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Faustus the summoning Warlock continued riding high as he made his way to the rough halfway point of Nightmare difficulty. I continued to be surprised at just how strong the demonic summons proved to be in practice, with this run through Nightmare difficulty feeling more like Faustus was still fooling around in Normal difficulty. All three of the different summon types were extremely useful, dealing lots of damage while taking little of it in return. I can't recall any of the various demons dying even one time across Act Two which was certainly far better than the comparable summoned creatures from a Necromancer or a Druid. Faustus also wasn't even close to being maxed out either, as he could still invest another 5 skill points into all of his core skills (Summon Goatman, Summon Tainted, Bind Demon, and Demonic Mastery) plus he had the hopes of making a Spirit shield runeword and potentially getting further +skills gear in the circlet or amulet slots. He was basically cruising along with little effort on my part even as the gameplay made it deeper and deeper into the second difficulty.
The outdoor jungle areas rarely present much challenge in Diablo 2 and they certainly didn't cause any problems for Faustus. He drew a jungle layout where the Spider Forest connected to both the Great Marsh and the Flayer Jungle at an early point, with each branch other than the Flayer Jungle eventually coming to a dead end. The fetishes and mosquitoes and thorned hulks inhabiting the forests put up no resistance whatsoever, barely scratching Faustus or his minions along the way. I observed that the tainted summon was especially useful at dealing with swarms of fetishes and flayers since its fireballs would pierce through whatever they hit and could down a whole bunch of the shrimps at a time. The bound Gorebelly demon from Act Two was dishing out ridiculous overkill damage with each swing, close to 9000 damage against fetishes that had a mere 600 HP, but better to make absolutely sure that those things were dead, right?
I usually write that the underground portions of the jungle were more difficult, however that was not the case for Faustus. They breezed past equally as fast and with no more danger than the surface areas above. While the heavy poison damage in the Spider Cavern and Arachnid Lair can often prove deadly for mercenaries and summons, it didn't really seem to bother Faustus' demons, either because they had much higher base HP and health regen or because they had higher innate poison resistance. The Flayer Dungeon and Swampy Pit were handled pretty easily by using Death Mark to place the summons around blind corners over and over again, always intercepting incoming foes before they could reach Faustus himself. Even the undead soul killer dolls struggled to get anywhere near Faustus where their death explosions might do something useful. It's honestly really hard to get into trouble when you can call your minions back to the summoner at any point in time with the click of the mouse button. I tried my best to get screenshots of both Sszark and Endugu but failed to capture either of them due to the bound Gorebelly one-shotting both of them, heh.
I was continuing to gamble rings since Faustus was still using a magical (blue) ring on one hand, unfortunately without finding anything good enough to be a true keeper. He did turn up an Io rune that could potentially be useful for something in the Flayer Jungle, followed by this unique item:
It was the Peasant Crown, the unique war hat, which was a solid fit for Faustus. This thing retained the +1 to all skills that had previously been on Faustus' Lore circlet, then traded away the 30% lightning resistance on Lore for 15% faster movement, 20 Vitality (60 additional max HP), 20 Energy (not needed but still helpful), and 12 replenish life. Faustus already had 9 more life regen from the rare ring he gambled in the previous Act which resulted in more of this stat than I can recall on any of my other solo characters; he was actually regnerating about 2 HP per second which is really rare for Diablo 2. I thought that this was an improvement over the standard Lore runeword so I made the switch for Faustus, plus it was simply more fun to be using a unique item in the helmet slot. The only real downside here was the frumpy-looking cap design on the Peasant Crown - why couldn't this thing have some kind of cool recoloring on the base graphical design?
