[3.24] Easy Tank Freezy Spank! Asianskater2004's Endgame Hexblast Lifestacker Build Guide

[3.24] Easy Tank Freezy Spank! Asianskater2004's Endgame Hexblast Lifestacker Build Guide

Character Name: SheWithHalfLife

You know your Scion Ascendant is working hard blasting enemies of freedom when you hear her shout, "HA" "HEI" and "HOOAH" as you right click and obliterate Wraeclast's hordes.

Summary:
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I was super excited when I saw the Unique staff from 3.23, The Burden of Shadows, and immediately began working on this build. This build started with Penance Brand of Dissipation (PBOD) in Softcore, but with upcoming nerfs likely in 3.24, I converted it to Hexblast. It plays similarly to a Relic of the Pact/Blood Sacrament build, but without the need to stand in place for as long. I will update the guide as able.

Strengths:
Spoiler

Unbelievably High Life Pool
High block chance
No bricking map modifiers
No life/mana flasks
Low number of bound skills
Customizability
Low dexterity requirement

Weaknesses:
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Less than 2 seconds of not taking damage (this includes damage over time)
Adding more gems to this build (other than the ones described in this guide) costs you life or resistances

Path of Building (POB, a separate program):
Spoiler

Use the Community version of PoB.
These POBs are customizable and best viewed in the program itself (vice the webpage, which does not show everything), but keep in mind that you want at least 75% of all resistances, at least 16000 maximum life, and 50% physical damage reduction (preferably more). Chaos resistance is more important with abyss content, so if you don't plan to run abysses, chaos resistance is less important.
Note that there are passive skills allocated from the Shadow starting point. Start allocating them after you allocate Path of the Shadow ascendancy node.

POBs:
RECOMMENDED:
https://pobb.in/mBW_cMqSi0Xr

League Start:
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If you desire to league start this build, that would probably be pretty rough, so I recommend this build as your second build of the league. I may add a leveling guide in the future.

Key mechanics:
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Life stacking (6 life masteries), Blood Magic, block, armour, Arcane Surge, Iron Will, Pain Attunement, and Eternal Youth/Dissolution of the Flesh.

The build is immune to ignite, poison, bleeding, and corrupted blood (all optional but improve quality and speed of play greatly).

Ascendancies:
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Scion's Saboteur and Hierophant are what I chose, but there are other options (you get 2 of these):
Saboteur gives AOE, CDR, 7.1% DPS, and enables tree pathing with Path of the Shadow
Hierophant gives about 9.1% DPS
Berserker gives 14.9% DPS but -4.8 EHP
Chieftain gives 2.3% DPS, 1.6% life, ignite immunity, and slows monsters
Pathfinder gives you flask uptime, a bleed solution, and movespeed

My Order:
1. Grab the Two double-attribute ascendancy passives that give Intelligence
2. Saboteur
3. Hierophant
4. Path of the Shadow

How to play the build:
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You must place the mines with your right-click in front of your character so that they are near the tankiest enemies. Hold down the key that you bound "Detonate Mines" to, for example, the R key. You do not want to take constant damage, so if your life reservation creeps down to about 25% life left, make sure to back away and get 2 seconds away from damage so that your reservation can reset. If you get surrounded or trapped by enemies, switch to your backbar (default: the X key) to gain life and use Flame Dash to reposition yourself. Then, switch back to the staff to start dealing damage again.

Bandits
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Kill them all

Pantheon
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Major: Brine King (fully upgraded)
Minor: Abberath (upgraded)

Gear
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The items below may be outdated. Refer to the POB section above for the recommended items. This is a Life-stacking build. Do not neglect Life on your items.
Staff
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The crafting bench can force 6 sockets on any staff for 350 jewellers if you or a friend have the recipe.
Spam Chromatic Orbs until you get 6 red sockets.
Mine is 6-linked, but yours doesn't need to be.

A setup for the backbar could be these two items for when you really need more life and a quick escape (optional).

Armour Items
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Unless you have an aurabot, the armour items should be an armour and/or evasion base, and armour modifiers are very important. These items should have eldritch implicits from ichors and embers as shown. These items should have about 4 white sockets amongst them to get some elemental resistances from the amulet. The other sockets should be red to get some life from the amulet.

The Body armour is a defensive Lightning Coil. The sockets should be 4 blue and 2 green, 6-linked.

