Hexblast ignite and the new blackflame ring interaction

Hello fellow Exiles,

I was thinking about the new blackflame ring that lets enemies ignited by you take chaos instead of fire damage.
First I thought increases and reductions to fire damage wouldn't affect the ignite but then I saw that the ring has a fire damage over time multiplier on it, implying that fire + chaos modifiers are able to increase the resulting ignite damage.

From there on I searched a matching skill and got to Hexblast.
Hexblast has a strange ailment applying ability. All damage from hexblast can ignite. Hexblasts base damage is chaos though.

So chaos damage applies a ignite that is chaos damage over time.
My question is:

Would fire damage scale the damage of the resulting ignite even though it was never fire damage?

I'll write it out for whoever DON'T want to look at a Youtube video for it

Blackflame
Amethyst Ring
+x% to Fire DoT Multiplier
50% Reduced Ignite duration on Enemies
+x% chance to Ignite
Enemies ignited by you take Chaos damage instead of Fire Damage from Ignite
Withered does not expire on enemies ignited by you
+x% to Fire and Chaos resistance
Beyond the veil of death, there burns a fire / by whose light night is borne

This is... a very bad case of miscommunication.
Since your Ignites deal Chaos damage instead of Fire Damage, the bonus onf Fire DoT will NOT increase your Ignite Damage. It will, however, boost any other kind of fire DoT skill (like Righteous Fire) you may use. This can come in handy with skills like Burning Arrow, who deal burning debuffs along with the usual Ignite, in order to vary a bit the damage.

Why in Innocence's name you would want to use more than 1 type of damage in a non-EE environment is beyond me.

P.S.
I guess the main idea is exactly to use it with Hexblast. This way you can focus on Chaos, lower the enemy's chaos resistance and deal an Ignite that deals Chaos instead of fire, so you don't have to build up Fire DoTs.

"

Maxtrux wrote:

Since your Ignites deal Chaos damage instead of Fire Damage, the bonus onf Fire DoT will NOT increase your Ignite Damage.

but it does not say you deal chaos damage instead of fire, it says that enemies take chaos instead of fire

it would mean you are still dealing it as fire but they take it as chaos

otherwise the wording could have been "your ignites deal chaos damage over time instead of fire" or something like that

I know, that would imply DoT conversion (like damage taken as) which we know is not possible atm

Your explanation would also mean none of the fire/elemental/burn mods affect it..

so.. Im not saying Im sure you are wrong but you might be :)

we will see...

"

Ludvator wrote:

so.. Im not saying Im sure you are wrong but you might be :)

Sure. I mean, we are talking about things that are literally been made public yesterday. We are also assuming those new Unique mechanics will work as intended.

"

Ludvator wrote:

but it does not say you deal chaos damage instead of fire, it says that enemies take chaos instead of fire

it would mean you are still dealing it as fire but they take it as chaos

otherwise the wording could have been "your ignites deal chaos damage over time instead of fire" or something like that

I know, that would imply DoT conversion (like damage taken as) which we know is not possible atm

Thank you for pointing out that "take", it's the little things that matter.

I guess this means either: that it's just a fancy way to say "your Ignite damage bypass energy shield and it's resisted by Chaos resistance" (both those things are not new, the latter has been introduced in an even more elaborate way from The Admiral) OR we are witnessing the very first DoT conversion ever, with the worst possible choice of wording.

"

Maxtrux wrote:

I guess this means either: that it's just a fancy way to say "your Ignite damage bypass energy shield and it's resisted by Chaos resistance"

If thats true then hexblast is probably a bad choice if someone wanted to utilize this ring, since hexblast allows the player chaos dmg dealt to be resisted by the mobs lowest ele res, which the player can reduce significantly using curses and EE and the like.

"

Orbaal wrote:

lowest ele res

Judging by the ingame description and wikia page, "lowest resistance" is not implied to be just elemental. Physical resistance is not a thing, but Chaos Resistance is, and can be lowered via Despair. I don't understand however if it's something like Wave of Conviction, where "resistance" is implicitly to be intended as elemental because there is no such thing as Chaos Exposure (yet).

Can you please link me a Reddit or Forum post that clearly states Hexblast only goes for the lowest elemental resistance, or show me some personal experience? I believe the absence of sponsored Hexblast Despair builds should imply something, but I'd like to be sure.

You are right, its just res.

I never considered chaos res when I tested hexblast ignite, since the means to reduce chaos res are far more limited than ele res and forgot it was an option.

That said: Id still argue you´d likely need flammibilty to reach 100% ignite chance. If you then wanted to reduce chaos res, you´d need to be able to apply a second curse because otherwise fire res is likely ending up being the lowest res and at that point it should be more efficient to use ele weakness over despair, especially if you take EE into account. Which is why I used despair as my 3rd curse - not for the res reduction but simply for the dot scaling.

