[Archived] Archmage Hexblast | 4M+ Ignite DPS | Budget Options League Start to Endgame

By the way in that PoB link it shows a low value for Lightning resist, but that was just as of this evening, after I bought the Crown of the Inward Eye. I haven't rejigged my gear to get Lightning Resist back up since then.
But before that all 3 were at 75%.

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Taro514 wrote:

Surprisingly (to me, even), I have just about all the items you listed. The only exception are the Omeyocan boots, and the Cloak of Defiance is only a 4-link at the moment.

Here's a PoB link anyway, your input would be appreciated, thank you in advance.

https://pastebin.com/hJUaanfh

I took a lot at the PoB and it looks alright for the most part except for a few things.

- Probably the biggest thing is to deactivate all your auras. It might sound unintuitive but by activating Determination, you actually decrease your defences. Determination reserves a lot of mana and you need that mana for your other defences (because of Mind over matter).

- Clarity reserves less but I would deactivate it too (it is preference though) - while active you have more mana regen - while not active you will be able to tank bigger hits.

- By deactivating your auras you will increase your damage by quite a lot too, because archmage scales with unreserved mana. Similarly, Arcane Cloak scales with unreserved mana - boosting your defences.

(You can only have an active aura once you use the Essence Worm ring, but you cannot do that right now because the resistances are quite tight.)

- Since you have Cloak of defiance, you can actually unspec Mind Over Matter on your passive skill tree and put the skill point elsewhere.

- I would also despec from Doomsday (this is again my preference). I used doomsday only for lvling but your damage should already be high enough without it. If you use Doomsday, you have to wait 1 sec after every cast of Flammability, which gives the mobs more time to kill you. Try unspecing Doomsday and simply casting curse+hexblast immediately after. This should kill all trash mobs faster than with using Doomsday - giving them less time to kill you.

- Also, do not use vulnerability. When you do not use the Windshriek boots, you can only use 3 curses (Flammability, Elemental Weakness and Despair).

- I would keep a good rare helmet with a lot of life and resistances for now too. Only switch to Inward Eye and Essence Worm once you have a 6-link chest and sceptre+shield. (this is again because the resistances are tight)

- Start getting as many rare jewels from the Endgame section as you can. They will give you life, mana and damage (possibly resistances if you can afford it).

- If you get the Intuitive leap jewel, it will save you a few passive skill points and you can get Purity of flesh for more life.

- I think that you might die sometimes because of stuns. Have you upgraded your Soul of the Brine King pantheon? (PoB doesn't show this) You don't need the whole thing, mainly the second upgrade is nice to have. Minor Soul of Garukhan is nice too.

- Upgrade your mana flask to Enduring Eternal Mana Flask. If you can, get curse immunity too (that is the "of Warding" suffix). If you get cursed, you will get crushed easily but you can have permanent uptime on your mana flask and therefore permanent immunity to all curses.

- It might be also a good idea to use Rumi's Concoction Granite flask instead of a normal Granite Flask (I will update this to the original guide). Get it with high chance to block attack damage (ideally 20%). Also, if you replace your current flask, then don't forget to get bleeding immunity on some of the other flasks (possibly replace ignite immunity - ignites are less common than bleeding).

- If you use 5-link staff, the unique Searing Touch Lathi is a better option. I got a rare staff only because it was a 6-link. Having 5-link rare cripples your dps by quite a lot. So either get a rare 6-link or 5-link Searing Touch Lathi.

- Get the Omeyocan boots if you can.

All of this together with my previous advice (keeping flasks up, keeping fortify up and playing defensively) should at least give you enough room to level up, farm some currency and buy upgrades. The biggest upgrade would be getting a 6-link body armour and switching to sceptre + shield, but I realize that might be expensive right now. If your problem persists after these changes, let me know and I might think of something else.

That seems like great advice, I will definitely give all that a try tomorrow and let you know how it goes.

Thanks for the tips, and for the fun build. :)

Having made most of the changes you recommended in that last post, I'm happy to say my durability is much improved.

That's not to say things are easy... I still feel... "fragile" at times, particularly in higher tier maps, but I guess that's normal to some extent. It also has made me change my play style to be much more defensive.

I think I'm much more used to playing more tanky melee builds, but I'm having a lot of fun with this one. :)

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Taro514 wrote:

Having made most of the changes you recommended in that last post, I'm happy to say my durability is much improved.

That's not to say things are easy... I still feel... "fragile" at times, particularly in higher tier maps, but I guess that's normal to some extent. It also has made me change my play style to be much more defensive.

I think I'm much more used to playing more tanky melee builds, but I'm having a lot of fun with this one. :)

I'm glad to hear that! :)

Yeah, this build especially at the beginning can be quite fragile, but once you level up and get more upgrades it will get much better. It will still not be a face-tank-everything kind of build but it will be tanky enough for everything in the game.

