TbXie's Hexblast Miner Saboteur Build Guide (PoE Necropolis 3.24)

March 27th, 2024, 22:05

Introduction

Hexblast has been a skill that has seen a lot of uprise when it comes to player interest. This is probably a result of numerous & constant buffs to the skill and some pretty smart architecture by other people to create an archetype that uses the mechanics of Hexblast incredibly well, the miner.

When first talked to about Hexblast, you would most likely not foresee yourself playing a miner. Quite honestly, you’re not really playing a miner in a sense that this build feels way less clunky than you would imagine it because you can quite confortably play with Detonate on left-mouse button and its AoE & Speed make it feel more like a caster would, in general.

Because of its current powerspike, archetype, ascendancy and the choices we have made, this guide will hold your hand to deliver you what is probably going to be one of your most successful characters, both in newer leagues, as a leaguestarter or when trying to find spots to invest into a build, later on in said league. This character can do both, can be scaled to wherever you want it scaled to, and tackles all the content in the game because of its obscene damage numbers & relatively safe playstyle. I would suggest you enjoy it while it lasts.

Solo Self-Found Viability

This build suits itsself particularly well for SSF as the only item it would require in any circumstance is the Profane Proxy which is a common unique you can be finding quite regularly. Worst case scenario, you can just run a Blasphemy instead of the Skitterbots. You’d deal less damage, but you’ll probably be fine, if you really can’t find a Profane Proxy.
Other than that, it runs only Rare gear which is easily crafteable / obtainable through some smart farming & crafting strategies which you should understand before starting any SSF endeavours.

Build Summary

This guide was tailored to provide with a way to play what is currently one of PoE’s powerhouses on any budget alike. The main selling points of the build are that it is able to clear all content you will regularly encounter as well as enable you not to be gated by weak spots and therefore are able to clear the content you want. It can therefore farm almost any endgame atlas with relative ease, given it has the correct gearlevels for the contents difficulty.

Pros and Cons

Pros

+ It only requires a single unique to pop off yet still has a path to go without it
+ Can dish out stupid damage while maintaining really good clearspeed
+ Gets going as early as day 1 of a new League

Cons

– Still is a miner, might not be for everyone
– Profane Proxy is a 50c unique on day one, you might have to play blasphemy for a while

Map Modifiers to be Avoided

You should definitely avoid No Regeneration and possible reduced recovery rate for Energy Shield as those will gimp both your ability to spam mines & recover your healthpool.

Playstyle, Mechanics & Strengths

As mentioned before, through some smart tailoring, this build has circumvented most of Hexblast‘s downsides. First and foremost it plays as a miner, as mines are able to use Curse on Hit mechanics and more importantly only detonate in a sequence. This means that Hexblast will consume a Hex upon cast, but apply one as well, meaning that your next mine, going off just a tad later, will again be able to abuse the massive more multipliers you get for hitting hexed targets. The mining playstyle allows it to frontload all of its mines and therefore burst bosses in a relatively fast manner whenever they become targetable.

Mana

Mana is a bit gimmicky in this build. We are specced into Eldritch Battery which makes it so we use Energy Shield for our Mana Cost and therefore don’t require Mana to “cast” mines. However, because mines have a reservation associated with them, even while being Eldritch Battery, they will still reserve Mana while they are out there. Therefore, you need a certain Mana Pool in order to be able to cast them. We recommend you have enough Mana to reserve your maximum amount of mines plus an exta one as you’ll otherwise find yourself in tricky spots. You can check your current amount of maximum mines by spamming them in your Hideout, or just checking in the Calcs tab of Path of Building (under Skill-specific Stats). Additionally, for the build to play smooth, you will need enough Energy Shield so that you can’t ever run out. Generally, having a total Energy Shield pool of 500 is enough to never make you run out of it.

Videos

Currently this guide has no videos available

Passive Skill Tree, PoB, and Gem Links

You can find an optimized Path of Building here. Every build I release will use the community fork of Path of Building, which is maintained and updated in a much more regular fashion than the original one. You can find PoB’s Fork, by LocalIdentity, here.

If you are not comfortable with Path of Building, PoePlanner’s wesbite offers you a non-PoB alternative to import the pastebin into..

More information about the Passive Skill Tree, as well as all the Gem Links can be found on our dedicated page.

Passive Skill Tree, PoB & Gem Links

Ascendancy, Bandits, and Pantheons

Our Ascendancy, Bandit, and Pantheon Power page goes into detail about all the choices you need to make in these regards.

Ascendancy, Pantheons & Bandit

Gear Summary / TL;DR

A lot of this is explained more in depth in the Gear Page, however we will provide you with a basic idea of what gear you’re looking for in this short summary.

Gear, Jewels & Flasks

Our recommendation:

Item Slot	Item Name
Head	Rare EV Base with Suppression, Life, Resistances, Mine Throwing Speed
Amulet	Rare Amulet with Crit Multi, Life, Resistances, Mine Throwing Speed
Chest	Rare ES/EV Base with Suppression, Recharge, Resistances EV & ES
Gloves	Rare EV Base with Damage against Chilled Enemies, Suppression, Life, Resistance
Boots	Rare EV Base with Suppression, Life, Resistances, Chill Immunity
Belt	Rare Belt with Life, Resistance, Mine Throwing Speed
Rings	Rare Curse on Hit ring & Profane Proxy
Weapon	Rare Wand with +2 to Gemlevels, Spellcrit, Mine Throwing speed & Damage
Shield	Rare Shield with Spellcrit, Chaos Spell Skill levels, Life, Spell Damage

Questions & Support

If you enjoy my content to such an extent that you’d like to support me and my work, or you have a specific question you request my private time for, you can buy me a coffee over at Patreon. At no point should you feel pressured to contribute, but if you do, your support means more to me than you will ever imagine.

Even though we try to make our guides as complete as possible, obvioulsy it’s possible you still have questions. We have an entire mod-team readily available to support you & your questions on Discord. You can find us on the ARPG Vault Discord. Make sure to open a Guide Help thread so things stay clear in the main channels.

Leveling

Since we are very adamant about trying to give you a leveling experience that lies as close to your endgame playstyle as possible, we will be providing you a way to level up with Stormblast Mine and Pyroclast Mine. These should feel like a breeze. Leveling up with Hexblast is sadly impossible unless you have access to currency. For more information about leveling, we refer you to the following guides:

Our step-by-step leveling walkthrough, which allows even more experienced players to save time and speed through the leveling process.
Our guide to Unique Items for leveling, which helps you gear up your characters for the leveling process.
Our beginner leveling guide, which answers many of the questions new players might have and will set you on the right path.

For starters, Create a witch in your desired league environment. Pick up the following gems to make your progression a breeze!

Levels 1 to 28

Stormblast Mine
Added Lightning Damage Support (L8 – After killing Hillock)
Swift Assembly Support (L4 – After MudFlats)

Orb of Storms
Added Lightning Damage Support (L8 – After killing Hillock, buy from Nessa)
Arcane Surge Support (Keep low enough level to proc from a single Orb of Storms)