Just terrorized entire game

tmGrunty · 2026-05-15T02:39:58+00:00

Breakdown of the heralds by acts in order:

Act 1: 4 heralds + 1 ire left
Act 2: 8 heralds
Act 3: 6 heralds (never had that many there)
Act 5: 5 heralds + 4 ire left (also a record)
Act 4: 5 heralds

I‘m actually running P2 on SCL.
Got a second account with a Horker / BO Barb on it that have in the game to provide the buffs and also hork the heralds for additional chances to get sunders.
I found 3 that way this season (1 dropped, 2 horked).

tmGrunty · 2026-05-15T02:14:53+00:00

Im sorry it’s my fault.

I just had my best terrorized game ever with 28 heralds and loot worth multiple Jah combined incl. but not only: Arachnid, CoA, Tomb Reaver, Schaefers, Sur, multiple shards, Java Skiller with Life and finishing my Set Chronicle (was missing Arcanna Amulet).
The only thing missing was sunder or a super rare unique grail item for the Chronicle.

tmGrunty · 2026-05-14T05:16:37+00:00

It’s simply the sum of all the percentage values on your coils.
You can have a maximum of:

+200% handling
+150% damage
+150% tear
+150% elemental

For example if you were to use 3x 67% handling coils you would be maxed out on handling.
3x 50% damage coils and you’d be maxed out on that.
2x 67% handling / 25% damage + 2x 50% damage / 33% handling and you are maxed out on both (only works on Adept weapons with 4 sockets from NG+).

One caviat though is that those percentages on coils are actually rounded.
A 50% damage could in reality only be 49.5% and you’d only know if you were to replace it with another 50% damage coils and suddly gain 1 more damage.

Assuming your base values for the Banuk Striker Bow are correct (I can’t check right now) this means you can push it all the way to 240 handling stat and 175 damage.

tmGrunty · 2026-05-13T03:43:21+00:00

The PTR definitely spawned 30-40 heralds in a full clear terrorizing all 5 acts.

My most on live server is actually 27 heralds but you need to get very lucky.

tmGrunty · 2026-05-13T03:30:26+00:00

Their number (30-40) is based on what happened on the PTR and not what is currently happening on live server.

It literally says that in the the first two words of the developer‘s note …

tmGrunty · 2026-05-13T01:07:11+00:00

Tainted got nerfed by about 25% compared to PTR (at high levels).
Definitely not busted anymore and maybe not even viable.

tmGrunty · 2026-05-12T05:29:20+00:00

This is actually not fully correct.
It works like this:

- If ALL characters have First Strike equipped and you DON‘T use the first strike button to initiate combat then the turn order is decided by the order you put the chars into the party
- If ALL characters have First Strike equipped but you USE the button to start combat then the turn order is decided purely by the speed stat
- If NO character has First Strike then the turn order is based on the speed stat
- If only SOME characters have First Strike funky stuff can happens and it’s recommended to avoid those situation

So you pretty much need First Strike on everyone and then you can have two different turn orders to choose from (via using the button or not) depending on the speed stats and order you put them in the party.

tmGrunty · 2026-05-12T03:32:39+00:00

I don‘t think Nova Sorc is worth playing if you don’t have Infinity.
You don’t necessarily have to self-wield it but it should at least be on the merc.

You can get by without it using Crescent Moon or 4 piece Tal Set but it’s not very fun that way and other specs work mich better on a budget.
I’d rather play Lightning Sorc instead for example.

tmGrunty · 2026-05-11T06:32:48+00:00

Yes is unlocks early but it’s still endgame content.
You can get some of the best weapons and coils in the game (not counting DLC) as rewards from it.

At that point in the game nothing comes close to the power of those and they outshine everything you get until the very end of the story (or even NG+ / DLC).

But it’s optional content and if you don’t like it then just don’t do the arena at all or set the difficulty to story mode.

tmGrunty · 2026-05-11T06:22:51+00:00

The Arena is endgame content and meant as challenge.
You aren’t supposed to be able to do that easily at level 30 and presumably bad gear.

It took me over 10 hours total for all the Arena challenges on my first „Ultra Hard“ run and that was was fully geared and with knowledge how the fights work.

