[3.16 - RETIRING BUILD] VD Brands: S-Tier Bosser, A-Tier Map! -- MURDERED BY GGG_INTERN SOMEWHERE--

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primaeva wrote:

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Iluvthu wrote:

Hi Primaeva,

I'm currently lvl94 in Rituals league and planning to switch over to this build. However, I do not have the currency and experience to craft/buy the helm and armour. Is it mandatory to have these items for the build to work? Or is it also still viable (but less dps) with Arcanist Brand and VD in a 6l non influenced armor?

Thanks for sharing the build as it looks really cool.

Heya mate!

I would say using a tanky 6L armor would work well, yes, but you more or less want to guarantee having "10% of Max Life gained as ES" craft on the chestpiece. In your helm can go the Incinerate/BoneOffering/Flammability/CWC loop (er, or you can just manually cast Bone Offering and Flammability sure.)

In the Chest Links you must include Power Charge on Critical as that's how we generate most of the damage.

Focus on getting Cinderswallow, Unnatural Instinct and Awakened Spell Cascade first - these are higher priority than the helm.

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primaeva wrote:

Ok took a look mate.

1) How come you're not running Discipline? That'd take you to 1.7k ES immediately. Your PoB shows you as running two Zealotries.. Are you running two Zealotries? lol

2) Drop your 30 dex node

3) Unspec the Str and Intel node above Trickery. Instead, path through Assassination - crit mult is huge for the build.

4) Unspec that node next to Prismatic Heart on your Cluster Jewel. Put it in something like Lethal Assault.

5) Your Atziri's Flask doesn't do anything aside from 35% chaos res since we are Avatar of Fire and do no Chaos damage.

Always try to record your videos to see what went wrong. A lot of people panic and mash a ton of buttons and mess up their Brands on the floor.

Firstly, this can be undone by doing a manual #1 - #2 - #1 - #2 again, forcing the oldest wrong brands to disappear.

Secondly stay calm and don't panic - unattached brands last for like 8 seconds actually, and 5 for attached so there's no need to really cast new brands all the time. Instead focus on just dodging stuff, calmly cast new brands every 5 seconds.

Look at this fight. Just drop 2, and chill, let the Brand Attachment Range do its work. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1Xw7RtJyJk


Finally this is a topic most build guides seem to get caught up on - getting one shot on T16 has a lot to do with what map mods you roll, more than the build sometimes. With 6-7k combined pool, block/spellblock and not being a melee character, a LOT of deaths are from people running stuff like 210% gained as *element*, Monster Crit + Power Charges + Turbo, 2 Additional Projectiles, etc.

It will be a recurring theme in your PoE life that no build seems to be tanky enough because most of the Softcore builds focus on giving you 6k HP + Fortify and that's it - that's still gonna get clapped in a badly rolled map. You'll want 83% all res + Fortify + Perma Enfeeble if you want a one-shot-free experience.

At the very least, if you invest enough into this build, I will guarantee you that it does so much damage that you destroy things like Rituals before they even have a chance to stack auras.

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Crusnik02 wrote:

Hi! So I respeced my lvl 93 witch into this build, I am carrying around 80ex worth of gear/gems, and am sitting at 5.3k life, 2.5k es. I think I got a hang of the playstyle, placing the brands alternatively as you described in the guide.

However, I still feel that I am doing something wrong, as I die quite a lot to pretty much anything. The damage is obviously there, with a lot of burst once the balls start rolling and the es leech kicks in. But once I stop to place more brands or to fire incinerate, I have to pray that I don't get hit, especially at the start of a map.

Can you please take a look at my setup and advise on what I need to do next?

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FateAvrnicus wrote:

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primaeva wrote:

Ok took a look mate.

1) How come you're not running Discipline? That'd take you to 1.7k ES immediately. Your PoB shows you as running two Zealotries.. Are you running two Zealotries? lol

2) Drop your 30 dex node

3) Unspec the Str and Intel node above Trickery. Instead, path through Assassination - crit mult is huge for the build.

