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

I tried to reach the 80% chaos res without Cleansed Thoughts and it is possible but very hard and it would too costly in my opinion.

So, here is how I would go about Divine Flesh with Cleansed Thoughts:
https://pastebin.com/TaP3zyGn

Most of the chaos res there should be easily achieved and I even managed to increase the armor further by using a flask with % increased armor. I was not able to increase the damage though and I don't think there is any easy way how to keep the defensive and increase damage significantly at the same time.

You can reach 80% chaos res by relying on the chaos res from the amethyst flask, but I don't think that is safe - maybe for mapping where you get flask charges very quickly but it might be too risky to rely on.

how necessary is the cloak of defiance? say theoretically you get a shaper armor with 10% damage taken from mana before life, wake slam it with redeemer chest for t1 mana recovery. if you can craft mana on or happened to get a mana roll, then youre almost at a cloak of defiance, other than having to burn a passive point on mom. and this way you can get other stuff like res, life, etc on chest.


i havent calc'd it out but for endgame might be a way to go around cloak - especially, i think, in the first few weeks of league a 6L cloak is like 6ex- you can easily get a shaper 6l for 1-2ex, hit a couple lucent fossils or just rando essence and get some good mods for this build i think?

thank you btw for that DF pob i will toy with that myself. if you get lucky you can get an easy to reach +1 max chaos res + 19% haos res node in the radius of the timeless jewel which would help a lot too.

also you can get a delve shield with +3% max chaos res and harvest craft it as its not influenced. or get a hunter shield but those are pricey af.

suggestion i think the shield 'manastorm' its a decent weaponswap option for bigger ignites , like if you are prepping for a boss to become targetable etc. i will try it out myself next league, probably a good substitute if lacking dps early on, though can only use in certain scenarios due to rippiness

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rozakk wrote:

how necessary is the cloak of defiance? say theoretically you get a shaper armor with 10% damage taken from mana before life, wake slam it with redeemer chest for t1 mana recovery. if you can craft mana on or happened to get a mana roll, then youre almost at a cloak of defiance, other than having to burn a passive point on mom. and this way you can get other stuff like res, life, etc on chest.


i havent calc'd it out but for endgame might be a way to go around cloak - especially, i think, in the first few weeks of league a 6L cloak is like 6ex- you can easily get a shaper 6l for 1-2ex, hit a couple lucent fossils or just rando essence and get some good mods for this build i think?

thank you btw for that DF pob i will toy with that myself. if you get lucky you can get an easy to reach +1 max chaos res + 19% haos res node in the radius of the timeless jewel which would help a lot too.

also you can get a delve shield with +3% max chaos res and harvest craft it as its not influenced. or get a hunter shield but those are pricey af.

Cloak of Defiance is not necessary if you can afford a good double-influenced body armor. I don't think it is a good idea to do during the first few weeks of the league though.

It depends on how much you want to rush the league start. It usually takes me around a week to get to A5 (I'm pretty slow and do not rush) so the prices are manageable. You can get Cloak of Defiance for 0.5ex and Fated Connections for 4.5ex after the first week.

Getting just Shaper-influenced 6-link body armor would probably be cheaper but also worse. The maximum mana that you can roll is almost half the amount that Cloak of Defiance provides. You would also lose the mana regen, which you can compensate for by using a double-influenced body-armor but Awakener's Orb costs around 3.5ex and you have to be lucky to get some good modifiers or spend quite a lot of lucent fossils.


It is quite unfortunate because if you play this build during a league start, then Cloak of Defiance will definitely slow you down, but in my opinion, it is still worth investing in it - even during a league start.

I would invest in double-influenced body armor only for late endgame when you already have most of the other upgrades. Then it would 100% be worth it!

Having +3 max chaos res on the shield would definitely be nice but I'm not sure how much you can rely on harvest crafting. If I understand the nerf correctly then most of the useful crafts are getting removed.

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rozakk wrote:

suggestion i think the shield 'manastorm' its a decent weaponswap option for bigger ignites , like if you are prepping for a boss to become targetable etc. i will try it out myself next league, probably a good substitute if lacking dps early on, though can only use in certain scenarios due to rippiness

Manastorm is definitely tempting. If you pull it off, it can double your dps pretty much. I have already played with it a little bit though and it was VERY clunky and dangerous. It might be better suited for the tanky version of this build since there is a lower risk of dying while you have 0 mana. It is also very annoying to use when there is more than one target and you have to re-apply ignites more often.

edit - nvm cant weaponswap with qotrs haha. but it does work with manastorm, but yea rippy

Is there any way to get out of using vixen's? im trying to see if a breathstealer is useable. this would let you do a second anoint which might be kinda nice since losing amulet anoint to cleansed thoughts.

i know windshriek has no mana , but i calculated it out and the mana you get from a breathstealer is going to be same or more than omeyocan (skyforth's mana crushes both of course). And windshriek gives back the 'additional curse' that vixen had.

The other big plus to both windshriek and breathstealer is +ele resists because this build's unique heavy and this would take a lotta burden off trying to squeeze resists into other pieces. plus both gears help with getting resist balancing for a wiseoak which i think would work well in this build.



The issue is applying the extra 2 curses, haven't figured out how that would work yet.

what do you think of this pob i added athread of hope to reach a +1 all res, lost 300k ignite dps but got 2 extra passive points remaining, havent figured out where to place yet (probably best route is arcane chemistry near supreme ego). also fire res got slightly uncapped but that shouldnt be hard to fix

https://pastebin.com/e8p4pzua

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rozakk wrote:

Is there any way to get out of using vixen's? im trying to see if a breathstealer is useable. this would let you do a second anoint which might be kinda nice since losing amulet anoint to cleansed thoughts.

i know windshriek has no mana , but i calculated it out and the mana you get from a breathstealer is going to be same or more than omeyocan (skyforth's mana crushes both of course). And windshriek gives back the 'additional curse' that vixen had.

