Fyregrass' Comprehensive Storm Brand Assassin Guide - Currently Dead Build. Revisit in 2 weeks.

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Fyregrass wrote:

It really just depends on the league, in 3.13 for example I had a headhunter on day 3 but killed Sirus for the first time on day 4. My farming strats usually don’t involve rushing Sirus kills out and especially with the new atlas passives I believe this league as well I am going to be focused on rushing out atlas strategies as opposed to Sirus farming, which is something that I leave for the latter half of week 1.

In heist? league I did Sirus 8 on day 3 fwiw, so it’s definitely possible, and I think I was sitting at 8/900k dps per brand off the top of my head. But that was skewed by replica soul tether being super cheap and available earlier as well as 6-L Agnerods being super common drops in heist.

I completely agree that Sirus A5 is not necessarely a target in itself for league start, especially since Echoes of the Atlas. I was asking about him because he is a benchmark for builds and players. Top racers on top build get him in 11-12h in SSF. Knowing how fast you reach him would have given me a reference to measure how "bad" I am at speeding with your build :)

Do you consider sharing with your guide followers (once patchnote is out) what will be your day 1-3 strategy for 3.14, or this better stay secret for max profit? My opinion is that you are that much faster than even if you tell what you will do, only a handfull of people will be able to compete with you. So feel free to share :p

This guide has definitely inspired me to league start and play storm brand for the first time. I do want to ask though, since it is such a squishy build, do you have any concerns about pushing far into ultimatums? Or will you just be focusing on other content if it proves too dangerous?

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This guide has definitely inspired me to league start and play storm brand for the first time. I do want to ask though, since it is such a squishy build, do you have any concerns about pushing far into ultimatums? Or will you just be focusing on other content if it proves too dangerous?

I'll try to give you my two cents on this in case Fyregrass is not responding.

No one really knows the difficulty of Ultimatum yet, but it's most likely going to be difficult (at least in the beginning), and then it might slowly be nerfed a bit as the league progresses just like GGG did with Betrayal.

Though the build may seem squishy due to low EHP, it's actually fairly tanky IMO. Most enemies die almost instantly, thus, preventing them from even getting close to you, and if you know the mechanics of the game, you should be able to survive anything. Also, I had a ring with LoH for spells, and it progs every time a brand hits (not just the initial hit) which gave me roughly an extra 420 Life per second with five brands active. The only reason I would die was if something one-shot me.

I was able to do all content with this build, so I'm pretty sure it can push Ultimatum as swell. Just keep on moving around and dodge mobs. The brands will take care of the rest.

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Mogens_Penge wrote:

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This guide has definitely inspired me to league start and play storm brand for the first time. I do want to ask though, since it is such a squishy build, do you have any concerns about pushing far into ultimatums? Or will you just be focusing on other content if it proves too dangerous?

I'll try to give you my two cents on this in case Fyregrass is not responding.

No one really knows the difficulty of Ultimatum yet, but it's most likely going to be difficult (at least in the beginning), and then it might slowly be nerfed a bit as the league progresses just like GGG did with Betrayal.

Though the build may seem squishy due to low EHP, it's actually fairly tanky IMO. Most enemies die almost instantly, thus, preventing them from even getting close to you, and if you know the mechanics of the game, you should be able to survive anything. Also, I had a ring with LoH for spells, and it progs every time a brand hits (not just the initial hit) which gave me roughly an extra 420 Life per second with five brands active. The only reason I would die was if something one-shot me.

I was able to do all content with this build, so I'm pretty sure it can push Ultimatum as swell. Just keep on moving around and dodge mobs. The brands will take care of the rest.

Thanks for the reply, and that's kind of what I was thinking. I've played squishy builds before and it looks like storm brand has enough damage to clear all content deathless if you can dodge. It sounds like this is the first time where GGG intends for us to fail the league mechanic, but it's really hard for me to believe that the hardest Ultimatums are harder than Maven or Feared or something.

Who knows. Unless the value of Ultimatums become insanely high for the latter waves, it's also tough for me to imagine them being a super efficient use of time.

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KappKapp wrote:

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Mogens_Penge wrote:

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This guide has definitely inspired me to league start and play storm brand for the first time. I do want to ask though, since it is such a squishy build, do you have any concerns about pushing far into ultimatums? Or will you just be focusing on other content if it proves too dangerous?

