Testing Bind Demon mechanics

While working on an

Echoing Strike Warlock build, at level 81 with only 1 hard point in

Bind Demon, I decided to try and give an Urdar a go in Hell lvl non TZ

River of Flame. I was surprised at how easily it worked, but what was most surprising was how effective the Urdar was in taking down Diablo. The Urdar turned out to be a total tank, so I made a quick video demonstrating it.

If it snapshots the deamon's damage + health at the time of binding then you would want to have found 2-3 Skill shrines before hand near a WP and bind a Cursed demon in a

Terror zone lvl 95+ to get the highest level aura.
then also stack your char with all the + Gear, +1 Demon Grand Charms, Max lvl Call To Arms BO BC,

Ars Tor'Baalos book with max

Demonic Mastery.

Shit I need to re-binda a Lister in a Cursed TZ when its in Worldstone Keep / throne Room & un-equip my

Renewed Bone Break & remove my horrodric cube + Tele

Tome I could add 2 more +1 Demon Skills GC, then find a skill shrine beforehand. stacking at least +4 more skills +1 from CtA already.

Bind Demon would be like lvl 52 or something

Demonic Mastery at 55, Un-Holy mother of SHIT, Diablo & his brothers will start to pray to

Tyrael if I can bind a Demon with that extra stuff, did not think about it.....time to hunt 2 more GC xD

this is Huuuge, but how the Hell are you going to Bind a Cursed demon in Players 8, that seems hard to archive, I usally have to unbind my current demon and Un-equipp Mercenary and have him killed to no kill the

Baal Waves to fast, might not need that at P8.....

DrunkAkuma wrote: 12 hours ago

Bind Demon Snapshot.jpg

this is Huuuge, but how the Hell are you going to Bind a Cursed demon in Players 8, that seems hard to archive, I usally have to unbind my current demon and Un-equipp Mercenary and have him killed to no kill the

Baal Waves to fast, might not need that at P8.....

This is wrong. I tested this already and show that damage is not snapshot at the time of binding. It is always snapshot at the time a game is started and the demon "spawns". You can bind the demon naked and then throw on +30 skills and have a super demon in the next game (won't affect the demon you bound in that game though.

SO, things like CTA and skill shrines do not help you with

Bind Demon because you can't prebuff before the demon spawns in a new game. That is why I stack skillers before starting a new game and move some over to the stash during game play.

What I can tell so far for the "binding snapshot" is:
1) snapshot of Demon level--still unclear if it takes the actual demon level or the minimum of demon level in game and warlock level;
2) snapshot of demon health, including the health

Cap--in some cases P8 may not be necessary to hit the health

Cap, especially for superuniques who have higher health in P1 than the health

Cap--

Blood Oath bonues may or may not be snapshot at time of binding, but from recent discussions , you likely don't need

Blood Oath that high to reach the caps;
3) Aura level if at least level 20

Bind Demon (depending on the demon level at time of binding). None of the above change after binding, except aura level than can be buffed by CTA by one level.

What changes after binding:
1) demon damage, which is snapshot at the start of the game based on

Bind Demon and

Demonic Mastery skill levels--doesn't matter if you strip naked afterwards, the demon's damage will be unchanged;
2) sunder effect: this may be adopted at the time of spawning in game--still some testing to do, but I sart games with a

Bone Break and then remove the

Bone Break--this definitely works with

Tainted summons where you cans summon them with a fire sunder and then remove the fire sunder with them keeping het sunder effect;
3) potentially life adjustments from CTA's BO and/or Spirit of Oak;
4) potentially

Blood Oath benefits like % damage reduction and resists, but this looks to be impossible to actually test, so I don't know.
5) Aura level can be buffed by CTA

Key points:
1) have high enough

Bind Demon and

Demonic Mastery level to bind the demon you want and get the affixe bonuses you want (i.e., aura or no aura)
2) figure out the player level needed to hit the health

Cap of your target demon (I am making a separate post about this later)
3) start your games with as much +Demon skills and +

Bind Demon / +

Demonic Mastery as possible, and you can swap out gear afterwards.

