preloading the spearwoman in p8 is a good call. I wasn't aware they kept p8 stats when the zone was left vacant for more than 10 seconds or so. for merc, yea kill his ass or just remove his weapon.

spearbae is jealous as fuck and she won't let you bind another while she is around, so it can be a little difficult to find the one you want if trying to snag an elite version without first consuming her possessive ass

Hell witch with holy freeze for massive amp spam ( + amp is in her spellbook).Nothing else matter. Spearwoman are garbo

Monsters stats are set when spawned in by someone moving within 2 screens of their tiles, then their stats are locked in. It was common to use as a trick for classic rushing to spawn hell travincal with 1-2 players and then kill it in a P8 game easily, since monsters never despawn or reset their stats, they stay permanently at their spawned values.



Hell witches cast more amp overall, but they also cast curses that overwrite amp and undo some of their benefit
but a spearwoman can hit for as much as 24000 damage per hit avg, with just 1 point in the skill
sirens cap out around 2000 per blood star at the same bonus, not as shit as other ranged attacks, but very mediocre

Even so, the rate at which u get amp from Witch is far greater then spearwoman ( even if it can get undo by other curse ).

if you plan on killing heralds, the witch just doesn't cut it. cursed + hf/light enchant spearbae or even demon lord/heph/lister are all superior if you plan on using bind for dps/tank purposes outside of having a pure amp bot. The coverage is similar but with these obvious added benefits, witch is clearly just a temporary solution until you get a better demon. She also runs away when you death mark her on someone, leaving you and your merc vulnerable to herald rushdowns.

This post was edited by Gilgameshed on May 31 2026 12:04pm

Greater yes, far greater no. Holy freeze + cursed is pretty reliable in any large pack, often 10-20 monsters clumped for 40-64% per tick, every 2 seconds. Siren doesn't cast amp every time either, so its just another layer, and overwrites amp sometimes.
The real benefit to siren, venom lord, flayer, etc is against isolated bosses like diablo or baal where holy freeze + cursed does almost nothing (no holy freeze procs, just 5% on attacks)
But taintlocks already fry bosses so they don't care. Fire warlocks don't care about amp either, or purge ES, and pure demon summoners get their DPS from spearwoman, so really only subpar blood boil builds skipping tainted, or physical ES warlocks, care about amp on bosses.

technically any build can prebuff 1 point bind demon to get 15k+ damage on a spearwoman, assuming they stop at 10 demonic mastery, but 20 mastery builds get it to 20k+
for demon builds its an obvious payoff for already using skillers and other +demon gear or magefists or so on.

witches do 0 damage and have the ai of a fucking birthday balloon floating around
spearwomen with some defilers can screenclear mobs and kill anything in the game down to ubers

hard choice

other ranged mobs do 0 damage, witches and archers deal a bit of damage
the +damage from bind demon actually adds to their ranged attacks, unlike other ranged mobs with spells. But the +% ed does not. So you can get 2000+ per blood star with 1 point, maybe 3600+ with max skills, and they can shotgun multiple shots for a unique with max skill so it is possible to have a siren blasting away for 10k+ which is pretty good compared to most summons but the same +skills gets you that 40-50k damage on a spearwoman yeah

does it matter if you grab an A1 spearwoman vs A5 spearwoman?

only a5 spearbae has jab