Note by the way that the Warlock class receives 3 HP per point of Vitality which is why 20 Vitality translated into 60 more health. This is a higher rate of return than any of the other spellcasting classes, as the Druid / Necromancer / Sorceress all receive 2 HP per Vitality, though that's probably a balancing issue for the Druid since that class has the Werewolf/Werebear transformations plus Oak Sage for some crazy HP stacking. With the Peasant Hat atop his head, Faustus was now well over 1000 HP and for a character who rarely took any damage at all, that was a gigantic safety net to protect against any silliness on my part. Faustus made his way through the gates of Kurast (where I again failed to get a screenshot of Stormtree - I simply could not highlight these bosses with the mouse cursor and hit the PrintScreen key before they were dead!) and proceeded to lay waste to the denizens inside the temple city. The outdoor areas flew past and even the Horadrim Ancients in the Kurast Sewers were surgically eliminated through the use of Death Mark telekills. The only places that I needed to be careful were the Kurast Temples, for this reason:
Diablo 2 can be extraordinarily nasty sometimes with its stairs traps, ugh! The Forgotten Reliquary had four spiders and about half a dozen corrupted rogues waiting right at the entrance where they were on top of Faustus before the area had finished loading in. This is one of those places where summoning builds have a huge advantage: most of the enemies focused on the demon trio and left Faustus himself alone; he took several blows but I drank a red potion immediately and quickly observed that a purple full rejuv wouldn't be necessary. The three demon minions proceeded to hack down the foes that besieged them on all sides and this little hairball was cleared out in a few seconds. None of the other Kurast Temples were nearly as bad, though the Forgotten Temple did have its own stairs trap to deal with as well. Faustus had to clear out a bunch of corrupted rogues in the entry room, and the commotion was enough to wake up Sarina and her own mob earlier than I was expecting. I was juggling the positioning of Faustus and where to teleport his demons around which caused me to miss that boss screenshot as well, argh! On the positive side, one of the temples dropped a Large Charm with 10 life and 11% cold resistance which is about as good as it gets for charms dropping at this monster level.
Travincal wasn't particularly challenging though it was a lot of fun. The Hierophants are supposed to be challenging due to their long-range elemental spells and the ability to heal their Zealot followers. Faustus' demons didn't care about any of that since they could be Death Marked right on top of the casters for an instant one-shot kill, or alternately they could simply splat the Zealots in a single attack which left no time for any healing. This was the rare situation where I did not have to pull the Council members out into the rest of the temple city for safe disposal, with Faustus instead fighting them on the steps of the Black Temple right where they stood. Faustus could face Ismail and Geleb at the same time, plus their minions, and still deal so much damage that they had no opportunity to heal one another, sheesh.
I was on the lookout in the Durance for a Mauler boss to replace the Gorebelly bound demon that had been following Faustus around for the whole Act, since a new demon would have higher base stats by virtue of appearing later in the gameplay. This proved to be impossible, however: there were zero Mauler bosses or champions on Durance 1, and then Durance 2 had the other three enemies present (mummies, vampires, and undead dolls) with no Maulers of any type. Oh well, I'd be on the lookout for one of the many available demons in Act Four for the next bound creature. This was Nightmare difficulty so Durance 2 went on and on and on, however Faustus was strong enough that he raced through the whole place on his full clear. According to the in-game clock, both of the first two floors of the Durance took right around 30 minutes to complete which is really, really fast by my standards. Here's the obligatory picture showing the full clear of Durance 2 which was honestly just tedious.
Then the Act wrapped up in the same fashion, with the demon trio bowling over the various Council members on the bottom floor. Bremm, Maffer, and Wyand were all one-shot kills from the bound Gorebelly demon and I didn't get a chance to look at the boss stats on any of them. Sirian would have said that they were all "Extra Dead" enchanted so we'll go with that, heh. I was curious if Mephisto would have enough damage to defeat the bound demon before its health ran out, and the answer to that remained a resounding "No". Although the poison cloud from Mephisto was clearly doing some real damage, dropping the lifebar on the goatman summon into the red before long, Mephisto himself only had 75,000 HP here in Nightmare and that wasn't enough to last for long either. The Gorebelly was still hitting for nearly 10,000 damage per swing and every attack that landed took out a huge chunk of the Prime Evil's lifebar. I could visibly see when those attacks were landing (the bound demon actually whiffed about 60-70% of the time) and Mephisto's healthbar simply gave out first. This was honestly easier than the same boss fight back in Normal difficulty, when I at least needed to summon some replacement tainted demons. If Faustus makes it back here in Hell difficuly, I should remember to pull Mephisto over to one of the side chambers for potential Engorge heals from the vampire corpses left there, something I failed to do on this occasion.
