Hex

Overview

The Hex is the mage — top burst damage in the roster, bottom survivability. A Wizard/Necro hybrid, the Hex fires slow, heavy bolts that splash on impact and builds toward a channeled cluster nuke. Its lifedrain ability is the only sustain it gets. Everything else is killing the room before the room kills it.

The class name encodes its identity: “Hex” as a curse (the Necro lineage) and hexadecimal (CS/AI). Its defining constraint is the no-OP-mage contract (FOUNDATION L172): unlike RotMG’s Wizard, the Hex is explicitly not allowed to be best at range, damage, AND survivability simultaneously. It gets burst. It pays in paper EHP. Land the cluster nuke on a packed room and everything dies. Whiff it on a spread or moving pack and you took the channel risk for nothing.

Source mix: Wizard + Necro.

Weapon — Sigil Staff (energy bolt with splash)

The Hex fires slow, deliberate bolts, not a spray:

• Pattern: a single slow, heavy energy bolt that explodes on impact for ~1.5-tile-radius AoE splash. Mid-range. Each shot is a commit — you aim it at a cluster.
• Fire rate: ~1.8 shots per second — among the slowest in the roster. You get fewer chances; each one matters.
• Projectile speed: ~7 tiles per second — the slowest in the game. Readable and predictable, which means positioning the splash zone is a skill, not a spam. An enemy cluster that moves before impact takes no splash.
• Damage: ~22 base direct + ~14 splash damage. The top Gain (ATK) stat in the roster. Hitting four enemies with one bolt is the highest single-moment total damage in the game.

Abilities

Both abilities are MP/mana-gated. Bolt is the most expensive ability in the roster — the Hex needs high Bandwidth (MP pool) and Refresh (WIS regen) to cast it regularly. Gain (ATK) feeds both the Sigil bolt and ability damage scaling.

Bolt (A1 — damage lane)

A cluster nuke with a required wind-up — the signature and the risk.

• After a ~0.4 second channel (during which the Hex cannot move freely), detonates a ~5-tile-radius AoE burst dealing ~60 damage.
• Positioning-gated by design: Bolt deals full damage only on tightly-clustered, relatively stationary targets. Spread-out or actively-moving packs take reduced damage or none — the built-in punish that enforces the no-OP contract.
• MP cost: ~40 — the priciest ability in the roster, reflecting the damage ceiling.

The 0.4-second wind-up is the entire skill expression of Hex. Committing to a channel in a bullet-hell while standing still requires predicting where the pack will be in half a second, not where it is now. Whiffing the channel on a target that moved is the built-in punishment that stops Hex from being the dominant meta pick. A great Hex reads the pack’s movement and pre-commits; a bad one channels into an empty space.

Drain — skull (A2 — control / sustain / mobility lane)

A lifedrain — area damage that heals the caster.

• Fires a Necro-style skull that damages enemies within a ~3-tile radius for ~25 AoE damage.
• Heals the Hex for ~30% of all damage dealt by the cast (capped per cast — cannot out-heal a serious incoming hit).
• MP cost: ~30.

Drain is the Hex’s only sustain — its sole answer to paper EHP, and the only way to recover from chip damage without retreating. It is also a risk: to land maximum drain you must be close enough to hit a pack, which is close enough to get hit on the squishiest body in the roster. Choosing when to spend a cast on sustain versus saving MP for Bolt is a constant resource decision.

Survival Model

No built-in mobility. No defensive passive. Kill-first or die.

The Hex survives through:

1. Killing the cluster — the fastest AoE burst in the game means threats die before they close.
2. Drain sustain — topping up chip damage when it’s safe enough to commit the cast.
3. Raw dodging on the lowest EHP pool in the roster — the glass-cannon contract is non-negotiable.

The Hex has the lowest Integrity (HP) and lowest Coherence (DEF) of all five classes. It cannot trade hits. A maxed Hex caught out of position dies as fast as a fresh one — the entire power budget is spent on burst offense, and the bounded gap (~1.8×) holds because fragility is built into the class identity.

No class may be best at range, damage, AND survivability (FOUNDATION L172). Class power-parity at launch is a release gate enforced by the balance-sim oracle.

Stat Identity

Skill Tree Paths

Two per-character trees (lost on death):

• Bolt tree: Annihilate (focused single-target super-nuke), Fork-Bolt (Bolt chains or clusters to nearby targets), Detonate (delayed AoE — place then trigger)
• Drain tree: Vampire (increased heal percentage), Plague (AoE damage-over-time layer), Siphon (MP returned on Drain — sustain the ability economy itself)

Node names are OPEN — path themes are locked, final names are a taste pick.

The glass-cannon contract holds for all Hex skill tree paths (FOUNDATION L172): even the most defensive tree choices keep the Hex at bottom EHP. The tree bends its playstyle; it never removes the defining weakness. The balance oracle enforces this.

Loot Contribution

The Hex earns loot through heavy damage_dealt — especially multi-target splash from the Sigil bolt and packed cluster nukes from Bolt. Drain provides a small self-enable / sustain footprint. The contribution model rewards the Hex for clearing clusters — its role — without requiring it to tank or control.

Strengths and Weaknesses

Strengths

• Highest burst damage ceiling in the roster — a good Bolt on a packed room is the single largest damage moment in the game
• Sigil splash bolt hits multiple targets per shot, making room clear faster than any other auto
• Drain provides the only lifesteal sustain of any class that isn’t gear-dependent

Weaknesses

• Bottom EHP in the roster — one bad position is a one-way trip
• Bolt’s wind-up is a full commitment; whiffing it on a spread pack is both a wasted cast and a survival risk
• No mobility tool — no dash, no escape beyond dodging on foot
• Most MP-hungry class — Bolt sustainability depends on high Bandwidth and Refresh investment