummon them instantly
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Apr 23 2026 02:38am
its a tossup depending on build.

There's a premium on having a physical immune stone skin so it can't die easily.
Venom lords spread amp with inferno and with holy freeze + stone skin + cursed are immune to everything except amp/decrep (conviction can make cold/light chip them and magic damage is full power but all of those are minor damage sources)
Urdars from act 5 with holy freeze + stone skin + cursed stay physical immune even through amp/decrep and are aggressive and higher than normal damage/regen, but they can't amp small packs or bosses, and they aren't poison immune (~77% resist, but their regen will be disabled). And while venom lords are unbreakable fire immune, urdars being unbreakable phys immune is 100x better for staying alive
Spearwomen with holy freeze + stone skin + cursed hit 99% dr and aren't immune, that means amp/decrep utterly wreck them so they're vulnerable. Higher damage output but very fragile now, and definitely can't tank heralds. And same urdars, are immune to fire/cold/light without conviction, but only 92% poison resist.
Siren is a really iffy call. Its generally the best at spreading amp now, but its erratic AI means it won't tank or deal dps reliably, or even stay in range for blood boil, and even though +damage applies to blood star its damage is dinky. And they only have 91% dr with stone skin / get wrecked by cursed (but immune to fire/cold/light/poison)
Vile mothers have an extra purpose now that their vile children can soak up some hits from heralds. Vile children spawned in a TZ should have 4468 average hp and benefit from bo so maybe ~7.8k hp each. Hell I wonder what demon hp is capped at, because maybe the vile children tank more than the demon. And once that meat shield is up, it becomes a competent aggressive AI melee fighter. I think you'd need to test how well it tanks heralds because those vile children aren't something to write off.

As to above post from a couple weeks ago, WSK1 lancers are just a typo on basin wiki. They aren't 450% hp, it would be extremely obvious when you fight them if they had 2x the hp of a death lord
The wsk version has identical stat scaling to the other lancers in act 5, they just have a % of the monlvl stats, the matron's den version has totally different scaling and only appears in matron's den


Man, I hope the ptr changes get moderated a bit. I get nerfing ES some as it is insane and way outstrips basically every spec except maybe Mosaic, but a good demon build is, in my opinion, about on par with some of the other meta builds in end game, except maybe being a bit too tanky.

Having a summoning class where your summons, which are very difficult to farm, can't checks notes fight a lot of the enemies in the game, seems like a really poor design choice. Hunting a cool bind down is some of the most fun I have had in d2 in ages, so I am not loving these changes.

What yoy described will also make ubers near impossible on a summoner, while of course a hammerdin with a two skill point investment into smite and fanat will be able to cruise through em with lifetap as always

Also, my understanding is that amp works at full strength, unlike conviction and lower res. There's not the 1/5th penalty after breaking immunities.i believe decrep is the same. I'm fine with that generally as physical classes don't get many breaks as is.
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May 21 2026 01:20pm
I've got a couple 94+ locks in my offline SSF file. I haven't updated to 3.2 and so I'm hoping to grandfather in some S-tier demons given that I can bind uniques/super-uniques w/ only one hard point into Bind Demon.

What's the consensus on the best binds for Echoing Strike / Fire / Blood Boil / Abyss -- if any??
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May 21 2026 01:58pm
I've got a couple 94+ locks in my offline SSF file. I haven't updated to 3.2 and so I'm hoping to grandfather in some S-tier demons given that I can bind uniques/super-uniques w/ only one hard point into Bind Demon.
What's the consensus on the best binds for Echoing Strike / Fire / Blood Boil / Abyss -- if any??


The pokemon tiers have definitely changed a bit.
It still depends on the build of course. Since you can no longer get conviction demons, fire and abyss builds are basically restricted to using them for holy freeze or vigor, the other auras and curse do nothing, and you're probably better off just using 2x defilers + consume
For echoing strike and blood boil not going all-in on the damage, you need to work a bit harder to get amp procs now, and the two best candidates are either venom lords or succubi. The venom lords still have a super high damage attack even if they only use it half as often, the succubi still shoot mediocre blood stars, at least not irrelevant. But with only 1 point bind demon you can't get multishot, lightning enchanted or stone skin now, only cursed + holy freeze via a TZ normal mob. The succubi have an annoying evasive AI and can durdle more and waste casts on defense curse, so even if they can directly apply amp and maybe even amp single targets/bosses more reliably, they have a lot of variance and can be unreliable. Venom lords are reliable and just apply a pretty steady stream of amp via inferno even without multiple shots, working decently vs single targets.

For all-in demon summoners, the damage was doubled and HP made so astronomical you can totally ignore any weaknesses that existed in 3.1 like the vulnerability of spearwomen. They used to have ~115k hp with bo, now they have up to 2.2 million. They can park afk in ubers. So even the regen on urdars is no longer a big selling point for blood boil, I struggled to get a demon to die even once at 0.1% hp after boiling it to minimum.

But the biggest difference is that now summon tainted outshine all these demons. Even if you could get 40-50k damage on a spearwoman now, its a single target jab attack. Tainted can shoot 36k aoe fireballs and you can have 3 of them.
So for a practical blood boil build, the best setup I've found is simply a 1 point bind demon venom lord with cursed+holy freeze and 2x tainted, with max tainted.
Best pokemon isn't a bound demon at all :S
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May 21 2026 06:19pm
venom lord with cursed/multishot/fanatism
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