I'll try to give you my two cents on this in case Fyregrass is not responding.

No one really knows the difficulty of Ultimatum yet, but it's most likely going to be difficult (at least in the beginning), and then it might slowly be nerfed a bit as the league progresses just like GGG did with Betrayal.

Though the build may seem squishy due to low EHP, it's actually fairly tanky IMO. Most enemies die almost instantly, thus, preventing them from even getting close to you, and if you know the mechanics of the game, you should be able to survive anything. Also, I had a ring with LoH for spells, and it progs every time a brand hits (not just the initial hit) which gave me roughly an extra 420 Life per second with five brands active. The only reason I would die was if something one-shot me.

I was able to do all content with this build, so I'm pretty sure it can push Ultimatum as swell. Just keep on moving around and dodge mobs. The brands will take care of the rest.

Thanks for the reply, and that's kind of what I was thinking. I've played squishy builds before and it looks like storm brand has enough damage to clear all content deathless if you can dodge. It sounds like this is the first time where GGG intends for us to fail the league mechanic, but it's really hard for me to believe that the hardest Ultimatums are harder than Maven or Feared or something.

Who knows. Unless the value of Ultimatums become insanely high for the latter waves, it's also tough for me to imagine them being a super efficient use of time.

Keep in mind that you have a 5 second timer reset going in and out of the ultimatum area. For a build that delete monsters very fast, getting out with flame dash for 2 second could be enough to complete some types of Ultimatum. We will see how they prevented those cheezy strats (can't damage monsters if you are out?) but going in and out could be a thing for glass canon builds.

@Fyregrass If you have time a Witch version of the LightningSlinger PoB would be helpful.

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Fyregrass wrote:

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Kalantek wrote:

Thanks for the guide, I really like what I'm seeing so far.

I'm currently practicing for leaguestart with it and im having trouble with white/yellow maps. I understand the build is a bit on the squishy side but there have been a few bosses that I ran out of portals on.

Rolled an imbued wand, added a moonsorrow, capped resists, and have power charge on crit as a 4th link on arc+storm brand, is there a key to this leveling strategy i might be missing? I like the idea of transitioning into the build rather than rerolling from something else.

Appreciate how active you've been updating and responding! Thanks!

Unfortunately we just get absolutely cucked by damage until we get the MoM variant going. You should be able to get to about 3.5k life and capped resists though with some cheap day 1 rares (1c), as long as you run fast and attack frequently enough you will be fine in the end.

If you’re used to playing tankier builds the pace that this build requires will probably feel uncomfortable, we definitely can’t tank failure damage, we’re pretty much just aiming to use the damage for early progression to rush out the MoM set up.

If you’re having a lot of troubles, you CAN drop ball lightning from the links and then run Frenzy + GMP + Blind + Chain, I’d also recommend looking for coral or vermillion rings on day 1. Having a CWDT immortal call set up is also useful. But we can’t do much more than that without killing our damage output.

I ran this build in 3.13, and absolutely loved it. Finally something that felt good after being underwhelmed by my first few builds of the league (vortex league start was meh, aura stacking carrion golems just didn't feel good to me).

I also did some practice in SSF, and had a couple questions and thoughts.


1.Regarding the feel in white/yellow maps, I felt that it is pretty much 100% damage upgrades. I got a six link soul mantle and six link quill rain in rituals right after hitting maps, so did a few hours of just quick low level mapping to get the deferrals to add them to my standard SSF stash where I likely will never use them. Felt super squishy at the start, but with almost no gear upgrades felt so much better with just a few more gem levels (got them to 19) and a few more damage nodes (I just took throatseeker as I had no plan to continue with the build). Glass cannons just feel so much better when almost everything dies.

2.In Act 5 I spent the 3 points to get the 4% reduced mana reserved by Chaos Innoculation. It allowed me to add storm brand to my spell slinger setup as soon as I bought it in act 6, and then I just respecced out a few acts later. Probably not worth it, but I probably would do it again.

