Templar - [3.10]The CEO of lightning Storm Brand Hierophant [Retired] - Forum

That doesn't seem right. Drop everything below ghost reaver, everything below the socket before dreamer, the Runesmith wheel, and the 2 small nodes in written in blood wheel (+20 passives). Take Unnatural Calm wheel (-6 passives), in cluster jewel take 3 notables, 2 jewel sockets, 2 small passives (-7). In medium cluster jewel, take 1 small passive, 2 notables and 1 socket (-4) and in other medium cluster jewel take 1 small passive, 1 notable, and 1 socket (-3). You should come out ahead in ES, dps, and brand range/number. I think the issue is that the cluster jewels best for this build don't make up for all the ES you have to give up to grab them, even though they're definitely worth the lost dps from what you give up. But Unnatural Calm is a convenient fix.	Posted by jbmcarth on May 4, 2020, 9:13:53 PM Quote this Post
" Sat down and played with the popular cluster variants posted in the comments, even other build guides that use clusters for storm brand. I have to say that for most players, as they did me, they come up severely lacking compared to OP's build. Cluster socket? Stick a Fevered Mind in it. Chaos for Chaos, OP's build is insanely efficient and super strong (I'm currently crushing t15 maps with ease) with mid-level investment (think 10-50 exalts). Of the balanced cluster variants that had both damage and survivability, they usually traded either damage or survivability in the tree for clusters, leaving me completely gimped with my "50ex build". It is only when I put in 100's of ex in the rares; wand, amulet, rings, belts, watcher's eye, etc that I started to get a well rounded build again. So my conclusion is that if you only plan to invest <100ex, stick to OP build and stay away from clusters. But it will cap out on both damage and survivabily (though high). To go further you need to first improve your rares to insane levels using hundreds of exalts, then switch to clusters to min/max further. My experience with the build is that 30-50ex with no Watcher's Eye can get you to 15 million boss DPS per brand. If not for the Delirium mechanic, this would be enough to blow through all other content in the game save for deep delving which doesn't follow the same rules as the rest. I did play with clusters at first, and a combination of Large and Small clusters it what you would start with in order to balance damage and surviveability. If you know what you are looking for, upgrades are not that expensive. Annulments are cheap and people sell off items with 1 bad stat for much less than more ideal weapons. Mana is still a bit undervalued and I've found plenty of amulets that are more DPS than Atziri's Foible for 30-50c. Skyforth's are also back down to 3ex compared to the 7ex when I picked up the build a week or two ago. I'm currently at ~32 million boss DPS per brand (before frenzies, Vaal RF, high level Arcane Surge) with about 8k ES. This level of comfort does require investment but certainly not 100s of exalts. For everyone, if you are going to grind for exalts to min/max the build, I would think having a high ceiling is nice to strive for as you work to improve pieces of gear. If you want a breakdown of my costs or upgrade path or tips, let me know as well.	Posted by Jolo0213 on May 4, 2020, 10:29:28 PM Quote this Post
oh boy, here I go arguing on the internet... " jbmcarth wrote: I think the issue is that the cluster jewels best for this build don't make up for all the ES you have to give up to grab them Yup the only cluster build that worked for me at all used unnatural calm (funsize123's) and less dps cluster jewels, but then with my gear I was behind on dps by a large chunk, so it was sidegrade at best since it had a bit more ES. bnjee who posted in this thread advocating for cluster jewels; without their rare gear I had 4.3k ES lol So while it is possible to make cluster jewels work survivability wise, at least for me and at current prices I found it a sidegrade at best, a huge downgrade at worst without significant investment in rare gear. " Jolo0213 wrote: I'm currently at ~32 million boss DPS per brand...does require investment but certainly not 100s of exalts Let's play pricecheck! 1.9% Bottled Faith flask: 20ex storm brand pen enchant mindspiral: 70ex ES watcher's eye: 32ex total from only 3 items: 122ex don't even have to touch your rares yet! Maybe lucky annuls but I was looking for the same deals and right now all the gear even with bad stats is super expensive. In the end I think most people geared out their chars earlier in the league before all the gear went insane expensive, and accumulated the gear one small upgrade at a time watching the market for a long time for deals. Time we no longer have given how many weeks are left. And prices that no longer exist. The OP guide advertises an inexpensive build at two tiers where neither require really hard to acquire rares, or min/max uniques and can clear into high red maps. I think OP delivered, not sure why people keep coming in advocating for cluster over this build given the investment amount here is a fraction of the cost. Like I said it has a hard cap though, so if you want to push higher you gotta go cluster, but then you gotta pay the price. This will get you there so that you can farm those ex' if that's what you want to do.	Posted by OrionPlays on May 4, 2020, 11:09:57 PM Quote this Post