Helmet should have as much life as you can manage and chaos resistance. The Eater of Worlds implicit should be either cold, lightning, or fire. The links don't matter.

Gloves should have as much life as you can manage and chaos resistance. The links don't matter.

Boots should have as much life as you can manage and whichever resistances you are lacking. Add movement speed as well. The links don't matter.

Jewellery
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The Amulet gives you benefits based on how many empty sockets you have and their colours. We like red and white sockets in this build. Anoint with Teal, Opalescent, and Silver Oils. Alternatively, use Violet, Silver, and Silver Oils.

Ring 1 contains Summon Skitterbots (blue).

Ring 2 contains Despair (blue) for your Shocking Skitterbot to apply Despair and you Chilling Skitterbot will keep on chilling.

The Belt will be an Elder or Hunter influence Stygian Vise or Leather Belt with two good life prefixes. You can make one by using Chaos Orbs on an ilvl 84+ Stygian Vise or Leather Belt until you get tier 1 life in the prefix as well as an open prefix and an open suffix. Then, fill suffixes temporarily on the Crafting Bench and use a Hunter's Exalted Orb to get a chance at getting the second life prefix. Once you get that, lock prefixes on the Crafting Bench and reroll on the Horticrafting Bench to include a Chaos modifier, hoping to get Chaos resistance. Finish it on the Crafting Bench with additional Chaos Resistance mixed with the elemental resistance of your choice from a Betrayal recipe.

Jewels
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Dissolution of the Flesh drops from Searing Exarch and is key to raising your life pool. You want a 29% or 30% roll.

Rare jewel should have 7% increased maximum life and either resistances or strength. I chose to have dexterity instead, useful for high-level Hypothermia support.

Flasks
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Prefix modifiers on the flasks should improve the uptime of the flask. Suffix modifiers on the flasks are somewhat interchangeable. You want any mods that include "less duration" to be on your flasks with the most uptime, such as a Bismuth Flask. This build especially hates damage over time (DOTs), so 3 flask suffixes make you immune to 4 types of DOTs. Reduced effect of curses and increased armour are also good suffixes.

Quartz Flask is used for those moments when you get surrounded or have no escape route. It gives you phasing and a little defense.

Amethyst Flask is for chaos resistance. A better choice is the more expensive Progenesis.

If you are wearing the Lightning Coil chest, use a Topaz Flask.

Taste of Hate Sapphire Flask raises your physical and cold damage mitigation.

Ruby Flask increases your fire damage mitigation.

Last edited by asianskater2004 on Apr 10, 2024, 2:29:22 AM
Last bumped on Apr 27, 2024, 3:33:35 PM
Very intresting build you got there. Minimal build. Your Ring is the hero here! Great job!
Very cool Idea. Could you provide maybe a Video ?

How would the DPS in POB need to be calculated for true DPS ? Cant be "only" 1 Mil. Is that 1 Mil per Mine ?

What is the hardest content you ran with this ? I would be interested how well it works in Simulacrum/Ubers/Ultimatum Trialmaster.
"
NoBotGamer wrote:
Very cool Idea. Could you provide maybe a Video ?

How would the DPS in POB need to be calculated for true DPS ? Cant be "only" 1 Mil. Is that 1 Mil per Mine ?

What is the hardest content you ran with this ? I would be interested how well it works in Simulacrum/Ubers/Ultimatum Trialmaster.


Tier 16 unjuiced. I doubt it would be doing any of those three well, but you are welcome to try. Bring an aurabot.
Hi, very cool build !

I am kinda new to Scion but why the Hierophant ascendancy, I can't quite see the benefit over pathfinder or berserker, is it only for arcane surge?

Any updates planned soon for a more definitive version?

Thank you!

The Hierophant ascendancy is to buff the arcane surge. You are correct about the Pathfinder or Berserker being viable options. I'm adding them to the build guide now and describing their pros/cons.

I don't unfortunately have updates planned, but do you have something specific you are looking for? I don't know what you mean by definitive, but I can probably provide it.
I am confused. The PoB you posted is 3.23 with no 3.24 information on it. This one right? https://pobb.in/mBW_cMqSi0Xr

Yes. In POB there is a button at the bottom of the Tree tab that allows you to convert it to 3.24. There will be no substantive changes when you do so.

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