[2023] Slayers Abandoning Hescas?

Many use meta builds which assume optimal play. By adopting more, or even highly defensive builds, they can ease gameplay in Heroic Escalations.

Generally you want to pick either a shield, or life steal type build and see what you can do to maximize survivability, then tune it down and add damage based on skill level.

An example (life steal) would be

• Iceborne (life steal/defense based on missing health)
• Koshais Lantern (heal boost when needed)
• Pike with Concussive Payload (emergency heal button)
  • Bonus points for Parasitic Curse (Team Revive) or Millenium's End (Self Revive)
• +6 Tough cells (Synergy with Koshai's, extreme synergy with Iceborne)
• +3-6 Sturdy if you struggle with being knocked down a lot, keeps you up and healing, also allows you to get hit when reviving others.
• +3 Parasitic (Reduces damage giving time to life leech and boosts how much you steal)
• +6 Nine Lives (another free life on top of weapon) between both cooldowns and reset per kill allows you to die a LOT, but also reduces how much damage you take by a lot over the long term.

Rest=offense

How much you tune into defense vs offense is really down to how comfortable you feel, though the top 4 (Iceborne-Tough) and maybe +3 Sturdy are enough for many. The short of it is though, don't neglect defense in Hescas unless you're really good!

It doesn't. It's the high damage in a single hit potentially at range combined with the life steal build that can give you a huge heal from hitting with it. A good use example would be getting knocked back with very low life and you want to heal up before safely re-engaging.