Hivemaster Helm (Rev. 31)

Hivemaster Helm A nefarious helm combining pheromones and Killer Honey to captivate Killer Bees into servitude.

Tier UT
MP Cost 80
On Equip +6 DEF, +6 SPD
Effect(s) On party: Inflicts Red Sword Berserk within 4 tiles for 6 seconds
Summon 3 bees to aid the player in combat for 6 seconds
  • Bee Attack: 120 damage every 0.6 seconds
  • Bee Range: 4 sqrs
  • Red Bee Effect: 50% chance of inflicting Curse for 4 seconds
Cooldown 7.5 second(s)
Fame Bonus 6%
Soulbound Soulbound
Feed Power 1,000


Notes:

A unique helm that gives up its speedy ability and some of its defense to summon 3 bees to help you in battle. It also gives a heavy speed boost to compensate for the loss of Speedy.

The bees orbit you for 6 seconds and inflict 120 damage each every 0.6 seconds each to anything near them by firing short-ranged beams at them (the beams are not projectiles, and therefore will never miss) with a range of approximately 4.5 tiles relative to the user. Each bee will perform this damage separately, so at 0 defense this helm will give 600 dps. Note that the bees’ damage does not ignore defense. In addition, there is a chance that the red bee starts flashing red which indicates that its next attacks will apply the Curse effect. However, the Curse can only affect up to 3 targets at any given time.

Due to the formula of how the helm works, the overall probability of the red bee flashing is supposedly 50% as noted on the tooltip. However, there seems to be a bug where the chance of the bee flashing is much lower.

Overall, this helm is incredibly useful when DPS is your main priority and speed/survivability is not, due to the bees being able to churn out immense damage per second (along with the curse effect), not to mention that the curse effect stacks with the bees’ damage output.
An example of this would be during tight boss fights (like the Killer Bee Queen or Marble Colossus) where the mobility from a tiered helm would be detrimental, or boss fights where the armor boost from the Helm of the Juggernaut would not serve as well (due to armor-piercing shots).