3.21 Champion of the Armageddon brands

Always happy to help to help expand the Brand army :D

If you play safe like you would on actual HC then you might actually make it all the way to the end-game bosses with that setup in your PoB.
I don't play safe enough and sometimes mess up things like altar rolls and doing stuff like reducing my resistances close to 0 or removing my armour and stuff like that on a map where they have multiple "Mobs gain % of dmg as extra ele dmg" or similar things so that generally isn't to great for surviving. Pay attention to those things and you'll live a lot longer :p

Hi.

gonna give this a try.

any recommendations on best leveling approach ?

never leveled a champion as a spell caster ! lol

Haha I can imagine it sounds a bit strange but it's like the champ is made for casters.
So far I've been experimenting with a few things but as we rush toward's the brand talents we won't get to many damage talents so using skills that deal some good base damage are best.

If you have some basic crafting currency you could use to keep shields or weapons a bit updated then shield charge, shieldcrush, or ground slam are reasonable choices until you can use firestorm and armageddon brands.

For spells, if you manage to find reasonable leveling wands/scepters with a +1 level then you could go for something like fireball + flamewall.

Talent wise you can do some creative things like getting Eldrich battery or some int/dex or stun immunity from the tree while you don't have the ascendancy's or items yet.

I was very "original" when leveling:

1-13 (Weapon: 2x Rustbeak)
Splitting Steel + Chance to Bleed + Onslaught

13-31 (Weapon: Limbsplit)
Sunder + Added Fire Damage + Ruthless + Onslaught + Melee Physical Damage + Lifetap

Herald of Ash
Ancestral Protector
Vitality

31+ (2x Sceptre or Wand with +1 Fire Spell Gems)
Armageddon Brand, use Inspiration once you can for easier mana management

Beelined straight to Runebinder + Runesmith, then did Labyrinth for Conqueror and slotted in the forbidden jewels for Worthy Foe (there are 2 jewel sockets on the way to the brand nodes). Make sure to use Praxis ring and mana flasks (Enduring prefix if possible). Worked well for me straight until LVL70, when I swapped to my real gear.

Thanks very much for suggestions.

I like to level "thematically" so i went dual wands, had a lifesprig in the stash, and used rolling magma + firewall with wintertide brand to kill the stragglers.

it worked really well. just about ready to take armageddon brand.

just love the idea. i really hope i can make this work. i'm really terrible and making builds work. this is my 3rd build this league. lmao.


edit: my FOURTH build this league.

haha,

Well, I created this build 2 leagues ago and started out as a inquisitor but that felt lacking. That part is what people can read, what I didn't put down was that It was the 6th build that league I've played and the first that actually worked well :-p

Now it's my default league starter, did try 3 or 4 other builds this league to see if I can find something new but no luck so far. For me that is the charm of the game though, messing around with builds, feeling kinda sad it didn't work out, but then feeling awesome when you hit that 1 thing that does work.

Why lifetap instead of just spending ES to cast AB ?

Is it for the more damage on lifetap ?

or is ES recovery too slow to maintain ?

I prefer lifetap as Arma brand costs a lot of es to cast, If you have plenty of ES it's no issue but if your ES is just sufficient to cast your divine blessing aura then sometimes you'd need to wait for ES recharge and I didn't like that so I went with lifetap instead.

Downside is that with lifetap you do quite some dmg to yourself.

Lifetap and/or cruelty/empower arn't mandatory so if you want to use different gems for those then you can.

ok, thanks !

yeah, i just ran into the problem of trying to turn on anger and finding out i don't have enough ES because i'm still using an armour i found in like act 3 or 4 that doesn't have enough ES. lol.

I ike that there seems to be some room to experiment but still keep the build strong. I might try and figure out if there's some way to get the ES to fuel brand use instead of lifetap.

also , i really like the idea of using a staff for this build and getting some block. it would work, but you would need an expensive staff. i just got a really good wand for only 5C, so maybe once i get some currency together give that a try.

How is sporeguard working ?? i think that's a really fun idea.

;-)

edit: doh! i don't have enough ES to run anger. until i do i bet i can run brand from ES.

A staff is definitely possible, I tried going for one last league but a staff with decent stats was nearly non-existent then so gave up on it again.

If you can get something nice there with some + levels or something like socketed gems are supported by stuff then you might even be able to bump the dmg even further.

Sporeguard works reasonably well. Overall I feel like its a 5, maybe 10% upgrade in defenses and damage compared to the chest I used and that is in the PoB. Keeping in mind I've got the 2max res eldritch mod on there the sporeguard (about 2.5div to buy and 6l it) Was cheaper too and I switched to it completely.

Only downsides are that without anything to cascade/loop the explosion that effect feels a bit limited but it does help a little. Also, on bosses you need to be close in order to have the boss on the spores for full effect but with this build that usually isn't a issue. I think for the explosion to really shine we'll need something that can loop it, increases the aoe, or adds some of our fire damage to the chaos explosion.

Atm I am just in end-of-league mode for this character and I'm shifting atlas passives and my talents just a tiny bit to check some more things.

As for the ES. One of the Idea's i've been playing around with in my head is to convert physical damage taken to ele/chaos so that I can drop armour and the talents + determination all together and focus on pure ES gear. I havn't given that any ingame or PoB work though. Maybe with the shield or chest to convert phys and then use the free talents + reservation to compensate for the damage loss.