[3.10] Nokey91 - Love that Freeze/Shatter Sound? 4mil Shaper DPS Storm Brand Assassin

Pros

Fast Clear
Built in Culling Strike
Chaos Innoculation
93% Freeze Chance
91% Shock Chance
Super High Crits/Chance
4mil Shaper/Sirus DPS (PoB shows 2.1mil dps, double this for Runebinder as PoB does not calculate 2x brands attached to one enemy).


Cons

Glass Cannon (Fairly squishy)
Relies on applying Elemental Ailments for damage (chill/freeze)
Requires a Skin of the Lords
Low Armour and Evasion
Can not run No ES/Mana Regen Maps
Expensive: 20ex+ Budget

5 Cluster Jewels

Increased Chill and Shock effect is extremely useful. Small chance to blind is an added bonus along side +10% Elemental res for free. A good mix of offence/defence in this jewel.

This gem is pretty self explanatory, Attachment range for brands and activation frequency is both extra dps and good quality of life for the build. Dexterity is also a nice addition for these jewels if you want to use Awakened Support Gems later.

Chance to deal double damage on crits, effect of chill and shock all add to this build's survivability and dps output. Dexterity is also a nice addition for these jewels if you want to use Awakened Support Gems later.

Energy from Naut provides a HUGE increase in Energy Shield for us, Any resistance, ES, Mana, Dexterity or Intelligence you can get on this gem is an added bonus.

Same applies to the above jewel.

2 Unique Jewels

This build utilises "Lethal Pride" timeless jewel, using the "Kiloava" skill group. The number does not matter, it is used to change the "Pain Attunement" node to "Glancing Blows" which doubles your block chance, at the cost of only blocking half the damage.

This build also uses "Energy From Within" allowing us to use the "Cruel Preparation" notable for an extra 15% ES and 5% Ele res, on top of the 6% Maximum Energy Shield we get from the jewel.

Chest:
This Chest is used to gain the allocation "Runebinder". This allocation allows 2 brands to be attached to a singular enemy, which essentially doubles your single target DPS.

For levelling, you can still use this if you wish, or if you have something already 6 Linked that has better levelling stats, use that instead. I personally chose to use this chest throughout the levelling process to assist with the bosses through the game.

Helmet:

A high ES base and a little fossil crafting can net you a helmet in excess of 300+ ES fairly easily. The price comes when you have to roll for the Redeemer mod "Nearby enemies have -9% to cold resistance", which as you can see I still haven't managed to get. A couple of resists and a large amount of ES will make this helmet viable for you instantly, however having the 40% Storm Brand damage is useful and not rare on ES bases and also Nearby enemies mod is rare, but super powerful.


Belt:

Here you are rolling for Cold Damage and Damage against chilled enemies combo, with literally anything else you can get, ideally you want more resistances and/or energy shield, but using a Crystal Belt base already provides roughly 350 Energy Shield on it's own.

Amulet:

A Pandemonious was the obvious choice here, combined with Turbulent Catalysts to increase Elemental Damage. This increases both the % damage mod and the Cold Penetration mod. Arcane Potency provides +30% Crit Multi and 30% increased Crit chance for spells and costs roughly 40c.


Rings:

2x Call of the Brotherhood rings make up the ring slots for this build. These rings both convert 40% of our Lightning damage to Cold. Using Turbulent Catalysts, this increases to 48% per ring, for a total conversion of 96% Lightning to Cold. It also provides us with 100% chance to Shock frozen enemies.

Boots:

Boots are fairly self explanatory, high movespeed, as much resistance as possible and as much Energy Shield as possible.

Weapon/Shield:

This wand is currently super cheap and provides such a huge damage boost for our Storm Brand. It also gives us a lot of other added bonuses such as increased spell block, crit chance and crit multi, not much to say other than this wand is perfect.



This shield took a while to craft, Fossil crafted to 30% quality and maxed as much Energy Shield as I could while gaining the "Recover 5% of Energy Shield when you block". Anything else you can get on the shield is a huge bonus, especially Chance to Block and/or Resistance modifiers.

Flasks:

For Levelling: You can level with any Lightning/Cold/Spell skill until level 12, then switch to a Storm Brand setup.

Pick up Flame Dash as early as possible for QoL movement, and Frost Bomb to add a little Cold Exposure to enemies. Your call of the Brotherhood rings can also be used from Level 20 onwards, but you may prefer another levelling ring.

For levelling and for a decent chunk of maps, I used Discipline, Herald of Thunder and Herald of Ice, this allowed me to consistently run around 6.2 - 6.6k Energy shield. Once I had 6,000 ES without Discipline, I then switched to Zealotry to improve my DPS.

Your 6L Gem Setup is as follows:


Your Movement / Brand Recall Setup is (4L):

Arcane Surge kept at Level 11 to permanently proc it.

Cold Exposure / Curse Setup (4L):

Auras and Misc (4L):


Cast When Damage Taken Setup (2L + 1):
+

Enduring Cry Setup (2L + 1):
+