Going through all the skills again, Hexes still stands out as one of my favorite tertiaries in the game (Tarot being the other). However, I was a Hexen only once (as a Nihilist) and became very frustrated very quickly, as I just couldn't wrap my head around the skill.
So, from other experienced Hexes users, what are some strategies that have helped you (in whatever context)? What are some synergies between afflictions in the skill itself? The more in-depth, the better. I'm trying to wrap my head around affliction strategies that I may not otherwise see.
Thanks!
Comments
"But paradise is locked and bolted...
We must make a journey around the world
to see if a back door has perhaps been left open."
-Heinrich Von Kleist, "On the Puppet Theater"
Hexes is a one trick pony. Vapors spam to hide ectoplasm. His kills are more about balance loss stacking than anything hexes offers, speaking as someone who has fought him a few times. He did the blackout spam thing against me, it didn't work, and then it turns out he didn't need it. I was balance locked anyways. You can hex with scabies and epilepsy if overkill is your thing.
You can sleep lock, which is questionable without aeon, and give very short bursts of afflictions, but otherwise hexes is pretty meh. It's extremely costly and the 6 affliction limit combined with the power costs of guardian/wiccan instas makes hexes underwhelming. I'm working on a strategy to envoy it so it's actually a functional tert outside of vapors, but so far I'm meeting some pretty silly resistance to my suggestions.
It has its perks, and have used it for that, but it turns out to just be a super gimpy demesne watch. It's nice to spread paralyse hexes everywhere to keep runners under control. I've found it's not all that useful vs Celenwilde because of the non stop prismatic spam from trueheal/full/serpent/harmony. Slowing them down isn't that useful when you can't even hit them.
The problem with hexes, for wiccans, is that it's so expensive to do anything, and it lasts like 10-15 seconds before you are out of power, out of hexes, and the other guy cured most, if not all, of their affs. Shuyin even mentioned this problem with illuminati and having to restort to sleep spam and jinx just to wait for power regen, and they pretty formidable passive affliction capabilities to back it up.
I have a hexes report up to help with the overall problem of being super costly and the 6 hex limit. Getting some opposition though (with somewhat strange reasoning...I think there's a comment about giving hexes more "utililty. I don't know what that's about.) so feel free to comment/support/suggest alternative.
I think people are going to go OH GOD NO NIHILIST/ILLUMINATI OP. What can you do, though.