Mastery: Avenger (Hunting / Earth)
Build: Physical / Pierce / Fire spear hybrid


Stab things with a cool, fiery spear while you drop an eruption at your feet. Hybrid build concentrating mostly on Str / Dex with some Int thrown in.

Pros:

• Good mix of damage types
  
• Good single target with Study Prey
  
• Decent aoe in Eruption
  
• A number of buffs and auras
  
• Oh ♥♥♥♥ option in Stone Form to let you pop a potion

Cons:

• Lack of a good spammable LMB
  
• Extreme mana issues, especially combined with energy reservation from your auras
  
• Tricky to get all the stats you need

Ensnare


Ensnare provides a CC to lock opponents in place. I didn't pick it up in my build but I can see a few points being useful here simply for using on ranged enemies. Chasing down packs of archers and kelpies is very annoying. Skip Barbed Netting synergy skill through, more important skills to invest in.


Takedown


Your RMB attack. Useful for charging ranged enemies or for a big blow. Has a 8 second recharge time through so you'll be using default attack most of the time. A single point in it and it's synergy skill is fine in the beginning. Once you max out masteries and vital skills you can invest more into the skill.


Wood Lore


A fantastic passive that boosts your defensive ability and attack speed. Max it early.


Markmanship


Pretty much the reason that Hunting is considered the 'bow' mastery. As this build is designed around melee with spear, this ranged skill doesn't concern us.


Art of the Hunt


An excellent aura, Art of the Hunt gives you nice bonuses pierce and bleeding damage and extra damage specifically to beasts and beastmen. The Find Cover synergy skill boosts your chance to avoid projectiles which is nice as ranged enemies are super annoying. Both should be maxxed.

Drop a single point into Trail Blazing at a minimum for the entrapment immunity (no getting netted by centaurs). Extra points just boost your movement speed so you should only add additional points to the skill if you're movement speed is below the maximum 166%.

Also note that Art of the Hunt and Trail Blazing together reserves a solid chunk of mana; you may find yourself having mana issues early if you pick them both up along with Earth Enchantment. Find Cover takes only a smidgen in comparison.


Herbal Remedy


A nice buff that gives a very sizable boost to your poison resistance and some additional health regeneration. Frees you from having to worry about getting poison resistance from gear and allows you to concentrate on other needs instead. Lasts a decent time and can be recast whenever you have mana.


Study Prey


The best debuff in the game? Debuffs enemies in a small circle with large physical and pierce resistance letting your spear blows do more damage. The Flush Out synergy skill also reduces defensive ability, bleeding resistance and elemental resistances letting your bleeds and fire do more damage. Absolutely max out and cast as often as you can.


Gouge


Gives you a chance to apply a bleed dot. Not a priority. Drop a single point into it and max out your other skills.


Call of the Hunt


Useful short term buff to damage, attack speed and big boost against beasts and beastmen. Drop one point into it and it's Exploit Weakness synergy skill and max it later.


Monster Lure


Didn't pick it up. I mostly used Stone Form instead as an 'oh ♥♥♥♥' option when I needed to heal or with eruption. If you want to use the skill to distract enemies you can probably free up some points from Trail Blazing, Takedown/Eviscerate or Gouge. I would not recommend the Detonate synergy skill through.


Volley


Gives you a chance to do a triple attack. Absolutely max it out when you have free points.

Earth Enchantment


Aura that will boost your fire damage and give your spear attacks fire damage. A single point is fine in the beginning, instead max out it's Brimstone synergy skill first with it's physical damage buff and fire dot. I didn't bother with Stone Skin synergy through. At ultimate level (14/10) it provides only a 36% buff to fire resist and 75 to armour. There are other skills more worth picking up.


Flame Surge


Earth's primary spammable nuke (once you've maxxed the Barrage synergy skill at least). The attack range is very limited imo so you have to be pretty close to enemies which isn't great for caster and for a hybrid it's very mana consuming. Flame Arch adds extra damage and more projectiles. There's a debuff to defensive ability but I just can't see this being worth it.


Heat Shield


Short term buff that grants a bonus to physical resistance, fire damage absorption and fire retaliation. The skill has a short cooldown before you can recast it. Drop a single point into the skill as soon as you can as you get the full buff to physical resistance (15%) right away. Increasing the skill buffs the damage absorption and the retaliation damage. The fire retaliation damage is honestly negligible so it comes down to the fire absorption. Put extra points into the skill when you need more absorption of fire damage.


Ring of Flame


Never tried this skill out before. From my understanding, it can be useful in normal difficulty for clearing quickly but the damage scales off in epic / legendary difficulty and it apparently drains a ton of mana. Your energy pool isn't particularly large even before you tack on all the energy reservations from your auras.


