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

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Crusnik02 wrote:

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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.

I think that's right on point. After OP confirmed that there's not much wrong with my setup, I analysed my playstyle and pretty much came to the same conclusion. The build's defences heavily rely on being in the "momentum", when I am leeching and have all the buffs up. However, at the start of the map and if I stop for whatever reason and lose the momentum, I feel like glass and it's at those points I get the one-shots.

I changed my playstyle a bit and was much more careful in my lack of momentum state. It's a bit frustrating at that point because unlike other builds where you immediately leech by attacking, with this one it takes a while and there's not much you can do other than get out of the harm's way and build the momentum. Bosses with invulnerability phases are particularly annoying in this respect, especially Kitava who has a lot of on ground degens and Chimera in its smoke-phase.

All in all, I think the build becomes the more enjoyable the more you progress in the initial learning curve. I think I have yet to surpass it though, been playing for just a day or so. I will make sure to record some videos if I encounter problems other than those described above. And I also agree that it would be very useful for OP to make a video guide explaining the mechanics in detail, as they are not very intuitive from the start.

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Asterism wrote:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but if you wanted the Immortal Ambition + Corrupted Soul combo, couldn't you just switch the Timeless jewel from Ahuana to Doryani and wear a (3c) regular Soul Tether instead of a (1 ex) replica?

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Asterism wrote:

or drop a cast because the game went down to single digit FPS

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Asterism wrote:

In any case, rapidly getting to the point where all my upgrades are multiple ex for pretty marginal gains. A9 sirus down deathless, A9 conqs don't even get a chance to finish their first attack animation, but bosses that (MAVEN) go invincible (MAVEN) and (MAVEN) disengage from brands a lot (MAVEN) are a good deal more annoying.

The big sin here is that I'm using an 6W Astral Plate instead of a Vaal Regalia, because I could steal my Chieftain's for free instead of spending 10 ex crafting another one. Losing out on a couple hundred ES and having to hit 180 strength is awful though, so don't do that unless you just have the plate sitting around like I did.

If you can bear to lose the six slots for leveling gems to sell, I recommend a Shimmeron + Light of Lunaris weapon swap. It cuts your Shimmeron degen in half, which is nice for A9 -max resist or -recovery speed maps that dramatically increase the damage you take.

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primaeva wrote:

All right, thanks you three, that's solid feedback. Working on a technical video that showcases some tips and tricks to work around these. It's become a fairly common thread that there's a learning curve (as listed in the Cons) - but it does seem some people get hooked on it. The objective now will be to fast-track newcomers to the build with a properly explained video, and I will put that high up in the initial post. Stay tuned!


For example: did you know you can drop your Desecrate Brand and Recall, and it summons corpses? (Recall basically activates your Brands once instantaneously)

Or if you drop your Desecrate Brand and VD Brand, you can actually start ramping up stacks while waiting for bosses to finish whatever dialogue they're spewing, and in so doing get your Bone Offering + Infused Channeling prepped.

Finally, I guess I have to release tankier versions of the build as baseline - it got quite tunnelled on meme-level boss damage in Harvest because I was obsessed with the Corpse Pact loop - but a simple tweak like picking up more life nodes and a shield could send it to 6.5k base HP / 5k ES territory for only 40% of its DPS, and then the thrill-seekers who've ramped up some playtime can go full ham on DPS.

ALSO! If you guys haven't seen - I equipped a Replica Soul Tether and have close to 10k combined HP/ES now. This used to be IMPOSSIBLE in Heist because we would lose all leech stacks after getting hit with Corrupted Soul - GGG appears to have reversed that bug.

Thank you for your valuable feedback!

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primaeva wrote:

Man, I really need to look into Vermillion Rings, they look absolutely delicious. How did those cost you?