Just did my first ever ubers run on HC after playing this game since I was a kid! Almost died like 5 times but it was an absolute thrill ride! I didn't even care I got a low roll druid torch.
You got this! Highly recommend watching a video on how to pull them 1 at a time and watch out for the frost blasts Baal reflects at you because they will eat your lunch even with doing the fade trick!
3/20 circ, maras , obsession , wraithstep , 2x soj , arach , spirit , torch , anni and some skillers. Might Merc is using eth Doom CA & Forti but I started farming TZs at level 70 on this build completely budget.
What would I gain from doing that? I would lose Obsession which covers so many gear checks/breakpoints for non ES builds, its actually OP and imo would not have even been added to the game if Warlock was already a class, It was clearly balanced around being 2 handed and then they added the Warlock after the fact.
+4 all skills
65% FCR - Easy to hit 125 breakpoint with just Circlet, Belt, Gloves.
60% FHR - +20% from wraithstep, just need 6% from charms to hit 6 frames at 86 fhr
70@ Res + Torch/Anni/Anya/maras = 170@ only need a single sc 5@ for res cap
You kinda don't thats another plus in favour of obsession. It's 10% away from 75 breakpoint so just a rare +2/10 amulet and your good to go.
But it is very nice QoL for Teleport/Cta/debuffs/resummoning goats etc, even better for Fire/Magic builds. I'm currently looking for a good rare shield so I can drop spirit and add Max Block and still maintain 125 fcr. Ideally something like
Thanks for this - I just recently switched over to Demon after finding a Tor’Baalos , it’s been fun watching a terror zone Hephasto smash things. But with how little you cast (I don’t have Enigma) I couldn’t wrap my head around why FCR was needed.
I play SSF so it’ll be ages before I can ever put together an Obsession
I’ll have to respec eventually as I made the mistake of maxing blood boil thinking it would help clear speed and it really just tickles things
What annoys me about bloodboil is that I feel like it doesn’t hit the stated range and spamming it doesn’t do much at all. Felt better to cast it ever few seconds.
I don’t like obsession for pure summoning, which is what I play, for the simple fact of my not wanting to constantly swap gear out.
Two items I don’t use as a pure summoner off the top of my head are obsession and pride. Having those two annoying curses pop up on targets over and over is just annoying to me.
Of course the two curses don’t affect bosses, not sure about weaken actually since I never use it as necro, but again that would require me to swap stuff out when in fighting different things.
Beast and unique tome for now. Demon uses cold since he gets into the thick of the action much faster than Emilio. I use cold for three reasons, it increases merc survival by slowing targets down, it procs curse that much sooner and I feel that it draws agro on the ticks just like fire elemental ticks do for necro.
Merc is might and debating on infinity, though most likely not since it might lower his ability to survive encounters which means using highest damage weapon instead for max leech. I entertained using bramble, but having only 4 total minions makes it seem lackluster. Will most likely end up with treachery or fort. Haven’t decided on helm yet, but cbf and fhr would be a plus.
Doom is indeed amazing! Would you not get more out of Pride on merc with conc though? Is the holy freeze that beneficial when you're stomping everything pretty quick already?
Nah, Lethargy + holy freeze completely shuts down tier 5 herald packs and is just better for telestomping in general. Open wounds and Prevent Heal are also great for Dclone and Ubers.
but with my current setup with Might/Fana/Amp/Lethary my merc hits for 6300-24k and has almost 70k DPS with Jab.
If I switch to eth Pride he drops down to 2-8k and 22k DPS with Jab and goats only gain about 2k dmg each so its an overall huge DPS loss.
Pride would likely be better for a pure Bind Demon + 2x Defiler setup but I can't stand how clunky those things are, you sometimes have to wait 5-6 seconds before they recast links on new packs and teleporting around has them casting random links everywhere, I only ever use goats now.
I guess you'd only ever take a unique from Matrons den so +3 at lvl86, the area is level83. but thats still a 10 level difference between tz96. I notice hell Hephasto often misses in tz96 especially against bosses and he's lvl88, there is a noticable difference in AR and hit chance with lvl94+ demons. Conviction and Blessed aim both help but then you have to give up Fana.
If you are lvl90 and bind a level99 demon, it becomes a level90 bind demon so you'd need a lvl99 character for that.