4) Unspec that node next to Prismatic Heart on your Cluster Jewel. Put it in something like Lethal Assault.

5) Your Atziri's Flask doesn't do anything aside from 35% chaos res since we are Avatar of Fire and do no Chaos damage.

Always try to record your videos to see what went wrong. A lot of people panic and mash a ton of buttons and mess up their Brands on the floor.

Firstly, this can be undone by doing a manual #1 - #2 - #1 - #2 again, forcing the oldest wrong brands to disappear.

Secondly stay calm and don't panic - unattached brands last for like 8 seconds actually, and 5 for attached so there's no need to really cast new brands all the time. Instead focus on just dodging stuff, calmly cast new brands every 5 seconds.

Look at this fight. Just drop 2, and chill, let the Brand Attachment Range do its work. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1Xw7RtJyJk


Finally this is a topic most build guides seem to get caught up on - getting one shot on T16 has a lot to do with what map mods you roll, more than the build sometimes. With 6-7k combined pool, block/spellblock and not being a melee character, a LOT of deaths are from people running stuff like 210% gained as *element*, Monster Crit + Power Charges + Turbo, 2 Additional Projectiles, etc.

It will be a recurring theme in your PoE life that no build seems to be tanky enough because most of the Softcore builds focus on giving you 6k HP + Fortify and that's it - that's still gonna get clapped in a badly rolled map. You'll want 83% all res + Fortify + Perma Enfeeble if you want a one-shot-free experience.

At the very least, if you invest enough into this build, I will guarantee you that it does so much damage that you destroy things like Rituals before they even have a chance to stack auras.

Thanks for taking a look and the suggestion. Hmm must be a PoB bug lol, I'm running Discipline already.

After the tweak, the damage has gone up again and I pretty much got the playstyle, but I really have to keep rolling T16 map mods because I can't take any medium to high-risk mods (very rippy with my 5k/1.2 es). I'm trying to get a few more lvl so I can reach heartseeker node for that juicy multiplier.

Reading on some of the other player problems, I think I'm gonna swap the helm setup with a tanky 6l chest and see how it goes. Thanks!

Edit: Wow that video, nice fight, how did you get 3k Es?

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primaeva wrote:

Mother of god! Your gear is absolutely up there and you should be crushing content with impunity and no fear of death. All right, I need to thoroughly investigate what's going on with so many people reporting sudden deaths - in this build I almost relish getting hit because it lets me see some juicy ES overleech. If we pool enough videos maybe I can help solve a pain point that I'm missing.

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Asterism wrote:

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primaeva wrote:

Mother of god! Your gear is absolutely up there and you should be crushing content with impunity and no fear of death. All right, I need to thoroughly investigate what's going on with so many people reporting sudden deaths - in this build I almost relish getting hit because it lets me see some juicy ES overleech. If we pool enough videos maybe I can help solve a pain point that I'm missing.

In my experience, it's very easy to make a small mistake at any time while playing this build while mapping and immediately get exploded. When you have momentum on your side, you feel unstoppable. You've got tons of overleech/discipline-ES-on-hit, you've got big corpse removing explosions, you've got the max block/life on block stuff from Bone Offering, and you're packing a very respectable 7k+ combined ES and life.

But if you ever let the momentum drop--if you forget to channel incinerate once in a while, or if you double-cast one kind of brand, or drop a cast because the game went down to single digit FPS, or you move towards a pack and press Brand Recall while it's still on cooldown, it all goes to hell.

It's especially spooky if you're engaging your first pack unbuffed, either because you just entered the map or because you spent some time looting, because then your raw HP drops down to a kind of pathetic 5K and you don't have Bone Offering up.

My honest guess is that you've been playing this build since Harvest, you likely just aren't making a lot of these mistakes anymore, but they will absolutely get you killed with very little warning in high red maps.