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2

Description

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?
Description by FerociousTerrier
5

Can be used to make Runewords:

7
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?
7
User avatar

ShadowHeart 6229Moderator

RotW Paladin Europe PC Playstation
FerociousTerrier wrote: 15 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)

I'm in CET (Central European Time)
My profile says Ladder, but I play both Ladder and Non-Ladder.
My profile says Softcore, but I play both Softcore and Hardcore.
My Holy Grail Tracker is for Offline Hardcore.
Holy Grail Death Count: 1
7
OP
ShadowHeart wrote: 14 hours ago
FerociousTerrier wrote: 15 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!
7
User avatar

kerph 106

RotW Americas PC
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 😅

♥♥♥ SC ladder & non-ladder ♥♥♥
Cure for sale starting at
Ist
*
trade
Sorry if i'm slow to respond here or on battle.net sometimes! you can always message me on discord @kerph for a quick response 😊
7
User avatar

kerph 106

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

♥♥♥ SC ladder & non-ladder ♥♥♥
Cure for sale starting at
Ist
*
trade
Sorry if i'm slow to respond here or on battle.net sometimes! you can always message me on discord @kerph for a quick response 😊
7
User avatar

ShadowHeart 6229Moderator

RotW Paladin Europe PC Playstation
FerociousTerrier wrote: 14 hours 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).

I'm in CET (Central European Time)
My profile says Ladder, but I play both Ladder and Non-Ladder.
My profile says Softcore, but I play both Softcore and Hardcore.
My Holy Grail Tracker is for Offline Hardcore.
Holy Grail Death Count: 1
7
OP
kerph wrote: 13 hours 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.
7
OP
kerph wrote: 13 hours 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.
7
User avatar

kerph 106

RotW Americas PC
FerociousTerrier wrote: 13 hours 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

♥♥♥ SC ladder & non-ladder ♥♥♥
Cure for sale starting at
Ist
*
trade
Sorry if i'm slow to respond here or on battle.net sometimes! you can always message me on discord @kerph for a quick response 😊
7
OP
kerph wrote: 12 hours ago
FerociousTerrier wrote: 13 hours 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
Was thinking of testing
Blood Oath
in Palace Cellar by Death-marking the demon behind the open windows and letting
Skeleton
archers take shots on them. May be a bit easier to count hits when the demon isn't killing everything.
7
Not particularly useful to this conversation but maxroll can simulate your bound demon by loading your save file. My dark lancer is visible in the maxroll calculations and I can see that she's outputting 66k damage per hit when amp damage is cast.

It doesn't show life though.
7
departure wrote: 7 hours ago
Not particularly useful to this conversation but maxroll can simulate your bound demon by loading your save file. My dark lancer is visible in the maxroll calculations and I can see that she's outputting 66k damage per hit when amp damage is cast.

It doesn't show life though.
Interesting. Can you explain how to do this?
7
Rhaegar86 wrote: 6 hours ago
Interesting. Can you explain how to do this?
Sure.

Your character files are in user / saved games / diablo II resurrected on windows. I like to copy this entire directory off periodically to make sure I have a backup of all characters. If you go to the maxroll planner and choose import, you can navigate to this folder and import your character (and all their gear). Your demon will be in the "calculations" tab. You can choose different target monsters and see how their damage changes. You can apply amp damage or remove it, and you can apply might, etc. etc.

I don't know if all of the calculations are correct. But it's trying. For reference, you can also invent gear, change skills, and output a file and then play that in single player. It's basically a hero editor.
7
FerociousTerrier wrote: 13 hours ago
kerph wrote: 13 hours 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.
My guess from experience is that it is a hard
Cap
and you can't go beyond it with
Blood Oath
. I have a lightning immune vile lancer with Stone skin (94% total physical res) and maxed
Blood Oath
because I never did a respec post patch. One the one hand it is very hard to find a situation where she takes any visible damage on her health bar. However, if
Blood Oath
is not capped she should have around 87.5k hitpoints, with a 1.2% health regeneration rate / second. That's 1k hp regeneration per second. I feel like instead of almost never, I would literally never see her health bar down even a tiny bit if she was regenerating 1k hp / second.

Also, one time against a T-5
Herald
with
Amplify Damage
she did lose around 20-25% of her health. The heralds spawned in an awkward spot with a bunch of crap in the way, so it took me longer to take them down than normal (normally vs. a T-5 she might just lose a super small sliver). But - that would still be her losing around 20k hp if she was truly at 87k, and I just don't see that as likely based on the damage I took, which wasn't a scary amount (granted part of the problem was getting line of sight on the heralds - I think it was in
Tal Rasha
tombs right around a doorway and with a bunch of pillars on the other side and additional Chaos from not yet dead other monsters). Also, while heralds can do a shitload of damage, 1k/second regeneration and losing 20k hp just doesn't seem likely.