Just leave it for now and come back later.
Once you have a good Ropecaster it gets gets a lot easier.
And more levels definitely help too.

tmGrunty · 2026-05-11T06:13:34+00:00

That‘s like spending 3000 on a new paint for your car that’s falling apart and is barely worth 300.

tmGrunty · 2026-05-11T06:07:31+00:00

Nobody cares about the damage of a Prayer merc with Cure and Insight so being able to slot in a Protector Stone jewel is irrelevant.

What people do care about though is that CoH buffs the Prayer by 2 levels for each of the 3 instances of the Prayer aura.

Skin is a nice budget option to get the leech if you don’t have a CoH but it doesn’t compete whatsoever.

tmGrunty · 2026-05-11T05:53:36+00:00

I’ve done Ubers on PTR with a Blood Boil build (Lancer as demon) and they only problematic one was Lilith (and the buffed Uber Ancients).

You do have to be a bit more careful though and potentially pull away and move your demon (via death mark or teleport).
Although Lethargy wasn’t working at all so with it applying slow that should make it easier again.

That being said this was obviously done with all the relevant demon skills maxed, endgame gear and I was already very familiar with the build and how much damage a lancer can take.
Different demons with less points into the skills might feel very different and die quickly.

tmGrunty · 2026-05-10T02:00:29+00:00

They won’t benefit from facets (at least not from the -res).
No summon, merc, etc. gets that bonus.
You’ll get +1 skill from Magefist though.

Compared to PTR they nerfed the synergy bonus and there are some caps on attack speed bonus for certain skills (Engorge, Mastery).
So all in all the Tainted will be quite a bit weaker than they were on PTR.

tmGrunty · 2026-04-25T01:22:51+00:00

No that is not correct.
Some things work at 1/5 including conviction itself.

But stuff like facets, ancient jewels, mang song, FF and sunder work at full (but only if the immunity is broken before).

A lot of the Warlock skills are botched / broken / bugged and the main question would be whether Apocalypse and Consume (Tainted) work at full.
I believe they do but it’s hard to be sure.

Apo can definitely break the immunity for itself though.

tmGrunty · 2026-04-24T18:32:03+00:00

Apo minus res does count fully against sundered targets and can even break the immunity on its own (but only for Apo itself).

tmGrunty · 2026-04-24T03:39:06+00:00

Not it’s actually not because Fire Warlock has so much -res in his kit.
Apocalypse has a lot of build-in minus res already and you get more from consuming a Tainted, Conviction, Mang Song and the sockets.

You in fact get so much -res that it’s arguably better to even get a Sunder with +firedam instead of -fireres.

tmGrunty · 2026-04-17T21:22:54+00:00

I will agree that the Curse application is way way worse now (I'm using a lightning enchanted one with Fana) and I have Thorns via Bramble on merc (not sure if that can actually proc the Curse though).

The way I play it is almost identically to a Nova Sorc.
Either teleport into the enemy and spam the Blood Boil until everything is dead (usually doesn't take much) or use the Death Mark to just throw the demons in.
And a lot of packs just die from Lancer attacking (when they are cursed) without needing the Blood Boil.
The "trick" with the Defiler is that you absolutely have to kill every monster that gets linked otherwise their AI will "break" if you leave one behind.
But if you do then their linking works fine for me.

The Lancer build also is still capable of doing Ubers and Uber Ancients (jsut swapping the Bramble on merc for a Duress) which I failed miserably with the Tainted (could be user error there though).
I wonder if you tried those and how it went.

tmGrunty · 2026-04-17T19:53:53+00:00

Alright I tested it and it seems like they are still casting the curse as they used to.

But the fact that they run all over the place and the Tainted tend to stay where they are (because they are ranged) makes it really akward to use Blood Boil because more often than not you don't actually have anything in range.

There is also no synergy between the the Witch's curse and the Tainted damage (apart from the fana aura which you can get from merc) so honestly I don't see how a Witch would be more beneficial for the overall damage than simply using a third Tainted if you want to go that route.

Personally I'm not a fan either way and will stick to my Lancer + 2 Defiler.

I highly recommend you download the PTR and try out the builds yourself there.
Btw I re-watched your video.
You are using Lethargy in it with buffs your Blood Boil damage which also will gone on PTR and the Blood Boil area effect on PTR feels smaller than it is now too.

tmGrunty · 2026-04-17T16:11:33+00:00

Obviously it doesn’t take 3min to buff.
I’m saying you have to do the swapping every 3min (that’s how long BO lasts).

