[3.10] Storm Brand mana based Hierophant on MoM
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Special thanks to forum people, helping to shape this
Hey guys and gals, Playing around with new mechanics of Archmage gem I worked out with help of nice people on forum this build. It is maximizing manacost of Storm brand, keeping it up with brand recall and extending skill tree with cluster jewels. Pros and Cons
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Pros -solid survival ability (MoM, hybrid eHP/ES 10k+) -reasonable budget to get going -elemental ailment imunity through ascendancy -build enabling uniques are quite cheap -pseudo DoT=safety in distancing -Most important casts are instant Cons -no regen maps can be problem due to huge mana use, manageable with Cinderswallow urn and mana flask -Requires cluster gems -Porcupines Videos
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-will add more as I will progress in content Low lvl maps 4L, 4,5k mana, minimal gear: https://youtu.be/mnEHbFCe5U0 Yellow map delirium rush (5L, skeleton gear-2 Apep, Atziri foible): https://youtu.be/ox-MWVnGGZc Awaken 4 guardians + Awaken 5 Sirus, 5L, 2-3ex gear: Sirus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnetU-vyq1g Crusader: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hk6-NYkpfOg Warlord: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TghdGF5-Lw4 Hunter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofgOr8JTyZY First Simulacrum try, 5L (Wave 19 was last I managed to kill) https://youtu.be/lbIq8LdpBXo https://youtu.be/JBgRzuNOPpc T16 no regen map: https://youtu.be/1rMkU46-WSo Path of Building links
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Current PoB: https://pastebin.com/87q76dyn -Going through T16 content without problems Target PoB https://pastebin.com/nKWeuN6e -adding fevered mind can add 0,5M dps per piece, so if this is not enough dps for you, you can move it up. Optimum would be probably dual rare wands with tripple fevered mind, for reasonable mana management and DPS combination Mechanics
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Goal is to increase cost of Storm brand to maximum and keep it up with brand recall. Combining it with Archmage support and stacking mana wherever possible we can reach cost of between 20 % (budget 4L and dual apep´s rage) to whooping 65 % from our unreserved mana (6L, dual apep, 3 fevered minds). That means for low mapping equivalent of 900-1k added lightning damage, for endgame we can get to cca 5-5,5k added lightning damage. Defensively we are stacking Mind over Matter to get 50 % damage taken from mana instead of life to get effectively 7-8k eHP plus sizeable energy shield (1k should not be problem, depending on your focus, can be much more). Main source of pain will be probably physical hit as well as chaos, against them I will include flasks, chaos golem and immunity to stuns with Skyforth. We also use Arcane surge, both defensively and offensively. Thanks to out ascendancy we can keep it up indefinitely, it is enhanced through skill tree (Arcane Capacitor) and keeps us immune vs. elemental ailments. Gem setups
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Storm Brand-Archmage-Lightning penetration-energy leech-concentrated effect-6th link option -This looks at the moment as best option for this build -Energy leech is for another layer of protection and good dps boost-we are leeching practically all the time -Concentrated effect seems as best DPS option for 5th link, reduce of area is noticeable, but not horrible, everything dies fast enought anyway -6th Link options: -Elemental focus-takes away our shock -Controlled destruction-reduce elemental overload uptime significantly -Awakened Increased area of effect-lowest pure damage boost of them, but I believe this one is best option-but most expensive as well Frostblink-second wind-increased area of effect-empower -main movement skill, amazingly versatile in combat, little slower outside one. In white maps I used it with archmage support for nuking white packs. Wave of conviction-archmage-increased duration -sometimes something does not want to die immediately, so let´s reduce it´s resistance. Sincerely I use it rarely and on beefy stuff only Arcane cloak-Second wind-increased duration-Arcane Surge -amazing thing both defensively (effectively taking cca 4k of your mana into another layer of defense or adding another few hundred added lightning damage to the battle. I use it also to proc Arcane Surge lvl 20 for another little boost Brand recall-second wind-Empower -bread and butter, to keep out brands up and going. Combined with increased attachement range, you do not need to even jump much near the packs. Helps with mana management, as cost close to nothing to cast and keeps our brands up -Clarity We need as much mana regen as possible Chaos golem-minion life-elemental army -to help us a little bit with survival against physical damage. He dies a lot... Basic gameplay loop
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Casting brands to maximum number, while recasting brand recall (holding key works). And simply running around, with flasks ideally up for speed. For bigger groups/tougher uniques pop Arcane cloak and wave of conviction. Recast Chaos golem, rinse and repeat. -No regen maps-cinderswallow urn is critical, good to add some mana flask for safety -elemental Reflect-classis sibyl´s lament+Yugul pantheon (good to have capped resists without one ring) -Good to have always warding and bleed flask in your setup Gear setup