3. For the life of me I can never wrap my head around spellslinger scaling, so let me know if I am just being dumb, but wouldn't it make sense to switch to wand and shield at some point (probably when we hit maps)? Wouldn't one good wand be just as good as 2 good wands that contribute 1/2 each, or I am missing something. Could then add even an OK shield for a little block and more life pretty easy. My understanding is the only slinger that really wants dual wands is Chaos for the DoT multi, but again, I am probably missing something.

Thoughts after the manifesto? Is Impulsa's the chest we'll use at final end game now?

Is Storm's Gift something worth considering at any level?

Manifesto nerfs:
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3079632

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Flesh and Stone now has a 35% mana reservation (from 25%)
The Sextant modifier which granted players increased Damage and Movement Speed for each Poison on them has been removed.
Corrupted Soul Keystone now causes you to Gain 15% of Maximum Life as Extra Maximum Energy Shield (from 20%)
Influence and Synthesis modifiers that caused enemies killed to explode dealing physical damage will no longer have a 100% chance to apply.
Splitting an item through Beast-crafting now applies a split tag to both items (similar to “Mirrored”).
Items that have Fractured Fossils used on them also gain the split tag.
Split items cannot be split/mirrored again, and cannot have Imprints made of them or applied to them.

Ambush and Assassinate will also be "rebalanced" for low-life. I could stay on Inpulsa if explodey nerf turns out to be serious. But I'm less worried about the defensive nerfs than about Assassin in HC overall. And it seems that both fractured maps and synthesized power rings are not a thing anymore.

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Foeglas wrote:

Manifesto nerfs:
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3079632
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I’ve already updated the guide to reflect these changes.

Flesh and Stone mana change doesn’t affect us much because once we replace it with Discipline we were switching to a 35% aura anyway.

A&A was not a node we ever wanted to take and this nerf was kinda dumb since it wasn’t good anyway.

Delirium nerfs will change the endgame farming meta a lot but I think it’s fine, by being unable to fracture maps, even though our build lost power, the power requirements of endgame farming went way down disproportionately to our nerfs.

I’ve updated the guide to reflect all these changes including the loss of synth bases and that Inpulsa may be our new BiS.

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livejamie wrote:

Thoughts after the manifesto? Is Impulsa's the chest we'll use at final end game now?

Is Storm's Gift something worth considering at any level?

Inpulsas is probably BiS, I’ve updated the guide to reflect that Explodey chest is probably not worth crafting anymore.

Storms Gift is garbage and should never be taken. Holy Conquest as a cluster node is far lower investment. We NEED life and resists on gloves with the harvest nerf and storms gift gives hardly anything.


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BarSmash wrote:

3. For the life of me I can never wrap my head around spellslinger scaling, so let me know if I am just being dumb, but wouldn't it make sense to switch to wand and shield at some point (probably when we hit maps)? Wouldn't one good wand be just as good as 2 good wands that contribute 1/2 each, or I am missing something. Could then add even an OK shield for a little block and more life pretty easy. My understanding is the only slinger that really wants dual wands is Chaos for the DoT multi, but again, I am probably missing something.

This only affects wand attack damage as far as I know, lightning damage to spells to my knowledge gets the full value.

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livejamie wrote:

@Fyregrass If you have time a Witch version of the LightningSlinger PoB would be helpful.

I’m not sure I’ll be able to put one out before league start. I have class all this week during the day, and I have to split my afternoons between pre-emptive catch up work since I’m taking next week off and also league start practise and theorycrafting due to nerfs/changes.

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KappKapp wrote:

This guide has definitely inspired me to league start and play storm brand for the first time. I do want to ask though, since it is such a squishy build, do you have any concerns about pushing far into ultimatums? Or will you just be focusing on other content if it proves too dangerous?

Probably focusing on other content if it’s too difficult.
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Rootsmann wrote:

Do you consider sharing with your guide followers (once patchnote is out) what will be your day 1-3 strategy for 3.14, or this better stay secret for max profit? My opinion is that you are that much faster than even if you tell what you will do, only a handfull of people will be able to compete with you. So feel free to share :p

I will be streaming on league start, and I’ll put my stream link at the top of this guide, feel free to drop in and ask me what I’m up to, I’ll be sharing everything I’m doing.

Our strat of rushing delirium got ruined so we’re not sure exactly what we’ll be doing yet.