" oh boy, here I go arguing on the internet... Yup the only cluster build that worked for me at all used unnatural calm (funsize123's) and less dps cluster jewels, but then with my gear I was behind on dps by a large chunk, so it was sidegrade at best since it had a bit more ES. bnjee who posted in this thread advocating for cluster jewels; without their rare gear I had 4.3k ES lol So while it is possible to make cluster jewels work survivability wise, at least for me and at current prices I found it a sidegrade at best, a huge downgrade at worst without significant investment in rare gear. This league shits out currency though. You can farm maps for splinters and sell all your Simulacrums if you can't run them. Don't knock it till you search everything. https://pastebin.com/YB2vfi3u Clusters, no Watcher's Eye, no Bottled Faith, no Unnatural Instinct. ~7500ES, 15mil boss DPS per brand. Using my rings and belts those are recent purchases for about 50c-1ex and slammed with a Crusader Exalt. Total cost of gear there is maybe in the 15-20ex range. Certainly a viable next step for people who want to push a bit further than what they start with here. " In the end I think most people geared out their chars earlier in the league before all the gear went insane expensive, and accumulated the gear one small upgrade at a time watching the market for a long time for deals. Time we no longer have given how many weeks are left. And prices that no longer exist. The OP guide advertises an inexpensive build at two tiers where neither require really hard to acquire rares, or min/max uniques and can clear into high red maps. I think OP delivered, not sure why people keep coming in advocating for cluster over this build given the investment amount here is a fraction of the cost. Like I said it has a hard cap though, so if you want to push higher you gotta go cluster, but then you gotta pay the price. This will get you there so that you can farm those ex' if that's what you want to do. Which brings us to this point: that's why people are going to show off where the build goes. So the OP shows off the capabilities of the build at very attainable early starting budgets. But people come in and ask where they can improve. People ask how to make it less squishy, more damage, more QoL, etc. So others like myself can come in and answer how with personal takes and experiences. " Let's play pricecheck! 1.9% Bottled Faith flask: 20ex storm brand pen enchant mindspiral: 70ex ES watcher's eye: 32ex total from only 3 items: 122ex don't even have to touch your rares yet! Maybe lucky annuls but I was looking for the same deals and right now all the gear even with bad stats is super expensive. Of course my gear is going to be nice because I invested a lot more into the build recently. Didn't do this at league start when items/currency was cheaper; I started this build two weeks ago. In case anyone wants to know what levels of investment I took without poor speculation. Spoiler 8% penetration Mindspiral - 15ex (expect 20-30ex if one comes on market, more for uber enchant) Ivory Tower - 2ex Voidbringer - let's say 5ex (good rolls on mine, but I just corrupted ones I found and divined once to get those rolls) Skyforth - 7ex (self enchanted, now 3ex no enchant) Wand - 4ex (1ex base, 2ex multimod, 1ex spell damage/chaos hybrid) Prism Guardian - 70c (found and corrupted all of mine, still waiting for something good to come out of it) Amulet - 2.5ex (30c base, useless Crusader slam, catalysts and annoint included in cost) Rings - 5.5ex (1ex for one ring, 50c for another, 2 Crusader slams, catalyst up) Belt - ~2.5ex (50c base, Crusader slam, catalyst up) Cinderswallow, junk veiled mod - 1ex? Bottled Faith - 21ex well rolled Rumis - 25c? Large Cluster (w/ Storm Drinker) 7ex Large Cluster (w/ Prismatic Heart) 3ex You can craft these yourself. I made some that had Overshock and Widespread Destruction that I used for awhile. Went with Prismatic Heart to help with resists if I ever get a good shield corrupt. Sold those later to make up most of the prices of my current ones back. Medium Clusters - self crafted, don't know market price, very easy to self-craft % Mana as ES Watcher's Eye & Zealotry Cast Speed - 55ex (if you're going to save this much for one jewel, might as well get a damage mod in too, best ones are Precision Crit Multi, Wrath or Zealotry Pen, Zealotry Cast Speed) Unnatural Instinct - 23ex (about 27ex now I believe) Corrupted Blood Healthy Mind - 5ex 4 Fevered Mind > 38% spell damage - 20c each - 80c total (self corrupted 2, minimal gains pushing to 40%) Transcendent Flesh - 1.5ex Awakened Controlled Destruction - 8ex Awakened Lightning Pen - 1.5ex Awakened Elemental Focus -1.5ex Total ~172ex POB: https://pastebin.com/4F4JtsPC For a little more than a Headhunter at it's peak this league, that's not bad with Awakened Gems and a lot of items which, in fairness, the expensive ones can be transferred to other builds (Bottled Faith, Unnatural Instinct, % Mana as ES Watcher's Eye). Plenty of room to scale further, 21/23 gems, an actual good wand, uber penetration enchant, corrupts/double corrupts on gear and jewels, skill points for hitting 100. Last edited by Jolo0213 on May 5, 2020, 1:29:27 AM	Posted by Jolo0213 on May 5, 2020, 1:26:43 AM Quote this Post
