3.5 Chaos/Cold Storm Brand - Uber Elder✓ 10k EHP ✓ Budget ✓ HC ✓ Hierophant or Occultist

Occultist regen is fine w/o leech for me, i spent like 7ex in total with 4ex being the chest alone ( the watcher is from other char and i used only from 92 to 93 since i switched few points for one more jw socket ). Its mediocre because half of the gear is unique, so the other half is just rares with res and low es... it could be improved a lot that's why it's mediocre for me

Sorry guys I am quitting this league or game, new obligations are calling

I was originally going to roll a chaos conversion Orb of Storms build, but with Storm Brand/Brand Recall being so good I stuck with them into maps and ended up with a pretty similar build concept.

The main difference in my build is that it goes CI and Crit w/ Power of Conviction instead of Illuminated Devotion. Basically, the build is designed around Incandescent Heart reducing elemental damage taken and Skyforth covering stun resistance plus generating endurance charges for physical mitigation/immortal call. While it is far from budget friendly I had no trouble transitioning from a starter Life/MoM Storm Brand setup.

My Current Gear.


PoB - https://pastebin.com/t6ZrF3KW

Ok now that i see people are contributing to the original post i have some questions:)

1: How do we play?I mean can someone post a video from casual mapping?What spells do we channel/use except storm brand/recall?

2:At what level should we take CI?I barely get hit even in boss fights..But if anything chaos touch me i go straight to 20% life:)I find it rather dangerous to have to watch around even for the slithest vhaos blob that comes near me:D

3:How much do you think the gear to start mapping costs in BHC if someone is allready there?

Thx a lot in advance:d

P.S. I know that for some of you my questions might be silly or newbbie ones:)
I just came to this wonderful game after 6 years of non stop d3 :P
Show some patience and the well worth disrispect to someone that prefered stupid diablo over this jewel:D

"

killkarabill wrote:

Muera plz share your character gear m8..Also i see a buig difference at your tree with the one OP has at his character that died at 250 delve..You pass to the other side of the tree taking all the + ES nodes instead of going through the avoid cast interruption nodes as occultist tree of the original build suggests..Tbh i dont have any experience yet but i find Muerta's tree very nice..What do you say about this guys?I wanna hear everyone's opinion:D

hey, sorry about that :) I'm done with this league for now and gave all my gear to friends... you can still see the tree though.. I didn't go crit and ended up using Shade of Solaris which I find amazing for this build (if going non crit)... I had about 9300 ES and honestly nothing but maybe Minotaur gave me trouble. T16 mapping was a complete joke and SO fast! If going crit I'm sure you can have more dmg at some point but I didn't find that necessary- Shaper fight weren't the fastest ever but fast enough and safe. Using Mind over Matter is nice too.
Otherwise my gear was was very similar. 20/20 gems help a lot. Oh and I got very lucky with my boots enchant - 16% increased Attack and Cast Speed if you've Killed Recently - is enormous boost for mapping. Aaand I was using flame dash, coz SCH sucks imho.

Oh and my tree is definitely not the best one you can do with a non crit build here I just didn't really have a reason to change anything because it worked well.

I'm happy to answer any questions here :) Good luck guys :)

I bought a perfect Shade of Solaris for like 20c at the beginning and now it's 2+ ex :)

Thx a lot for the help Muera..Keep the tree up so we can have a look at it while leveling..Good luck to everything you do m8.:)

p.s. Can you enlighten me a bit regarding the playstyle?How do you progress in a map?WHat do you cast?Do you channel anything or just cast storm brands blink brand recall etc etc?
Thx in advance:DD

"

killkarabill wrote:

Ok now that i see people are contributing to the original post i have some questions:)

1: How do we play?I mean can someone post a video from casual mapping?What spells do we channel/use except storm brand/recall?

2:At what level should we take CI?I barely get hit even in boss fights..But if anything chaos touch me i go straight to 20% life:)I find it rather dangerous to have to watch around even for the slithest vhaos blob that comes near me:D

3:How much do you think the gear to start mapping costs in BHC if someone is allready there?

Thx a lot in advance:d

P.S. I know that for some of you my questions might be silly or newbbie ones:)
I just came to this wonderful game after 6 years of non stop d3 :P
Show some patience and the well worth disrispect to someone that prefered stupid diablo over this jewel:D

1. I typically Flame Dash around close to packs, but not directly into them. Then I press Brand Recall and cast one or two Storm Brands at mobs farthest away from the Recall spots to ensure everything is cleared. Rinse and repeat for general map clear. You only need to use Wither-CwC-Frost Bomb on bosses and when there is a safe window of time to do so.

2. CI is much more gear dependent than level dependent. Unlike Life where your character gets a starting HP and +12 Life for every level, which adds up to be a substantial amount of what you're increasing with life nodes, when it comes to ES you start with zero and you get nothing from levels. Base ES all comes from gear, a few flat passives in the tree, and ascendancy nodes. On top of that CI builds are weak to status effects because by default they are based on total life and thus need ways to resist/remove/prevent them. So in the case of stun the OP was using Occultist ascendancy to immune to stun while having ES. I use Skyforth to base stun threshold on 500% of my mana, which equates to 10,000+ life. So a lot of components need to be in place before you switch to CI, which means it is generally better to build as a Life/MoM version of the build and then switch to CI when you have the gear ready.

8-10% elemental pen or 1-160 lit damage a better enchant for boots?

Also wondering for the last socket, the best 3 gems are

1)elemental focus (bossing)
2)Crit rate gem (general)
3)Cold to fire (more conversions for more double/triple dipping) ???

Thanks again for the guide and help from the others on posting replies

is it possible to use herald of thunder for more dmg boost ?