Optimal Blood Oath for mixed Demon builds

tl;dr:

Blood Oath is hard to pinpoint what level is best to target with hard + soft points.

Whilst we know more about the mechanics of

Bind Demon and

Demonic Mastery (multiple prior posts in the forumverse and my simpleton testing show that the bound demon's damage is set at the beginning of each game based on the skill level of both at the very start of the game), the

Blood Oath skill remains a bit mysterious. The uncertainty around the passive benefits to you and your demon can be quite vexing when planning a build that is heavy on demons.

Let's take an example of a mixed build in Chaos and Demon:
20

Abyss
20 Miasma Chains
20

Bind Demon
20

Demonic Mastery
Pre-reqs
1 Sigil: Lethargy
1

Blood Oath

That leaves precisely 20 points at level 99. Do you invest in

Miasma Bolt to increase the damage of your Miasma Chains and

Abyss? Or

Blood Oath to bolster the health and resists of your Demon(s) and physical damage transfer from you to your demon?

Perhaps even more frustrating is that Patch 3.2 introduced max health caps for demons that are demon-dependent and I don't know where you can find those values, which of course would be very helpful for planning builds and for D2R Pokemon Hunters.

Here is what I've found so far:
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/d2r/t ... -32/176167

Not much, and no confirmation or details on how they arrived at these values for Heph and Lister (20K life at p1, 27K at p8) and "Act 5

Valkyrie (

Spear maiden)" which I assume they mean Dark Lancers (13.2K at p1, 17.82K at p8). If these values are true, that would bring Dark Lancers much closer to Heph and Lister (and Urdars). But from my play experience, Dark Lancers are still noticeably more squishy than Urdar--but that may have to do with inherent resistances (??).

The question no one has asked (at least publicly), is that if these are health "caps", does that mean that the bonuses of

Blood Oath cannot bring them above that

Cap? I assume that is false, otherwise they may as well change the tool tip to remove % increase in health, or at least specify that it only applies to "summoned" demons. For example, our Lancer with 17.82K health would have a +1,065% life increase if you got

Blood Oath up to Lvl 30 with a mix of hard and soft points (quite doable). That would be >207K life. I assume the skill is not working this way. But maybe?? Posts by user HOLYKNIGHT on the following thread suggest that both

Blood Oath and BO can boost their health, so maybe the "caps" are just a snapshot of the health of the demons at time of binding and those values can be modified by

Blood Oath, BO, Spirit of Oak, etc.
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/d2r/t ... e/176049/8
The effect of hard and soft points is linear, so IF there is no

Cap on

Blood Oath increases--not necessarily a good assumption--then there is no sweet spot in terms of health benefits for your Demon.

Blood Oath benefit to bound demon's life: haven't the foggiest

Ok, so how about benefit to the warlock. Blue post on the patch notes says that damage transfer from warlock to demon is capped at 50%. Previously, it was capped at 43% although the tool tip was misleading. However, blue post in this forum under the

Blood Oath skill page (also reflected in the maxroll d2planner) shows diminishing returns with % transfer hitting 25% at level 20 (previously 43%):
skills/blood-oath-t1674064.html
However, the diminishing returns scale shows that you basically reach an asymptote at 29% (still at level 56), so you'd never reach the 50%

Cap. Who's lying here? Blizzard or Blizzard?

Blood Oath benefit to warlock: uncertain, but presumably this effect is not "snapshot" at the start of a game and dynamically changes depending on your skill level during play (e.g., swapping out all your +demon skillers may reduce the damage transfer effect)

Then there is physical damage resistance and elemental resists to the demon. My understanding from discussions is that these resists cannot create an immunity, but the mechanism is not clear. For instance, the mechanism for affixes like Spectral Hit, which adds 20% elemental resistance, has a check and pass mechanism where it first checks Cold--is there immunity?--No?--Are there already 2 immunities?--No?--+20% resistance to Cold (no idea if say, 95% cold resistance +20% == 115% or stops at 100%)--next, fire, is there immunity?--Yes?--Here I don't know if the +20% is applied to the total, meaning 100% --> 120%--next, lightning, is there immunity?--No?--Are there already 2 immunities?--Yes?--Skip providing +20% resistance altogether. For

Blood Oath at high level, it is providing >70% resists, yet not adding immunities to demons. Unclear whether it performs a check/skip mechanism or just adds resists up to a

Cap. Most Hell demons have pretty decent resists on the order of 33-50% to start with, so the bonus would easily put them into immunity levels. Physical damage reduction is moderate and diminishing returns, so nothing to fret about. It is the elemental resists that we can't be sure how much is benefiting them.