Finally - the idea of the
Cap
occurring pre-
Blood Oath
doesn't make sense with a vile lancer, who normally has 3k-6k hp. A champion or unique will have 2x the amount, so up to 12k, but that is still below the "
Cap
". Maybe a super unique it could apply to. I'm not 100% certain on all of this, but this is just my guess based on what I have seen.

That said, my Stone skin vile lancer almost never takes any damage, so outside of ubers which I haven't tried, I have zero concerns about her.
7
departure wrote: 7 hours ago
Not particularly useful to this conversation but maxroll can simulate your bound demon by loading your save file. My dark lancer is visible in the maxroll calculations and I can see that she's outputting 66k damage per hit when amp damage is cast.

It doesn't show life though.
This is interesting. I guess many people might want to try this out.

But here it does not really fit, as you alrerady said.

Maybe you can make a new topic in the forum and also provide a link to the calculator and some info on your saved files.
7
OP
varangium wrote: 4 hours ago
FerociousTerrier wrote: 13 hours ago
kerph wrote: 13 hours 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.
My guess from experience is that it is a hard
Cap
and you can't go beyond it with
Blood Oath
. I have a lightning immune vile lancer with Stone skin (94% total physical res) and maxed
Blood Oath
because I never did a respec post patch. One the one hand it is very hard to find a situation where she takes any visible damage on her health bar. However, if
Blood Oath
is not capped she should have around 87.5k hitpoints, with a 1.2% health regeneration rate / second. That's 1k hp regeneration per second. I feel like instead of almost never, I would literally never see her health bar down even a tiny bit if she was regenerating 1k hp / second.

Also, one time against a T-5
Herald
with
Amplify Damage
she did lose around 20-25% of her health. The heralds spawned in an awkward spot with a bunch of crap in the way, so it took me longer to take them down than normal (normally vs. a T-5 she might just lose a super small sliver). But - that would still be her losing around 20k hp if she was truly at 87k, and I just don't see that as likely based on the damage I took, which wasn't a scary amount (granted part of the problem was getting line of sight on the heralds - I think it was in
Tal Rasha
tombs right around a doorway and with a bunch of pillars on the other side and additional Chaos from not yet dead other monsters). Also, while heralds can do a shitload of damage, 1k/second regeneration and losing 20k hp just doesn't seem likely.

Finally - the idea of the
Cap
occurring pre-
Blood Oath
doesn't make sense with a vile lancer, who normally has 3k-6k hp. A champion or unique will have 2x the amount, so up to 12k, but that is still below the "
Cap
". Maybe a super unique it could apply to. I'm not 100% certain on all of this, but this is just my guess based on what I have seen.

That said, my Stone skin vile lancer almost never takes any damage, so outside of ubers which I haven't tried, I have zero concerns about her.
Pack leaders have double health, bit that also scales up with player count, so at p8, I think that is +450% hp, well above the
Cap
.

If
Blood Oath
does not increase bound demon health above the
Cap
, it is pretty much useless for that aspect of the skill. Summoned demons, of course, would still benefit, but their health is of little concern as you can just resummon them (which I do sometimes just for repositioning). Resistance benefit doesn't seem super helpful. Physical damage reduction diminishes very quickly. That just leaves damage transfered to demon, which also seems to diminish within the range of soft points.

Basically if
Blood Oath
can't boost a capped demon's life, I see no reason to go beyond 1 hard point (other than
Blood Boil
synergy).
7
OP
departure wrote: 6 hours ago
Rhaegar86 wrote: 6 hours ago
Interesting. Can you explain how to do this?
Sure.

Your character files are in user / saved games / diablo II resurrected on windows. I like to copy this entire directory off periodically to make sure I have a backup of all characters. If you go to the maxroll planner and choose import, you can navigate to this folder and import your character (and all their gear). Your demon will be in the "calculations" tab. You can choose different target monsters and see how their damage changes. You can apply amp damage or remove it, and you can apply might, etc. etc.

I don't know if all of the calculations are correct. But it's trying. For reference, you can also invent gear, change skills, and output a file and then play that in single player. It's basically a hero editor.
I suppose Mac users playing off GeForceNow can't access those files.
7

There is is!!!
7
Ok so you can bind and relinquish
Infector of Souls
automatically in maxroll. If you bind infector with my character's gear but no skills in
Blood Oath
, he has 28k life. If you add 1 point to
Blood Oath
, he has 28k life. If you add 20 points to
Blood Oath
, he has 28k life.

I don't know if this is a maxroll bug or what.
7
Well, maxroll is probably only as good as the extent diablo's calculations are clearly documented or extractable.. and then only as good as whoever writes the code and reviews the documentation.
9

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