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

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exxtraterra escribió:

I have a question, how do you do the Ultimatum, Now I'm lv68 but i keep dying in Ultimatum Tier 1 map, like i can't do anything...

Hey, before you get 6-link cloak and a shield, this build can be rather squishy, but you can make some cheap upgrades before that.

The main thing is having proper flasks and keeping them constantly active. All five flasks that this build uses are defensive so it is a pretty noticeable change. Rumi's flask give you block chance and armor, basalt gives physical damage reduction and quartz gives you phasing. Having proper immunities is also important - mainly immunity to bleeding, freeze and curses. Poison and ignite immunities are only needed if there are specific map mods.

Next thing is to keep moving. Never stop and have your arcane cloak on your movement key so that you cast it off cooldown. Also, make sure to cast Vigilant Strike every 12 seconds or so to keep the fortify buff active.

A very quick upgrade would be anointing your amulet with Disciple of Unyielding - that would give you 3 endurance charges during ultimatums.

You already have the cloak and atziri's foible so your regen should be pretty good. You might consider getting Omeyocan boots - they would give you 20% to dodge spell and attack hits. You have to make sure that your mana regen is high enough before equipping them though so I wouldn't equip it until you get the boot lab enchant for mana regen.

You could also get the cheap cluster jewel with Evil Eye notable. That would give you basically constant uptime on blind.

I think that your gear is good enough at this point so you can unallocate Doomsday and still kill all trash mobs instantly - meaning that you would not have to wait that 1 second to kill trash packs and the less time you wait the less time they have to kill you.

You can also unallocate Mind over Matter and Agnostic since you get them from the Cloak and the boots and use the saved passive points elsewhere.

Also, simply leveling up will help a lot too. That will increase your mana pool quite a bit.

I tried this as my only character this league because of lack of time. I am however missing some damage on bosses on t14+ maps. I still need the helmet enchant and have to put the arcanist brand in place (I just replaced my gloves and boots), but am I missing something that explains my lack of ignite dps?
Is the added fire damage to spells on my sceptre messing with the Elemental Equilibrium? If I replace it in PoB, the ignite dps doesn't change much.

When I use your tree and import my items, the dps on PoB drops dramatically. I was hoping you could see an explanation. Thank you in advance and thanks for making the build!


This is my pastebin.
https://pastebin.com/bcnvNcy8

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Selenes escribió:

I tried this as my only character this league because of lack of time. I am however missing some damage on bosses on t14+ maps. I still need the helmet enchant and have to put the arcanist brand in place (I just replaced my gloves and boots), but am I missing something that explains my lack of ignite dps?
Is the added fire damage to spells on my sceptre messing with the Elemental Equilibrium? If I replace it in PoB, the ignite dps doesn't change much.

When I use your tree and import my items, the dps on PoB drops dramatically. I was hoping you could see an explanation. Thank you in advance and thanks for making the build!


This is my pastebin.
https://pastebin.com/bcnvNcy8

I Recall playing with RF build. When I found a major upgrade to my scepter, it had the added fire damage to spells and guess what, when I hit mobs with lightning spells to proc EE, they still were resistant to fire.

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Selenes escribió:

I tried this as my only character this league because of lack of time. I am however missing some damage on bosses on t14+ maps. I still need the helmet enchant and have to put the arcanist brand in place (I just replaced my gloves and boots), but am I missing something that explains my lack of ignite dps?
Is the added fire damage to spells on my sceptre messing with the Elemental Equilibrium? If I replace it in PoB, the ignite dps doesn't change much.

When I use your tree and import my items, the dps on PoB drops dramatically. I was hoping you could see an explanation. Thank you in advance and thanks for making the build!


This is my pastebin.
https://pastebin.com/bcnvNcy8

Yeah, as you and zerOcode have implied, there is a problem with elemental equilibrium. You cannot have added fire damage to spells anywhere on your gear because if you do, then every spell has a fire portion in its hit, even Storm Brand. When you hit a mob with a spell that has lighting and fire damage, it gains positive res to lightning and fire and negative only to cold.

I will update the guide with a warning against "added fire damage to spells" modifier. Right now, you only need to switch the scpeter for a similar one without this modifier and you should be sitting at nice 4M dps.

There was also a bug with the PoB when I imported it as it showed negative reserved mana so I have also removed the second Malevolence gem in there. I have also removed the added fire damage to spells on your scepter and here is the result:
https://pastebin.com/FUADgHHJ

I'm still trying to figure out what is happening that some guardians and their minions are acting like they're immune to damage over time from time to time

Fighting drox now I just died cause I couldn't damage him. Wierd cause my dot dps is around 5 mil. Go figure

Had to log in totem to kill him lol

Ignore that post haha, I had my gems all weirdly configured. Build has been really fun to level so far, if it doesn't somehow get gutted, I plan to do it again next league as a starter too.

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GimbO escribió:

Yeah, as you and zerOcode have implied, there is a problem with elemental equilibrium. You cannot have added fire damage to spells anywhere on your gear because if you do, then every spell has a fire portion in its hit, even Storm Brand. When you hit a mob with a spell that has lighting and fire damage, it gains positive res to lightning and fire and negative only to cold.

