Sorry did not understand the question.. by a mile the 2 defiller with bind demon and don't even need to be max

yeah I figured defilers are better there
Will probably start doing that

only thing is that my normal fire-res is 10%+ (with sunder in inventory) and the 65% from Tainted FR aura adds the rest to hit 75%
if I use defilers I will be at ~10% FR in the middle of a herald fight - dangerous

but I will probbaly just swap WT for Aldurs boots. The 10% DTGTM there helps too

This post was edited by Ph0en1X on Jun 25 2026 04:39am

You can definitely deal more dps to the fire immune heralds with demon+2x defilers while spamming blood boil, but it slows you down overall since you'd want to resummon tainted by returning to town and prebuffing, which takes longer. They just don't take that long to kill anyway. You can see it in the numbers. Say its a pack of 50% dr fire immunes. 2x Tainted hit about 3-5 at a time for ~16k hp every 22 fpa (4x ~18.2k dps = 72.8k). Blood boil just from the physical portion can be hitting all 15 of them for ~7.7k at 9 fpa after amp (15x 21.4k dps = 321k). A spearwoman might hit one target for 75k at whatever random speed, about 18ish fpa on average I'd guess. (1x ~104k dps = 104k)
Defilers spread about 1.57x on 5 targets for 7.85x (+285%) since it doesn't shotgun with multiple instances, just one +57% per blood boil to the 4 extra targets in the chain, and one other target sharing its 57% back to the one that hit the other 4
If its spreading its full benefit by a lancer hitting extra 4 defiler targets and blood boil hitting all 10, that raises total AOE of blood boil from 321k -> 443k, and lancer from 104k -> 341k
Which of course is far more than what you're losing in 2x tainted here.

That should all be pretty unsurprising, tainted are extremely nerfed against fire immunes, and their damage against non-immunes is so astronomical it just one-shots them so the main limitation is moving around fast enough, while a bound demon has gigantic dps but melee range and single target attacks that limit her from being able to apply it to anything but a big damage sponge. So a big damage sponge herald that is immune to fire winds up being a prime target for blood boil + lancer, and could take a lot of extra dps, and you can get about 80% more overall DPS by summoning 2x defilers in the best case

Except as I said above, this is pretty pointless. If it took 10 seconds to kill a fire immune herald without that +80% dps, maybe it takes 5.5 seconds instead. But its going to take you more than 4.5 seconds to go to town, swap your gear, resummon tainted, swap back. When you already have the huge demon + blood boil dps, the defilers just aren't really worth the effort.

Mind the real application problems as well. There's a 1/3 chance 2x defilers miss a herald with their binds even with no nearby trash mobs, and more trash mobs complicate it. And uneven DPS application from a non-bound herald means he's left alive at much higher HP than other trash mobs. And his much higher base HP means no matter what, he's left alive and just getting hit by your bound demon with no % bonus from defilers who are floating around being useless gas bags when there's only 1 target, where tainted would still add ~18k dps to one target. Those aoe values always diminish as the pack thins.

And of course, the practical aspect of it all. was the only one hitting the sage wisdom. Its our peanut sized lizard brains that make us bother killing big immune herald packs when we could just... skip them. We've all seen the math and the results, they're not whatsoever worth killing, and I only bothered with most packs just because it tickled me to do so.

how good is Taintedlock on colossal ancients? are there any corpses there for Engorging?

And which current warlock build is generally best for colossal ancients?

am I correct in understanding how Engorge works?
- for example lvl 37 Engorge says duration 113 seconds - that means when you use Engorge once on any corpse - for the next 113 seconds all your demons (tainteds and bind) - will have the 35% IAS and 87%ll buff, right?
And then after ~113 seconds you just do another Engorge to refresh

and these:
-Physical DR to demon by 5%
-Replenish Life 5
-Defense 25
are also part of the 113s buff?

I'm pretty sure it instantly applies to all currently existing demons when used, but won't buff demons used after it summons. As soon as I cast my level 35 engorge, it heals all my demons regardless of range for 74% of their max hp, then gives a buff that lasts 137 seconds with +75 defense, +15 rep, +35% attack speed (EIAS) and +103 life drain. Due to a typo or blizzard having no idea how it works, its definitely not life steal. If my demon had 103% lifesteal on its 75000 damage attacks then even at 1-2 million hp it would be topping itself off nonstop through blood boil
Instead engorge gives life drain, a damage typed not used by many monsters. Maybe vampires have it, I'm not sure. I believe the way it works is that it directly subtracts life (+103 damage, not scaled by %DR, not sure on this) and then heals... 1.25% of damage dealt. So +1.3 hp healed per attack on a 1-2 million hp demon.

but yes you can recast it to refresh the duration

This post was edited by Goomshill on Jun 26 2026 01:28pm

Herald hunting was never about the drops, it's about overcoming the most basal of human instincts—fear.

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

hi got a question what would be best for the renewed bone break -enemy res or %dmg?

% ed does absolutely nothing here, -10% dr works with blood boil