Hex Blast Clarification?

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Hexblast
This is a new skill gem that calls down a beam of chaos damage on the target. If the target is cursed with a hex, it consumes that hex and causes a shockwave around that enemy. Similar to Impending Doom, the more Doom the supported hex built up, the greater damage the skill deals.

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Although Hexblast is a chaos damage spell, it has some elemental-themed properties that make it special. For one, the damage it deals has the ability to ignite, shock or freeze.

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Secondly, it deals damage based on the lowest resistance the enemy has! For example, this lets you use an offensive hex such as Flammability and still make use of the fire resistance reduction that it provides.

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Maxtrux wrote:

Of course only a patch will tell (probably). That said...

1) "the more Doom the supported hex built up, the greater damage the skill deals.". To me it looks like either a "Deal x% more damage per Doom stack on enemy", something similiar to Wither Stack, or a "Deal x damage per Doom stack on enemy", something similiar to the consume-and-damage Discharge

2) "Your chaos damage can ignite, Shock or Freeze" is already seen on Zerphi's Heart. It means your chaos damage can inflict those ailments (Remember that Freeze =/= chill, something to consider when using Hypothermia), and those ailments will scale also on chaos damage (by "also" I mean: if the hit has added damage that can deliver that ailment, it will add to them. For example, if you add Fire damage to a Chaos hit, the Ignition will scale its damage based on both the Fire and the Chaos damage from the hit).

About ignition, the burning damage coming from the skill will still be fire (elemental) damage and will scale with fire (elemental) damage (NOT spell damage, since it's a DoT and does not clearly states Spell Damage applies also to that. An exception may be Essence Drain, which clearly states Spell Damage also applies to the skill's DoT, though in this case there is ambiguity on "the skill's DoT". It's not clear if it refers only to the Chaos DoT from the skill, or any DoT it delivers.
In other words, if you want your chaos damage to deliver more burning DoT you will want to build both Chaos damage and Fire/Elemental/FireDoT damage, which may be not optimal.
Finally, remember that this kind of chaos damage can still deliver poison if you can make your Chaos damage poison, thereby applying two different DoTs on an enemy with 1 single hit

3) Assuming "lowest resistance" is worded like Wave of Conviction, it should mean it will deliver a flat base damage of the element (no physical, no chaos) with the lowest resistance. Alternatively, by "lowest resistance" even Chaos can be considered. Certainly not Physical. There is no such thing as "Physical Resistance", only physical damage reduction (buffed by Armour and EC, for example, and nerfed by Overwhelm mechanic and Punishment) or physical damage taken (like in Vulnerability), so it's impossible to "lower" an inexistant resistance. As Wise Oak users know, if you somehow manage to lower all of the resistances of an enemy to the same exact percentage, then all of those lower resistances will generate extra damage. It is however quite difficult to achieve on an enemy, since some white mobs still have natural resistances

4) If the chaos damage is able to deliver an ailment, then it is right to believe the skill can indeed hit. If it can hit, elemental penetrations will work

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DER_PSYCHOPATH wrote:

Freeze is not chill, but enemies are chilled if they are frozen.

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When a target is frozen, it is also considered chilled. As the target becomes unfrozen, chill will remain on the target for an additional duration of 0.3 seconds.[3]

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DER_PSYCHOPATH wrote:

Essence Drain clearly specifies "this skill's damage over time effect", meaning it applies to the ED DoT, but not ignite or poison inflicted by the ED hit.

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DER_PSYCHOPATH wrote:

It remains to be seen what type of damage the skill actually deals, and there is speculation that it will deal chaos damage and either use the value of the lowest resistance for chaos resistance instead (or for all damage dealt by the skill), in which case chaos penetration would be relevant, or actually mitigate the chaos damage (or all damage) with the lowest resistance, in which case penetration for that damage type would be relevant.