Physical Hell Mode Build - SB6

This is a summary of the hell mode build that can be used to start clearing hell mode at lower levels, taking advantage of the high boss damage Vayne does.

The Mythics

Despite the name, this strategy has a blend of physical and magic DPS. To do this strategy, you'll need to have

Main

Vayne - level 15
Chu - level 12
Lancelot - level 12
Kitty Mage - level 12

Optional

Tao - level 12
Indy - level 12
Orc Shaman - level 10
Frog - mostly for gold gain, ideally level 12

You're going to want to have the exclusive treasure on all of these mythics.

Wave Clearing

You can get away with not having Tao 12, because of the physical focus of the build, but it's sometimes hard get an overclocked Chu. In that case, Tao is the second best option until you can get a Chu, because his damage is so high that it will be useful all the way to the end of the game. In fact, if you get a Taoist, and 2 Lancelots, you may not need a Chu at any point. Tao is very good. You'll need the mana regen to back up your Lancelots but it shouldn't take much. The real crux of this strategy, is surviving the horde waves with as little wave clear as you can possibly get. Because you want as little wave clear as possible, I would avoid summoning any of the other wave clears if possible. Anything weaker than Chu or Tao will not be enough to scale with the enemies at the final waves. 2 Chus or Taos paired with 2 Lances is a fairly safe stack to make it to wave 80.

Beating the Bosses

The real focus of this build is the boss damage. You have to important pieces to this - Lancelot, and Vayne. Lancelot is really great here because while he's known for being a boss killer, he also does great damage during horde waves. So you can kill two birds with one stone by getting two Lancelots. Vayne can't do the same - I have Vayne maxxed on both her treasure and her altar, and while she surprisingly can help clear waves up to wave 25-ish, allowing you to save gold as long as possible, she can't help after that. But she does huge boss damage, and because she has ranged attacks, you can have up to 4 attacking the bosses at the same time. I often will only have 2 or 3. If you only have 2 it often gets really close, but you can still win. 4 is a guaranteed easy clear. This still assumes you have 2 Lancelots. An interesting note about Vayne is that she will clear both Barrier, and Grunt, despite Barrier having a huge amount of health, and Grunt being resistant to physical damage. Vayne deals so much physical damage that she will eat through Grunt's health anyways.

Support

The support on this build can be difficult. But with Orc Shaman's exclusive treasure it's much easier. The first issue is that you need as much Defense Reduction as you can possibly get. This is difficult considering this strategy doesn't use Monopoly Man, and Vayne and Lancelot both rely on hunters to summon. Orc Shaman also uses Hunters to summon, but in the long run it's worth it because Orc gives 20 Defense Reduce just by existing, his exclusive treasure makes his stun much stronger, AND buffs physical damage by up to 18%. This 18% is borderline broken when you're using 2 to 3 Vaynes on bosses, and Chu's to do wave clearing. If your partner can contribute Defense Reduction as well, then you're set. If you get a bunch of Tigers, it's often worth having a stack of them in front, even if it takes the place of a Lancelot. One strategy you can use is have Lancelots in place during the main waves, then switch one of the Lancelots out for the stack of Tigers during the boss fight. This will help your stuns be more solid, and every time Tiger uses his ult it will reduce enemy defense by 80 for 5 seconds. With Kitty Mage support this is essentially permanent if you have a full stack of tigers.

You also need Kitty Mage for this strategy. Not only does Lancelot need MP Regen, but Vayne does 4x the damage when in ult form. With 3 Kitty Mages, Vayne is almost permanently in ult form. This means each Vayne is as strong as 4 Vaynes, and your Lances will do much better wave clearing and boss damage. This means that while Orc is nice to have and can make clearing much easier, Kitty Mage is a must have.

The other optional summon is Indy. At level 12, Indy just has really cool buffs that are much more easily attainable. The best one for Indy is 50+ (up to 80) defense reduction. This basically completely solves the above problem of trying to get enough defense reduction. It doesn't cost any hunters, so if you get it you can use those hunters you're saving to summon more Vaynes, Lancelots, and Orc Shamans. A really useful buff to get that can nearly guarantee a win if you can get it.

Gold

You're going to need about 400k gold to clear realistically. I believe I've done it with less, but it's always at least been close to that. Learn to stack gold as aggressively as possible. Early eagles and frog can support your bandits for more gold gain. I don't mention frog in the wave clearing section because you don't really want to rely on him as a wave clear, since Chu and Tao are in general stronger than Dian. However, Dian is very close to being as good. So if you lift frog when you no longer need the gold gain, and you get Dian, that's still usually a good thing. Or you can keep frog to the end. Later I will post pictures or videos of this strategy so you can see what it looks like in practice.

Good luck on the grind!

-GhidWard