Arcanist Brand

I made an Elementalist previously that I deleted out of rage because clearing even white-tier maps was horrendously difficult. My intention was to eventually respec to Necromancer and do Arcanist Brand - Desecrate - Volatile Dead, and for the purposes of levelling to that stage I was mainly doing Arcanist Brand - Shock Nova.

Here is a tl;dr of my opinion: Redditors thought that Arcanist Brand was dead on arrival when the 20/20 numbers were released. I thought they were exaggerating. But after trying Arcanist Brand, I feel they could have held back less on the criticism.

Arcanist brand has too short a duration and has too severe a damage and QOL penalty, even accounting for the more damage multiplier on the attached target. This is especially poignant when comparing to the other short duration ally-cast support, Spell Totem Support.

To wit, Arcanist Brand at base attaches for only 3 seconds and fires once a second, for a total of three casts per Brand. Spell Totem lasts 8 seconds at base and casts spells with 30% less cast speed; given that the cast speed of most spells is 0.7s, then most Spell Totems have about 1 cast per second at base, for a total of 8 casts per Totem at base. So, already, each Totem does more damage over its duration at base than Brands.

Second, while Arcanist Brand has a base spawn limit of 3, only 1 Brand can attach to an individual enemy at any time at base. This means in the worst-case scenario of fighting a unique or rare enemy who do not spawn additionals, Arcanist Brand effectively only has a limit of 1 Brand at base. This is the same for Spell Totems. The limits of both can be increased to 2 by taking Runebinder and Ancestral Bond respectively. Arcanist Brand may be theoretically more effective at clearing packs, however packs in PoE typically means normal or magic packs and are (or rather, should be) trivial non-issues even with only 2 totems.

Third, Brands no longer reattach to the nearest enemy from the last enemy it kills, instead reverting to its original cast point. Hence, Brands have now become as immobile as Totems.

Fourth, while Brands are in theory "tankier" than Totems (because they aren't even actual spawned creatures), in practice Totem survivability has only ever been an issue at very high-level gameplay because a variety of coping mechanisms such as positioning, resummoning, and speccing Totem survivability, negate against Totem deaths against content weaker than the deadliest boss encounters and league areas.

Fifth, the base totem placement time is 0.6s, while the base cast speed of Arcanist Brand is 0.8s. A total of 105% increased totem placement speed is available from 4 passive clusters in the base passive tree. Those 4 clusters also grant 24% increased cast speed to spell totems in total. Increased cast speed on Brand clusters grant 20% increased cast speed in total from 2 clusters. At least 30% increased cast speed is needed for casting new Brands to be as fast as placing new Totems at base, while 100% increased cast speed is needed to be as fast as placing new Totems with 50% increased Totem Placement Speed. Of course, at this speed the Brand is also firing at a faster rate than Totems, bringing the cast time down to 0.5s (6 casts over 3 seconds) while Totems are firing at 0.8s (10 casts over 8 seconds). That said, on an overall scale, because cast speed is so much harder to stack and the opportunity cost of taking extra cast speed nodes on the passive tree is much greater for Brand users than taking Totem clusters is for Totem users, it quickly becomes clear that Arcanist Brand requires much more investment just to acquire the same level of power.

Sixth, Brands have 80% increased duration from 3 clusters, bringing up Arcanist Brand's base duration to 5.4 seconds (10 casts with 100% increased cast speed), while 90% increased duration from 2 clusters, bringing up Spell Totem's base duration to 15.2 seconds. There is simply no fight here, Totem QOL completely overwhelms Arcanist Brand QOL.

Seventh and finally, Spell Totem does not impose any penalty on AoE or chain length, and the damage penalty is 35% at base. Arcanist Brand's effective damage penalty to the attached enemy is 37% at base. At 20/0, the Spell Totem damage penalty is 26%, while the Arcanist Brand effective damage penalty is 14%. Arguably, this makes Arcanist Brand seem like it is positioned for a QOL to damage tradeoff, except that Arcanist Brand can only ever have at most 2 brands attached to an enemy while the "damage penalty" for using Spell Totems over Arcanist Brand disappears when you get a third totem limit. This is easily achievable with either just taking the appropriate ascendency (Hierophant or Ascendant-Hierophant), using the appropriate uniques (such as Soul Mantle), or using a support gem (Multiple Totems Support). In contrast, there is, at the moment, absolutely no way to get more than 2 Arcanist Brands attached to an enemy at any moment.

