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

Quests rewarding a passive skill point:
- The Dweller of the Deep
- The Marooned Mariner
- The Way Forward

Passive Skill Tree


Gems

Kill all bandits (2 passive skill points).

Passive Skill Tree


Gems

You can skip The Labyrinth level 33 (because Scion only gets strength and one passive point) and do it with the second one on level 55.

Quests rewarding a passive skill point:
- Victario's Secrets
- Piety's Pets

Passive Skill Tree


Gems

Quests rewarding a passive skill point:
- An Indomitable Spirit

Passive Skill Tree


Gems

Quests rewarding a passive skill point:
- In Service to Science
- Kitava's Torments

Passive Skill Tree


Gems

After finishing act 5, you will get -30% to all elemental resistances. Make sure that you get gear with enough elemental resistances so that you are capped at 75% of each elemental resistance (fire, cold, lightning). Act 6 has mainly fire damage, later cold. Use your Essences, Orb of Alchemy or crafting bench in your hideout to craft resistances on every piece of gear that you can.

Quests rewarding a passive skill point:
- The Father of War
- The Puppet Mistress
- The Cloven One

Passive Skill Tree


Gems

Quests rewarding a passive skill point:
- The Master of a Million Faces
- Queen of Despair
- Kishara's Star

Passive Skill Tree


Gems

Complete the first two labyrinths after Act 7 to get your ascendancy points. Hierophant ascendancy will be a big defensive boost. Once you get the Hierophant ascendancy, you can drop the Arcane Surge Support gem linked to Arcane Cloak.


Quests rewarding a passive skill point:
- Love is Dead
- Reflection of Terror
- The Gemling Legion

Passive Skill Tree


Gems

Quests rewarding a passive skill point:
- Queen of the Sands
- The Ruler of Highgate

Passive Skill Tree

Gems

After finishing Act 10 you will get another -30% to all elemental resistances. Make sure to have +75% to all elemental resistances from your gear before you start mapping.

Complete the third labyrinth either shortly before or shortly after you finish Act 10 and get the Chieftain ascendancy.

Quests rewarding a passive skill point:
- Vilenta's Vengeance
- An End to Hunger (2x)

Passive Skill Tree


Gems

Once you get decent League-Start gear, I would advise you to unspec Doomsday. This is only my preference though, you can keep it if you like playing with it.

In my opinion, Doomsday is slow for clearing maps. The only reason to use it for leveling was to compensate for damage. Once you get gear, your damage will be good enough to simply cast cure + hexblast without the need to wait 1 sec for the Doomsday 'pop' and you will still kill all trash mobs easily.

League Start Order of Upgrades


Cloak of Defiance is a huge mana regen boost, it gives stronger Mind Over Matter and a huge chunk of mana. It is pretty much mandatory for this build but buying a 6-link can be expensive. I would advise you to buy a cheap unlinked Cloak of Defiance. You can 5-link it using the Jeweller's Touch prophecy but if you use a staff, it is not necessary. 4-link will be enough for now.

Before you can afford it, simply use a rare 4-link chest piece with a lot of life and mana. Try not to rely on any resistances from your body armor as you will need to switch to the cloak that gives none.

Once you get the Cloak you can unspec Mind Over Matter from your passive skill tree.



Our main skill Hexblast will then be temporarily socketed in a staff. You can get either a cheap 6-linked staff with either Fire damage over time multiplier, Burning damage / Elemental damage / Fire damage and if you can get some mana or mana regen on it as well but don't spend too much on it. You can usually find decent corrupted staves with these stats for quite cheap.

Another option (much weaker though) is to buy the unique The Searing Touch Lathi and 5-link it with Jeweller's Touch prophecy (if you choose this option temporarily drop either Deadly Ailments support or Burning damage support, getting 4 blues and 1 red will be easier than 4 blues and 1 green).

CAUTION: Make sure not to have the "adds fire damage to spells" modifier on your weapon as it messes up your elemental equilibrium.



Vixen's Entrapment Embroidered Gloves are mandatory. They should be cheap and you can buy them even during lvling if you plan to lvl up with Hexblast.


Atziri's Foible Paua Amulet is again a great boost to our mana regen and max mana. You should get it as soon as you can afford it.

Before you can afford it, simply use either a rare Paua amulet or Blue pearl amulet with a lot of mana and mana regen. You can also get some attributes here but do not spend too much on it and try not to rely on any resistances here!


Get Skyforth Sourcerer Boots. They provide a big chunk of mana and make you basically immune to stuns.

Before you can afford them, simply use boots with a lot of mana and life.

