Arcanist Brand Blazing salvo/Firestorm

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This is a build that I have slowly built and improved over a few leagues, chippping away at its weaknesses etc each league. It can be used as a league starter, and can do pretty much all content, with the exception of uber bosses & wave 30 Simulacrums (can do up tp & including wave 20).

POB: https://pastebin.com/9ZaeVK1q

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Youtube clip: ( currently uploading) https://youtu.be/dzcTpM65pmU

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How the build works:

Using arcanist brand to apply blazing salvo (firestorm for bosses), you can safely place brands, and focus on dodging ground effects and mechanics. All the while, the spells hitting will be generating and maintaining max all charges, and giving great sustain due to ES leech on hit. With a decent ES pool and 35-40k armour, you really do not die often - even if you decide to dash into packs. blazing salvo on brands means that multiple brands casting causing a nice overlap of the projectiles, pretty much shotgunning packs. simply place the brands and walk past.

I used this build to clear t16 maps, with as many alters as i could click (watch out for flask charge mods if you use corruscating elixir!) and used to farm expedition & logbooks very confortably. you could quite easily use this build to farm the guardians/shapers/elders/invitations.

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Firestorm gemswap is very nice for single target, and visually looks great too (I know this may not be to everyones liking!!) You can actually use firestorm indstead of blazing slavo, but you would need to swap conc effect for awakened spell cascade to make it as smooth. however awakened spell cascase is super expensive at the time of writing this (around 22 divines), so blazing salvo is easier option.

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Due to the high mana cost of multiple brands applying spells at a very high cast rate, we use a battery staff to house our main skill- this makes it spend ES to cast. ES leech & ES regen means that we do not even feel this. No need to concern ourselves with mana regen.

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This build runs low-life but can be started as normal and run as lowlife once you can access a shavs.

later on you can use corruscating elixir, and use a well crafted vaal regalia instead. (alongside brutal restrain keystone)

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I made this build for fun, and is intended to be league start-able and useable into endgame. however it isnt specialised for doing ubers & wave 30 sims, so please dont kill me in the comments!

This is not a beginner friendly build! lots of things that you could miss/ not follow properly & brick the build if you don't know the game well enough.

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You could most probably adjust this build to use many different skills, and just tweak the damage type on items/auras, and still see nice gameplay. I just love fire skills.

Ive made this post mainly to show off the off-meta playstyle, as opposed to making it as a build guide. however I've tried to facilitate anyone that may want to try it out. If you dont like the build thats fine. please dont roast me into oblivion (happened when i posted similar build two leagues ago- I deleted post)

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Pros:

- Using arcanist brand to apply spells still count as you casting the spells- so you can take advantage of many cool modifiers due to this.

- Guardian ascendency means that the brands hitting count as you hitting, and you can ramp up all 3 endurance/frenzy/power charges very quickly, and maintain them with ease (gain charges when you hit an enemy)

- you can leech ES off the brands that hit, so you can get around 1-2k es leech per second whilst there is a target to hit!

-faily decent EHP, with nice ES looking around 6-7k depending on gear, with around 35-40 k armour, max all res inlucding chaos isnt hard to acquire

- easy to get started- no uniques required ( but battery staff base later on due to high mana costs)

-immune to curses ( ascendency plus 20% mastery)

- very nice sustain/ regen

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Cons:

- cannot run ele reflect maps (unless you roll ele reflect immunity on sextant ofc)

- really uncomfortable to run "% reduced ES/life/mana recovery rate" map mods. pretty much treat this the same as ele reflect and avoid.

-needs battery staff later on due to scaling mana costs. due to barely anyone using this, you will have to craft it yourself to get a half decent one.

- can get killed if your brands aren't hitting something, as uses es leech for sustain. still has nice es regen though. worth thinking about during annoying boss phases.

-wont show up on poe ninja due to not calculating arcanist brand damage corrected (no dick swinging possible sadly)

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Notes:

- I've used a fairly min-maxed build in my showcase videos, but this build really does nicely when not min maxed. I will/ have attached a basic leveling pob for this.

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- Switching out shavs for Corruscating elixer gives you lots of freedom on body armour. you can gain permanent uptime on this flask by 28% quality hillock craft & brtual restraint keystone. craft " reuse at end of flask effect" and you press once and done. you can use two other flasks in this set-up, 4 if you can get more ways of gaining flask charges ( belt mods etc)

-can have below max fire res on gear as perma uptime corruscating elixir gives fire res

- gains immunity to shock from perma flask uptime (gain charges when hit a crit & craft use when charges full)

- get arcanist brand unnerves helmet enchant for guarenteed unnerve.

- can be flexible around some of the ascendency nodes. I use a lightning golem to proc % more dmg multiplier, but you could easily switch this to bastion of hope and move some passive points around to cap attack & spell block - i haven't felt the need.

- uses infernal cry to cover enemies in ash. you have to manually do this, i tend to only use this for bosses & stubborn tanky rares.

- my POB has some extra configurations in place due to being able to use sanctified relics. this might not be valid in other leagues. build is still useable, just requires slightly different passive points.

-end build can use impossible escape ghost reaver to take the % increased max es recovery from leech node and the global crit multi node. using this in conjuction with lycias ghost reaver invocation on a santified relic means you can also have ghost reaver for 2k es recovery on leech per second.

-uses battery staff to keep up mana mana costs of skills (spend es before mana to cast slotted skills). pob doesnt recognise this and flags up as error in mana costing.

-brutal restraint jewel can grant extra modifiers on your notables. use POB to make sure you are getting the most out of this-can use to cap cold res, or stack more dmg/ aura effect/movespeed etc. you can look for your perfect timeless jewel using the search option at the bottom of POB.

https://reddit.com/link/110lrfh/video/j98lft4sqsha1/player