Act Four Nightmare was where things finally started to get a bit more serious for Faustus. That's not to say that the normal monsters caused any kind of problems, because they certainly didn't, however when multiple bosses clumped together I had to start using some care. The Outer Steppes were noteworthy only because there were Venom Lords present and I was trying to capture one of them as a new bound demon. Unfortunately there was only a single Venom Lord boss in the whole area and Faustus proved unable to capture it - remember that he still had about 45% odds to fail on the Bind Demon capture even if everything else went perfectly. The Plains of Despair then presented this big hairball shortly after Faustus entered the region, a double boss pack with a Burning Soul boss and a Doom Knight boss. The latter of these had the Extra Strong / Cursed combination and that was enough for the demon minions to start taking real damage, enough that the goatman minion actually died for possibly the first time in all of Nightmare! I had to dust off the R key that Faustus had previously bound to Summon Goatman and call in another one for the rest of the battle. The enemy types here in Act Four were not a joke since Venom Lords, Oblivion Knights, and the breeding Stygian Hags can all be dangerous in their own ways.
There were none of the balrog monster types throughout the Plains of Despair and I wasn't able to find any Corpulents that I deemed worth binding. The Doom Knights would make an excellent target for Bind Demon except that unfortunately they are classified as undead instead, rats. Then the City of the Damned was flooded with the Damned monsters who were also potentially good recruits for binding, however there were also Pit Lords present and Faustus was finally able to snag one of them:
I managed to get a screenshot of the binding itself in progress which can be tricky to do given how quickly the skill activates and how fast Faustus' minions were killing everything. A red chain stretches out from the position of the Warlock over to whatever demon they're attempting to bind and the skill attempts to make the conversion happen. I was standing and tanking the two Pit Lords on the left side of the screen with Faustus while this was in progress, scared to move away out of worry that the binding chain would be broken somehow; he actually had to drink a full rejuv for safety, heh. But it did work out as the Bind Demon skill activated before the demon minions could slay this latest foe, replacing the loyal Gorebelly champion with this new Pit Lord boss:
Seethe Skull retained his boss name and carried over his Mana Burn / Stone Skin traits. The Mana Burn trait was fairly useless since monsters don't have mana in Diablo 2 (though it does also provide 20% more resist all) whereas Stone Skin's 50% physical resistance was downright fantastic. These defensive traits are pretty good to have on a captured enemy boss since it helps them stay alive longer and the bound demon already gets Extra Strong / Extra Fast traits for free anyway. Seethe Skull now had six total boss traits and gained fire element immunity as well thanks to the Mana Burn trait combining with its innate 80% fire resistance. Best of all, the Aura Enchanted trait finally rolled as Fanaticism, yay! That's probably the single best aura to roll since it provides a boost to attack damage, attack speed, and movement speed all at once with its fiery red aura. The bound Pit Lord was absolutely zipping around at warp speed though it's hard to convey that through a report written in text form.
One additional quick note on the various auras associated with the Bound Demon skill. Boro pointed me to the patch notes for the Bound Demon skill in Patch 3.2 which nerfed the original implementation for the auras. The release version of the Warlock simply took whatever aura an enemy demon boss happened to have running or (if the demon wasn't aura enchanted) rolled a new aura from the standard set of seven: Might, Fanaticism, Conviction, Blessed Aim, and Holy Fire / Freeze / Shock. This was apparently way too powerful since the Conviction auras were insanely good at slashing through enemy magic resistance for a minimal investment on the part of the Warlock. Patch 3.2 removed several of these auras completely and replaced them with alternate Paladin auras that normally never get used by enemy bosses. Might was replaced by Concentration, Blessed Aim replaced by Thorns, Holy Fire and Holy Shock replaced by Vigor (which is clearly the worst aura to roll), and Conviction also replaced by Fanaticism. Therefore the Bound Demon skill now takes one of five total auras: Concentration, Fanaticism, Holy Freeze, Thorns, or Vigor and it's no longer possible to get Might or Conviction at all. I can see why this was a real problem when Reign of the Warlock first released, though the patching fix is pretty awkward and it's weird to receive auras that the enemy bosses have never used in 25+ years of Diablo 2. It would have been nice if this could have been resolved in a different way.
