reworked penance brand + non-conversion occultist = true nuke?

so, more like a theorycraft, i believe that the new penance brand is kinda juicy for an occ with ascendancy other than void beacon and its branches

my main idea is getting items with tons of added spell phys damage like disintegrator that has integrated battlemage, crit spell and multi with brands passives can make it a true stacker for massive instant damage, just like discharge can do with elemental damage
the only downside is the cooldown and the need to ramp up clear speed with other means
for defences, obviously it must be ES based, but i still not decided between LL or pure CI, using devouring diadem or something that passively recovers from incoming damage

i will make this a side project of mine, and perhaps i can upgrade this topic to a full build guide

notes (to myself):
-warlock ascendancy has a tincture capable of igniting
-big armour
-focusing on medium clusters

How do you plan to mitigate Disintegrator's self damage on witch?
I'd use Martyr of Innocence instead. Or maybe just wand + shield with + phys/all gem levels. It looks like it will scale great.

The biggest issue is that Brand activation can be sped up by only one source - Swiftbrand support gem. And it grants 44% more activation frequency +5% from quality. Nothing else affects brand activation time.
So, let's say you got 50%. Instead of 2 seconds(20 stages * 0.1 sec per stage) brand will explode after 1 second. Not that great for fast clear unless you get chain explosions and even then you have 1 second delay before damage is done - this will probably feel clunky just like Ironwood totems support.

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alex_disp wrote:

How do you plan to mitigate Disintegrator's self damage on witch?
I'd use Martyr of Innocence instead. Or maybe just wand + shield with + phys/all gem levels. It looks like it will scale great.

The biggest issue is that Brand activation can be sped up by only one source - Swiftbrand support gem. And it grants 44% more activation frequency +5% from quality. Nothing else affects brand activation time.
So, let's say you got 50%. Instead of 2 seconds(20 stages * 0.1 sec per stage) brand will explode after 1 second. Not that great for fast clear unless you get chain explosions and even then you have 1 second delay before damage is done - this will probably feel clunky just like Ironwood totems support.

Actually cast speed still affects Penance brand's activation frequency. you can check by hovering on the gem in the official rework post.

Oh you're right, I missed the post where they showed regular 20/20 gems.
Hm, interesting.
But with that much phys damage you'd better go conversion, for example to cold, to get big freezes or to lightning for maximum shocks. Scaling just phys damage without converting it looks like a waste.
Also, there are tons of %phys as extra <element> damage modifiers on many types of items, why ditch them?

not that it is a problem, but the new gem has 570% effectiveness from added damage, so i think adding flat elemental is kind of wasteful and the conversion nodes to elemental in the tree kind of clash with the passives i am planning to allocate
maybe chaos conversion is viable since disintegrator already gives a bit and some nodes are nearby
i thought of doing pure phys because it seems straightfoward with the double curse setup but i hope ggg can release the transfigured gems sooner

edit: just to clarify, this won't be my league starter and the budget is already over 50 divines on my pob drafts, also this won't be a beginner-friendly build. i just believe that i stumbled on something worth exploring
everything goes well and i have an uber farmer