Blood Oath benefit to Demon resists: unclear

With all of this uncertainty, is it better to just go 1 point in

Blood Oath and let soft points add what they can? Or is there still a sweet spot before diminishing return curves flatten?
*Resists: elemental resists to demon; PDR: Physical Damage Reduction to demon; PDD: Player Damage to Demon; PDD?: Physical Damage to Demon according to patch notes, which probably isn't correct

The benefit of synergies like

Miasma Bolt is straightforward. They provide a linear increase in damage per hard point.
One caveat with

Blood Oath, though. During my

Bind Demon testing with

Blood Moor

Fallen, I noticed a survivability trend in the bound

Fallen depending on whether they were BOUND with level 1

Blood Oath or

Blood Oath buffed by items/skill points, and that was before starting a new game. Possible that

Blood Oath has an effect at the time of binding (??). But this was inconclusive, as I burned my only Token to do this (I'm not too rich). A better experiment would be to Bind at 1 hard point vs. 20 hard points in the same game to assess survivability, but also to bind at 1 hard point and start a new game fully skilled up (>lvl 40) vs. binding at 20 hard points and starting a game naked. Or perhaps even "titrating up"

Blood Oath skill points to see how survivability scales. That is more tokens and time than I'm worth, unfortunately.

Conclusion: very unclear what the "optimal" level of investment in

Blood Oath may be, but I am inclined to think that going 1 hard point in

Blood Oath and stacking as much +demon skills as possible at time of binding and game start may be the most helpful, freeing up points for something else like a Chaos tree or Eldrich tree synergy. If you are

Blood Boil, you want

Blood Oath hard points anyway.

Anyone else have thoughts/data/opinions?

FerociousTerrier wrote: 2 hours ago

Perhaps even more frustrating is that Patch 3.2 introduced max health caps for demons that are demon-dependent and I don't know where you can find those values, which of course would be very helpful for planning builds and for D2R Pokemon Hunters.

The maxhp values/formula are found in the monpet.txt file. If you haven't extracted the game files yourself, you can find a copy of this file on GitHub (for example here: https://github.com/pinkufairy/D2R-Excel ... monpet.txt). Like all other internal txt files, it's tab-separated, and there's a column named "BoundStat1" which always seem to contain "maxhp" (where applicable), and the corresponding "BoundCalc1" column defines the maxhp formula.

For example, for Hephasto (who for some obscure reason, to me anyway, is named "The Feature Creep" in the internal game files), the maxhp formula is:

((pcl5>20000)?(min(pcl5,20000+(1000*(stat('monster_playercount'.accr)-1)))):pcl5)

I'm not sure what all of this means, but it looks like his max HP will be 20000 on p1, and 27000 on p8 (I could also be misinterpreting). The formula looks very similar for other monsters, it's just different numbers.

(you can find all the other internal txt files on the same GitHub, monster data is separated into multiple files)

ShadowHeart wrote: 2 hours ago

FerociousTerrier wrote: 2 hours ago

Perhaps even more frustrating is that Patch 3.2 introduced max health caps for demons that are demon-dependent and I don't know where you can find those values, which of course would be very helpful for planning builds and for D2R Pokemon Hunters.

The maxhp values/formula are found in the monpet.txt file. If you haven't extracted the game files yourself, you can find a copy of this file on GitHub (for example here: https://github.com/pinkufairy/D2R-Excel ... monpet.txt). Like all other internal txt files, it's tab-separated, and there's a column named "BoundStat1" which always seem to contain "maxhp" (where applicable), and the corresponding "BoundCalc1" column defines the maxhp formula.

For example, for Hephasto (who for some obscure reason, to me anyway, is named "The Feature Creep" in the internal game files), the maxhp formula is:

((pcl5>20000)?(min(pcl5,20000+(1000*(stat('monster_playercount'.accr)-1)))):pcl5)

I'm not sure what all of this means, but it looks like his max HP will be 20000 on p1, and 27000 on p8 (I could also be misinterpreting). The formula looks very similar for other monsters, it's just different numbers.

(you can find all the other internal txt files on the same GitHub, monster data is separated into multiple files)

Very cool. Copied and checking out monster stats now. I don't know what pcl5 is, but likely monster health in game, where if monster health is >20K, take the minimum of monster health in game and monster health + X*playercount... Lister has 60-67K health in Hell difficulty, so he's taking a big dip.

I also see nothing regarding

Blood Oath levels, so I am thinking that things like

Blood Oath and BO are calculated AFTER the "

Cap". That still means you get a huge modifier of >1,000% for those investing heavily in Demon. Also somewhat levels the playing field for demons. If you get a nice Dark Lancer at ~17.8K health, you're looking at 196,000 hp vs. an equivalent level Lister/Heph at 297,000 hp--still a tankier demon if you want to go with Lister or Heph, but not quite the differential as pre-patch.

I think most importantly from a squishiness factor are the affixes. Dark Lancers are Lightning Immune, but what you really want is to get a Stone Skin one to bump their 33% physical resistance up (Lister starts with 50% and Urdars are 55%, I think). That + Fire Enchanted or Magic Resistant will help beef up the Lancer. Unique one in high Player Count should hit the

Cap.