Volcanic Orb


Fires an orb in an arc that explodes when it hits the ground dealing fire and physical damage to small radius. The Conflagration synergy skill adds a patch of burning ground that does burn damage. Fragmentation sends out fragments that inflict fire and physical damage and apply a short 1.5s stun. The stun can be useful I guess, I find the skill a little clunky to use sometimes through and prefer Eruption.


Stone Form


Makes you immobile and unable to attack or cast but grants you 100% damage absorption and a health regeneration buff. Excellent 'oh ♥♥♥♥' button for when you get overwhelmed and need to heal up with a potion or remove a nasty dot like bleed. Good combo with Eruption. Drop the Eruption at your feet then enter Stone Form. You're protected from everything while they take damage from eruption. A single point is fine. Extra points just boost health regeneration. You can just use a pot instead to heal up. The Molten Rock synergy skill adds a pretty negligible fire retaliation damage. Not really required, I just dumped some points on my last level up before clearing legendary as I wasn't sure where else to put them at the time.


Summon Core Dweller


Summons a big golem as a pet. The Inner Fire synergy skill boosts total speed, dexterity and health regeneration and adds a bit of extra fire damage. The Wildfire synergy skill lets him light the ground on fire around him and burns people who step over it. The Metamorphosis synergy skill boosts health, armour, armour absorption and elemental resistance.

The Core Dweller is not really a DPS pet. It is basically a high health / armour tank and as such is useful for casters as they're squishy. Despite this, I'd say Liche King, multiple Wolves and Wisp are probably 'tankier' overall. Liche King and Wolves have synergy skills which provide damage absorption (instead of straight up health / armour) and Wisp has god-tier dodge and projectile avoidance and is only at risk against spells. The Dweller can go down pretty fast in Legendary and has a fairly long minute cooldown.

The Core Dweller would need some investment to be useful, I didn't really need a tank and wasn't interested in having a pet for this char so I skipped.


Volativity


A wonderful passive that gives you a 33% chance of getting big boosts to your physical, fire and burn damage. Max as soon as possible.


Eruption


Basically creates a mini-volcano on the ground for 6s that spurts out fiery rock fragments that do physical and fire damage. Max out the skill when you can but make sure you have enough mana to reliably use it.

Against packs of melee mobs, debuff them from range with Study Prey, drop the Eruption at your feet and stab them until the die. Ranged mobs are more a hassle as they won't stay still and will scatter so Eruption won't work as well (Ensnare can potentially be used to lock them in place or you can just use Takedown to charge at them). You can also use Eruption + Stone Form to dish out damage to melee mobs attacking you while you're invulnerable and heal up with potions.

Health: A few points can help pad your health a bit.

Energy: This is the only character so far that I've felt like putting points into Energy. Normally you can just buy mana potions but your energy pool won't be that big and a pretty big chunk of it will be eaten by your auras unless you have gear to lessen the reservation amount. I ended up deciding to save the points for other skills but it was painful at times.

Strength: Boosts your physical damage. End game strength gear requires ~650 or so.

Intellect: Maybe try to get somewhere around ~300-400

Dexterity: Boosts your offensive and defensive ability and your bleed damage. You'll need at least enough to equip your spears. Str 1:1 Dex is probably fine.

As you'll be in the thick of things you'll need to keep your resists up. You can get away without resists in early normal but you'll want to start building them by act 3 and definitely by act 4. By Epic, ~40% to all resists is a good number to shoot for. In Legendary ~50% is a good number to keep yourself covered (bleed damage is fairly uncommon but try to keep it at least positive), you may need to rotate gear around to top your resists up for particular fights.

+skill items are always nice to have but isn't mandatory for the build. There are no skills reliant on ultimate levels for the build to function properly. Skills can be buffed to 4 over the normal max level.

Extra health and energy can be useful as you'll be juggling strength, intellect and dexterity and won't have many points to drop into them. Earth / Hunting doesn't give you a huge amount of health and you'll have energy issues so items that reduce energy reservation can help.

Recharge reduction not really needed in the build.

I'd suggest starting with Hunting Mastery. At level 2, pick up Hunting Mastery. One point into Takedown, one point into Wood Lore. Max out Wood Lore and level up mastery. Leave Herbal Remedy alone for now. One point into Art of the Hunt, Call of the Hunt, Eviscerate, Find Cover. Pump points into Study Prey.

In Earth, one point into Earth Enchantment and Heat Shield. Pump up Brimstone and mastery. One point into Stone Form.

Max Hunting Mastery for Flush Out and Volley. Max Earth Mastery for Eruption and Volativity. Max your vital skills first then max secondary and / or situational skills.

If you have any queries about the build leave a comment and I will respond when I have time.