Optimal Prebuffing Bound Demons

Now that we know that bound demons have their damage (and sunder effects) set in Stone at the beginning of each game when they "respawn", we can optimize our gear at the start of each game to "prebuff" our demons. The major question is: max Bind Demon? Max Demonic Mastery? Balance of both?

TL;DR: get as much Bind Demon as possible.
Mang = Mang Song's Lesson
Baalos = Ars Tor'Baalos
BDdagger = Magic Dagger +3 Demonic Skills +3 Bind Demon
DMdagger = Magic Dagger +3 Demonic Skills + 3 Demonic Mastery
BDbook = Magic Grimoire +3 Demonic Skills + 3 Bind Demon
DMbook = Magic Grimoire + 3 Demonic Skills + 3 Demonic Mastery
Splendor = Splendor runeword in Grimoire with +3 Bind Demon

I used a basic calculation, which I don't even know if this is the correct way to calculate damage:
Damage = Flat + (Flat * Pct)
Flat = flat damage bonus from Bind Demon
Pct = enhanced damage bonus from Bind Demon
Note: ignoring the demon's base damage, because the flat damage dwarfs it, and it's just a small(ish) constant; also ignoring auras

In all cases, getting more + Bind Demon helps the most. E.g., if you have a Ars Tor'Baalos but haven't happened to find a magic book with +3 Bind Demon and +3 Demonic Skills (riiiiiight), you would be better off starting each game with a Splendor in a +3 Bind Demon base, which is more reasonable. If you really want to pump out the biggest numbers possible, get both a Bind Demon/Demon skills Dagger and a Bind Demon/Demonic skills book (riiiiiiiiiiiiiight).

departure wrote: 2 months ago

I might be worth mentioning that you can max a pre-buff for Tainted as well in much the same way, though it would be a slightly different set of gear.

Ethereal Wraithstep +demon is a nice pre-buff piece for any of these. Bone Break is important for Bind Demon pre-buff if the demon has curse.

Absolutely correct. Swap one of those skillers out for a Bone Break and stick it in the stash after the game starts (and put it back in inventory before you leave).

Best part? You can put ALL of those skillers back into the stash and it won't affect your bound demon at all!

Might affect your Blood Oath (only damage reduction, not life/res on bound demon) but we still don't know how that actually works, except that it buffs summoned demons at the time they are summoned.

Just out of curiosity, what gears are you guys running after swapping out the + skills gears?

Timecourse23 wrote: 2 months ago

Just out of curiosity, what gears are you guys running after swapping out the + skills gears?

I am swapping my baalos book for mephistos, my +3 demon skills ammy for Maras, and moving most of my demon skillers to stash and swapping in a Gheeds and a 15 all res. I'd eventually like to get chaotic skillers to swap in, and I have a Gheeds Belt to swap in when I want to do Ubers--also would like to socket a Hellwarden with an uber jewel and swap that in for Shako. Once I get a Mang, I will use that for prebuff and then swap in my Obsession.

Pretty strong combo. I haven't started ancients yet, but I am ready with +absorb rings/ammys to help cover (still need the lightning absorb Belt).

I'll forever be too lazy to bother changing my gear out and whatnot to bind a new demon but if you really, REALLY wanted to optimize things to the extreme, what with caps and weird interactions and (some) stored base values and whatnot...the real question to answer first is what happens to any and all possible buffs applied to the demon upon binding and can any of those be "snapshot into the base stats" so to speak?

I.e. if you use Mind Blast or Conversion first to make your target demon friendly and then bring all of your friends to cover every buff you can think of from every class and piece of gear you can think of and then bind that buffed-to-hell-and-back demon after the Conversion wears off, is all of that really lost for the next game or does any of it end up as part of the snapshot-stats? ;p

But yeah, even if that did work - unlikely as it may be - I'd still just bind with my regular gear. Switching is just too much of a hassle imo, even for something as "one off" as binding.

departure wrote: 2 months ago

Timecourse23 wrote: 2 months ago

Just out of curiosity, what gears are you guys running after swapping out the + skills gears?

We've got a variety of demon builds in this thread, so some of us would gear pretty differently than others after the pre-buff. Some are going magic, some are going Blood Boil.

Ah I see. This whole time I assumed everyone was a pure summoner build.