I hope it is clear that in a comparison between Arcanist Brand and Spell Totem support, Arcanist Brand is absolutely the inferior option. I can also confidently state without further analyses that Arcanist Brand is absolutely inferior to Trap Support. I also suspect that Arcanist Brand is absolutely inferior to a self-cast option making use of Unleash Support, however I do not have sufficient experience playing self-cast to have an informed opinion.

If Brands are going to be in this current form for quite a while to go, I suggest that Arcanist Brand needs at least one or all of the following changes to be competitive:

1. Lower AoE, Chain, and overall damage penalty.
2. +(0-3) additional Brands attached to enemy, in intervals of 10 (i.e. 1-10: +0, 11-20: +1, 21-30: +2, 31-40: +3)
3. Increase the attached and detached duration to (5/6) at minimum.
4. Brand clusters on the passive tree need to be located closer together to facilitate efficient passive trees.
5. Allow Brand Recall to be targeted -- i.e. Brand Recall recalls all Brands to the pointer location instead of the current user location.
6. Rework Brand Recall to allow modifiers to cast speed to affect cooldown speed, then remove all Brand Recall cooldown speed modifiers from the passive skill tree to make way for more generally useful Brand passives.
7. Allow Arcanist Brand to interact with channeling spells in the same way that Spell Totem Support interacts with channeling spells and Mirage Archer Support interacts with channeling attacks.

Without improvements, Arcanist Brand is going to be a dead skill for a long time to come with 0.1% rate of main skill usage, versus 2% for spell totems, 5% for mines, and 0.2% for traps.

Why Lightning, Fire and Cold Walker notables doesn't apply cast speed with Arcanist Brand, if i'm using Lighting, Fire or Cold skill gem linked with it?
So there is also question, does Corrosive Elements and Orb of Storms work with it?

Arcanist Brand + Dark Pact .. DP is still activating around you hero, not around brand's target.

Hi Rob! :D

I'm a Brand main and I love the concept of Arcanist Brand, but feel like it's not competitive when compared to other proxies. Brands are my favorite themed playstyle in PoE, and I very badly want this support gem to be competitive and feel great to use.

In my opinion, the delay before the first activation and its sluggish 1.0 activation frequency is what kills this support gem for me personally. I'm a player who's used 6-Link Brand skills in every League since Betrayal. This support gem just doesn't feel right compared to the buttery smoothness of Storm Brand, which I believe is the perfect baseline. Here's why:

One EK Totem

Level 20 Ethereal Knives
Level 20 Spell Totem

Average Hit: 601.1
DPS: 701.2
9 Activations over 8 Sec: 5,409.9

One Attached EK Arcanist Brand

Level 20 Ethereal Knives
Level 20 Arcanist Brand (Attached)

Average Hit: 698.9
DPS: 698.9
3 Activations over 3 Sec: 2,096.7

Math

Totem DPS is almost identical to Brand DPS
Totem deals 158% more Total Damage (5409>2096)
Totem has 200% more activations (9>3)

Consider Storm Brand

EK Totem deals 5,409.9 Damage over 8 Seconds. Since we want the attached brand duration to be 5 seconds like Storm Brand, we multiply 5,409.9 by (5/8) to get 3,381.2 Damage. Which translates to the following if we round values down:

74% less Damage
60% more Damage to Branded

Level 20 Ethereal Knives
Level 20 NEW Arcanist Brand (Attached)

