[3.5][HCSSF] Storm Brand Hierophant | Tanky, mobile, beginner friendly, and fun

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Agarwaen88 wrote:

Is elemental overload still triggering when you have Controlled Destruction on storm brand ?

Controlled Destruction cant reduce crit chance below the minimum of 5%.

Innervate V efficiency? one guide i see says innervate and lightning pen the other efficiency and elemental focus the choice is hard.. the other question using Conductivity + blasphemy with a lightning Impresence

I'm pretty sure that Storm Brand - Controlled Destruction - Lightning Penetration will always be optimal.

Innervate is about 7/8th as powerful as added lightning damage, assuming you actually shock a target. Elemental focus means you can't shock, which makes Innervate not worth using. Elemental focus gives us 49% more damage, so using Innervate + something to replace Elemental Focus would have to net you more than that.

Shock works best with large hits. Storm Brand hits small but very often. As such, I believe that Elemental Focus is best.

That said, with the Elementalist, that might change.

Conductivity + Blasphemy would be perfectly viable, but replacing Enfeeble in hardcore doesn't feel great to me. For Softcore it'd be great for more damage.

What do you think about going crit and Inquisitor?

The hierophant seems to add Tankiness and nothing much more to the brand setup. Is the brand recall CD reduction a big loss?

Thx in advance and sorry my crappy english

Hierophant adds a lot more! We have permanent arcane surge from brand recall and later from hits, we have loads of damage from that, ailment immunity, more powerful MoM..

The brand node is also deceptively strong. The lower the cooldown of brand recall, the more time we spend moving and the less time we’re actually casting the brand itself. 30% gives us 80% with the gems native bonuses, which is just over halfway to permanent brands. On top of that, we get 20% MORE damage on targets affected by two brands. This is really powerful.

And between Crit or non-crit build?

Because I think i will have no damage later on speccing into Elemental Overload

Thx a lot Lily

Elemental overload is up 100% of the time with this build. In order to go crit, you want your crit chance * crit multi to be higher than 40% overall damage. There’s a handy table on the elemental overload wiki page that shows you at what values crit is better.

I’m firm in the belief that going crit without specific uniques is going to be too expensive for the benefit you get over elemental overload. EO nets us 40% more damage for three passive points, that’s hard to beat.

Added FAQ, playstyle, and "Why Hierophant" sections!

Wall of text incoming, I'm already sorry lol

Currently trying my own (very similar tree) Storm Brand build in Betrayal Softcore. A few thoughts:

Still trying to optimize best 6L for Storm Brand. Controlled destruction and added lightning dmg are a no-brainer, I feel every added bit of flat lightning helps because of the low base damage of storm brand. Assuming you go with ele focus, my last two links would be maybe faster casting (cast speed affects brand hit frequency, but very little in my experience) and either lightning pen or conc effect. Thing is, conc effect REALLY brings up the tooltip dps, and I feel it lacks damage without it. I don't think penetration is accounted for in the tooltip, right?

It's my first time playing a pure lightning caster, and being in trade league I'm thinking about nice uniques for the build. I ran 2x Singularity sceptres and already replaced one with a better rare sceptre, changing the offhand later (couldn't find a really good unique for more dps, only shimmerons, but I'm not running power charges, it isn't a crit build, and degen is annoying, so I guess rares are the best option here). Maybe an Atziri's Splendour would offer great sustain with the life, all res and 100 mana and life on kill, but I don't know how hard is to get 6B sockets on that, requirements are matching 66 str-dex-int, so it's weird. Impresence and Essence Worm for Wrath and Conductivity 100% unreserved, and a Clarity lv 10-15 would be my bet to have 2K mana unreserved.

Will try Vaal RF with inc duration for the more spell dmg while bossing. Spire trap for single target has been... irregular, takes too long to arm and mobile bosses just move out of the way, most times I don't even need it on low tier maps (I'm just lv 77 atm), so I don't know what to use for single target in the long run. I use vigilant strike to get fortify sometimes too.

In conclusion, build is a fast mapper, pretty safe until now even without any armour/eva/block, I believe mom+fortify+maybe self cast enfeeble if needed, defensive flasks and a lot of running around will be enough to not die often at least. I'd appreciate any advice especially on getting more flat lightning dmg. Thanks for reading!

I'm 95% certain that Storm Brand-Controlled Destruction-Elemental Focus-Lightning Pen will be the strongest for a 4L. Lightning Penetration won't show up in tooltip, but Path of Building will properly account for it.

Added Lightning is great for the 5L.

For a sixth link, swapping between Conc Effect and Inc AoE is probably going to be your best option for combining mapping and bossing.

Can't give much advice on uniques I'm afraid, always been an SSF player.