In any case, the new Pit Lord boss was downright awesome to have under Faustus' control and proved to be an invaluable addition to the team. It was virtually immune to incoming damage between its fire immunity and heavy physical resistance stacked on top of its already high base stats. The Fanaticism aura sped up the other two demon minions as well and the three of them tore through the inhabitants of the River of Flame without breaking a sweat, even when faced with heavy resistance from Abyss Knights. There were no maggots or flesh spawners to be found on the River this time and in fact Faustus had avoided the breeding demons throughout the entirely of Act Four, which was a bit ironic since his character build could have handled them just fine. Hephasto rolled Extra Fast for his Nightmare boss trait only to get smacked into oblivion by Faustus' superior demon minions. The Hellforge quest reward was a real dud for the second time in a row with Faustus, handing over a Sol rune as the big prize. Will the third time be the charm in Hell difficulty?
The Chaos Sanctuary was a lot of fun and the battles could get intense when big swarms of monsters stacked together. The Oblivion Knights liked to cast Amplify Damage and Lower Resist on Faustus' minions and that combined with the defending Venom Lords and Doom Knights for some fierce fighting. Faustus never saw a goatman or tainted minion die outright, though there were several times where I had to be on top of healing them with Engorge to keep their healthbars in the green zone. One Venom Lord boss rolled with the Extra Strong / Fanaticism aura combo to make him a worthy challenger to the bound Seethe Skull; I debated trying to bind the new customer only to watch the demon perish in mere seconds before I made up my mind. All three of the seal bosses were straightforward with Death Mark teleporting Faustus' minions into the thick of them and then holding down the Engorge key for healing as the enemy minions started to provide corpses. I knew there wouldn't be any issues with De Seis and the Vizier, then I was pleased to find that the demonic trio could stand and hold their ground against the Infestor's mob. It probably helped that most of them aggroed onto the bound Pit Lord who was Fire Immune and heavily physical resistant, the exact two damage types that these opponents used.
Diablo definitely put up more of a fight than Mephisto had done. His Lightning Breath of Doom was easily sufficient to kill the goatman and tainted minions, then eliminate about 20-25% of the healthbar for the bound Pit Lord. I had been trying to conduct this battle in a spot where Faustus could make use of corpses on the ground for Engorge heals, only to find that the Chaos Sanctuary had cleaned up nearly all of the bodies at some point, argh! The only ones nearby were the corpses from De Seis and his slain minions which I made sure to grab throughout the combat. Meanwhile, the bound Seethe Skull was dealing massive damage to Diablo whenever it managed to hit the Lord of Terror and the goatman/tainted combo were kicking in some modest extra damage as well. I wasn't worried about them since they were infinitely replaceable but I did want to keep the bound demon alive if at all possible. I think that Seethe Skull would have survived the battle even without any assistance from Engorge, I didn't want to take any chances though. Overall the whole thing went smoothly and Diablo was defeated in about a minute's worth of effort.
On to Act Five where the guest monsters from earlier parts of the game started showing up for the first time. This was immediately apparent in the Bloody Foothills which were absolutely packed with Burning Dead Archers, tons of skeleton archers as far as the eye could see. They created some potentially nasty firing nests when they clumped together, except that the demon minions barely seemed to take any damage and Faustus himself was rarely targeted. Huh, I guess that was easier than the experience of most other characters. Then the Frigid Highlands rolled Burning Dead Archers again to have them inhabiting two large areas in a row, heh. They weren't as common in this second region which also had a good number of Blunderbores. The demon minions continued to smash their way forward without any issues and I was amused to see that the Pit Lord demon could one-shot the various doors and barricades blocking the path. Those things have about 2000-3000 HP in Nightmare which was easily broken in a single hit.
I also had enough gems and runes at this point to try my hand at the occasional crafting recipe. Faustus had one solid ring at this point but I was still trying to get something decent for the other hand, therefore taking a stab at crafting a Blood Ring using a Perfect Ruby and a Sol rune. My first attempt was a total dud with bonuses to Attack Rating, Strength, Dexterity, and Level 2 Ice Blast charges - uh, thanks? Nevertheless, with the stackable runs and gems here in Reign of the Warlock I planned to keep making additional rolls whenever I had surplus resources to spare.
