Hexblast

Question about Hexblast:
Does All damage can freeze
All damage can ingite
All damage can shock
means tha a critical hit will proc all these Elemental Ailments at once?



Or do we only count the element it "chose" from the less resist on enemy?

If I add damage other than Chaos to the Spell does it act as the same instance of damage against the lowest resistance ?

Let say 1000 Chaos + 1000 Lightning against Cold res.
Does it count as 2000 damages or (1000 and 1000) ?

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Pioms wrote:

If I add damage other than Chaos to the Spell does it act as the same instance of damage against the lowest resistance ?

Let say 1000 Chaos + 1000 Lightning against Cold res.
Does it count as 2000 damages or (1000 and 1000) ?

The skill's wording says Chaos damage with Hits...
So nope. You'd have to basically wear that new chest "The Admiral" that does the same as that mechanic, just with Elemental Hits.

My opinion of the skill so far while leveling with it:

This skill is honestly amazing.

Pro's
1) For support built characters your curse effect is your damage, scaling immensely and powerfully. Great skill for curse support players when solo.
2) Doom rampup gives massive damage output, allowing for easy clearing of mobs, while keeping bosses fairly stable in tankyness if not invested in any damage, providing a rampup gameplay.
3) Ability to focus on any elemental debuff while playing without worrying about damage type allows for excellent focus on support roll application of freeze or shock, allowing superb control over enemies when used with elemental proliferation, which stacks with frostbite for example and curse effect to bring a large chance for elemental effects to or at cap (investment depending).
4) Excellent synergy with EE, allowing quick application of any opposing element (through an aura/herald, added damage, or arcane cloak) for the benefit of solo or party play.
5) For those seeking it as a damage skill, applying permanent curses through various means (skitterbot aura curse, self aura curse, totem aura curse) it has one of the highest listed damage outputs for a skill ontop of AOE. Powerful synergy with totems or mines.

Con's
1) No aoe at ALL without curses. This design has also resulted in what is a technical bug where it doesn't work with spell cascade despite being an AOE target skill.
2) Can't target environment such as rocks with it, and even then since no aoe, it would hit them one at a time.
3) Skill does not auto target enemy nearest to cursor that HAS a curse. It is a freaking nightmare when you miss the intended target only to get a single hit on a random enemy that SOMEHOW isn't cursed (this is directly related to self cursing).
4) Can't curse totems. Trials of ascendancy are terrible.
5) Bosses have curse resistance. Creating huge gape between clear and boss fighting.

Overall Suggestions
Give it a miniscule aoe as a base (against non-cursed enemies) so it can at LEAST hit environment objects and break things for loot, you could even cause it to have reduced scaling or no scaling when the enemy isn't cursed. This also eliminates the anomalous behaviour where it's not compatible with spell cascade. Lastly please make it prioritize cursed enemies near your cursor..... You wanted us to self cast, please don't discourage it with lack of auto targeting the correct enemy for bombing. Curses should apply to totems properly. Adjust how curses interact with bosses, especially self cast curses.

Will update this feedback if there are any other drawbacks I can think of that need fixing (one's that are unfair in general).

Character: EggOnChandelier
Level: 85
Ascendancy: Occultist
Self-cast everything.

TLDR:
- Good starter, not friendly in endgame.
- Can't do delve.

Feedback:
- Playstyle is too slow, even slower than trap/mine/totem.

Suggestion:
- A mechanic/unique/keystone that make so every few seconds the next self-cast curse is applied at maximum/half-max doom would be a nice fix for its crippling slow playstyle.

Unique of choice:
- Vixen's Entrapment
- Doedre's Scorn

Pros:
- Fat chaos damage. Hit hard, hit once.
- Ultilize Curses.
- Bring back good old EE keystone.
- Good boss perma freeze up to T5 map on 4L setup.

Cons:
- Cannot deal with totems since it is immune to curses thus make some heist map, map with totem mod and Acid Carven become supper annoying to play. Can't kill the totem is fine, but you constantly cast Hexblast on top of non-curses totem which does not trigger the explosion which essentially mean you "missed" a hit.
- The mechanic still fuzzy on how the resistance is selected in case of equal resistance (for penetration gem link).
- Some monster have ridiculous resistance without any reason (EE + Frostbite cannot remove "Resist Elemental" mod - seen on T9 Metamorph).
- Cannot do rush contents such as delve, temple because of the nature of the skill force you to wait for doom to build up or you not gonna do any damage, even against trash mob.