UPDATE: Use the new Dance of the Offered Carnal Boots! They are much better and cheaper.

OPTIONAL: If you feel like you are having issues with stuns, consider getting the boot enchant "80% chance to Avoid being Stunned if you've Killed Recently".



Other slots should be filled with rares with stats like: mana, life, resistances. Nothing special.

If you cannot find any cheap rings with dexterity, then simply buy them without dexterity and use lower level dexterity gems or temporarily allocate the +30 dexterity passive skill points. Never spend too much extra chaos because of dexterity!

Get a mana flask with the 'Enduring prefix'. The mana regen from the flask will then not be removed when on full mana. Immunity to curses is not mandatory but if you have it, you can run maps with curse modifiers.

You should also have immunity to bleeding and freeze on your other flasks. Immunity to poison is also nice, but not required. Get a quicksilver flask for movement speed and then a quartz, granite and basalt flask for defense.



If you want to have more cast speed, you can also temporarily replace the basalt flask with a silver flask (not needed if you use the Dance of the Offered Carnal Boots). You can switch back to the basalt flask once you upgrade your boots to the endgame version Omeyocans.


For even more defense, you can use Rumi's instead of a normal granite flask. Prioritize the attack block chance roll.


For early mapping, when you don't have big mana and life pool, I would also strongly advise you to get a cheap medium cluster jewel with Evil Eye notable on it. That will cause your curses to blind enemies for the first 4 seconds of the fights (which is all you need for trash mobs) and it will help you survive. The cluster jewel will be changed to damage cluster jewel later in the progression so don't spend too much on it.


You can also purchase 3 rare jewels with life, mana and burning damage and socket them in your passive skill tree. You can get them with mana, burning damage, and resistances as a very early on budget option.


If you use the General's Cry setup for fortify, get the Vigil jewel. Otherwise, get a 4th rare jewel - same as before.

After the nerfs to the Vigil, it is better to self-cast Vigilant Strike linked to Faster Attacks and Ancestral Call. This option does not need the Vigil!


To further improve your defenses, you can also anoint the cheap notable Disciple of the Unyielding (Violet, Crimson, Opalescent oils) that provides endurance charges while mapping. Only anoint your amulet if you already have the Atziri's Foible.

League Start Order of Upgrades

We use a bunch of normal jewels that give max mana, max life/mana regen, and burning damage/fire damage overtime multiplier. If you can afford it, you can also get some resistances on them, which will lower the number of resistances that you have to have on your other gear.


Normal Jewels are not that important compared to our cluster jewels. We use two medium cluster jewels with 5 passive skills and notables: Circling Oblivion and Smoking Remains. Getting these cluster jewels or their budget options is very important for boosting our dps.

After some testing, I came to the conclusion that Blowback is not worth it. It increases your dps by a lot but it also makes your ignites way too short (it can get to 3s) which means that you have to reapply them constantly. I rather scaled the overall total damage per ignite while not sacrificing too much dps and for this, the best option is Burning Bright and Circling Oblivion. You can get these cluster jewels with either 4 or 5 passive skill points, do not get 6 points as it is too much and we don't have any passive skill points to spare.


Budget option would be getting a cluster jewel with any two good notables. You can use the following link to find cheap and viable cluster jewels: https://www.pathofexile.com/trade/search/Ultimatum/O6BMM8lfE

You should have enough resistances now to get the Essence Worm Unset ring. Upgrade your rare gear if you do not have enough resistances. Socket Malevolence gem into it and activate the aura.



Either buy a 6-linked Cloak of Defiance or buy the expensive Fated Connections prophecy and 6-link it yourself, either one of these is currently cheaper. You can then socket Hexblast in your body armour and get a scepter and shield.


Sceptre modifiers should include: Fire damage over time multiplier / Damage over time multiplier, increase Fire / Elemental / Burning damage, a huge amount of mana, and if you can also an increased mana regen. For optimal endgame scepter, you should also get the Hunter influenced suffix which increases Malevolence aura effect.

CAUTION: Make sure not to have the "adds fire damage to spells" modifier on your weapon as it messes up your elemental equilibrium.



The shield should have a lot of resistances because we will switch one of our rings and helmet to uniques which give none, then also mana, life, mana regen.


Once you have a shield with resistances, you should also be able to get the helmet Crown of the Inward Eye, Prophet Crown. It is an insane damage boost but it doesn't give any resistances or mana meaning that your shield, belt, and one ring will have to have a lot of these elemental resistances so that you have all of them capped at 75%. (Do not buy the hexblast enchant, it is not worth it. Buy Arcane Cloak enchant if you can afford it later on.)



