Generally the most practical form of PvM right now is P8TZ 96 solo farming, either in split or with loaders to fill games. That's what people do in pubs and privates, in various zones, preferably not A1
So let me weigh in by just showing the comparative kill speed of {bind demon + 2x defilers + blood boil // max bind, mastery, oath, boil, engorge} vs {2x tainted + bound demon + blood boil // max taint, bind, mastery, boil, engorge}
It annoys me my thread got spammed enough with that, so might as well make a video of it side by side



I hope this video can help people draw their own conclusions about how practical the two different builds are

I totally agree with you if you wanna run bb and do speed you will want max tainted with hf cursed demon and max bb your build is top notch

2 defiller.max bind demon is bowlock material ( with many variants)

I actually dont think this build needs Hex Siphon

I only use BB on some fire immune herald packs and theres still no guarantee that it will be my BBs that get the killing blow and not the minions
if Blood Boils dont get kills - Hex Siphon does absolutely nothing
and when I dont use BB (which is most of the time) - Hex Siphon also does nothing..

spending 3 skill points (and needing to periodically recast it) just for that seems a waste to me
even if BB gets a few kills here and there - the life/mana you get is negligible overall
with a ~9 cost teleport and 900++ mana pool, there are no mana issues at all, ever

I think its very viable to not skill it at all

if the Blood Boils applied the -33% damage from H:S then yeah, it'd be worth
but as it is - meh


I've been running this build without H:S so far and its been great

This post was edited by Ph0en1X on Jul 2 2026 02:58am

What about the other hexes ? Are they of any use ?

Its a fair point for sure, but I find the hp and mana both pretty useful when you're in those dense fire immune areas and thaf could mean mana burn affix too. BB uses up mana way faster and immunes are far more likely to land some damage on you, and siphon is full synergized with just 3 skill points needed. Its a really small investment to unlock a really huge effect that yes, only applies in some scenarios. But there are enough areas that pack swarms of small fire immune monsters that can demand frequent BB spam that the mana/hp streamlining can pay off.

Notably I think it matters the most against burning dead / scarabs in tals tombs. They fold fast to BB, even the pure phys no fire sunder / base oath setup. But they can spawn with swarms all over the place and are aggressive enough to land a few hits, and you'll always take chip damage from bolts. Siphon does a good job negating that damage and making the BB free to spam

Other areas its less relevant. Mana burn affix maps you can have hiccups where you get drained to 0, wait a half a second, then tele and bb a mob and pop back up without using a pot. Fallen and flayers being fire immune matter, and it also offsets some poison damage taken in those flayer areas. The more low hp dense mobs, the more you will be the source credit for the kill and more kills at a time. But when you're against some chunkier fire immunes that can damage you like frenzytaurs, arachs, lister- then its a mostly irrelevant buff where you probably won't get the killing blow on half the kills, like you say.

Overall its 3 skill points so I figured its worth the QoL here

This post was edited by Goomshill on Jul 2 2026 04:40am

I never use BB on regular fire immunes, even on ppl8
they die too fast as is
only on t5 fire immune herald packs does it seem worth to press BB button (after AD has proc'd)

But I suppose there is nowhere else to put 3 points on 95-97 anyway

Even in tombs? Those skeletons are dense and block tainted fireballs. They have 5212-7447 base hp in tz96, so they are one shotted with conviction but take 3 hits before it sets in, and minions take 2 hits, and so the fireballs dont pierce and overkill as easily. I find the sheer density matters where you can teleport into a room of 30-40 monsters and the fireballs just cant cover the area but if you cast a few BB everything but unravelers / urdars / ghoul lords will die instantly and open the shot for tainted to kill the bigger stuff.

Feels like you'd be skipping out on the good XP and best drops if you don't aoe blast down the dense mobs of flayers in jungle / wsk / halls of pain and skeletons in tombs.

Can hex siphon staff mod spawn on warlock books?

Nope, its flagged as a weapon skill and only spawns on daggers. All warlock skills spawn on daggers, and only nonweapon ones spawn on tomes. So no hexes, mirror blades, echoing strike, blade warp. Otherwise yeah a splendor +3 siphon would be BiS. And no glitch to roll it anyway like holy shield scepters not existing anymore

3 sigil skills dont count as weapon so its not the whole eldritch tree. Not sure about tier 1-2 like mastery since you cant find them in high level pvm

This post was edited by Goomshill on Jul 2 2026 05:56am

I respec'd into this last night and even with a P1 lancer the build shreds. I will put more effort into a better demon soon, but I was eager to try it out. I do have some noticeable slow downs with fire immunes. I actually tried carrying a bone break + pre-ROTW fire sunder and that made the problem go away for the most part. Obviously just a big hit to resist.