Can anyone take a look at my PoB please?, i feel like i'm lacking a lot in dps and survivability. I currently only have about 9ex to spend on the build further (not the best league i had), any input toward improving the build is much appreciated! My PoB: https://pastebin.com/FwVW8iDC	Posted by ryan_MD on May 5, 2020, 7:53:04 AM Quote this Post
" WorderMostFoul wrote: " darkknight04 wrote: First let me say I'm really enjoying this build. I love the mobility and speed. The main issue i'm having right now is getting one-shot by pretty much every boss t11 onwards. I'm used to have the bulk to take a few normal attacks from bosses but even with arcane cloak I don't have anytime to react. I've invested about 10ex in the build and have 7kES. As i continue to level i'm taking more mana/ES nodes over crit to try and be less squishy: Thanks! Hmmm...most of your setup is pretty on-point. I can make a few suggestions; hopefully you can get a reply from f1rstborn since his answers always offer top-tier insight. I think generally we want to to get your mana pool bigger, since both our offense and defense scale heavily with mana investment. 1. Replace your wand! This is probably the biggest thing. It's basically only providing you 130% increased spell damage and a little mana. Get a wand with at least +150 to mana and it will make a big difference both in terms of survivability and damage. Relatedly, seeing elemental resistances crafted onto your wand is not a great sign; generally speaking--and certainly for this build--you never want to be reliant on your weapon to shore up your resistances. (Also, you need all 3 sockets linked for WoC to actually apply Conductivity, so doing that will make a big difference for your boss damage.) 2. Juice your amulet! That's another easy one. Get it to 20% quality with fertile catalysts and put an anointment on it. There has been much discussion about what the best options are; I think the best ideas are listed in the guide. I use Mana Flows, but there are other good (and cheaper) options that will provide you more mana, an extra brand, etc. I'd go for the mana. 3. Take another look at your flasks-- a. All flasks should be at least 20% quality. b. Mana flask prefix should definitely be "Catalysed". Scour, get to 20% quality, craft until you get Catalysed, then beastcraft of Staunching suffix. c. You don't have any warding flasks, which is a surefire way to get screwed in maps with Temporal Chains or Vulnerability. You also don't have a quartz flask, and the phasing element of the quartz flask is pretty important for a build that basically just runs through packs of monsters. I'd replace your Atziri's Promise with an experimenter's quartz flask of warding for mapping and then swap out your QS flask for Atziri's when you're bossing. d. Best QS flask for mapping is probably chemist's prefix and adrenaline suffix. I'd go for that and move the "of heat" suffix to the diamond flask (curing suffix isn't really very important). 4. Not sure how popular an idea this will be, but divining or replacing some of the uniques (as appropriate based on which option is cheaper) could reasonably score you another 50+ raw, flat mana, which of course equals a noticeable bump in mana pool and therefore eHP and damage. I'm specifically looking at Mindspiral, Atziri's Foible, and Skyforth (though Ivory Tower could also be improved upon). This one obviously requires some currency. 5. The belt is pretty good, but you ultimately want a stygian vise so you can stick an abyssal jewel in with ES and mana (and resistances, if necessary). Fossil-crafting a good one is generally pretty easy. For the moment, at least spam blessed orbs on the belt and two-stone ring so you can maximize their implicits. 6. Get Vorici in research and have him craft a white socket on your Ivory Tower so you can replace Controlled Destruction with Chain Support (extremely helpful for safer mapping). Swap CD back in for big boss fights. 7. I'm not sure what the logic is in having Arcane Surge in two setups. Your high-level AS should be active pretty much all the time if you have your keys bound correctly. There are many possible configurations that work, but, for example, if you assign Arcane Cloak to left-click and Brand Recall to right click, you can just hold down both mouse buttons and run around and everything pretty much dies. Replacing the low-level AS with Second Wind will help your mobility while costing you basically nothing (aside from the few Vaal and chromatic orbs needed to recolor the sockets). 8. Skill tree: a. Refund "Mana and Mana Regeneration" node right below Arcane Capacitor, refund Soul Thief, and use the 3 points to take Mind Drinker. You already have ES leech via Illuminated Devotion ascendancy. b. The node directly above Cruel Preparation is objectively better than the one above Deep Thoughts (10% increased mana vs 8%). c. Use your next two levels to grab Arcane Focus and then the two levels after that to get the jewel socket below Mind Drinker. All of this should provide you at least another 1k ES and various other improvements. If I made any suboptimal recommendations here, someone please call me out! Thank you very much to you and others for providing so much detail on improvements I could make. I've played POE for years now yet I still find I know so little about how the game works. I'll make some of the cheaper adjustments first and report back on how things are going.	Posted by darkknight04 on May 5, 2020, 9:18:43 AM Quote this Post