Good luck hunting your demon!

P.s., I don't find binding too hard, even with a bound demon. Strip naked before starting a new game to make sure your demon isn't hitting like a semi truck, re-gear, summon only goats or no summons at all,

Teleport to throne room, and target lister once he's taken one hit or so and just keep channeling--if it says you can't try again after another hit. Aim for a cursed/Stone skin in any case and that will take more hits before dying.

DrunkAkuma wrote: 12 hours ago

Bind Demon Snapshot.jpg

this is Huuuge, but how the Hell are you going to Bind a Cursed demon in Players 8, that seems hard to archive, I usally have to unbind my current demon and Un-equipp Mercenary and have him killed to no kill the

Baal Waves to fast, might not need that at P8.....

I should add, that I don't know if the Binding Snapshot takes into account modified damage from increased player counts, but my understanding is that the number is so small that the flat damage bonus of

Bind Demon dwarfs that aynway.

The HP increese would be enough to make it worth while.

Go from TANK > SUPER MEGA GIGA CHAD TANK

tough I still need to make it to lvl 94 first, 70% or so left, its getting slow, why can't there be 2x exp event's from time to time & you stack that with a 2-4 hours 2x exp card / buff for 4x exp, like other MMOs like Maplstory xD

DrunkAkuma wrote: 11 hours ago

The HP increese would be enough to make it worth while.

Go from TANK > SUPER MEGA GIGA CHAD TANK

tough I still need to make it to lvl 94 first, 70% or so left, its getting slow, why can't there be 2x exp event's from time to time & you stack that with a 2-4 hours 2x exp card / buff for 4x exp, like other MMOs like Maplstory xD

Correct, going from P1 to P8, your bound Lister goes from 20k to 27k hp, which is substantial. Not the ridiculous increase from prepatch, but probably noticeable.

FerociousTerrier wrote: 11 hours ago

What I can tell so far for the "binding snapshot" is:
1) snapshot of Demon level--still unclear if it takes the actual demon level or the minimum of demon level in game and warlock level;
2) snapshot of demon health, including the health

Cap--in some cases P8 may not be necessary to hit the health

Cap, especially for superuniques who have higher health in P1 than the health

Cap--

Blood Oath bonues may or may not be snapshot at time of binding, but from recent discussions , you likely don't need

Blood Oath that high to reach the caps;
3) Aura level if at least level 20

Bind Demon (depending on the demon level at time of binding). None of the above change after binding, except aura level than can be buffed by CTA by one level.

1) Aura takes actual demon level for the snapshot, so mlvl 96+ snapshots a lvl 12

Fanaticism aura at the time of binding (96/8 = 12). Regular demon stats and level are adjusted down to match the warlock's level, if its level is lower than the warlock then it snapshots the monster level instead.

Mizar wrote: 6 hours ago

FerociousTerrier wrote: 11 hours ago

What I can tell so far for the "binding snapshot" is:
1) snapshot of Demon level--still unclear if it takes the actual demon level or the minimum of demon level in game and warlock level;
2) snapshot of demon health, including the health

Cap--in some cases P8 may not be necessary to hit the health

Cap, especially for superuniques who have higher health in P1 than the health

Cap--

Blood Oath bonues may or may not be snapshot at time of binding, but from recent discussions , you likely don't need

Blood Oath that high to reach the caps;
3) Aura level if at least level 20

Bind Demon (depending on the demon level at time of binding). None of the above change after binding, except aura level than can be buffed by CTA by one level.

1) Aura takes actual demon level for the snapshot, so mlvl 96+ snapshots a lvl 12

Fanaticism aura at the time of binding (96/8 = 12). Regular demon stats and level are adjusted down to match the warlock's level, if its level is lower than the warlock then it snapshots the monster level instead.

Thanks for the clarification!

I believe the denominator on Aura level depends on the Aura (e.g., Might was 6 or 7, I believe), but it's 8 for

Fanaticism. No idea what it is for

Vigor or

Concentration, and the others I ignore.