I would also like to mention one last thing that I did not think of in my last post. There are two kinds of defences: the first one being your effective hp (that dictates the biggest hit you can tank) and then there is your recovery (how fast you recover after being hit).

This build can struggle with its effective hp at the beginning when you do not have good gear but it has an immense amount of recovery - thanks to the Agnostic notable. Remember to use it to your advantage - meaning that if you stand near a pack of mobs and you suddenly notice your health going down, simply dash away, wait for a few seconds to recover and get back. This has already saved me countless times.

I hope you will continue having fun with the build in the future!

I was really impressed with the high armour version, really seems quite tanky -was wondering if you had the wizardry to find a way to work divine flesh into the build? and also put skyforth back into that version (i saw your atoll video and the lack of stun immunity looked like really bad qol) ? between those armor values, VMS, and divine flesh, it seems like this build would be at aura stacker levels of tankiness. Given that my pob is showing like 5m ignite dps even with that tanky version, it seems possible? keep in mind that if you drop omeyocan and have divine flesh, you should (correct me if im wrong) be able to keep RF up fulltime which will compensate for a lot of the lost damage? (unless this doesnt affect ignite, not sure)

oops doesn't look like RF does anything for ignite, thats a bummer

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rozakk wrote:

I was really impressed with the high armour version, really seems quite tanky -was wondering if you had the wizardry to find a way to work divine flesh into the build? and also put skyforth back into that version (i saw your atoll video and the lack of stun immunity looked like really bad qol) ? between those armor values, VMS, and divine flesh, it seems like this build would be at aura stacker levels of tankiness. Given that my pob is showing like 5m ignite dps even with that tanky version, it seems possible? keep in mind that if you drop omeyocan and have divine flesh, you should (correct me if im wrong) be able to keep RF up fulltime which will compensate for a lot of the lost damage? (unless this doesnt affect ignite, not sure)

Divine Flash is actually a pretty interesting idea. As far as passive skill points go, it would not be such a problem: I would place the timeless jewel into the slot near Pain attunement and convert that into Divine Flash and I would sacrifice the jewel socket under Supreme Ego - additional dexterity would be then probably required on some of the rare jewels.

To compensate for the lost jewel, we could switch to Vigilant Strike + Ancestral Call + Faster Attacks setup and replace The Vigil jewel by a normal rare jewel.

I'm not sure where I would get more chaos res easily though - probably from small cluster passives / rare jewels? I will look more into that tomorrow (too tired today).

It might also be a good idea to anoint Soul of Steel.

I also completely forgot about the influenced belt modifier "Increased Mana Recovery Rate" in the PoB. I would definitely get that!

You can definitely use Skyforth. The three boots listed in the Endgame sections are all viable and it is pretty much all about preference. Depending on your budget, some high-end rare crafted boots could be pretty good too. I do get stunned sometimes without Skyforth, but thanks to the Soul of the Brine King, I won't get chain-stunned and the Endgame gear setup can tank a few hits so, in my opinion, the stun immunity (pretty much) from Skyfoth is not necessary. Also, if you decide to use Skyforth, you lose permanent Onslaught which is a big QoL change for this build, so be sure to get at least Onslaught on kill abyss jewel or Onslaught support gem instead of blind support.

Yeah, RF increases spell damage, unfortunately, so it will increase the actual hit of hexblast (which is very low dps) but ignite damage scales off the base damage, not the actual hit itself and it does not count as a 'spell'.

I wouldn't be surprised if there was something else to improve the damage though! I haven't spent too much time on the tanky version (it is pretty much the same thing only with 4x Stubborn Student + Molten Shell) so it is possible I have overlooked something. If you figure something out - either to increase damage or defensive of the tanky version - definitely let me know and I will be sure to add it here!

I had some ideas in the past myself that I was not able to make work just yet. Probably the most promising one was using Glancing Blows, capping Block chance and getting "mana on block" modifier on our shield. You might look into that and see if you could figure something out!

To further improve this build, there is also the possibility of replacing almost every unique armor with a very expensive rare armor piece. I'm not too eager to do that though because harvest is getting nerfed so it will probably not be even realistic (at least for me) to craft these items :/

They would be very similar to the items that are used in this BF/BB build https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3009476 made by Dem_hunter. They would include:

- rare helmet with resistances, elevated Transfiguration of mind, life and mana

- chest piece with mana recovery rate (not sure if this would be better than Cloak of Defiance)

- rare amulet with lots of mana regen, life, mana

I also think it might be possible to apply curses in some other way and replace the gloves. I haven't thought of anything just yet though (probably awakened blasphemy + something else?).

off the top of my head, megalomaniac x2 with stubborn student + born of chaos , but that would take some serious luck!

or stubborn student + antivenom though that wont give as much max chaos

another option anoint cleansed thoughts