Average Hit: 341
DPS: 682
10 Activations over 5 Sec: 3,410

Recommended Gem Values

Level 20 Arcanist Brand

Can be Attached for a total Duration of 5 seconds
Activates every 0.5 seconds while Attached
Can be Detached for a total Duration of 6 seconds
Supported Skills deal (83-74)% less Damage
Supported Skills Deal (41-60)% more Damage to Branded Enemy

Hi Rob,
Spells, especially Brands are my favorite play style in POE and I really love the concept of AB. Although I'm just a casual player.
I was trying AB-Shock Nova build but I simply couldnt make it work, especially in the higher map tiers. Being said Shock nove is not the best option since the possitioning for that one is really important, but that's another story.
1st there is the range when arcanist brand kills the enemy and is lying there detached not able to reattach and kill even a smaller pack of enemies (also because of the AoE panalty). This is somehow fixed with holy conquest, but still compared to other skills the clear is hard work.. :)
2nd the penalties are just too much making the skill useless. I'd like to see a mechanism how to lower or even overcome this - the delayed activation, skills AoE/range and damage to non-branded enemies.
I eventually switched to AB-VD-Desecrate, which was okey-ish on the damage and range since the balls are not affected by the penalty. But it also leaves us with only 1 good ascendacy for this skill getting the massive Increased Cast speed consuming corpses.

Hope this helps.
Anyway keep up the good work.

Archanist brand is extremely cool skill however as far as I'm concerned it will always remain unusable (unless broken interaction like wave of conviction bug) due to the god awful activation time.



The skill seems to have about a 1+ second delay when its cast to start its initial casts.

You can have a insane cast speed and a skill activation of .15 seconds and it doesn't change to initial delay.

The delay feels worse than totems in my opinion and in a game now balanced around blowing shit up before it can do anything. You reeeeealy cannot use a skill with this sort of awful initial activation.

It makes me incredibly sad because I love the design.


I understand that it probably in place as an opportunity cost. But at least give ways to overcome it (increased activation time nodes? Make the delay scale down with cast speed??). This opportunity cost literally translates to not usable except as extra damage for bosses.

Another way to potential overcome it is to buff brand recall to at least give brands some sort of durtaion extension. Maybe if brand recall bybassed the initial activation this would work. Problam is brand recall is the most useless skill in the game after its complete destruction nerf in 3.11.

Seconding the opinion about the initial activation delay. In my opinion the versatility of triggers and the mobility of brands makes arcanist brand a very dangerous archetype in terms of becoming extremely dominant with slight balance changes, so I understand any potential trepidation with direct damage buffs. However all the comparisons I've done have shown that nearly any arcanist brand build is going to output anywhere from 20-30% less damage than a storm brand build with roughly equivalent investment.

The primary issue with the skill lies in the unscalable activation delay between the brand attaching to an enemy and the first activation/trigger. With the current pace of the game this renders the skill almost unusable - you have to play a dodging game every single time you cast/recall brands at a pack while you wait for the brand to actually output any damage. This, combined with the skill's relatively low (compared to other brand skills) base activation rate makes arcanist brand an exhausting exercise to use while clearing, a shame since the skill is one of the most interesting archetypes in terms of allowing innovative build design.

I didn't see Arcanist Brand mentioned anywhere in the 3.15 patch notes and was wondering how it will work with the new trigger mechanics. Will we be paying the mana cost for the brand then each time the brand activates pay the cost for the skill it's triggering?

Alright, it now spends mana with each activation.

Do you think this change was justified for Arcanist Brand especially?
I mean all brand do stuff on activation. Storm Brand fires lightning beams, Armageddon Brand drops meteors from the sky, etc. Design-wise they do the same.

Yeah this is what brands do, you create them, they periodically activate, do stuff, jump between enemies, all by themself. That's why people often confuse them with totems, brands look like separate entities with their stats. And they spend mana only once - on their creation (both brands and totems).

I wouldn't also say this change was balance justified, other brands are usually ahead by power/popularity (but I'm concerning about brands design here, not balance. I've never even played Arcanist brand).

So you changed mana consumption for Arcansit Brand only due to mechanical reasons - cuz it triggers linked spells. Reconsider this please.