FerociousTerrier wrote: 11 hours ago

DrunkAkuma wrote: 11 hours ago

The HP increese would be enough to make it worth while.

Go from TANK > SUPER MEGA GIGA CHAD TANK

tough I still need to make it to lvl 94 first, 70% or so left, its getting slow, why can't there be 2x exp event's from time to time & you stack that with a 2-4 hours 2x exp card / buff for 4x exp, like other MMOs like Maplstory xD

Correct, going from P1 to P8, your bound Lister goes from 20k to 27k hp, which is substantial. Not the ridiculous increase from prepatch, but probably noticeable.

with Blooth Oath at lvl 50+ &

Demonic Mastery at lvl 53 Binding at P8 in TZ 96 with clvl 94+ says Lister would get HP's in the 3-5 Millions....

sounds Crazy.

It would probably take 3+

Herald of Horror Packs or more to spawn directly at him with

Conviction + other strong auras etc to even se HP go down xD

yeah, this is going to be fun when archived.

FerociousTerrier wrote: 4 hours ago

Mizar wrote: 6 hours ago

1) Aura takes actual demon level for the snapshot, so mlvl 96+ snapshots a lvl 12

Fanaticism aura at the time of binding (96/8 = 12). Regular demon stats and level are adjusted down to match the warlock's level, if its level is lower than the warlock then it snapshots the monster level instead.

Thanks for the clarification!

I believe the denominator on Aura level depends on the Aura (e.g., Might was 6 or 7, I believe), but it's 8 for

Fanaticism. No idea what it is for

Vigor or

Concentration, and the others I ignore.

Yes it's 6 for Might and

Concentration. Not sure about

Vigor but don't think it matters you're running fast AF anyway. I tested

Concentration vs

Fanaticism aura against p1 Hell

Baal (same demon), and

Fanaticism won by quite a large margin. It was 16 seconds vs 22 seconds for the demon to kill

Baal without my help.

The one thing I for one would really like to know is how and when the health

Cap is calculated and whether that's adjusted by joined game or by bind game.

Let's assume the general extracted value of "20k + 1k per (player-1)" is correct for Heph, he does start out at 113k life, give or take, even in a P1 TZ game. So well above the P8

Cap.
So is that...

a) reduced to 20k if bound in P1 or 27k if bound in P8?
Or b) always reduced to 20k base and then re-adjusted from there each game/join to add 1k per players 2-8, meaning the same P1-bound Heph would later have 20k life when joining a P1 game but 27k life when joining a P8 game?

Schnorki wrote: 2 hours ago

The one thing I for one would really like to know is how and when the health

Cap is calculated and whether that's adjusted by joined game or by bind game.

Let's assume the general extracted value of "20k + 1k per (player-1)" is correct for Heph, he does start out at 113k life, give or take, even in a P1 TZ game. So well above the P8

Cap.
So is that...

a) reduced to 20k if bound in P1 or 27k if bound in P8?
Or b) always reduced to 20k base and then re-adjusted from there each game/join to add 1k per players 2-8, meaning the same P1-bound Heph would later have 20k life when joining a P1 game but 27k life when joining a P8 game?

That should be testable. Someone above showed how to import your demon into Maxroll by accessing the saved files. You could bind Heph in P1, import the saved demon file into maxroll to read it's health and repeat by binding in P8. If the health is the same, perhaps the 1K hp per player is added to the demon at the start of a game when it spawns.

I don't think I can because I play over GeForceNow, so I don't even have the game saved on my Mac.

Given demon health pre-patch seemed to be a snapshot at the time of binding (binding in P1 gave a squishier demon even when later joining P8 games), is it more likely Blizzard would stick to the same mechanism or develop a new one for dynamic demon health caps?

Mizar wrote: 3 hours ago

FerociousTerrier wrote: 4 hours ago

Mizar wrote: 6 hours ago

1) Aura takes actual demon level for the snapshot, so mlvl 96+ snapshots a lvl 12

Fanaticism aura at the time of binding (96/8 = 12). Regular demon stats and level are adjusted down to match the warlock's level, if its level is lower than the warlock then it snapshots the monster level instead.