I'm playing Hexblast ignite Trickster. Currently level 90 and doing t16 maps comfortably. But when it comes to single target damage, it's awful. I'm using 4 curses but only have 3 max curses, in 3 levels I will reach Whispers of Doom to apply the 4th curse as well.

My gear is decent: https://pastebin.com/YtjBCn0K (note that alt quality gems are not supported by PoB yet so I swapped those for normal ones)

How do we fix Hexblast then? Reduce or remove curse resistance from bosses, when self-casting the curse.
I realize that Temporal Chains was the curse that forced GGG to add curse resistance in the first place, but surely Temporal Chains could be an exception to this self-casting rule?
Hexblast is highly reliant on curse gameplay, so having something as significant as curse resistance for bosses makes this build awful

Level 89 CI occultist here

pastebin: https://pastebin.com/qZ62nR1D

I'm trying 5 curses hexblast/impending doom while selfcasting frostbite.
I'm using vixen's entrapment to trigger my 4 curses. (1 additional curse is temp chain w/ blasphemy)
Curses i'm using: frostbite, despair, assassin's mark, punishment, ele weakness, temp chain (supported with blasphemy)

My hexblast is 6L and i'm really struggling with bosses and conquerors. I have not done Sirus yet and i'm sure i won't be able to kill him.

I'm using Void battery, So i went 7 power charges and invested in crit, and my single target is still very bad. I plan to use an empower lvl 4 when i'll be able to get one, and maybe replace my void battery with a +1 chaos spell skill gem and spell crit chance, just like what I have on my shield. At this point i'll try everything and see for myself but I'm really thinking of rerolling into another character or going archmage or ignite because cold damage is only defensive so far. It's cool to have a longer freeze on bosses, but that's not what will boost the DPS. I think the optimal gear is to go with a shavronne's wrappings and go low-life w/ pain attunement, scale damage with cluster jewels and all that good stuff, but for now it's not good enough. Struggling with tier 12 red maps is not a good sign. Of course the clearspeed is very good, but sometimes you have to 2 or 3 shot a yellow mob or even blue packs, what the hell...

So I have few ideas to boost the damage to make the skill viable:

1. Boost flat crit chance on the skills (doom blast and hexblast)
2. Boost chaos flat damage
3. Make chaos DOT scale with the hits (I would love to see the Decay skill gem scale with it)
4. Remove curse resist from bosses
5. Rework Occultist ascendency
6. Allow curses on totems and other items that are not destructibles with these skills (lab totems are a priority)
7. To diversify the playability of the skill, make it playable with low levels of doom, because right now it's max doom or nothing.

And I'm really wondering how many people killed Atlas lvl 8 Sirus. Did it happened? How many exalts worth of gear do you need to do that? This is the first time i'm struggling like that to get decent single target and i'm playing since beta lol. Anyway, cool skill with a lot of potential, but it needs help!

In case this section has better visibility, there is currently a bug for the ailments using hexblast.


My Path of Building and napkin math put my Hexblast ignite damage around 7-11 million dps. However, this damage is not appearing in game. High level enemies take a very long time to die. I would guess 20-30x as long as expected. The lack of damage is, however, extremely noticeable on T15 and T16 bosses and metamorphs, as well as elder guardians, whom I can barely scratch.

Here are my main damage sources:

Alternate 60% Flammability for +15 max doom, Skittering Runes for +10 Doom
(+30 base, for 55 total doom)

Archmage with 9.5k mana.

6 link Hexblast - Ignite Prolif - Anomalous Combustion - Deadly Ailments - Awakened Burning Damage - Archmage

Sigil of Power

Scorching Ray Spell Totem for exposure

Elemental Equilibrium and Elemental Overload Keystones (double checked, no fire damage is being applied to enemy, only lightning).





My guess is that the Doom bonus for ailments is not working correctly. Other than that, I have no idea. The initial hit seems to be doing significant damage.Character name Ryhkken (my only hiest char, softcore).

Please take a look asap, as I cannot clear end game bosses reliably since my in game damage is so low and it's my only character.

So Doom as a stat is mitigated by Curse Effectiveness?

I mean if that's true, all that it would take for the skill to be really good against bosses is just make Doom its own pure statistic or ailment thats only governed by itself.

If that can't happen for programming reasons, you would need to scale the damage bonus from Doom, or the base damage of the skill, or both up.

That way you don't need to gut Curse Effectiveness and have people Temp Chain Chill Freeze Chaining the Conquerors while buffing a skill that honestly really cool in terms of theme and mechanical implementation.

It's almost there really.