The other big plus to both windshriek and breathstealer is +ele resists because this build's unique heavy and this would take a lotta burden off trying to squeeze resists into other pieces. plus both gears help with getting resist balancing for a wiseoak which i think would work well in this build.



The issue is applying the extra 2 curses, haven't figured out how that would work yet.

what do you think of this pob i added athread of hope to reach a +1 all res, lost 300k ignite dps but got 2 extra passive points remaining, havent figured out where to place yet (probably best route is arcane chemistry near supreme ego). also fire res got slightly uncapped but that shouldnt be hard to fix

https://pastebin.com/e8p4pzua

The easiest way to get rid of Vixen's gloves would be using Awakened Hextouch Support level 5 that would solve both problems - it would increase your curse limit and you could apply the other curses by casting a linked spell - the best one would probably be Vortex since it is instant. It is very costly though.

You could then self-cast Flammability, cast Vortex (instant) that would apply the other two curses and then Hexblast.

You could either use Breathstealer or double-influenced gloves with life, mana, resists, hunter's fire damage over time multiplier and warlord's increased damage over time.

The only disadvantage is the cost. If you cannot afford Awakened hextouch support then you could use normal hextouch support together with windshriek boots or maybe even the ring Doedre's Damning - you would have to compensate for the lost resistances in the gloves though. The last option would be using a rare amulet with the "you can apply additional curse" corrupt implicit modifier but it would be very hard to find/craft one better than Atziri's Foible.

Technically, you could also self-cast all 3 curses and then after each Hexblast re-apply only the oldest one, but I'm not sure how annoying that would be xD.

Wise oak would be nice defensively, but correct me if I'm wrong (really not sure) but I think that damage penetration only works for direct hits so it would not affect ignite dps only the initial Hexblast hit.

The PoB looks good. I actually did not realize that you can use Insightfullness. I would spend the last two points either on Arcane chemistry, as you have said, or honestly on getting another of the notables from the large clusters. You could also upgrade the large clusters to have 3 notable skills and allocate all of them (that would be more costly though)!

im planning on this being my league starter meaning first 2weeks or so of league so awakened hextouch not an option. But good thought on hextouch/vortex. hm i was planning on keeping molten shell or arcane cloak on left click..i suppose i could keep guard skill on left click and then keep vortex on right click, run around with both constantly held down maybe duct tape my right mouse button lol.

im happy using windshriek, not a bad pair of boots with decent MS + resists and easy to make up mana on the gloves (not sure on breathstealer cost at league start, just liked the idea of another anoint, but as you listed many other good options are there). plus the increased aoe on hex on windshriek must be good for this build.

As it is i'm not sure about affording a 6l cloak so early in league, am not 100% convinced that a 6l cloak would be cheaper/better than a woke slammed 6l shaper/redeemer chest (assuming 1ex for 6l shaper chest + 3ex for woke orb.. i could be off on this), unless bad rng with no mana roll /no prefix on chest is always possible.

Not too worried about weapon as in my experience can make pretty nice stuff just spamming harvest crafts , and shields generally pretty cheap. remaining pricey items would be a thread of hope depending how well rolled, intuitive leap(low priority) , well rolled atziris could be 40-50c early on, atleast a couple golden oils to be safe, and of course the timeless jewel (hoping for cheap legion jewels again)..ideally everything should be in a 10ex budget for first two weeks (assuming some decent luck finding/crafting my own things like clusters) and a big chunk of that is the body armour.

i honestly not sure on wise oak, but wording just says 'damage' not 'damage with hits' so i think the pen should apply to the ignite as well.
im definitely not interested in self casting 3 curses LOL.

i just realized the 'insightfulness' node forces you to have es on something on your gear or jewels otherwise i believe 'maximum energy shield' would apply at 0 es and you would take a huge damage hit from the 10% reduced mana cost of skills. but cloak alone solves that easily, otherwise just get it on an abyss jewel or other sources etc

edit - just out of my own curiousity im seeing if i can incorporate a max block setup into this build. i dont know if its really needed on an agnostic build and i think it's gonna cause a big dps loss but will see. im almost certain that div flesh will have to be dropped to make it happen

alright i made a max block setup - sucks losing chieftain but i just dont see a way around that. so yea easily 40% dps loss but survivability should be thru the roof. i think this can be tweaked a lot; currently using a really cheap anoint on the foible just to cap block

https://pastebin.com/DfJLBsR6

i left a few unallocated passives, stil deciding best use for them.

i'd say the weaponswap manastorm idea is a must for this version on bosses cuz of low dps lol. would be easily a 30% dps boost. i would wait till molten shell cooldown is up, immediately swap, use shell so dynamo kicks in, then swap back. u get an 8k guard buff which will help save ur butt while ur mana recovers

i also reverted the armor/div flesh version and just did max block on this pob:


https://pastebin.com/JXMVTCA1

this version not bad. max block even without rumis, plus 3mil+ ignite dps (at 40 doom) assuming cloak is up; havent undone the armor clusters either and still have some unspent passives. and theres still the manastorm gimmick (MUCH rippier in this version though)
this is honestly the first version i am going to aim for when i try this out, as outside of the cloak (3-6ex depending on league time) and weapon(~5ex?) theres nothing expensive in this setup (obviously belt is god tier but ignoring the life recovery rate its pretty reasonable, and resists are overcapped anyways).


question for ya - is wave of conviction actually adding fire exposure? i look at pob calc and it seems like it does way more lightning damage than fire damage cuz of arcane cloak. so i feel like most of the time its putting the wrong exposure on the enemy?