First off, let me get this out of the way. This isn't going to be a meta build, there's probably better selfcast builds than this too, and i'm sure mines will do better damage. I just hate mines and don't want to play it, and wanted to see what I can do with Archmage on leaguestart.

Also many of the more popular ways to scale hexblast involve some very expensive uniques, and since most traditional archmage items are relatively cheap (Ivory Tower <5c launch day). I thought it might be a decent league starter, so lets give it a try. It does roughly 20M Pinnacle Boss DPS, and some PoB warrior versions i'll include far surpass that.

The general idea of the build is using unleash to help with the (now very long) cast time of hexblast. The high added damage effectiveness of hexblast coupled with the new curse changes give us a lot of extra damage from our large mana pool. I am experimenting with freeze+chill+temp chains+enfeeble+hinder as the main defensive layers.

I have tinkered with a few versions of this build, and the best I could get was it starts out as a lightning damage archmage hexblast but transitions to cold damage + heatshiver later. The most expensive early-game item is an atziri's foible, but that really not a requirement and can be skipped. In general the most expensive item for the whole build is the Prism Guardian, hoping to avoid that item for a few days while i focus on some other important items.

Here's the build progression:

Leveling: https://pobb.in/yGsYWDn-Sqsq

Early Mapping: https://pobb.in/tTQ9fWkB2C0v - 4M Pinnacle DPS

Cold Switch: https://pobb.in/RQdygqRjn_JM - 17M Pinnacle DPS

Much Later: https://pobb.in/HlQcsWBOQGXo - 27M Pinnacle DPS

Full PoB Warrior: https://pobb.in/sQMyEwbi8GYr - 44M Pinnacle DPS

We leave out Forbidden power because we just need the other things more. Would be a good forbidden flesh/flame but Shaper of Storms would be the best to get those big Shocks back.

The builds do a bit more DPS with a void battery but I left it out for cost, also i'm sure there's more to squeeze out with cluster jewels somewhere but I didn't want ot deal with trying to make cluster jewels in PoB. Happy for any recommendations there.

Defensively it is a glass cannon but we're fitting in 3, 50% DPS aura's that could easily be changed. I'm expecting curse on hit from gloves to be the main source of cursing early on for hexblast. For leveling I plan to do pretty standard OOS leveling and swap to hexblast after Act 4. Really needed to get hydrosphere and A4 gems before everything felt good from practice runs.

Please let me know your feedback! (other than mines would be better) Thanks!