Do we know for a fact that this method works to keep the monsters at p8 level even if the other players end up leaving the game?

Didn't know they would stay with p8 stats if you pop a shard and teleport around spawning them, I always rush to try and bind one and get it done before anyone leaves, lol

I must

Hmm, i get it, but i have a friend who just filled 4-5 accounts into my game after i found the cursed game i wanted and then i rolled the last dude like that. Never close to dying that venom lord.

Anyone can do it by just making a farm game and rolling for cursed and asing d2jsp for chronicle afkers after hitting desired game/mob availability.

I feel like you obviously know a lot more than me about average monster immunities and resistances, but the mention of like flayers and stuff baffles me. Those mobs were never (even though "fire immune" technically") an issue in my eyes, because they just have such small healthpools. Even when they pop as heralds, they just die immediately.
I was running p8 sanctuaries and 3-4 times got herald pops on venom lords.... those were hard as fuck to kill, and honestly, based on no math (because i don't really know what those venom lords are and how they treat incoming damage) it just looked like my tainted fireballs did almost nothing to them (30k tooltip) - but the blood boil was chunking them, although not as fast as i'd like.

(there's a sidenote here about heralds generally - i feel like im killing them out of habit but it seems clearly never worth it, the loot is so worthless fomr them, so i feel like i know i should just skip anything that doesnt die as fast as regular uniques)

Ill also say though, that ive maxed blood oath last (its at 14-15 base) because while leveling up i felt anything that dies to fire just dies anyway, so it just is the physical i wanted.

But the issue is clearly my knowledge. I don't know why it is even though i "fire sunder" mobs they don't seem to reduce that far down in fire res. Maybe it's also that my sunder charm is a +%dmg and that as you allude to, i needed to be stacking more -fireres for it to start being really effective. i should spend a moment researching these things, but i honestly feel like many of the sources im reading from are dubious.

As for mana, i honestly cant see myself going to insight ever. I didn't even use it before infinity, i used a reapers because i felt the safety was nice and the few times the holy freeze "fails" at applying amped dmg it hlped to have earlier -phys res - even if less.
All i do is use a +skill ring for prebuff and then use some +100ish mana + and then with siphon topping me when i telepast minors i feel fine. I never have to buy pots at all, i just sometimes randomly pick up rejuvs when im also picking up an item to ID.

I used to hate potting, but i played a warcry+dreadfang last season, and it kind of cured me i think.

This post was edited by emiq on May 29 2026 01:42pm

have another question - sorry for all the "spam".

Uber ancients and uber tristram?
Have you tried it with a maxed out build? Anything demonlock that works?

Well the variants in different areas can be fire immune, and monsters tend to group around a 50:100:200 ratio of HP/exp with a 4:2:1 mob density (but 1:1 item drops, hence flayers being far better for farming items)
Those ~50% hp mobs like flayers die rapidly to blood boil even with fire immunes or fire enchanted TZ affix. But the 200%+ hp mobs like venom lords, urdars, etc are chonky enough it really helps to have that bound demon +damage, and in areas with lots of these high HP fire immunes I can greatly speed up my kill speed by switching to 2x defiler + demon, since defilers are greatly amplifying boil & demon.



I've killed like 200-500+ and found absolutely nothing and they don't give proportionate xp. All the sunders I've found are from andy/trav/rando creatures. You're right its 100% the correct decision to skip tier 5 heralds that are any bit slow to kill or dangerous, but we have lizard brains that make us want to kill them anyway



That's my recommended build, you shouldn't be maxing it until level 97 and then have 2 more points to waste at 98-99
Blood oath shouldn't even scale its % redirection with base points anymore so its definitely the lowest priority



Well its just the matter that sunder only sets mobs to 95% resist, and you need -resists past that. Conviction from infinity is -17% for both you and tainted, and the biggest thing you can get to amplify tainted damage
Against 0/50/100+ fire resist mobs, your tainted are getting 1.85x / 2.70x / 4.40x overall damage from conviction aura on merc. Granted, the damage to immunes is still piddly- they're only dealing 22% after sunder+conviction. Versus 5%
For blood boil its really marginal. Its a big damage amp on non-immunes and matters a bit against immunes, but we're still talking like 50% more overall dps to immunes compared to the physical portion alone



I'd be curious to see how our playstyle are differing, because I find that in many areas I am literally holding down the teleport hotkey for the vast majority of my gameplay. You can see it in the clip at the top of the last page and first page. You don't get hex siphon mana back from tainted kills, and tainted instantly kill all the non-immunes, so all I'm doing is teleporting around while everything dies on its own, picking up items or casting blood boil on immunes only, and stopping for heralds if they look easy enough.
And that amount of teleporting really makes it near unplayable without insight, I don't have infinity yet but I already made an insight staff for when I pick up infinity

Thanks for the infomration. Learned a fair bit there (im one of those that played as a kid but then just noticed d2 again last season after 20 years).