What should I update now? Spoiler	Posted by gokudin on May 5, 2020, 2:00:49 PM Quote this Post
" gokudin wrote: What should I update now? Let's start with flasks. You're playing a lowlife build focused around crit. Your eHP is energy shield and mana and your mana is defensive and offensive. Scour your Quicksilver and Mana flask and quality them to 20% then aim for Catalysed Mana flask of Staunching and Experimenter's or Alchemist's Quicksilver of Warding or Heat. Drop 1st life flask; quality a white Diamond flask to 20% and go for the suffix you didn't get on Quicksilver. Replace the second life flask with Atziri's Promise with as high of a elemental damage as extra chaos roll as you can get. Make sure that and your Cinderswallow are also 20% quality. Moving on to gear. Get a better Mindspiral with high mana, 10% mana as ES, and whatever lightning damage roll you can afford. Wand is decent, but see if you can get a better one with 120+ mana and 100%+ spell crit chance so you don't use two mods for it. Shield, not a high priority but if you can get a 20% quality one would be marginally better. Foible, eventually get one with 24%% increased maximum mana and use Fertile catalysts to 20%. You have two dead mods on your Paua Ring, aim for a Cerulean with high mana and resists and maybe some more ES. Ruby could also use better resists or stats. Energy Shield recharge could be something else since you get big refills from Cinderswallow. Belt is okay, probably a more expensive piece to upgrade so others would be better to do first. Boots, maybe divine for better mana. Quality on all armor missing it. Gem sockets. Move Dash with Brand Recall/Second Wind/Empower. I'd put Righteous Fire in with Arcane Cloak/Arcane Surge/Inc Duration. The open slots then left on boots can be Shield Charge/Fortify/Faster Attacks, or other utlities/support skills. (eg. Tempest Shield, Lightning Golem, CWDT setup, your preference). Keep leveling gems and eventually flip them for quality. Conductivity in the CoH setup in Wand. Skill tree. Keep leveling and get jewel sockets for Healthy Mind next to Mystic Bulwark. Other sockets for well rolled Fevered Minds (I'd aim for 38% or higher spell damage). Definitely refund the two points going to Blood Siphon and either get more jewel sockets with that, go get Ghost Reaver, or Faith and Steel. Finish last lab and get Illuminated Devotion.	Posted by Jolo0213 on May 5, 2020, 2:30:01 PM Quote this Post
" Sat down and played with the popular cluster variants posted in the comments, even other build guides that use clusters for storm brand. I have to say that for most players, as they did me, they come up severely lacking compared to OP's build. Cluster socket? Stick a Fevered Mind in it. Chaos for Chaos, OP's build is insanely efficient and super strong (I'm currently crushing t15 maps with ease) with mid-level investment (think 10-50 exalts). Of the balanced cluster variants that had both damage and survivability, they usually traded either damage or survivability in the tree for clusters, leaving me completely gimped with my "50ex build". It is only when I put in 100's of ex in the rares; wand, amulet, rings, belts, watcher's eye, etc that I started to get a well rounded build again. So my conclusion is that if you only plan to invest <100ex, stick to OP build and stay away from clusters. But it will cap out on both damage and survivabily (though high). To go further you need to first improve your rares to insane levels using hundreds of exalts, then switch to clusters to min/max further. Pretty much this. My argument has never been that clusters are bad. It's that they are not efficient. They always have a trade off and i was attempting to make a balanced build that scales from peanuts to hundreds of exalts. There is nothing stopping you from using cluster-boys if that's what you are in to!	Posted by f1rstborn on May 5, 2020, 5:20:12 PM Quote this Post
First Sirus kill on woke 8 with this toon. Did it waaaaay more easily than my CoC nova toon (gg having shit all over the screen). Killing blow actually occurred after dying, but my brands still ticking damage lmao. Anyways, OP build has totally proven itself and I don't even think I sunk 7.5ex into it. Amazing job OP; thinking about using it as league starter next league. In the interim, could use some advice on next upgrades with a budget of 10-20ex. TIA sempais Spoiler Last edited by Saltbringer on May 5, 2020, 5:24:31 PM	Posted by Saltbringer on May 5, 2020, 5:24:02 PM Quote this Post