Thanks for the clarification!

I believe the denominator on Aura level depends on the Aura (e.g., Might was 6 or 7, I believe), but it's 8 for

Fanaticism. No idea what it is for

Vigor or

Concentration, and the others I ignore.

Yes it's 6 for Might and

Concentration. Not sure about

Vigor but don't think it matters you're running fast AF anyway. I tested

Concentration vs

Fanaticism aura against p1 Hell

Baal (same demon), and

Fanaticism won by quite a large margin. It was 16 seconds vs 22 seconds for the demon to kill

Baal without my help.

I currently have an Urdar with

Concentration and a Rogue with Faith giving

Fanaticism. Fana bonus to the demon should be less than the bonus the rogue receives since party gets less. I'm thinking Demon + Fanaticismand Rogue + Mist (or Act 2 + Pride) might be the better scenario. Then demon gets full Fana and Conc damage bonus.

FerociousTerrier wrote: 2 hours ago

[..] is it more likely Blizzard would stick to the same mechanism or develop a new one for dynamic demon health caps?

Well, it wouldn't really be a new system that needed developing. Could simply be tied into the general monster health scaling with player count we've always had.

FerociousTerrier wrote: 2 hours ago

Mizar wrote: 3 hours ago

FerociousTerrier wrote: 4 hours ago

Thanks for the clarification!

I believe the denominator on Aura level depends on the Aura (e.g., Might was 6 or 7, I believe), but it's 8 for

Fanaticism. No idea what it is for

Vigor or

Concentration, and the others I ignore.

Yes it's 6 for Might and

Concentration. Not sure about

Vigor but don't think it matters you're running fast AF anyway. I tested

Concentration vs

Fanaticism aura against p1 Hell

Baal (same demon), and

Fanaticism won by quite a large margin. It was 16 seconds vs 22 seconds for the demon to kill

Baal without my help.

I currently have an Urdar with

Concentration and a Rogue with Faith giving

Fanaticism. Fana bonus to the demon should be less than the bonus the rogue receives since party gets less. I'm thinking Demon + Fanaticismand Rogue + Mist (or Act 2 + Pride) might be the better scenario. Then demon gets full Fana and Conc damage bonus.

After leveling to 86 and putting another 85 points into

Bind Demon, I decided to go for another Urdar. I ran into a pack in the

River of Flame. I haphazardly aimed my efforts to the center of the pack, and this is the result.

but importing save to maxroll to see the demon's stats only works in single player unfortunately, I would have love to see them stats even if its Online multiplayer, pity.

DrunkAkuma wrote: 37 minutes ago

but importing save to maxroll to see the demon's stats only works in single player unfortunately, I would have love to see them stats even if its Online multiplayer, pity.

Would loveeee a way to see full stats on all summons honestly

When Diablo 2 Resurrected gets Re-released in Full Unreal engine or better with First person view, the Normal class players buys a new PC Rig to play.....

meanwhile the Summon Necromancer Hire 20-30+ computers at his local IT cafe to start his Undead army + Merc, 1 PC for each summon even revives xD

Using 2 on 1 PC would burn the system to hard lmao

DrunkAkuma wrote: 3 hours ago

with Blooth Oath at lvl 50+ &

Demonic Mastery at lvl 53 Binding at P8 in TZ 96 with clvl 94+ says Lister would get HP's in the 3-5 Millions....

sounds Crazy.

It would probably take 3+

Herald of Horror Packs or more to spawn directly at him with

Conviction + other strong auras etc to even se HP go down xD

yeah, this is going to be fun when archived.

How do you get to 3-5M HP? If the health

Cap is 27k HP at P8 and you can scale this with

Blood Oath then I get to 300-400k HP in total at those levels. Which is still a lot but considering T5 heralds do crazy amounts of extra damage to summons it's probably still common to see HP visibly go down against a single Horror Pack with nasty mods. The real test will be Uber Meph, what demon can stand against him now?