A Journey into Jank; Brandsurge Always-Crit with Spell Echo and Plume of Pursuit

So there's this really interesting item; Plume of Pursuit. I've always wanted to try building around it, since guaranteed crit chance seems pretty abusable. This is my attempt at abusing it with another item I didn't even know existed until a friend pointed it out to me; Witchhunter's Judgment.

(tl;dr: spell echo + brandsurge + plume of pursuit makes them pop for ~2.5mill; clunky for clear, not bad for bosses, traps bypass brand attachment limit. pob: https://pobb.in/7YqjVstaEu2y , more video: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1810829060 )

This staff takes brands and essentially blows them up. However, when combined with Plume of Pursuit, there's a catch; only the second repeat of any skill will do any damage. If the first repeat triggers the brands instead of the second one, they'll blow up pathetically (no chance of crit, 80% less damage mod). So, how do we make the brands exist between the first and second repeats?

Traps! Using Cluster Traps, Multiple Traps and Trap support on any brand (except Arcanist), we can make brands appear in this small time window. Does it make this build a bit of a pain? Yes. If you brandsurge too early, the second repeat will go off before the brands exist. Too late, and they'll explode for tiny damage. There's also another very weird thing that happens; traps defy the brand attachment limit. I can throw 5 traps at a boss, and all 5 will attach to it; I've seen this so many times with this build. That means that in theory, one could take the brand notable and mastery for 7 brands all attached to one enemy. If you stacked Runesmith and its lesser cluster jewel notable cousin, you could get 5% x 7 = 35% damage taken, and 3% x 7 = 21% for each cluster notable. (I've done this manually in PoB custom mods assuming I take Runesmith and the one cluster notable; PoB won't let me attach more than 3 brands to something).

So what abomination have I made with this tech? Well, I've been flipflopping between a cold (wintertide) and fire (armageddon) version of this build; the fire gives more clear with Herald of Ash and Ignite Proliferation, while the cold gives satisfyingly crunchy freezes. The main damage comes from damage taken, stacking three curses (the two elemental ones and Punishment for low life damage taken), and crit multi; Marylene's Fallacy is BiS amulet for the sheer amount of crit multi it gives with no downside. The Witchhunter's Judgement staff is mandatory to get Brandsurge, Anathema is mandatory to get to 3 curses, and Darkness Enthroned lets me get some valuable flat added cold to spells. Lightning Coil gives me way more defenses than I thought it would. I'm using Saboteur for the area damage bonus node, and Explosives Expert node for more damage penetration or more crit multi depending on if I'm using cold or fire. Clockwork would help with Brandsurge cooldown too. My ‘theory crafting’ PoB below has the winter version at ~2.5mill damage per brand, so if you have 7 of them on one boss, it should be 17.5mill damage.

PoB here: https://pobb.in/7YqjVstaEu2y

Clip vs the Crimson Temple boss: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1810829060

All that said though; this is a difficult build to play. The timing is vital; if you mess it up you'll have an angry pack of branded mobs chasing you. And despite my efforts with ignite prolif and HoA, the clear on this is… not great. Sure you have 5 brands exploding, but they explode usually close together, and the AoE here is nothing to write home about. Considering it takes over a second to throw trap, wait for the right timing, then click Brandsurge and have it echo, then the brands accelerate and finally pop, it's… not a good mapper. However, it's pretty damn good for bosses. Get Arcanist's Brand on it for the curses, then throw the traps, and in a perfect world you get 7 brands on it and boom. This has been very satisfying at points, and I did do this build with bossing in mind.

However; at my skill level (skill at making builds) and investment level, I can't get the damage high enough to start one-tapping things like shaper guardians in invitations or anything. And for this build to be worth it, I'd want to get the 5-brand damage up to about 30mill at least, ideally more, so that I could one-tap guardians in corrupted invitations. So I ask the hivemind of poebuilds; where can I take this? Are there better ways to take advantage of the guaranteed crit from Plume of Pursuit? Can I make these brands blow up even harder? I did think of Spell Echo Discharge, but the investment required to get Discharge to consume no charges is insanity; I don't have enough currency for that.

Lastly, I do stream these experiments sometimes so if you'd like to see them in action, I'm occasionally live at twitch.tv/kapectas.