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Required Uniques/Weapons: We need only one really. Apep´s Rage -This unique is very cheap, at the moment of writing costs 1c. It massively increases our mana cost, enabling large boost to damage Recommended Uniques: Fevered minds -same as with apep´s rage, they increase manacost, leading to huge damage boosts. I believe 3 will be overkill and it might be worth considering at that point to switch to different wands for little more balanced build regarding mana spent. Atziri Foible -Cheap and easily attainable. Huge boost to mana, reduction of gem requirements is nice plus Cloak of Defiance -Saves us one skill point, as well as increase our MoM by 10%, extra manaregen is nice touch Omeyocan vs. Skyforth -Both options look nice. Defensively we are looking at 20% avoidance vs. stun immunity. Downsides of both options is either lovered mana regen or no HP regen. We can work around both. I believe Skyforth will be endgame option, but having Omeyocan before that seems very reasonable Cinderswallow Urn -gives us amazing sustain during our delirium fueled rush over map Atziri´s Promise -Nice damage boost with little leech on top Rumi´s Concoction -Defensive flask, nice to have Watcher´s Eye -15 % of mana to energy shield is too nice to pass. Second bonus matters only if you run with somebody, so not needed Rest-“The Rares”: Rings-Cerulean base looks too good to pass Gloves-Fingerless will be nice damage boost, but not needed Helmet-whatever you find Belt-flask recovery on crit can be nice, cooldown reduction as well, but nothing crucial Cluster jewels: -At this point I am working with large lightning, 2 medium brand and 2 small mana clusters. You want them as small as possible and maximize the number of notables. Bandits, Ascendancy, Pantheon
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Bandits -Kill all, no other option gives anything interesting. Ascendancy -Sign of Purpose-extra brand and reduce CRD for brand recovery helps, as well as 20% increased damage taken on bosses -Illuminated devotion-boost to our Arcane Surge, you want to add Arcane Surge support to your build until you get next Ascendancy -Arcane Blessing-permanent Arcane Surge and elemental ailment immunity, drop Arcane Surge support -Divine Guidance-10% to our MoM, mana boost, dmg boost Pantheon -Major-depending on boots either Stun protection or Lunaris for general defense boost -Minor-Gruthkul (physical damage reduction), updated Shakkari (Chaos and poison protection) or Yugul (reflection maps) looks like reasonable selection Changelog
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25/03/2020 -Added new videos, wave 19 simulacrum, no mana regen maps -Added basic gameplay loop description -Few general corections 23/03/2020 -added Guardians and Sirus video -And I am convinced about brand cluster jewels :) 17/03/2020 -second version of the guide -added video-basic showcase 16/03/2020 -discovered Apep´s rage and found way to make it work as noncrit :) -first version of guide 15/03/2020: -brand recall helps a lot with fluidity, as expected -made few optimizations in the build tree and gearing -set "added lightning damage" gem to lvl 40, as archmage should do similar effect, probably even slightly higher -if you get hands on brand cluster jewel, it is worth considering I think, but so far I am not convinced :) 14/03/2020: -Leveling quite slower in the begining, rush for dual attached brands, speeds things up. Last edited by Ramireus#4619 on Mar 25, 2020, 4:28:26 PM Last bumped on Jun 28, 2020, 11:09:55 AM
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I'm interested in seeing this finalized. Seems like there should be good opportunity for storm brand, being a low mana impact spell. Inquisitor is just so strong with the ability to negate resist, but between the two ascendancies I'm eager to see what people come up with for lightning builds and storm brand in particular.
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Yes I really want this build to work please post whatcha got!
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I have also looked at making a tree for this, I’ll have to compare them when I’m home, see where they match up or differ, together we will make it happen ! :)
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Cross posting from reddit, but here are some of my thoughts that I haven't yet crystallised into an actual build/Pob
- Going to start off non-crit, try and push the flat damage and cast speed as much as possible. If damage tails off, then switch to crit. Kalisa's grace should be pretty easy to sustain and help cap crit. - I was planning on just doing vanilla life + MoM. But am I gimping myself? Would EB be better? Or even CI with Sanctuary of thought? Low life an option with ivory tower, but don't want to plan for that as a starter. - EB or CI options would require Sanctuary of thought, which cuts the mana cost and hence the effectiveness of archmage. 'Free' ES and aoe is nice though, and could probably offset with fevered mind jewels and gear, but is it worth it? - If sticking to non crit, some combination of Apep's rage/shade of solaris seems like a good idea. Would lose shield charge/whirling but they will be clunky with no attack speed anyway. No fortify though. Would keep shade of solaris buff up with orb of storms + inc crit strikes. - Atziri foible would be best amulet option, which is always nice - Mostly rares everywhere makes gearing easy. Maybe Omeyocan boots if can handle the regen requirements. Though would also want to get to Acro/Phase acro then, which might be a stretch. - Chest options, Basic rare or cloak of defiance. Impulsa would be good for clear too. I'd like perfect form, but colouring it is going to be tricky. A good shadowstitch might eb an option too. Interesting thing with the archmage scaling is that gem levels are going to be a lot less important. - Looks like I'll be mostly just running around (though second wind dash/flame dash might help) and won't have any nice movement speed bonuses unless any smart ideas? |
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i had almost the same idea but as a non-crit storm brand https://pastebin.com/BdFPvzAk it shows about 1 mil shaper dps per brand with good gear. I will off course swap one of the supports for the new archmage, that way it will make the mana cost go as high as 260 i think, that way, casting 2 brands will proc level 20 arcane surge. it seems it might work, i will league start with this.
