Armageddon Brand

I leveled a Hierophant to 67 with brands this league, primarily using Armageddon Brand for damage and a Storm Brand setup with Culling Strike and Onslaught to speed up my movement.

The build used MoM and had normal life scaling, otherwise most of the available brand nodes, including Runebinder.

Overall, the damage feels underwhelming. Even with almost full investment into brands, I would sometimes have to wait for packs to die before moving on, not because I wanted to see the loot, but because white mobs didn't die and physically blocked the way. That's not something I remember experiencing on any properly set up build. I'll admit I had to build most of the character without Path of Building, but it was fairly close to ideal; leveling gear aside.

Armageddon Brand in particular took a very long time to deal damage, such that any enemy that would move around a lot would barely be hit by it at all, and be especially annoying to to target with Brand Recall.

I had the most fun fighting Izaro, rushing in, recalling my brands on top of him, and dashing away again. But the majority of the game's content runs at a different speed, and the skill doesn't feel like it's adjusted to that.

The attachment range feels like it might as well not be present. Rather than proliferating through a pack on its own, a brand will stop at most after the second or third mob, and the only things left are recalling the brands into the middle of the pack, which has obvious defensive drawbacks, or continuing to cast brands as if they were regular spells with less damage, which just feels bad.

The attachment range should at least be as large as the radius of the damage area. If it already is, then the latter is smaller than I thought.

That brings us to the last important part, which are the visuals. Recalling 5 or 6 Armageddon Brands which then attach to enemies in the middle of a pack and activate again, means I don't see anything. I appreciate the look on its own, but it's terrible for gameplay.

Finally, I'm not sure what the purpose of this was, but the duration actually feels too long without scaling. I'd rather make a meaningful investment if I want particularly long lasting brands or recast them more often for better damage instead.

So far I'm loving Armageddon brand. Still working my way towards maps, but it's been a great experience. Playing trickster ignite, and its feeling for the most part pretty smooth. It's also been one of the more interactive builds I've played in a while between using the brands, recall, dropping totems, and more, it feels nice to have something other than a one button build.

Only negative thing I've found about it is the attachment can be a bit iffy sometimes, especially around doorways. Maybe giving it a bit more leeway with attaching around corners would help it feel a lot smoother.

I'm playing a Armageddon brand inquisitor, crit based with MoM, using a self cast warlords mark, and assorted movement skills.

Armageddon brand's damage feels very solid, and the mobility becomes very satisfactory once you invest in a number of brand skill nodes for acquisition range which feels appropriate, but still forces the build to advance at a reasonable pace for how safe the brand game play is.

However, I do find it very frustrating that Armageddon brand can "miss" monsters that are moving, even with a respectable activation rate certain exiles, unique monsters, bosses, that move around a lot can be very tedious and frustrating to kill. While this can be mitigated with a slow effect, it feels bad having a skill that effectively auto-casts out of my control be able to "miss."

PvP - skill is funny to use against people who don't know how brands work, but once they realize they can literally walk and be able to mitigate all damage it becomes impossible to use.

Hello,

Currently leveling Elementalist Armageddon Brand Witch lvl 67 atm.
But its animation is too much aggressive. It hurt my eyes.
In my opinion it is too flickery animation and it would be good to little rework this flickering and make it more smooth.

Overall feel of this skill is really positive it is fun to play but my eyes hurt a bit after a while.

Elemental Witch here. L74. Specced into merely Elemental Damage. The skill is extremely powerful even with minimal support gems.

Problem is it's very visually messy and performance intensive. It's one of the only skills that i ever seen reduce my resolution.

I refuse to play with it due to the visual mess. Groups of enemies + this skill = screen gets covered.

You have to allow us to check a box for ''reduced visual effect''.

I think i tried everything i could now but nothing manage to compensate the VVVEEERRRRYYY long animation time of the skill.

Love the skill but might go stormbrand soon to deal damage when I cast and not 1.X seconds after...

I'm playing a Trickster Ignite/Burn Arm brand, and man, I wish I would have started the league with this build. Brands feel amazing - the style suits me perfectly.

The damage feels awesome, and I haven't noticed any attachment issues. It's definitely a step up from totems - being able to recall your brands to a new location is just what is needed for this playstyle.

So much fun!

this skill is my official league starter.

all you need is a nyctas lantern to carry yourself to yellow maps just casting stormbrand + recall

im running it as a CI ZO Ghostreaver Elementalist for reflect immune. it's a beast skill but it pumps out so much dmg that reflect immunity seems mandatory.
(still using nyctas at lvl 88 lol)

As the last guy said, this skill is so great that he uses storm brand instead =))
This skill is good for trash - bad for the endgame - i mean compared to other skills this is underwhelming. The playstyle and the idea around it are good - but the jumpy style instead of explosions ( like storm brand does ) makes it look weird and makes your eyes pop out if you look at it a lot - also once they start jumping up and down you won't see much on the screen.

Again good for trash clear and maybe leveling.. but not close to storm brand ( well what is not good for trash clear.. lol).