I had some free time to spare this afternoon and kept right on going into the Arreat Plateau. This area replaced the skeleton archers with fire element skeleton mages and a bunch of the Overseer / Hell Spawn pairs which was probably easier than the monster mix back in the Frigid Highlands. Faustus bulldozed his way through Abbadon and the Pit of Acheron quickly and easily enough that nothing stood out in my memories or my screenshots of these areas. He didn't draw any of the minotaurs in these subdungeons and that was about all that would have caused potential concern. The ice caverns continued the same basic pattern with Faustus just cruising along without breaking a sweat. Cold element skeleton mages, witches, and the prowling dead weren't going to do much to stop the demon minions from slaying everything. I think the biggest annoyance was having to spam Engorge for corpse cleanup wherever the Prowling Dead appeared, and they were present in several areas between the Crystalline Passage, Frozen River, and Glacial Trail.
Things were flying past so quickly that I actually full cleared everything from the start of Act Five up to the end of the Glacial Trail in a single gaming session, the whole thing lasting barely over 90 minutes of real world time. Keep in mind that I full clear every area and always explore every optional side area like the Drifter Cavern which meant that this was a truly incredible pace as compared with my other solo characters. One little encounter of note was Pit Viper snakes appearing in the Glacial Trail which have 50% physical resistance in Nightmare. One of their bosses rolled with the Stone Skin trait to create a full physical immunity; the tainted demon had to get the kill there with its fire damage and it was really obvious that the other two demons were attacking and dealing zero damage. The first place where I had to exercise some caution was the tiny Drifter Cavern:
That's because this optional subdungeon happened to have Moon Lord minotaurs present, including a group of champions encountered in the central part of the cavern. The good news was that the demon minions proved able to hold the line against this latest threat, standing there and tanking for the ten seconds needed to start dropping the minotaurs even as they started to go into a Frenzy. I was honestly impressed that I didn't need to replace the goatman summon due to the amount of damage that those minotaurs are capable of pumping out. The rest of the little cave was nowhere near as dangerous as this encounter and Faustus' crew tore right through the Infidels and Afflicted demons that made up the rest of the area. For the curious, that purple bubble surrounding Faustus in the screenshot was the "2% chance to cast Level 10 Psychic Ward when struck" property on his Authority runeword armor, something that I only saw on very rare occasions with this character.
That long gaming session left me with close to a million gold to splurge on gambles afterwards, and Faustus finally manage to hit a keeper ring! The new item had six different useful properties on it: 16% cold resistance, 15% lightning resist, 7% fire and poison resist, +4 Strength, and 5 replenish life. The ring had obviously rolled the Shimmering affix for 7% resist all plus minor boosts to cold and lightning resistances on top of that. Everything was helpful here though, none of those wasted modifiers to light radius or whatever, since the Strength would help push towards the requirement for a Spirit shield. Faustus also now had a ridiculous 26 replenish life due to a total coincidence of how his gear had been put together, far more than I can ever remember having with any other character. Again, while I don't value this stat too highly, it was nice to take a hit for 50 damage and then heal it all away over the next 15 seconds.
Nihlathak's Temple was reserved for its own nighttime gaming session and took place next. Faustus amused himself by taking out half of the Prowling Dead at the temple entrance, using Engorge to clean up their bodies before they even rose for the first time. Then after brushing aside Pindleskin, the Halls of Anguish turned out to be a resurrection-fest since there were more Prowling Dead inside along with Devilkin and their shamans. I had no choice other than to spam Engorge over and over again to remove all of the corpses, with only the third monster type (Death Brigadiers) not requiring this extra step. Although it wasn't difficult or dangerous, it was pretty annoying. The Halls of Pain featured Hierophant/Zealot pairs along with Razor Spine quill rats. I was wondering if the additional stats from having a higher monster level would make the Hierophants tougher this time around, but no, they still died instantly to Death Mark telekills which removed any healing shenanigans. The bottom floor had a whole bunch of skeleton archers which wasn't too bad of a draw for Faustus. I played carefully against Nihlathak, spam-casting Engorge to clean up the corpses of his minions whenever they fell, and the demon trio took out the boss before I even had a chance to highlight his Nightmare boss trait. Nihlathak only has 9600 HP on this difficulty so yeah, that was probably a one-shot kill from the bound Pit Lord.
