But yeah this is what I'm rolling in p8 tz games on ladder right now. I'd estimate its only about ~1/3 of the dps of a finished build, because I have no conviction, ~27k tainted. With conviction on monsters and 36k tainted it hits even more, a lot of monsters even in no immune areas like that have ~25% resist. So the difference of ~20k vs ~57.6k against those same monsters. I'm just rolling around with an ondals, um'd kiras, rising sun, measured wrath with a pdiamond in it. Its not godly gear whatsoever
And its another reason I've seen people try to self-wield infinity, or self-wield insight (easier to hit FCR breakpoints) and keep both auras, since the QoL really matters when you just teleport around nonstop
Would be pretty trivial to have an insight staff you could substitute in on a normal build and lose massive blood boil dps, and just keep infinity on merc, which wouldn't cost anything extra since its just a 4 socket staff + low runes

feels like enigma is the most crucial piece here , was thinking to use blade warp and get away with it xD

Feels like a Fire Sorc that only spams few fireballs, even though each fireball is doubling the sorc fireball

But sorc will spam a lot more fireballs and even add meteors and hydras.

Taintlock playstyle doesn’t make the char unique & attractive to play with.

I do like the 3 Goatmen or 2 Goatmen + fanat monster Bind + pride merc with might and Warlock Melee with Cleave & Mirror Blades.

Its a lot slower to TZ without it. I used 48 charge telestaff the first 4 days or so, but it restricts you to doing more deterministic zones like chaos or baal runs, andy, trav, etc. I still have 4 million gold stashed
You can tz some denser areas like the ice caves -> sub areas or kurast, but as you do tombs/flayer/spider/marsh/etc, you really need enigma to be anywhere close to speed

yeah , probably gonna use naj and 75fcr to spam some chaos / halls of dead

I think it would be worth hammering out what the best swap setup for TZ / mf with maximum QoL would be
Assuming you prebuff both your demon & tainted and then swap on gear for teleporting around killing with higher MF / survival / qol

Honestly ondals isn't even bad with the 5% xp and otherwise being a 4 skill 45 fcr
But I think there's a good argument for self-infinity + insight merc, or self-insight + infinity merc. Probably still want a minimum of 75 fcr, max resists and CBF for the quality of life. Self-insight gives FCR, but you lose conviction vs heralds when your merc dies. Self-infinity keeps aura up, and your merc has a stronger direct attack due to crit, but wastes infinity on a low roll you can only self-wield or put on nova sorc and loses that FCR. You still need to use a tome, so ars baalos is the best option for max blood boil, though if you're only at 75 fcr you can get it from insight + magefist + arachs alone, opening up sojs. And if you can get resists elsewhere, rising sun can be better than maras, its +2 to boil and the fire absorb is vastly better than resists in pvm a lot of the time, healing off inferno, hydras, fireballs, skele mages, etc.
You can't use a stupid tanky setup with stormshield + tgods anymore, unless you're going to use a 1 handed weapon like a dagger, so no keeping that dual aura unless its a tome. And ars baalos is just too good to pass up, otherwise measured wrath for a wonky 125 setup that wants to skip the fcr craft ammy but loses all its +skills.

prebuffing is for skilless rats

I found

I had bought an ondals and found a mang song myself radnomly today, but after sitting for a while strying to move things around finally made an obsession - and never looked back at mang, except to prebuff.

I have this feeling that all the -fireres and +fire damage becomes totally inconsequential in my build. The fire damage in my blood boil (which is the only thing they buff right?) is so minuscule compared to my tainteds.

I even considered that for the one slot i must put a collosal in (3/20 circ) to use a physical jewel, because it seems like fire immune mobs (even tho i got a sunder) are by far the biggest time sink, and so if i were to buff my bloodboil in any way (that isn't geting more +skill) i would rather have it's physical component buffed

I'm interested to ask whether you have considered the physical collosal jewl?
Or am i missing somehting about why the +fire dmg/-fire res really does affect the tainteds somehow?

I btw toatlly agree with you that nothing comes close to baalos. Since tainteds can be snapshotted at the start of each game for liek +10-15 more skill than is in the running build, with conviction they become so absurd that it for ure is bloodboil skill one needs while running (which honestly heavily pushes me to obsession for the running items, not even just the massive fcr, but the FHR, the 24% life, the regen...)


oh and lastly, i've been ejoying this build a ton as ladder starter, thanks for all the research you put in! i almost only used this as a source.

This post was edited by emiq on May 29 2026 01:03pm

Maybe im misunderstadning you, but you only need to burn one shard no?

ofc unless u/the demon dies.

i've died 2 times since getting to hell, and it's basically just creating 10-20 games really fast until cursed, then when it's cursed and u burn one deep shard, u will get the same cursed as whatever oteher area is terrorized (even if act2 or whatever) hopefully you arent burning them each game created??

Well bear in mind its still the full 450% hp from a P8 game and it does matter vs heralds. I've had some P1 demons die to heralds, but my P8 lancer has survived a few days now without ever being seriously threatened, worst is a conc+might+cursed witch pack shooting focused blood stars and it just makes her tick down a bit at a time. Getting that p8 cursed game isn't easy, either dipping into many pubs or following baal runs or finding split tz games and getting lucky like me. When you do get it, you need to pop shards and teleport like a maniac to prespawn as many of the demon class you want before anyone can leave the game, because you can take your time binding them once they're spawned.



I see obsession as a real option but I feel like there's such a solid argument for self-insight for even more QoL
I think its worth running the numbers on actual blood boil damage again when you look at options. The mang songs / defenders fire / facet / fire sunder setup can get about 6500 fire / 4800 phys / -40% pierce (or 7200 fire / -30% pierce), so against fire immunes with 0/25/50% dr and applying conviction+amp its getting a total of 13.6k / 12.4k / 11.2k damage per cast, of which only 4k is coming from the fire portion and the rest (9600/8400/7200) from phys. Now if you swapped out +10% fire / -10% resist for -10% dr, you'd be getting 6000 fire with -30% resist and -10% more dr, so against that same 0/25/50% dr fire immune targets you'd get 12.7k / 12.0k / 10.8k damage per cast
Now maybe there are more permutations to consider, but defender's fire is simply more damage in those scenarios. Clearly better against 0% dr monsters of course, but even against 50% dr you're still getting more from the fire portion getting +/-% at the same time


I think we really need to reevaluate the build though after playing more TZ. Trying to balance +skills / fcr / etc simply isn't as important for TZ games when you can prebuff and snapshot your +skills
I am joining games now with all my max +bind demon setup, then swapping my tome to make it a +tainted max setup, summoning them, then swapping on different items and spending 30 minutes in a game
The +skills to blood boils are nice, but honestly the +bind demon matters more for killing bigger immunes, and just having 'enough' blood boil kills packs of fire immune fallen / flayers / etc in 1-3 casts
Obsession certainly has nice QoL in the life/mf/resists and would be probably the #1 choice for a non-aura item that isn't trying to max blood boil dps, just keep that decent amount
But the ability to keep up meditation aura when you're just teleporting around 90% of the time seems crucial enough to have an insight staff in your hands and infinity on merc, or maybe even vice versa.
Playing without that meditation aura means chugging so many potions its a huge drain on the gameplay. I don't even need to stop teleporting for anything but heralds in a lot of zones, and fire immunes that are worth stopping to kill aren't refilling my mana off hex siphon enough to make the difference for teleporting around areas. So if we're going to hold insight in our own hands, obsession is out the window.