[3.8] Fast Storm Brand Leveling Guide | League Starter | HC/SC

It looks like we're going to be hit pretty hard with these patch notes.

There will be passive tree changes, I will update the second post when these are updated for the guide. Most likely we will be taking one point in crit hit chance for Elemental Overload as they're removing the 5% minimum crit chance. This saves us from dropping faster casting for increased crit strikes.

Seems like brands will actually get damage lowered, but I can't see this being too much of a concern.

New support gems will be considered, and if useful to us, added.

Further update coming after patch notes.

Thanks for the guide, it's really nice for getting some practice runs in. Hopefully we can still use this same setup but the combo of BV and storm brand nerfs is spooky. Maybe they'll only change the endgame dmg of BV and a +1 wand should still carry storm brand I hope. Also curious to see the passive changes by templar for A1 + A2 skill tree. GL in synthesis everyone :)

It seems that Storm Brand was only slightly nerfed, I guess this guide is still on point?

Storm Brand deals 18.6% less damage in the next patch, so I think it's still pretty OP for leveling and early game. But yes, we need crit source now.

Well our boss-killing tool for act 1-3 (Blade Vortex) has been completely gutted, 55% nerf on level 1, plus added damage effectiveness reduced from 35% to 30%.

Any good alternative around before we get to lvl 28 for lightning spire trap?

I will be updating the guide later today (after work).

A quick thoughts about the patch notes, Storm Brand had its damage nerfed, but it is much more noticeable at level 20 (which we won't get to during leveling) than level 1. To make up this difference we're going to be taking some extra minion damage (Spiritual Command cluster) nodes after picking up Spiritual Aid.

Naturally the change to minimum crit chance also affects us, but not by too much. We gain crit chance once we get Light of Divinity near Templar, so we will delay getting Elemental Overload by a little. After this, business as usual.

The Celestial Elemental cluster near Templar received a huge change, and it's now likely that we will not take any of these new notables, this is something I will look at in a few hours time.

The changes to Blade Vortex were expected, but again I feel like this change is minor to us, it may change the time of a boss kill from 5 seconds to 8-10 seconds in Act 2. For now it will be staying in the guide, if I discover a better alternative throughout this league, I will replace Blade Vortex.

From the patch notes it looks like no change to current quests or quest rewards.

Care to share your thoughts on using Orb of Storms (buffed) instead of Lightning Spire Trap (slightly nerfed)?

@Wallach_
TBH i never used vortex and I did just fine. I used explosive trap + lesser posion + what ever if i have another 3 link. It worked pretty well. Dmg of explosive trap is a bit nerfed as well but not rekt as BV. Hope that helped

Explosive Trap got a very nice buff this patch, and could very well be a good contender to replace Blade Vortex.

As for Orb of Storms, I will look further into the comparison of it to Lightning Spire Trap. For league start, I will still recommend the latter, this may change further into the league.

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Explosive Trap got a very nice buff this patch, and could very well be a good contender to replace Blade Vortex.

Did it? Its damage was slightly lowered, and the radius upgrade is progressive so we'll only get +1 radius before we can switch to lightning spire.

How about ice spear though? +57% damage at level 1, that's something.

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Naturally the change to minimum crit chance also affects us, but not by too much. We gain crit chance once we get Light of Divinity near Templar, so we will delay getting Elemental Overload by a little. After this, business as usual.

That's the only source of crit chance for spell we have though if I'm not mistaken, so that means our crit chance goes from 5% before the change to 1.1% (5.5 base multiplied by (1 - 1 from controlled destruction + 0.2 from light of divinity).
Wouldn't that be a bit too low ? Edit: There's a cluster of crit chance for spells nodes that we can get right from the start, without travel nodes, in order 20/25/50% crit. So for 2 points invested, with the +20 of light of divinity as well, we get to 3.6% crit chance, which should be good enough, and we can get to 6.3% with one more point if we want.

We could also just change controlled destruction for something else. We can get lightning penetration in early act 6 for instance, and before that we could be on added lightning maybe ?


Also, unrelated question : how far do you think we can reasonably get on a 4-link right after leveling, assuming I keep playing brand? Am I crazy if I try to complete yellow maps without tabula in the first weekend?
Spending 4-6 hours farming tabula in blood aqueduct doesn't seem very efficient. Maybe the currency from early maps can let me get it faster by buying the div cards?