[3.7] Storm Brand Elementalist. League Starter, Deathless Uber Elder.

This build is still really good! Smoothest start to a league I ever had. Thanks OP!

I was doing arc for 3.6 and I was so unhappy. It was so rippy and just not fun. I almost gave up on the league since I wasn't enjoying my favorite spell from 3.5.

I was recommended converting my tree to stormbrand. Your build being done with no required uniques (or at least missing a unique wouldn't break it) is awesome. I rerolled my witch and have been following your tree with the mini guide you gave for the nodes to go for and I have to admit, this leveling process has been one of the fastest I've ever done. I'm only lvl 50 with stormbrand on a 4 link, no other spells really being used and it's been safer than I expected.

I went with dual daggers, heartbreaker since it's cheap (around 5c for the perfect 70% increased spell damage roll) so that I could use whirling blades as my moment skill. I plan to use shaper daggers later on self crafting.

Thank you so much for doing this! I plan to take this build to endgame and I hope I can finally do uber elder for the first time with this. I missed the chance last league to do uber elder.

Current gear at lvl 85. Any pointers?

Uber elder is down, amazing starter build.

My gear is pretty bad, I didn't even think I'd have enough damage for Uber elder, my gems are not even 20/20, no enchants, no full pantheons, 5c weapons :D

Is cast speed better than spell damage if I had to chose between those two? 🤔

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Ovdovovac wrote:

Is cast speed better than spell damage if I had to chose between those two? 🤔

Depends how much of each you're talking about.

If you're asking whether to come out of the witch start area through the 4% cast speed nodes, or the 10% spell damage nodes, the 4% cast speed nodes are better.

Is the watcher's eye something to grab before an inpulsa?

I picked this up cheap to get me by in the meantime for a chest:

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teknik1200 wrote:

Is the watcher's eye something to grab before an inpulsa?

Depends how you feel about your mana situation. If you feel like your current mana solution is working just fine, then there's no need to hurry on the watcher's eye.

The inpulsa is a lot more expensive. You'd generally prefer a good 6-link yellow or shroud of the lightless over a 5-link inpulsa, so it isn't just the price of the inpulsa, but the price of 6-linking it, before it is actually an upgrade. You're talking 9+ exalts there.

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I picked this up cheap to get me by in the meantime for a chest:

That's a fine option for early league.

I'm Level 92 and into t15/16. I'm a bit disappointed about the clearspeed and bossdamage in the end game.




My jewels have cast speed and %life. One has cold damage to spells for hypothermia. My hit rate is 5.5 vs 5.7 from OP.
The wands for sale increase my DPS only marginally for relative high cost, <=7% increased dps for 2ex+.

My DPS is 275k in PoB without the "50% more damage" modifier OP added to his cinderswallow flask but with checking "Is the enemy shocked?".

I know I'm lacking 20% quality on gems.

I'd like to "one-tap-insta-kill" blue packs in t16 maps, meaning casting a single brand into a blue pack that dies almost instantly. Right now it takes some time until packs die in t16.

Is this build capable of doing that? If so, what should I improve besides 6l Inpulsa?

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moepmoep12 wrote:

I'm Level 92 and into t15/16. I'm a bit disappointed about the clearspeed and bossdamage in the end game.

[snip]

My jewels have cast speed and %life. One has cold damage to spells for hypothermia. My hit rate is 5.5 vs 5.7 from OP.
The wands for sale increase my DPS only marginally for relative high cost, <=7% increased dps for 2ex+.

I just bought this for 10c, and crafted the spell damage on it:


According to PoB slotting in place of your "dread branch" wand would be a 4.8% DPS (12k DPS) increase. In terms of total DPS offered by the slot, it is a 22% better wand than dread branch.

Here's the search I used to find it:
https://www.pathofexile.com/trade/search/Synthesis/n0Y24VS0

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My DPS is 275k in PoB without the "50% more damage" modifier OP added to his cinderswallow flask but with checking "Is the enemy shocked?".

PoB does NOT handle shock correctly, that's the purpose of the flasks. You have very little in terms of shock effect increases, so using the built in shock (which always assumes 50% shock) is vastly over-estimating your DPS.


Here's a PoB for your guy with shocks and liege of the primordial handled correctly:
https://pastebin.com/Ldd5BZTz

The reason you see such a large multiplier on that shock calculation flask I'm using in the OP is because I made a point to stack up shock effect / effect of non-damaging ailments. Inpulsa has 40%, my rare ammy has 30%, my boots have 30%, tree has 28%. That's 128% increased shock effect, for a 45% shock instead of a base 20% (24% with your setup). The other 10% bumping it up to 55% on that is the "enemies take 10% increased damage" mod on cinderswallow itself.

Any mod you see in PoB in red text is one that PoB is not doing anything to calculate, so I use those modified items to fix the calculation.

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I'd like to "one-tap-insta-kill" blue packs in t16 maps, meaning casting a single brand into a blue pack that dies almost instantly. Right now it takes some time until packs die in t16.

Is this build capable of doing that? If so, what should I improve besides 6l Inpulsa?

Yes, this build is capable of doing that, but inpulsa is how. Obviously that's expensive.

Pre-inpulsa it plays a little more like a DoT build. You don't wait for a pack to die and move on to the next one. You let brands kill the pack as you're running past it (and if your loot filter freaks at you, you go back to check what dropped).

It honestly isn't that much slower once you get used to the brand and slide by play style. (2 brands to a pack, usually, if brand recall isn't cooled down for a full drop).

Those really satisfying instant pack kills are only going to come with inpulsa though.