I will update the guide with a warning against "added fire damage to spells" modifier. Right now, you only need to switch the scpeter for a similar one without this modifier and you should be sitting at nice 4M dps.

There was also a bug with the PoB when I imported it as it showed negative reserved mana so I have also removed the second Malevolence gem in there. I have also removed the added fire damage to spells on your scepter and here is the result:
https://pastebin.com/FUADgHHJ

Thanks a lot! At first I thought the added fire damage on the sceptre worked the same, but it doesn't add to spells I learned. Guess I'm still prone to make rookie mistakes ;)

Hey Gimbo, can you give me a hand?

I'm trying to figure out how to cap or get close to chaos res to use your tanky version but it seems that market doesn't have any +8 chaos res small cluster

using +6, and 5 to chaos res, I was able to reach -16 instead of -48, which doesn't help much when I get hit by elemental (50% turns chaos and i'm dead, basically)

Any ideas?

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zer0code escribió:

Hey Gimbo, can you give me a hand?

I'm trying to figure out how to cap or get close to chaos res to use your tanky version but it seems that market doesn't have any +8 chaos res small cluster

using +6, and 5 to chaos res, I was able to reach -16 instead of -48, which doesn't help much when I get hit by elemental (50% turns chaos and i'm dead, basically)

Any ideas?

Hey, the cheapest option is to have as many items with a free suffix as possible. You could sacrifice the mana regen on your scepter and craft a little bit of chaos res there. Then one ring and belt can have crafted chaos res too.

You could get a shield with chaos res but it would have to be explicit so that you can craft the +2 modifier. You would also probably need to get more ele res elsewhere so you would probably need to get some of the expensive rare jewels with ele res.

Abyss jewel and rare jewels can have around 10% chaos res too.

If you get all that, an Amethyst Flask and Cleansed thoughts anointment you should be able to reach max chaos res.

If you are still missing some, there is always the option to use a rare helmet instead of the Crown of the Inward Eye, but only if necessary.

Also, do you feel like you need to go for the tanky version? I think it should be only necessary if you want to reach lvl 100. Other than that, you should survive most of the content in the damage with the normal setup.

If you want to increase your survivability but you do not want to go for the tank route, then I would simply get around 0% chaos res (with amethyst flask, without Divine Flesh) and invest in the belt with mana recovery rate. That way you do not need to sacrifice any damage and be decently tanky.

About your previous comment about being immune to damage over time... Are you sure that you cast Hexblast after you reach max doom? (it usually takes up to 4 sec after casting Flammability). If you do not wait, your damage might be lacking quite a bit.

Other than that the only thing that comes to my mind is that you might sometimes cast your hexblast right before the boss goes into the invulnerability phase and then it might feel like you do no damage.

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GimbO escribió:

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zer0code escribió:

Hey Gimbo, can you give me a hand?

I'm trying to figure out how to cap or get close to chaos res to use your tanky version but it seems that market doesn't have any +8 chaos res small cluster

using +6, and 5 to chaos res, I was able to reach -16 instead of -48, which doesn't help much when I get hit by elemental (50% turns chaos and i'm dead, basically)

Any ideas?

Hey, the cheapest option is to have as many items with a free suffix as possible. You could sacrifice the mana regen on your scepter and craft a little bit of chaos res there. Then one ring and belt can have crafted chaos res too.

You could get a shield with chaos res but it would have to be explicit so that you can craft the +2 modifier. You would also probably need to get more ele res elsewhere so you would probably need to get some of the expensive rare jewels with ele res.

Abyss jewel and rare jewels can have around 10% chaos res too.

If you get all that, an Amethyst Flask and Cleansed thoughts anointment you should be able to reach max chaos res.

If you are still missing some, there is always the option to use a rare helmet instead of the Crown of the Inward Eye, but only if necessary.

Also, do you feel like you need to go for the tanky version? I think it should be only necessary if you want to reach lvl 100. Other than that, you should survive most of the content in the damage with the normal setup.

If you want to increase your survivability but you do not want to go for the tank route, then I would simply get around 0% chaos res (with amethyst flask, without Divine Flesh) and invest in the belt with mana recovery rate. That way you do not need to sacrifice any damage and be decently tanky.

About your previous comment about being immune to damage over time... Are you sure that you cast Hexblast after you reach max doom? (it usually takes up to 4 sec after casting Flammability). If you do not wait, your damage might be lacking quite a bit.

Other than that the only thing that comes to my mind is that you might sometimes cast your hexblast right before the boss goes into the invulnerability phase and then it might feel like you do no damage.

Actually I was just trying the tanky version because of some map mods + ultimatum, I am surviving probably all of the content right the way I am now

Sirus change phases with only one dot

But the point is: i cant run - armor or +crit chance and multiplier because of the spike damage of ultimatums, not from regular map minions or bosses, those I can kill easily.

Usually can tank one shot, but then I'll probably die from regular hits right after, while if not doing those, I can walk around them taking multiple hits