Frigid Chaos -- Dual-Curse Aura Hexblast Bloodmage, Freeze and Hinder!

Build and equipment, video linked on page too: https://maxroll.gg/poe2/planner/zg3es0zh

Currently at T8 maps, I just got my 3rd ascendency done (it was hard) and now I have 2.7k HP and 1.8k ES with 1300 armour and I am CRUSHING. Figured some people might be interested to see how it works.

I have to sleep (its 4am) but I'll drop a quick description of how this works.

First, you run your despair (-chaos res) and chains on blasphemy, this not only makes you do a lot of damage and allows you to spam hexblast, but you also get survivability from chains. You could run another aura if you want, but I think chains is the best.

Then you hexblast 90% of the content. The damage is so high that I currently prefer to lower the cost of hexblast since you're spamming it and you don't want to sacc all your HP and mana.

When you come up against a rare or boss that doesn't go down in a few hexblasts you use the following strategy.

1. Contagion them
1.1 (optional) ED them
2. Drop your Dark Effigy totems w/ withering touch on them
2.1 (optional) maybe drop your profane ritual for more damage
3. Hexblast away

Due to Contagion's Chaotic Freeze effect, Hexblast will pretty much instantly freeze any rare. Then you can go ham on them while they're frozen. The passive tree makes our curses hinder, and we also get bonus damage on hindered enemies with HITS (ED and Hexblast) and we also pick up a bonus damage to HITS (ED and hexblast) on Frozen enemies.

Currently the non-rare enemies are not strong enough to survive very long, but in the case that higher tier maps have tougher mobs, you can use your contagion on one of the mobs, nuke them, spread the contagion, then you can hexblast the group and freeze them ALL and nuke them down. If they get even tougher you can drop your withering totems.

If there are any questions feel free to ask and I can answer when I wake up tomorrow.

Where are you getting your Spirit to use the curse aura? You have 12 spirit on your equipment. Are these more bosses that reward innate spirit bonuses? (I've only seen the first one)

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Rafkin4#7914 wrote:

Where are you getting your Spirit to use the curse aura? You have 12 spirit on your equipment. Are these more bosses that reward innate spirit bonuses? (I've only seen the first one)

There is 3 bosses

Normal
1st act King of the Mist +30
3rd act Fire Witch +30

Cruel
3rd act Fire Witch +40

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Rafkin4#7914 wrote:

Where are you getting your Spirit to use the curse aura? You have 12 spirit on your equipment. Are these more bosses that reward innate spirit bonuses? (I've only seen the first one)

Awake now! I can answer.

In addition the the 100 you get from the campaign (as mentioned by the other poster), I actually have like 40 spirit on my equipment. The amulet also rolled +33 Spirit as a prefix. I actually have 22 spirit spare. So right now all I need from equipment is the 12 innate, plus 33-22 = 11, 12+11 = 22.

Also I noticed an inefficiency in my passive tree that occurred due to respeccing, which I will fix and save 1 point.

Right now I have +50% mana regen anointed on my amulet, but in the future if my mana regen gets better I will annoint the +1 Chaos skills notable.

Edit: Oh also I should say I have +20 quality on blasphemy so the auras are a bit cheaper.

What was leveling like for you? Did you just do SRS + Fire wall and then respec?

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RSilver5#6729 wrote:

What was leveling like for you? Did you just do SRS + Fire wall and then respec?

I played Chaos since day one because originally I intended to go Contagion+ED and it was extremely painful, I very much suffered throughout the campaign. When I got to Hexblast it was just... so much more powerful than my Contagion+ED setup, though it still wasn't amazing for bossing since it is an AoE skill.

I would probably recommend someone level SRS+Fire Wall and respec but I'm not sure how much that would cost and I don't really have any advice since I did the entire game with Contagion+ED.

Edit: And to be honest SRS is about 10x more powerful than this build. This is for people who want to do chaos damage and don't want minions.

I'm now at T13 Maps with this build with not much difference. I got a +2 with spirit Ammy and I have no annointment atm and mana is OKish I might annoint it +1 chaos if I get the emotions for it.

For the most part the map tiers make almost no different. Its been smooth running from T4 through T13, I just die slightly more often in T13, but not often. Though breach is a bit hard.

ED and Contagion changes are coming in the new patch so I might return to that. But I think even if I don't get to T15 by the time I swap builds that this build would do fine in T15.

Now at T15 maps and it is all the same. Going on holidays so can't progress anymore (also might start playing ED+contagion since it has been fixed). But I'm happy to say that this build can handle the highest level maps just fine.

Hey just wanted to drop a post here and say that I've been loving this build. I'm up to T6-7 maps right now and have had no difficulties using it. Rares are no problem, though bosses can be a bit of a struggle, but I'm loving it. Blasphemy makes sure I never miss a monster, a few gems with chaos dmg and inc AoE give really good clear, and I just love this thing in general. I almost never die, and I'm coming up on 3rd Ascension points soon, hopefully, which should make me even tankier. I am curious about 4_ links and what you're thinking about doing with that. Thanks so much!