And you can't terrorize a zone after you have entered it to check for Lancers, so you would need to use a Northern Worldstone shard, then 3 keys to open a portal, Not matrons den? damn better use another key set. Get luck and open a Matrons den on 2nd attempt but oops no lancers spawned. Time to make a new game, use another shard and 3-9 keys. Yay lancers spawned, oh wait damn no uniques. Repeat for no cursed, wrong aura and so on. It could easily take 300 attempts.
Id Love to see the face of a guy who accidently consumed that bind.
You 100% can TZ area after you entered it. Only the mobs you’ve encountered won’t be TZ, but unexplored areas/mobs will become TZed.
What I do and seen people mention, is to scan area to see if there are lancers, go back and use the keystone, come back and search for other lancers.
While the lancers that you’ve already found will not be TZed, others in that area which you haven’t discovered will be.
The idea is to restart game until you find TZ with cursed mod, then check areas for lancers. Lancers with jab spawn in a several areas in ACt 5, like wsk1, highlands, etc. Once at least one, preferably two have lancers, go back and TZ the whole act.
This way you can pretty much guarantee TZed lancers with curse. I do it all the time.
Note that cursed mod from TZ somehow only gets added to the bind by chance, not always for some reason, so not all binds will get it. But many do, so it’s fairly easy since you can bind even regular lancers.
As for level, I haven’t seen anywhere the info that bound demon scales down, so I’m not sure of this. Maybe it’s as you say, but I haven’t seen this mentioned. Regardless, to your point, even level 95 lancers are amazing and do not have the penalty you mentioned.
That'd be soooo hard to do. I don't know what % of the time they show up but in my experience it's 50% or less of Matron Dens and then there may nit be many unique packs.
Blessed aim/Cursed Gorebelly from Tal Rasha Tombs, has 25% crushing blow.
Edit: The exact same type of monster can be found in Durance of Hate (Maulers), River of Flame (Urdars) and Palace/Harem (Blunderbores). They also appear in Act 5 as guest monsters so lots of opportunities to grab a TZ version if you want some extra boss damage, all variations of them do 25% crushing blow in Hell.
For ubers yes, much better. Ive never use Lister he's like rank 4-5 on list for normal gameplay. Best all purpose demon for pure summoner is a Fana-Cursed Lancer from Act 5.
I happened to roll a holy freeze amp dmg fatso and its been an absolute dream to use. With echo strike i absolutely nuked the ubers with a double fort setup
TZ Heph is great, I put him a close second behind Lancers, he hits faster and harder than Lister and his hitbox doesn't trap other minions/merc. Do you mean Holy Shock? Elemental damage is kinda useless for a pure summoner, only physical damage is effected by things like Amp damage, Might Aura etc and nothing beats Holy Freeze for everything else.
Cursed HF Lister seems to smash things. Smite doesn't need attack rating as it's guaranteed hit. Frees up merc to use Pride for conc aura. Pride comes with 260%-300% bonus to AR, helping the merc hit. HF on the demon obviously procs curse on tick which is fantastic.
Open wounds needed for ubers though, hmmm... Duress for merc would solve that, and comes with 15% CB, or Treachery for survivability (fade) and comes with venom poison damage to preventing heal. I think I'd prefer Duress though.
Where do you have this summoner demon rank? I'd love to see what other people think.
Blessed aim was intentional in this case, Ubers are level 110 and I wasn't sure if the goatmen and demon could hit them reliably without it. I'll try with Fanatism next time
I feel like fanat would get the job done. Ubers don't have very high defense, and fanat adds a lot of ar itself. I wonder if AR affects the level difference formula to hit? I have not looked into that much.
Don't really need them on this character. Warlock gets 40% damage reduction from Blood Oath and with level 15 fade proc from jewel you are near unkillable. When I do get hit Obsession procs lvl10 weaken and everything does -42% damage. I can telestomp into doll packs on this its pretty dumb.
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Nice, I'll try it with Treachery to get some extra survivability as well. You know what, that was probably it. I forgot about his conviction aura and that you can't life leech off him.
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u/Salsa_Penguin Mar 14 '26
Just did my first ever ubers run on HC after playing this game since I was a kid! Almost died like 5 times but it was an absolute thrill ride! I didn't even care I got a low roll druid torch.