I planned to run the remainder of Act Five from the Frozen Tundra to the ending in a final session, doing the whole Act in a mere three sitting which is really rare for me. The Frozen Tundra had more skeleton archers and a bunch of imps running around which made it a nice and easy warmup to the evening's work. I was able to capture one cool screenshot in the Infernal Pit at the exact moment when an enemy Meteor hit, however vampires and Overseers and even more imps didn't exactly make for a tough opponent draw. I failed to take even a single screenshot from the Ancient's Way which must have meant that it was routine, and then the Icy Cellar was sporting witches and Bone Spear tossing Pit Vipers. I realized when facing Snapchip Shatter that Faustus had barely seen any of the frozen ice monsters on this passage through Act Five, not that they were an issue for his summons. So that brought Faustus to the Ancients:
These guys are the bane of so many variant builds, the traditional summoning Necromancer not least of these because there's no opportunity to use corpses in the small battle arena atop Mount Arreat. This could potentially be an issue for Faustus as well since he could not replace the bound demon if it were to be defeated, though he could summon an unlimited number of the goatment and tainted if necessary. I wasn't exactly sure what to make of this challenge for Faustus and basically just kept riding along on the good vibes he'd been enjoying thus far. The one thing that I was watching for was dangerous boss traits on the Ancients, either Cursed or a Might/Fanaticism aura or a Stone Skin tag to make Talic or Korlic Physical Immune.
None of those things rolled and the boss fight turned into a straight up tanking fest as soon as it began. The three Ancients did very little in the way of moving around, instead standing in place to auto attack the demonic trio of minions. This proved to be an utter failure on their part since the health bars of Faustus' summoned pets barely moved over the course of the fighting. There was some minimal chip damage done to the goatman and tainted but the Pit Lord demon never budged from the fully green bar. Offensively, the demon minions focused on Talic at first and it took a little bit of time to work through the 70% physical resistance and 34,000 HP that Talic has in Nightmare. He lasted about a minute and then the group shifted to Madawc, who had absolutely no physical resistance and just wilted in the span of mere seconds. Korlic was last and had the same 70% physical resistance, but if the demon trio held up against all three Ancients, they weren't going to struggle against just one of them. Faustus basically stood around doing nothing over the course of this boss fight since none of his active abilities were useful here - truly an epic showdown on my Warlock's part! 
The three floors of the Worldstone Keep were mostly uneventful even if sometimes the monsters created some flashy magical displays. I didn't write down what was present on Worldstone 1, then the second floor had lots of Black Soul gloams that launched brilliant lightning blasts alongside Serpent Maguses with more Bone Spears. It continued to surprise me that the demon summons could tank those projectiles without taking much in the way of damage - I can attest that the Necromancer's skeleton minions do not absorb them nearly so well! On the rare occasions where the damage started to mount on the summons, a quick Engorge or two would instantly heal them back to full again. The combination of the Engorge and Death Mark skills really provides insane value for a single skill point investment, it's difficult for me to explain how fundamental these were to every combat that Faustus experienced. Worldstone 3 had a different sort of ranged opponent, imps and Storm Casters, both of which were significantly easier foes than the Burning Souls. Each of these floors was getting full cleared in 5-10 minutes as Faustus continued racing along.
The Throne of Destruction had Pit Lords present as an enemy type and even that small area happened to roll two different Pit Lord bosses. Since this was the same monster type as the currently bound demon but taking place at a higher monster level (MLVL 66 as opposed to MLVL 57), I decided to make the attempt to capture one. This worked out successfully and Faustus seized control of a boss named Haze Flame who came with Stone Skin and Fire Enchanted as its extra traits, not bad. There was one major downside though: this new Pit Lord boss rolled the worst option for its aura, Vigor, which added a bunch of movement speed and not much else, ugh. That was certainly worse than the old Fanaticism aura even if Haze Flame was otherwise superior in every respect.