Basically, superuniques and some monsters like megademons

Cap at 27,000hp while other monsters

Cap at 18,360 hp (e.g., Blunderbores), 17,820 hp (e.g., Lancers), and 16,200 (e.g.,

Fallen). Would be hard to find a

Fallen that hits the

Cap, though, since Devilkin, the highest level non-terrorized, in Hell are 1159-3400 hp, meaning at p8, they would be 6,374-18,700 hp. Not impossible, but you'd be playing Pokemon for a health capped

Fallen

Interestingly, there is one

Fallen, "Fallen5" that can hit the 27,000 hp

Cap... no idea who that

Fallen is, but would be very funny tanking Ubers with that little guy!

Can i ask why 20 in

Demonic Mastery? Don't u get 3 demons with 10 hard pts?

Ime certain binds are noticeably squishier in 3.2 so i think i would rather those 10 pts go to

Blood Oath. But admittedly i'm not thaaaat read up on the ideal optimizations for

Bind Demon. I will say anecdotally, testing binds for ubers on my pure demonlock, a random cursed lightning enchanted

Corrupt Rogue from the

Matron's Den was by FAR the best demon i have used period. Even without Stone skin she was basically invulnerable, maybe dropped at most 1/3 to

Lilith, and could take down

Uber Baal solo in a few hits. She seemed to curse a lot too, as if her charged

Bolts were triggering the 5% proc? But maybe that's just wishful thinking

Though i can imagine spending keys just to bind a demon isn't attractive for most ppl

Also ur non-ladder right? Can i give u some tokens?

FerociousTerrier wrote: 1 hour ago

Interestingly, there is one

Fallen, "Fallen5" that can hit the 27,000 hp

Cap... no idea who that

Fallen is, but would be very funny tanking Ubers with that little guy!

fallen5 is "Warped Ones" - i.e., they only exists as minions of

Colenzo the Annihilator (as far as I know).

kerph wrote: 53 minutes ago

Also ur non-ladder right? Can i give u some tokens?

Thanks, that's very nice! I'd be happy to continue testing, but not quite yet. Got myself a nice Mauler and playing around with

Tainted/Mauler build (

Tainted/Lancer was a complete bust as the Lancer gets telelocked by the

Tainted).

I am gathering gear for a respec into Demon/Miasma (to give me something to do other than kick urns while my demons smack around everything).

I could plan out the tests around then. Will have to think over the design. Can probably do it pretty economically with a "titration" approach. I also have more skillers now than previously, so should help with the differentials.

kerph wrote: 1 hour ago

Can i ask why 20 in

Demonic Mastery? Don't u get 3 demons with 10 hard pts?

Ime certain binds are noticeably squishier in 3.2 so i think i would rather those 10 pts go to

Blood Oath. But admittedly i'm not thaaaat read up on the ideal optimizations for

Bind Demon. I will say anecdotally, testing binds for ubers on my pure demonlock, a random cursed lightning enchanted

Corrupt Rogue from the

Matron's Den was by FAR the best demon i have used period. Even without Stone skin she was basically invulnerable, maybe dropped at most 1/3 to

Lilith, and could take down

Uber Baal solo in a few hits. She seemed to curse a lot too, as if her charged

Bolts were triggering the 5% proc? But maybe that's just wishful thinking

Though i can imagine spending keys just to bind a demon isn't attractive for most ppl

Depends on your priorities. If you want the max damage possible from your demon (which can be quite substantial--my Urdar one-hits all trash and many elites in p8, but does take longer on heralds and certain affixes), you want max

Demonic Mastery because that is a direct increase on

Bind Demon flat damage (the flat damage calculates your DM bonus), which then get multiplied by auras and Amp Dam. My current thinking is that

Blood Oath is providing a linear increase in demon health as an enhancement to the "

Cap". Nothing else explains how these demons deal with so many hits in Hell--with only 27K health they would be knocked out in about 5-10 seconds of a pack attacking them, depending on resistances. I have 4K health and a doll can drop me in half within a few seconds.

So if you're using the demon mostly for tanking (e.g., getting a

Megademon from Uberland),

Blood Oath may be a better investment. Although to be honest, tanks with so much immunity probably don't need that much extra health.

With the health caps, I think all demons could use

Blood Oath, even Lister and Hephy if it works like I think it does. But I am right now questioning whether a single hard point + soft points is sufficient or if it is better to err on the side of caution and pump some points into

Blood Oath--it would be devastating to lose a carefully hunted demon to a hard hitting pack. Lot depends on the mechanics of it, i.e., is

Blood Oath snapshot alongside damage at game start? Is it set on Bind? I don't think it changes when you change gear in game, but jury still out on that one.

FerociousTerrier wrote: 19 minutes ago

But I am right now questioning whether a single hard point + soft points is sufficient or if it is better to err on the side of caution and pump some points into

Blood Oath--it would be devastating to lose a carefully hunted demon to a hard hitting pack.

That's kinda my thinking ... especially with a mixed

Abyss build i assume you're not using any demon skillers, no +3

Circlet/amulet etc. So i think i would want to err on the side of caution. Especially since u don't need to rely on your bind as much for damage