New Brand Gems and Brand Changes in Path of Exile: Harvest

Wanted to try brands for 1st time as a league starter. Guess i'll take gud ol' melee again.

Ok so:

- Storm brand won't destroy an entire map in 1 cast anymore (which is a GOOD thing since it was completely OP).

- Brands now works somewhat like totems, they stand in 1 place, kill a monster and return there. This could be both good and bad since it changes the playstyle... but since they are basically unstoppable totems, why would anyone use totems anymore?

- Brand recall becomes basically a way to move the "totem" without recast it, so why using it if it doesn't refresh it? :D


I think there could be some interesting build around the arcanist brand to be used like a totem build, but all depends on how much the damage reduction we have compared to a totem...

Also: if you put lightning warp into a totem, the totem jumps around, so if you put an arcanist brand with lightning warp, does it teleport the mobs around? XD

I expected an archmage nerf to be honest. But not that hard. This change effectively kills the entire archmage brand playstyle.

While i appreciate that you justified the decision, its changes like this that remind me to never, ever buy any skill specific mtx.

RIP stormbrand archmage trickster, hopefully ill find a build that runs as smooth as you did again :(

The Brand Recall change makes little sense. After all, since the mana cost is increased based on the number of brands, it should also still refresh the duration, or at least a part of it. Now, all it will do is move the brands, and still cost more mana.
Seems like a very unfair change, with two negatives slapped onto it and no positives - the first negative being no more refresh, the other the untoubtedly very high mana cost, increasing per each brand, with no positive to justify this change.
The least GGG could've done is a positive change to offset the nerfs. Will it even be worth using anymore? It would probably be more useful to simply recast the brands manually. Seems like only reason to use Brand Recall is triggering the cold DoT and charge brands.

And that is not even counting the most probably upcoming Archmage nerf. Why is it that GGG tends to nerf things too far, in an attempt to balance things? Are the changes not play-tested first? It's not like it'd be the first nerf that made an item/skill so bad it's basically unusable. Archmage might still be a worthwhile support, but it's also likely GGG will make it useless, or even worse, it will negatively affect the skill, making it weaker with no positive effect!

A few questions:
1. can the storm brand MTX be used with any brand skill?
2. can arcanist brand be linked with / trigger another brand?
3. does the 6 brands limit still apply if you cast different brands at the same time (if that's posslible)?
4. will socketed support gems apply to arcanist brand as well as to linked spells (like spell echo) at the same time?
5. will the activation frequency of arcanist brand dictate or limit the frequency of the supported / triggered spells, or will the internal cooldown / frequency of said spell determine how often it will fire/activate?
6. can arcanist brand trigger brand recall?

All in all, curious to see the addition to brands, was annoyed with how unergonmical the brand recall mechanic was anyway ;)

I can still see some very exciting possibilities with the new gems. I think brand will still be fun, but require a very different play style. You have totally killed all existing brand builds and I think you went too far in the Brand Recall nerf in particular. Half its refresh capability, but leave us some. Otherwise there is now zero point to having a higher maximum brand count - how in the WORLD can you make minion builds like they are, make melee cyclone builds like they are, and then gripe about passivity in brands lmao

Wish I hadn't bought the Storm Brand MTX now

Brand nerf was expected but why did you have to kill it?
As mentioned above the uniqness is gone and new brands are just like mines but worse

Why couldn't you just make brand recall consume same mana as the brand it recalls and leave it be?

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pincoide wrote:

- Brands now works somewhat like totems, they stand in 1 place, kill a monster and return there. This could be both good and bad since it changes the playstyle... but since they are basically unstoppable totems, why would anyone use totems anymore?

* Reflected damage
* Corrupted blood
* Brands are limited to 2 per monster, or 3 for Wintertide; you can have more Totems than that, meaning potentially higher single-target.
* Totems can be targeted, giving monsters something to hit other than you.
* Totems can use channeled skills, Arcanist Brand (most likely) can't.

I don't mind the Brand Recall nerf as I never used it. I preferred dropping a brand or two at each pack and moving on. That way it would just latch on if it could and I wouldn't pull it away before things were dead.

The change to where it lands after it detaches is a massive nerf though. Will make it more clunky to play.

Now it's like a trap with worse damage/AOE and only 1 or two spells going off at a time. Also have to recast it way more often as it is not going to clear up packs as well.

If you have to cast a few times at a pack to clear everything you may as well just use a trap which can have multiple spells going off at once and doesn't have less damage/AOE multipliers.


Brands were good for clearing and not so good for single target. Now the clearing has been nerfed and it's still around the same for single target (not so good). So all round not so good now.

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ekaye wrote:

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pincoide wrote:

- Brands now works somewhat like totems, they stand in 1 place, kill a monster and return there. This could be both good and bad since it changes the playstyle... but since they are basically unstoppable totems, why would anyone use totems anymore?

* Reflected damage
* Corrupted blood
* Brands are limited to 2 per monster, or 3 for Wintertide; you can have more Totems than that, meaning potentially higher single-target.
* Totems can be targeted, giving monsters something to hit other than you.
* Totems can use channeled skills, Arcanist Brand (most likely) can't.

true but with damage reflect totems are useless because they get oneshotted anyway :D

Given the melee rework in the trailer, I think they are trying to push people to use more melee and less spells :/
But maybe this could be the league to go back to necromancy, like a summon skeleton arcanist brand XD