The side wings were quickly cleared out and then it was time for the concluding boss rush. Colenzo and Achmel were both eliminated with ease thanks to having corpse disposal readily on hand with Engorge; those things don't put up much of a fight when they can't revive their minions. Bartuc died offscreen before I could capture a screenshot and then I tried to make a fresh Bind Demon attempt against Ventar but without success. One word on that topic: the always-present bosses like Bartuc and Ventar are classified as "super elites" by the gameplay in Diablo 2. Faustus needed to have a base skill level of 20 in Bind Demon to capture them, investing the maximum allowed points into the skill, otherwise the ability wouldn't function against them. This was something that I had already done though, pumping Bind Demon to SLVL 20+6 with the intention of using it to capture some of those super elites in Hell difficulty. With the dud of the Vigor aura roll for the most recent demon capture, however, I decided that I might as well make a try against these customers even though my first two tries failed.
There's one more super elite boss in the Throne of Destruction who also counts as a demon: Lister. He had rolled Extra Strong to go with his always-present Spectral Hit and that was pretty nasty to deal with. I resolved to make the attempt to capture Lister anyway and did my best to separate him from his surrounding minions, which unfortunately didn't really work out. These demonic opponents were hitting very hard and actually killed both the goatman and tainted summons, forcing me to break the binding chain and retreat backwards to summon a new pair of them. I'm never quite sure if I'm doing the whole binding thing correctly and I'm hesitant to move the Warlock character in the middle of an attempt, therefore Faustus wound up tanking several big hits from one of the Minions of Destruction and had to drink a full rejuv potion. Big opponents like Lister can't be bound until they're down around 40% HP remaining on their lifebars so I was holding down that Bind Demon key and hoping against hope that it all worked out!
Fortunately it did:
Faustus now had Nightmare Lister under his control which was pretty freaking awesome. 
On this difficulty Lister has 21,000 health, 95% fire resistance, 95% poison resistance, 70% cold resistance, and deals about 200 damage per hit (though much of it is elemental in nature and can be resisted). The base stats on this boss were absolutely incredible and made a mockery of all the various demons that Faustus had successfully bound up to this point. Even better, Lister happened to roll Fanaticism for his extra aura, oh yeah! An Extra Strong / Extra Fast / Fanaticism aura Lister seemed like just the ticket to close out the final remaining portion of this Act. The only minor drawback was that Lister had appeared with Extra Strong for his Nightmare boss trait, since he would have received that anyway upon being bound. Something like Cursed or Stone Skin would have been ideal here, though capturing Lister with a Cursed ability would have been only that much more difficult.
Did Baal have any chance whatsoever against this absolute fiend under Faustus' control? No, no he did not. Baal barely tickled the demon summons while they set about smashing his face in. Lister was hitting so hard that I could see visible chunks coming out of Baal's lifebar, even with Baal having 118,000 HP and a very small lifebar thanks to such a short name. I really don't need to drag out the reporting here so I'll cut to the chase: Baal was unable to kill even a single one of Faustus' demon summons, he never brought out his own clone, and the whole combat lasted less than a minute. Game, set, and match:
Complete and utter domination. This Bind Demon skill continued to feel absurdly broken; while the actual capturing process was tricky, once a good target was under control, they essentially trivialized every other aspect of the game. It's not even that the goatman and tainted were weak, because they weren't, rather that the bound demons were so impossibly strong. They were hitting for 10,000 damage per swing, attacking very fast, and never seemed to take damage or even come close to dying. There was simply no challenge anywhere in Nightmare difficulty once I finished leveling up this skill. Oh, and the bound demon also gets all of the benefits from Death Mark and Engorge as well, instant teleportation anywhere on the map and free healing + attack speed boost any time a corpse appears. I knew that the Warlock had the reputation of being an overpowered class ever since release, but sheeesh, this was downright ridiculous! I can only wonder what the pre-nerf version of this class looked like.
Faustus fully cleared Nightmare difficult at an incredibly fast pace: all areas cleared, no deaths incurred, no need for Save and Exit shenanigans. I have to do the final test in Hell difficulty next to see if this class will finally be reined in to some extent. Surely it has to get harder on the top difficulty level, right? Right?