So... only -17% is what i definitely did not undertand. I thought that as u said i have the sunder, and that sunders their immunity, and so then it should go from 95% and be taken down -100% further (or however much conviction does)
But you're saying that even though i have a sunder, and it works for my tainted, my convction is still only reducing by that pitiful amount? Eeek. Well that tracks for sure with what i felt sometimes i guess.

For playstyles, the big deifference for me REALLY was playing warcry last season. Potting is so insanely different if you have small vs higher mana pool. For us 300 mana vs 800 mana.
ALL i do different, playstyle wise, is whenever i pick up a dropped item i cant leave (like SCs or GCs) i just also click on a rejuv on the floor.

My warcry barb last season had 4k mana while playing or so, and thus only used rejuvs to replenish (the response to the dreadfang conundrum) he had so much mana pool + usage that literally normal pots were totally useless for anything.
THat meant that in gearing him, in all relevant slots, 1 hardpoint in mana was worth 4+ hardpoints in life in the end min/max.
So the choice i felt i had this time was: if i change to insight i lose ABSURD amounts of damage, i teleport MORE EXPENSIVE (cause of the skill loss) 68%aææres 60%fhr 20%life... AND 30% regen. Theres no way.
Even with insight i still would be alcking mana sometimes, because mana regen is based on time (regenning ones total manapool in 120s at base i believe) increasing the mana pool is often way more effective, especially for smaller pools.

So if i don't do anyting and use insight i sit at maybe 400 mana. If i put in a soj and a 100+mana ring and have it on a few smallcharms i go to 800 and life is peachy. I teleport cheaper with obsession/more +all skill and i drink one of the rrejuvs (rarely, because as you may imaigne, when you have 800 mana instead, your hex: sipphons ability to replenish you stabilizes (imo the problems before come from the variance rather than the average intake/outake to a considerable degree - variance that makes it annoying at 400 but doesn't get felt at 800).

Really if im asking myself insight vs other setups, i would rather put SAPPHIRES in my 3/20 circlet o when i get it, over facets, and let that stabilize my mana, than use an insight.

This post was edited by emiq on May 29 2026 02:41pm

Conviction aura only gives 1/5 effect against immune monsters broken by sunder. The same is true for all skill-based -% resists except physical % dr get a special exemption from bone break and applies the full effect of amp / decrep against physical immunes being sundered. I don't think physical immunes are enough of a consideration to run a bone break here anyway (you CAN run it alongside flame rift, but -% dr to self is eh).
So for tainted, the only things effecting enemy resists are conviction aura and sunder. Normal monsters get -85% off their base resist, immune monsters are set to exactly 78%.
Hence its a huge amp, but its still limited vs immunes. If you've got 2x 36000 damage tainted, then against 0/50/100% resist monsters they deal 72000/36000/3600 with just sunder, but with infinity they deal 133200/97200/15840

I get max mana really having an impact and I plan to get 2x sojs and drop back to 75% fcr soon anyway (or maybe swap kiras for a good resists/fcr circlet and stay 125), but you should still be draining your max mana faster than its replenishing if you're teleporting around without casting blood boil in the non-immune areas. I mean, I have managed to bottom out my 300 mana with teleports along because I'm regenerating just slightly slower than max consumption from teleport right now, obviously would be fixed with an soj, but that's how mana hungry its been for me. Just nothing but pure teleport in a lot of areas

Its why I'm leaning so heavy on being a dual aura setup, and if anyt

of course most chars get -% from gear after sunder to make them effective, like nova sorcs with -90% from items and -17% from conviction so an immune is brought to -12% resists
but tainted don't benefit from -% on gear, so immunes have your choice of 100%/95%/78% with neither/sunder/sunder+infinity

for hardcore im using only the bloodboil part with bind demon and gear like coa/ bks/ and im running insight rn and merc with pride/might i will test give merc insighht and run obsession for more resistan using death segil if needed extra aoe power but so far no problem on p8tz

I have assembled my fully operational ladder taintlock now and this is what I'm talking about
I'm just holding down teleport until I hit a herald or immunes, and even with 2x soj I'd quickly run out of mana if not for the insight battle staff.

I think its pretty obvious what the ideal prebuff equipment is, +3 helm/ammy, sojs, enigma, magefist, mang song/measured wrath for easy, +6 dagger/tome for ideal but hard to obtain, plain skillers
We're still up in the air about what the best combination of MF/survivability would be for gear you wear at runtime. You could even swap out skillers for mf/life/resist grand charms. I don't even have a baalos or defender's fire yet, and I'm just using an um'd kiras and rising sun for resists/sorb. It could be a shako and maras and have higher BO.

But I think better than any other video I posted, this represents what I'm talking about with the gameplay loop, give it a look

Ty for the build will test this asap



go mf some better rings, baddy https://forums.d2jsp.org/topic.php?t=109363055&f=268