[3.20] Ice Dancing Queen - Icestorm/Cyclone/CI - Viable For Everything

"

RagozFenrir wrote:

You will link spell echo to your brand and get 70% more cast speed and throw 2 brands at a time. You'll also get some duration from the tree and should probably consider the 90% skill effect duration nodes all near scion since not only will the brand last longer but the ice storms as well.

The math for those storms is for whenever the normal storm duration would expire you would be getting 90% more damage because the storm is persisting 90% longer.

Edit: It's possible this is just too many storms for anyone's GPU to handle or calculations for the server to handle.

I'm almost certainly mathing wrong, but assuming no other sources of cast speed (just spell echo) bringing out two brands will take 1.12 seconds. Each brand will activate every 1 second.. (Based on the wiki for storm brand spell echo doesn't help brand activation speed). Each brand will last 5.7 seconds (with all the duration clusters)

Let's say you cast in place for 3.36 seconds to get out all your brands. (also takes investment on passive tree to get 6 brands) Ignoring brand recall shenanigans for the moment that gives you 30 total WI activations for your 3.36 cast time. That's 3 times better than the 11.2 activations you would get during that same amount of time with CwC.

However, you need to give up 10(ish) passive points, and stand in place about half the time to hit that.

Also, your clear is impacted a bit due to the the 40% less area on your storms. This is mitigated somewhat by the fact that the brands will move and provide greater overall coverage in a more random pattern. That in itself is mitigated by the fact that you can't aim your storms anymore.

Your secondary damage to non-branded enemies will be around 58% less with brands as well, so your clear suffers again. This is mitigated by the fact that your damage will do 49% more damage to a branded target.

Already did too much math in this post, but I could see a case for a single duration cluster, and maybe Runebinder for investment, allowing you to do massive quick stacked damage on branded bosses, (skip spell echo for another damage gem) while keeping a more traditional setup for clear. For bosses that would give you 8 activations for your 1.6 second cast time. Each activation would do around 100% more damage than a traditional Icestorm (extra damage gem, and extra damage on branded monsters)

The advantage of super long duration Icestorms is a bit of a trap, at some point trash doesn't live long enough to make the extra duration worth it, and the things that DO live long enough have long since moved out of the storm. area.

TLDR:
Brands probably won't be good for map clearing, with the stop and go playstyle, smaller area of effect, and less "splash" damage, but with light investment they could do massive damage to bosses. So what others have said, they may be an awesome option for a bossing staff.

Brands WILL be able to put out Icestorms up to 3 times as fast as CwC so the drawbacks may be worth it as the sheer number of storms may make up for the mapping drawbacks. IF the servers can handle it.

They really don´t limit cold to the core like the herald stacking stuff or do i miss this in the patch notes?

"

Naramie_VI wrote:

They really don´t limit cold to the core like the herald stacking stuff or do i miss this in the patch notes?

No change to the power or limit of Cold to the Core. Only jewel nerfs that matter to us are Hexbreaker being gutted, and Split Personality being limited to 2.

Selfcast brand it's sadly, but what happens if we link cyclone+cwc+brand?

"

Hydrant22 wrote:

Selfcast brand it's sadly, but what happens if we link cyclone+cwc+brand?

That's a fun thought. Likely not viable as it costs you another support gem, but what it "SHOULD" do is cast an icestorm and a brand (that will then cast an Icestorm) every .6 seconds. CwC should alternate between casting Icestorm and Arcanist brand.

"

Breken wrote:

I'm almost certainly mathing wrong, but assuming no other sources of cast speed (just spell echo) bringing out two brands will take 1.12 seconds. Each brand will activate every 1 second.. (Based on the wiki for storm brand spell echo doesn't help brand activation speed). Each brand will last 5.7 seconds (with all the duration clusters)

Just arcanist brand + spellecho:

0.8 seconds base cast time

70% more cast speed spell echo

0.8 * .3 = 0.24 seconds per brand, must cast at least 2 from echo

0.48 seconds for 2 brands, 1.44 seconds to cast all 6 brands

"

Breken wrote:

Also, your clear is impacted a bit due to the the 40% less area on your storms. This is mitigated somewhat by the fact that the brands will move and provide greater overall coverage in a more random pattern. That in itself is mitigated by the fact that you can't aim your storms anymore.

The damage is increased from the same number of shards hitting targets more due to the reduced area. It can be an upside. The brands will attach to enemies and drop very concentrated storms and then attach to the next target after killing the previous.

"

Breken wrote:

Your secondary damage to non-branded enemies will be around 58% less with brands as well, so your clear suffers again.

When you encounter a pack of enemies the 6 brands will attach to at least 3 enemies and all activate. This will cast 6 ice storms with 46% reduced damage (assuming this is for any remaining enemies with no brands attached, worst case scenario) for a total of 324% of the damage you would get from your initial cast while channeling unreduced damage.

This is all before adding in your additional gem support from not needing cyclone + CWC vs arcanist brand only.

I suspect what will happen is the brands will rip through packs with concentrated damage area ice storms searching for new targets to attach to. That's my hope for how it will clear.

Edit: Spell echo might not even be necessary. It's a quality of life gem and might not even matter if it feels fine to throw brands normally.

I think about one more thing - how much cold penetration is good for this build?
I Have taken 50/50 nodes with cold penetration and cold to the core? Do you think it's worth?

"

mdpoe wrote:

I really hope

Spoiler

3def-1int
Cobalt Jewel
Crafted: true
Prefix: {range:0.5}EnergyShieldJewel
Prefix: {range:0.5}EnergyShieldDelayJewel
Suffix: {range:1}IntelligenceJewel
Suffix: {range:1}EnergyShieldOnHitJewel
Quality: 0
LevelReq: 0
Implicits: 0
+16 to Intelligence
7% increased maximum Energy Shield
5% faster start of Energy Shield Recharge
+3 Energy Shield gained for each Enemy hit by your Attacks

stuff like that will be rather easy to craft.
Hypno jewels with 2 cold and 1 int and 1 eshield are way stronger than the 3.9 tree at the start, but they are harder to craft and need like itemlevel 81-83 wheras cobalt jewels can be ANY level...

That +ES on attack is of no use to us, since we do not attack but instead cast spells. Note the legend on the Watcher's Eye is just "enemy hit" with no further qualification.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbllOZEtsMs

So we have a godlike tier buff for build.

That is fantastic news! But now we may be in danger of going meta! eep! But at least lilianmarius may be able to use something other than Concentrated effect now.

Hmm... if that works to truly remove fps issues, I might be tempted to test brands. *ponder*