We use The Vigil Crimson Jewel for fortify and Intuitive Leap Viridian Jewel to save a few passive skill points.


Once you have enough mana and life, you should be able to afford an offensive anointment and still survive. Get Burning Brutality if you want the most dps, Growth and Decay if you want the most damage per ignite.


Boots

There are several good options for endgame boots.

Skyforth Sourcerer Boots give you a lot of mana and making you pretty much stun immune.


Windshriek Reinforced Greaves lets you use another curse and they have resistances on them, but no mana.


Omeyocan Carnal Boots give 20% chance to dodge attack and spell hits, some mana, resistances and permanent onslaught but also lowering our mana regen.


After testing all of them, I came to the conclusion that Omeyocan Carnal Boots are overall the best option. You self-cast a lot and that permanent Onslaught is just too good. Together with 20% dodge and some resistance, they definitely come out ahead.

Whatever boots you choose to use, you should get the lab enchant on them that increases mana regen by 70% if you have cast a spell recently. You should be able to get this enchant yourself. There are 16 possible boot enchants that you can get and if you use the prophecy Twice Enchanted, you will have to run the lab 8 times on average to get it. Archmage builds with the Agnostic notable have quite a lot of regen so you can stand in traps and still survive which will make the runs much easier and less annoying than with some other builds.

Most of these upgrades are really optional as I believe that you should be able to beat the game with only the endgame gear setup but every upgrade that you get will definitely make it a lot easier!

Purchase Anomalous Flammability. It has to have 20% quality so be careful if you buy a corrupted one. What that does is that its quality increases the max doom that you can get, drastically increasing your damage!

We can further increase its quality by purchasing enhance lvl 4 (lvl 3 as a budget option).

We can go even further and purchase pretty much the same shield (life, mana , resistances) that we had but with a free prefix and crafting the "+2 to level of socketed support gems"
modifier on it. You can unlock this modifier by defeating Catarina, Master of Undeath at least two times, picking up the veiled weapons that she drops and selecting this modifier while unveiling. It costs 2ex to craft.

As your third gem link in your shield, you can get Divergent Arcane Cloak 20/20. It will be a considerable damage boost but only for the duration of your arcane cloak. If you choose this option, make sure to cast hexblast while you have arcane cloak up.

Another option is to get Anomalous Sigil of Power as a defensive option (it does not have to be charged for the defensive buff effect).




Get the same gloves but with the corrupted implicit modifier "+1 to level of socketed gems". Also, buy Despair and Elemental Weakness with 23% quality and link them to lvl 3 enhance and empower (lvl 4 does not do much for dps, but you can get it if you can afford it).


Get the enchant "70% increased mana regeneration if you've cast a spell recently" on Omeyocan Carnal Boots if you haven't already. Get 20% quality on all gems.


Upgrade your 6-link setup. Buy Divergent Hexblast 20/20 if you can afford it (I got it for 2ex but I was lucky, lol) or get Hexblast 21 lvl, 20 quality. 20% quality on Archmage support. Get Anomalous Combustion if you want the most ignite dps, Divergent Combustion if you want the most damage per ignite or just quality on default Combustion if you want a balanced option. Ignite Proliferation 21/23. Awakened Burning Damage and Awakened Deadly Ailments with 20% quality (get the awakened gems as soon as you can so that you can start leveling them up). You can also get alternative quality on your body armour with 30% quality. Ideally, you would go for the max mana. I got cold resistance because I was tight on resistances while gearing up.


Get quality for the Storm Brand gems setup. Also, get the helmet enchant for Arcane Cloak that makes you spent more mana on it.


Get Diverget Malevolence 20/20.


Belt and one ring stay the same (just bunch of mana, life, resistances). Get mana regen if you can, but mainly buy a bunch of Fertile Catalysts and use them on your belt, one ring and amulet.

You can also upgrade your belt to Redeemer or Shaper influenced Stygian Vise with the "Increased Mana Recovery Rate" influenced suffix to almost double your mana regen.



Buy Watcher's Eye with the "+% to damage over time multiplier while affected by Malevolence".


Once you have enough mana and life, you can afford to drop one defensive flask for an offensive one. The best option is to replace Quartz flask with Atziri's Promise.


Get pretty much the same scepter but with the hunter-influenced modifier "Malevolence has % increased aura effect". Also, get the alternate quality with elemental damage if you can. Socket either General'd Cry or Shield Charge setup into it.


If there is no sceptre on trade like this one, then look for a similar one. Try to lower the rolls or omit some of the modifiers completely.

The scepter can no longer be harvest-crafted the same way I did it in the Ritual league. I will update later an alternative version.