IGN: EduCaraDura Last edited by educaradura#2286 on Mar 13, 2020, 10:04:30 AM
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" Archmage sets the BASE mana cost to 6% of your unreserved mana, so a base of about 260, multiplied by your supports. So your actual cost will be over 500 at least. That's using Sanctuary of thought, which you would probably either want to drop, or offset with fevered mind jewels and gear like voidbringers/apep's rage. Arcane surge seems like a waste of a link if we get it for free via ascendancy (If dropping sanctuary of thought), but is still probably one of the best supports so guess it stays in Flat lightning to spells on weapons, and gem levels probably not the best way to scale things (Though if you can get for 'free', why not) as archmage will give such a huge flat lightning bonus on a mana stacking Hiero. You had some dodgy things in the PoB btw - 50% shocks, which aren't going to happen on anything tanky, especially as you were also using elemental focus as a support! Last edited by Carlovski#7040 on Mar 13, 2020, 11:06:07 AM
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" You are right regarding all points, thanks for the help, i'm gonna change these points right away. Ty! IGN: EduCaraDura
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" I was actually thinking this way, but I am not sure if I will be casting brands that much-brand recall is much more comfortable, so I am uncertain about mana spent. But it is fair point. " For this I am waiting for PoB update, but had similar thought. But I think that at that point archmage would become underwhelming. " Probably true :) " hmm, this boots looks nice. Very nice. Regen thing can be interesting challenge, but worth trying out. " Also interesting gearing options. Thank you " Heh, At the moment I was thinking about simple frostblink with maximized CDR :) But this will crystalize. Thank you for thorough input |
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I've been playing a MOM mana-stacking lighting hiero since launch.
Level 82 now. 6k mana. I originally thought I wouldn't take Sanctuary of Thought, but it's pretty hard to ignore 100% AoE and 1.5k ES. I'm not even ES right now. Still life/ES hybrid. The numbers look even better for Santuary of Thought on full ES builds. The less mana thing isn't such a big deal. Arcane Cloak is not affected. That would have been big a deal, but it isn't affected. It always takes 64% of current mana. (I tested this myself). Archmage is affected, but honestly the mana spend is pretty hard to handle without SoT. I have 6k mana, 600 mana per second, and am casting Arc out of a 5L Pledge of Hands (I get 4 casts for the price of one)...and if I have both of my Fevered Minds socketed, I can still go out of mana even while chugging a flask. Yes it is more DPS. But that huge mana spend only adds a moderate amount of DPS. I usually roll with just one Fevered Mind socketed, that seems the sweet spot. Most packs die in one blast either way, but on single target where I'm name locking the boss, I don't run out of mana as fast with one Fevered Mind. Overall it's more DPS and less tricky to use. Once I get a 6L my mana spend will go up again but I'll probably also have more regen by then so it should balance out. Finally, I started with Storm Brand but gradually moved to hybrid Storm Brand + Arc and eventually just found I wasn't bothering to cast Brand anymore so I took it out. Arc was just doing more damage, and also I don't have to jump right into the pack to cast Brand Recall. But I have a Pledge of Hands, until you have one of those, Storm Brand is probably in the running. I think there are a few ways to go end game with this. One is Cloak of Defiance + CI. Another, more expensive, is Presence of Chayula + Ivory Tower + low life package. I cannot figure a good way to fit in crit; all my best ideas end up running EO non-crit. Basically if you go crit there aren't enough points left over to really stack that mana and get everything else you need. Halfway committing to mana never seems to lead to anything good in my theorycrafting. Same with halfway committing to crit. The nature of crit is really all or nothing, the payoffs only come when both your cc and cm are huge. Last edited by elmasone#5446 on Mar 15, 2020, 5:08:53 AM
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