Wintertide brand and Spell echo?

So how come many high level Wintertide uses Swift Affliction? Doesn't it shorten the attached duration?

Let see if I understand Wintertide:

Mine builds up stage once every 0.17s. It takes about 3 seconds to achieve 20 stage (wish they showed that somehow!!). Wintertide does max damage for the remaining duration?

If I re-cast Wintertide again, it replaces the old one and the stage building starts over? So I shouldn't re-cast until after 3s?


Swift Affliction shortens all duration by 15%. My screen shows attached duration is only about 4s. That means Wintertide max stage is only about 1s? Does this hurt your dps overall?


Or Swift Affliction's "more" damage is really that much more powerful? I just need to re-cast Brands more (which I don't mind). I've always thought re-casting too early restart the stage process.

How can you tell your Brand is at stage 20?

Do you cast 5 or 7 brands? I am debating if I should take two more brands out but I feel 7 is overkill? I prefer to add 40% more brand range from mastery?

I'm only using 5 brands. Didn't try 7, but I'm already having trouble to keep 5 up... don't think 7 is worth it. (unless u have cluster jewels with 2 brands per cast, but u'd need to stack them to have at least a 70% chance imo)

For the Swift affliction... well less duration is definitely a negative and u can feel it. Brands expire faster, so u have to recast more often.
Nevertheless I think the damage increase is high enough to use it anyway... especially since there are no other really good support gem alternatives. The next gem would be Inspiration and that's only 25% more damage.

I don't think the less duration is that heavy in single target situations tbh, because I already recast brands earlier than they run out, whenever I have the opportunity to.

I still need to get some more cast speed tho, to hit the 20 activations with Swift affliction.

Overall I'm progressing red maps now and it's going pretty well. I think my dps is enough up to T14/15 without or T12/13 with Scourge. Also made the switch to CI yesterday after leveling to 92 as hybrid (which was working way better than expected)

If you re-cast Brand before hitting stage 20, does it over write it? I can never tell when it has reached stage 20.

pretty sure it overwrites, yeah... but as u said it's hard to tell when it reached max stage.
I'm not sure if there's even a visual for that.

I'm just playing with what I feel like should be appropriate timing, also u can see when the brands run out, so just try to recast them slightly beforehand and u should be good.