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

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KopaKabana wrote:

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My first point literally reads "you can have 6, only 2 attached to one enemy". And your response is to tell me that I'm wrong, because you can only have 2 attached...

Maybe you misunderstand and have never played brands, but you can lay down 6 and if there are 3 enemies each of these enemies can have 2 of those brands attached to it and do damage.

The changes that are coming do not change anything about that. Whatever you read that made you believe that, you have misinterpreted it.

dude...oyu have no ideea how brands even work

Please enlighten me. I've explained now several times how I believe the mechanic of brands to work, I have played them last league and in former leagues and have seen how they work... so, what is factually wrong?

Or is your "you have no ideas how brands even work" just meant as "I disagree with your opinion because I feel differently"?

Brand is a new totems, but they cant be destroyed. Use brand as debuff support skill like wither brand for bane/ed/blight, proc blade blast, aplying curse, proc EO etc. We didnt see numbers, may be they so bad and brand never be used as a main skill or we see some OP stuff. Let's not bury early brands, they will find application.

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KopaKabana wrote:

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clozzer wrote:

So the current brand-playstyle is dead?

I'm not talking about breaking the game by abusing jewels/archmage.

Just placing brands and running around with recall is gone? :/

yes, and will be even worse than totems, will be slow, clincky and lackluster dps

I'd love to see the evidence you have to conclude that. We know nothing about the numerical changes to brands, to duration, etc. We know nothing about new items, passive skills or any other resource that might support brands.

Not saying it won't be as you describe it - but there is nothing to base that on currently. We only know that yes, the "play-style" of running through a map without ever stopping or clicking anything, having brand recall basically on auto-recast bound to left-click will be gone.

But apart from that? How'd you know that the dps will be lackluster when we don't even have numbers on that? It worked well enough, even before Archmage, there is nothing indicating it won't now. It might not be "meta", but that is yet to be determined.

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brands are dead, all kind of play style involving brands
Maybe they should just delete everythign and make this an auto attack game fiesta

I don't understand your last sentence. That is basically exactly what Brands in 3.10 were. You cast them once and then run around, recalling every few seconds automatically, without any input by the player aside from moving. That is exactly the energy of non-interactive auto-attack builds. Yet, that they changed brands away from that play-style is what leads you to believe they are dead now. Why? Because you actually have to play?

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Serdoa wrote:

I don't understand your last sentence. That is basically exactly what Brands in 3.10 were. You cast them once and then run around, recalling every few seconds automatically, without any input by the player aside from moving. That is exactly the energy of non-interactive auto-attack builds. Yet, that they changed brands away from that play-style is what leads you to believe they are dead now. Why? Because you actually have to play?

Running around spamming 5 potions and 2 or 3 keys for movement skills and attacks is not much different or better.
You are not playing the game more. Not in the sense that you are making meaningfull or strategic choices or managing resources.
All you have to manage your positioning more or less (based on the difficulty of the content vs the tankability of your character) and flasks. The rest is spamming attacks/spells to keep up dps. POE is not baldur's gate 2.

So, if all it comes down to is constant spamming of attacks, unless there are huge qol advantages to using brands (like with the current brand recall) or huge upsides (like archmage brand level) there is not much incentive for the majority of people to play a brand build over something that can spam faster and from a safer distance and overall feel better to play.

this is a nice new touch for spellcasting, I like it!

Well, it does look nice.

Please do not overnerf brands because with this seems like its rip hard for storm brand builds. Thanks

I was fine with everything until I got to the end and they're like 'oh, here's a small change, it just fundamentally changes what Brands are, have fun guys'.

Nerf Brand/archmage damage? - Makes sense. Outside delirium content, the damage is op as can be.

Nerf brand range? - Yup. If you stack enough range on the skill tree (with the help of cluster jewels), you can basically attach to anything on screen. Often times off screen too.

Nerf Brand Recall duration refresh? - Sensible. If playing a Hierophant, you can keep up your brands indefinitely without having to recast.

Completely remove the duration refresh and ability for the the brand to move from default location? - You have now basically killed anything remotely unique and different about the brand skills. It is now just another generic self cast spell.

The new brands skills will largely be dead on arrival. Rip

I'm curious as to whether or not you'll give most brands a longer 'max attachment duration' which is currently 5 seconds.

Wintertide and Penance are both appealing, but since they're DoT, they will use a good chunk of their attachment time not killing - therefore suffering even more than storm brand from a number of these changes.

I'm as glad as anyone that you're nuking the archmage interaction. Since you've obviously deemed these nerfs better, holistically than not letting archmage work with brands, I hope you're giving them enough base damage, duration, and attachment range to make up for nuking the playstyle (which again, deserved it, because it really took the 'play' out of playstyle).