[Theorycrafting] Brandsurge with inc. Duration Brands

Effective HP: 5.39K
Life: 465
Level: 1
Min budget

Overview

[Theorycrafting] Brandsurge with inc. Duration Brands is a Path of Exile Inquisitor build by hyperfish3d, made for the Sentinel league (3.18). It is centered on Arcanist Brand and plays as a trigger, intelligence, spell, duration archetype. Defensively it sits at 5.39K effective HP, 465 life. Suited for: Mapping. Key uniques include Witchhunter's Judgment, String of Servitude.

hyperfish3d's Notes

View thread

Hi,

I don't have a PC at the moment so I can't really playtest anything. But I thought a bit about Brandsurge (https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Brandsurge) (from Witchhunters Judgement staff (https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Witchhunter%27s_Judgment)) and the possibility to stack increased Duration. Core idea: Brandsurge increases the activation frequency and decreases the factual duration at the same time. However, the base duration remains the same, i.e. Sign of Purpose does not start after actually 75% of the duration, but much earlier. This leads to an almost continuous 100% more multiplier for the frequency. (The Formular on the wiki page about expiration rate is wrong. You can use this spreadsheet made by psychomap to check on the actual values: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1fYwthGSui9iXeBrkftudntBH1XMJT_XVYMCkUFbqFo4/edit)

Brands that synergize well with this would be: 1. Storm Brand (because of the high base duration of 5 sec), 2. Penance Brand (which scales very well with cast speed/activation frequency), or 3. Arcanist Brand with Spark (because Spark scales well with both cast speed and inc. duration).

Pros:

- Forbidden Flame/Flesh with Sign of Purpose is relatively cheap (20c), i.e. it doesn't have to be built on Hierophant, but it can be built on Inquisitor

- Impossible Escape (Magebane) saves some points for the second Duration cluster.

- duration for brands is relatively easy to get (tree cluster and cluster jewels)

- Skill effect duration synergizes with protection skills & temporary auras

Cons:

- if Arcanist Brand is not used, it is a 2-button build

- the damage is backloaded, the longer the brands last, the higher the damage will be

I have put together a basic POB to show what items have inc. duration, what an example tree might look like, etc.: https://pastebin.com/LjxWmgZX

I would be very interested if someone could playtest the interaction briefly and make a rough estimate of what the damage looks like. Thanks.

Edit1: I didn't point it out, but it's not about the damage from Brandsurge itself. (That's basically a completely different build, where you want low duration.) It's about the inc. frequency that Brandsurge provides.