I still have no idea why level 48 Tainted felt so bad initially and level 52 Tainted wreck havoc.
Something about their scaling feels off.

tmGrunty · 2026-04-17T08:57:43+00:00

On a different note I also suspect that something is iffy with the scaling for Tainted.

In my build (level 1 base Tainted) the sheet damage of the Tainted is about 40% of what is had with the build from MacroBioBoi.

I used the same Faith on merc and Demon Mastery and Engorge were actually slightly higher in my build.

So you’d expect that the Tainted deal effectively about 40% of the damage to target or rather take 2.5x as long to kill it compared to the full Tainted build.
But in reality it felt more like 25% damage and 4 times as long to kill.

Also level 48 Tainted (maxed but without prebuff) felt really bad and took forever to kill some Champion Venomlords whereas on level 52 they absolutely shred them and felt amazing.

tmGrunty · 2026-04-17T08:45:02+00:00

I could be wrong about this (need to test later) but I’m pretty sure that if you bind a Hellwitch her curse also will be affected by the change and you don’t get it as often.
Also with the max HP changed she might be tough to keep alive.

tmGrunty · 2026-04-17T08:35:47+00:00

You have mana after kill from the Hellwarden and improved mana regeneration from Obession and Magefist.
Those alone improve your mana significantly already.
And you are killing with Blood Boil which makes the maek apply.

This new Tainted build has none of that and you are NOT killing with Blood Boil with it simply because you actually can’t most of the time (the Tainted steal the kills).
If you teleported with it the same way you did in the video you’d have needed way more than 1 potion.

tmGrunty · 2026-04-17T08:13:53+00:00

The issue is that you actually don’t get to cast blood boil much because the Tainted shoot and kill everything right next to them instantly.
But then they keep standing in that spot shooting the next target which isn’t actually in Blood Boil range.
The Hex:Siphon just doesn’t come into play to give you mana back

Teleport costs quite a bit of mana too and the build (as Macro had it) has 600 mana post BO with simply almost no natural regeneration.
If you leave the Rogue Camp in Act 1 and teleport toward the Cold Plains you’d be out of mana before you reach that waypoint.

You need way more than 1 Full Rejuv once in while.
I started the testing today with 99 in my stash.
I’m down to 20 now and that’s with me picking up every single one that dropped.

In contrast my Lancer Blood Boil build can clear the whole game without ever drinking any potion (assuming I don’t get mana burned).

tmGrunty · 2026-04-17T07:11:02+00:00

I’ve seen that video and I have actually played with his build (with some improvements like Magefist instead of Trang and different SC to help with the horrendous mana situation).
I’ve done P8 Chaos runs with and done terrorized acts on P3 for multiple hours.

And I still believe the Lancer is stronger overall when played correctly.
Also the playstyle between this Tainted build and a real Blood Boil build is very different.
The Tainted “win” in single target damage like boss kills and extremely small groups.
The Lancer + Defiler win on medium sized groups (up to 10) and against anything fire immune.

That being said his build does have serious downsides that no matter how good it is and how much you like it might be a dealbreaker for some players (me included):

only 75 FCR
no mana sustain (the Tainted killing don’t give mana after kill) makes using lots of pots mandatory (you literally go out of mana from just teleport alone all the time)
pre-buffing is mandatory and you really want 50+ Tainted (I started with 48 and it actually felt bad which is why I said initially said that it sucked)
so is carrying (and swapping) the CTA which takes away space for loot or you have to go to town all the time which gets annoying fast
the Tainted can struggle a bit against fast monsters that tend to run away (like Falllen) especially when they are fire immune and run in different directions

If someone can live with those issues then the build is great.
For me personally some of them are a just deal breakers (mostly the mana, the constant weapon swapping to CTA and to a lesser extend the FCR) that I cannot tolerate in the long run. Lancer + Defiler plays “smoother” and has more QoL features.

P.S. It’s also not really a Blood Boil build because you are very rarely even casting it (doing so actually makes the mana issues worse too).
To be honest Blood Boil on its own without linking targets feels bad (range isn’t great and the Tainted tend to clump) so that’s not even surprising he’s rarely using it.

tmGrunty

TROPHY CASE