Quote (Warlock316 @ May 24 2026 04:11pm)

good for lvling with too?

Quote (Goomshill @ May 22 2026 12:03pm)

Nope, it was a tossup between the Taintlock and Taintboiler
While I personally had been using the Taintboiler, I have to acknowledge that Taintlock already had traction on bnet so even if blood boil is one of your primary two damage sources, it doesn't even get into the name



I think the sacrifices to get meditation aura here would be too high. As I pointed out in the first page, it is possible to self-wield infinity, have an insight merc and go down to 75% fcr and lose ~3 skills and +15/-20 fire. Or to go 125 fcr you have to lose even more, like giving up ars baalos
That's a pretty hefty price, so I don't recommend it, and you sacrifice enough +skills and your blood boil's physical damage won't kill immunes efficiently

With the setup as is, you get about ~40 mana after each kill from hex siphon+opalveins, and when you DO kill a pack of monsters with blood boil, it instantly refills your whole mana orb. A non-tainted blood boil build from 3.1 had a pretty easy time just picking off a few stray monsters while teleporting to avoid the need for potions, or even just using conviction+cursed bound demon and insight merc. Now neither of those are real options, your tainted will kill stray monsters faster than you can actually cast, and you can't get conviction on the demon. If you sacrifice the infinity, your tainted lose almost all their damage to immunes and even with blood boil as your main source, that's a big slowdown.

Quote (Gilgameshed @ May 24 2026 09:36pm)

is this really better than firelock? the only thing that slows me down really is waiting for apoc to actually hit.

Quote (arbiter1758 @ May 25 2026 09:04am)

Is the consensus that tainted don't benefit from -enemy fire res on gear? I did some testing in game by removing some gear with -enemy fire res, and their damage doesn't seem to change at all against fire immunes.

Quote (SyML1nK @ May 25 2026 08:31am)

Approaching +19 skills now, found a siren it seems to help but its still not quite as safe as Id like it to be but im playing purely on console and death mark auto target allows me to snipe gloams from a screen away.

Starting to look at some mf, need a sunder really badly and some merc gear next. Its been fun but not nearly as efficient as a sorc for target farming. But I can take care of everything in the game at this point.

Enigma and infinity will be hard to get with this start I think

Quote (Goomshill @ May 25 2026 11:16am)

Oh I'm pretty confident without testing that if -55% fire resist from my NL taintlock applied, it would instantly kill fire immunes in p8. It would be a very visible and obvious difference since with conviction it would be 22% vs 77% damage dealt, without conviction would be 5% vs 60%
Sunder does apply (its sunder effect only), but you MUST have it equipped at the moment the tainted are summoned, and its locked in. Then its just 95% resist for immunes for them



Right now on ladder I've got a not maxed blood oath, not as many +skills with no torch/anni/mang songs/sojs, no CTA, and I've been binding demons in P1 games with only 100% instead of 450% hp. So my demons are probably about 6% of the HP they'd have when fully geared, like 1/15
And with that, I've had some bound demons die to TZ p8 heralds and act bosses. There was a herald who was dealing 2000+ damage per shot through blood oath/string of ears and my demon still tanked it for a good chunk of time, before a stray arrow got me, right as the herald died too
So I do think it could be a consideration for early on how tanky some of the demons are. Personally I'm prioritizing how easy to replace they are, I'm not going to hunt a P8 TZ96 cursed game in pubs without loaders of my own to set it up, but a cursed venom lord takes me less than 5 minutes to replace

Quote (Bers3rker @ May 25 2026 07:27am)

you have your answer as you don't need to wait with taintlock

Quote (Gilgameshed @ 25 May 2026 13:08)

my question was a bit more layered than that, but since you are a berserker I will give you a pass.

The question is, is taintlock still a fast clearer with zero skill gcs and an insight setup for 125 fcr.