But thats just my approach

I was really excited for occultist burning arrow XD

"

Orbaal wrote:

That said: Id still argue you´d likely need flammibilty to reach 100% ignite chance. If you then wanted to reduce chaos res, you´d need to be able to apply a second curse because otherwise fire res is likely ending up being the lowest res and at that point it should be more efficient to use ele weakness over despair, especially if you take EE into account. Which is why I used despair as my 3rd curse - not for the res reduction but simply for the dot scaling.

Assuming Theory 1 is right ("Ignition damage is still Fire and scales with Fire DoT, but is resisted by Chaos Resistance instead"), Hexblast only allows its damage to deal elemental ailment. Apparently, there is no "base chance to inflict ailments" - either we go crit or we raise this value with the "+x% chance to ignite".

Suppose we don't go crit and try with the long way around. Suppose we are not Elementalist nor we use a conflux or "always ignite" shenanigan. Let's see

A big chunk of base ignition chance comes from Combustion. Lv20 would give us 49% base. It will also give a More Fire Damage which, albeit it won't boost Hexblast's damage, will increase our Ignite's damage. The only downside is the -19% FireRes it deals to the enemy. That said, usually bosses and other enemies have higher eleRes than ChaosRes - also, Despair will aid us in making our enemies vulnerable to Chaos.

We are wearing a Blackflame, which conveniently gives a boost on Chance to Ignite. The showcased version has a +14%, so let's go with it. Now we are at 63%

How to build for the last 37% is up to the player. You may want to build up some nodes for increasing ignite duration, because of the damping 50% reduced from Blackflame. You may want to use a Phantasmal Ignite Proliferation (10% chance) or a more common Elemental Proliferation (20% chance for any eleAilment, which may be better for the purpose of Hexblast). You may use some equips like Martyr of Innocence if you too want to bask in those black flames. Or just craft it in your weapon, even from Veiled Mods.

All of this, I'll say that again, IF Theory 1 is right.

"

Maxtrux wrote:

Assuming Theory 1 is right ("Ignition damage is still Fire and scales with Fire DoT, but is resisted by Chaos Resistance instead")

Going with this theory and assuming its correct, you´d try to scale fire dot from tree best you can at least early on. Plus other sources like clusterjewels ofc further down the road.
If you did that, you´d most likely allocate at least Breath of Flames and Holy Fire, which already provide some 40-50% ignite chance by themselves and the nodes you have to allocate to get there (depending on your pathing) - if you arent bypassing those nodes via anoint.

So those 40-50%, the ring itself (~14%) and a lvl20 combustion (49%) would be good enough to achieve 100% ignite chance and no curse applied just yet, which is mandatory if you also wanted to take advantage of Doom and I cant see a reason why you wouldnt.
For each 5 Doom we´d get 35% MORE dmg with ailments, according to the wiki the default max Doom is 30 and can be scaled to 40 thanks to Skittering Runes.
Thats 8 x 35% MORE dmg = 280% MORE dmg
Too good to ignore.

Trouble is the time it takes ramp up Doom. Doomsday keystone would guarantee max Doom within 1 sec and I dont know how long it would take to get 40 Doom without Doomsday. My assumption was that this keystone wouldnt even exist, if didnt speed up Doom ramp up - not sure if thats correct tho.

Also a normal ignite would last 4sec, increased by 20-25% thanks to Breath of Flames and one travelnode inside the Holy Fire wheel which then is reduced by 50% tanks to Blackflame. So we´d end up with an ignite duration of 70-75% which translates roughly into 3sec ignite duration.
This leaves us with a 2sec window (1sec for Doomsday already subtracted) to cast our curse, cast hexblast and move around to dodge incoming hits.
So yeah you probably want to increase the ignite duration as you mentioned, otherwise its kind of defeating the dot playstyle and might become quite hectic to get it all done in time and keep the target ignited all the time - especially if you have to deal with a very mobile boss.


At this point you´d have to figure how to scale the dmg further.
I went for archmage because hexblast will allow all dmg sources to ignite. Archmage is very strong and will most likely be paired with Arcance Cloak providing even more flat dmg for the ignite scaling as well as a solid defense, if enough mana is available which it will be, if we invest into it and then go MoM.
Sounded like a solid synergy to me and thats why I went for it.

The rest of my scaling came from 3 curses and curse effectivess, which in hindsight wasnt that great. Hexblast did hit very hard and killed bosses fast enough - but hexproof exists and it sucks for this approach.
It might be smarter to ignore curses for the most part (except the one needed to trigger Doomsday) and get the dmg elsewhere unless you go Occultist or get the curse chest, which I didnt want to do because I thought CoD would be better suited for archmage MoM build and Profane Bloom ruins ignite prolif anyways.

Now because I went for MoM, Archmage and Arcane Cloak I also wanted Dynamo, which provides access to the Scion life wheel, Battle Rouse and Agnostic if you wanted to.
My thoughtprocess at this point was: Might as well grab EE and EO using Stormbrand to trigger both and apply both of my non selfcast curses.


So I still dont quite see how you´d reduce the enemies chaos res to the point it outscales EE plus everything else you´d get nearby and you´d be "forced" to invest into duration which an approach without Blackflame doesnt require.