Hex Mage Build Idea
I'm thinking of a build for a character that is centered around hex mage. So far, whenever i took hex mage, it was just an additon, not the focus of the build.
The idea started with me never having used rainbow hex, so i wanted to use that. But my issue with rainbow hex is, that it needs 6 hits (or if you are really fast 5, but i don't know if it even is possible to land 5 hits in 2 seconds) to apply. By that point, the most enemies are likely already, or at least close to, dead. Or they would be, if i had used a stronger weapon. Maybe i could use something else and just swap to the rainbow hex weapon for the few enemies that warrant it?
Also there is this whole "use jinx from a distance with a bow for larger lock on range" strategy. But since i intend to play this character in co-op, I don't want to tell my friend to sit around for me to use jinx over and over to hopefully apply a bunch of different hexes.
I was also thinking of using primal ritualist for automatic application of haunted and doom to blow up with rupture, and of course all the tankiness.
And I was thinking of what off hand weapon i could use. First I was thinking of chakrams. Or maybe a chimera or cannon pistol. When i looked at list list of pistols, it hit me: Astral Pistol. It has a 66% buildup for chill and scorched. If i load it with a shatter bullet, it also inflicts pain. If i go mercenary and blood bullet, i can "fire" the pistol 3 times without having to reload, twice is enough to apply chill and scorched. Since the drums provide doom and haunted, i have 5 hexes i can blow up with torment and rupture.
As a nice niche side bonus that will probably hardly ever come into play, but will be great when it does: this will apply burning thorugh scorched and torment, which then can be turned into holy blaze through using the drums to attack.
As a weapon I could use the Radiant Wolf Sword. Since it's all lightning damage, it would profit greatly from the doom through the drums. I could stack lightning damage bonuses on the gear to improve it. Torment and rutpure through the drum hexes would also profit from that.
And to add even more to it, if I go holy mission, I can use infuse light to add even more lightning damage to the sword. Spiritual communion boosts lightning and ethereal damage (for the drum hexes) as well as decay damage (for blood bullet).
All that lightning damage bonus will also add to the niche holy blaze scenario mentioned above.
And by using a 1 handed sword, puncture would give me access to another source of pain (for torment and rupture, it would do nothing for the sword itself though).
So i ended up with the following:
Skill Trees
Hex Mage (Rupture)
Mercenary (Blood Bullet)
Primal Ritualist (Nurturing Echoes)
Other irreversible stuff
Holy Mission (Spiritual Communion)
4 (or maybe just 3?) points of mana
Gear
Radiant Wolf Sword (Fulminaiton, pre-enchanted from a legacy chest)
Astral Pistol (Levantine Secret pre-enchanted from a legacy chest)
Tenebrous Helm (Order and Discipline)
Silver Armor (Spirit of Monsoon)
Tenebrous Boots (Flux? Speed and Efficiency?)
Light Mender's Backpack
Hotbar
Fire & Reload
Blood Bullet
Torment
Rupture
Drum
Drum 2
Blessed
Puncture (Jinx? Brace?)
There are 2 things i'd love to get a good source for, but I can't think of a way to really fit them in with the limited hotbar space: Curse and Elemental Vulnerability. Puncture is basically the only hotbar slot that is open for debate.
I have blessed on the hotbar for cooldown tracking. When i have a build that uses infusions, i like to keep the infusion up permanently. So in this case i cast blessed, and once it's off cooldown, i cast infuse light followed by blessed. repeat once blessed is off cooldown. Having blessed on the hotbar gives me an easily visible reminder when it's starting to be time to repeat this cycle.
I could put the astral pistol on that last hotbar slot and then manually equip a chimera pistol before the fight to apply elemental vulnerability and then swap to the astral pistol. I tried something like that once, but found it way too annoying and fiddly and ended up booting another skill off the hotbar so i could have the chimera pistol on the hotbar as well.
A similar issue is with throwing the drums off the hotbar. It is possible, but it makes deploying the drums much more annyoing, and nigh impossible if you get attacked by surcprise (putting down the drums can be problematic enough as is in those scenarios. The co-op partner can help though).
Jinx feels too random. But i might need to give it a try.
Curse Hex could be an option. But puncture will probably deal way more damage than i could expect from curse.
Radiant wolf sword with fulmination and infuse light should deal 54.75 damage. I should have 80% lightning damage bonus (25 armor, 10 helm, 5 boots, 10 spiritual communion, 10 backpack, 20 blessed), which means 98.55 damage per swing with the sword. so puncture will deal 197.1 damage before resistance. And that resistance is lowered by 25% through the drums. Curse hex will have a very hard time to catch up with that, even considering the extra damage blood bullet will do and that i have a 50% damage bonus on decay (and torment/rupture will make use of that bonus).
Sooo... Thoughts? Ideas? Improvements? Oversights?
A weird realiziation i just had: discipline is almost completely useless for this build. The only thing i'd get from it is an extra 7.5 damage when using rupture in case pain is applied (doesn't even work for torment, since that pain causes ethereal damage). And that's before generally high physical resistances.