Hello again everyone. So, last league I didn't had a chance to play archmage storm brand (mostly because I thought it was way too strong and a lot of people were doing it already, so it was not that interesting to me). But I really really like mana builds and Indigon is one of my favorite items in the game so I decided to give mana Storm Brand a try and it turned out to be pretty strong/fun so I decided to share it with others.

EDIT: Hmm, I just noticed that I forgot to enable Clarity in that Minotaur vid, oops :d

For some backstory of the build: I originally did not planned to actually end up using Storm Brand, just something with Indigon and mana stacking. So at first I played Wintertide Trickster as hybrid, after I got currency to get Indigon, I transformed it to Indigon build (and it was actually very very strong, would highly recommend this approach to any Wintertide build that just wants a lot of damage). Then I was looking at better options than Trickster as I kind of needed (or wanted) a lot more mana recovery, and well, Essence Glutton is hillariously broken, so I decided to level up necro. I wanted to do Wintertide on it again, but issue was that I had to have 2 trigger wands for both Bone Offering and bunch of standard cold dot stuff (frost bomb, curse, EE enabler), so I was looking for other options. First I tried penance brand, and well, it is boring boring skill imo (mainly with holy conquest that actually makes it clear bearable). After almost giving up on the char after trying some other skills that just did not felt right (winter orb, arcanist + some random spells, I think i tried also arc) someone mentioned in Discord that they are doing Storm Brand and I was like, how did I forgot about Storm Brand. So I tried it and well.. it felt great. The clear is fun, it feels smooth and it's MTX is beautiful.

For the build progression: Initially I just went all in on damage, so stuff like Essence Worm, Algor Mortis etc etc and the DPS was more than 30% higher than I ended up with, but honestly, it was not needed at all, my main struggle was movement. I was still Necro, and I am used to play fast rangers/shadows. After some experimenting I ended up simply using Null and Void (I would still prefer even more movement speed, but for that I will need GG boots, and at least atm I can't really afford that together with finishing rest of my gear like belt, wand and shield). I think what I need to invest into next is just more attachment range and it will be even better.

And for the actual build mechanics (you can just ignore what I wrote above if you care only about this): So, offense. Well, basically all my damage comes from Indigon and Arcane Cloak. Indigon gives me 2000% increased spell damage, and Arcane Cloak a lot of flat damage. Downside of this setup is that I need to be spending almost 16k mana recently in order to maintain Indigon. That is a lot. And I also need to save something for actual defense. So I stack mana regen literally everywhere, and I ended up at around 6k-10k mana regen/second (what is bascially my full mana regenerated in 1 second or less, what is pretty insane). And well... thats it. The damage sources are really simple.

For defense: I use Glancing Blows to max my block (75/75), then Bone Offering + mana on block shield for mana and life recovery on block, Omeyocan for 20/20 dodge and stacked up Quartz flask for total of 34/34 dodge. I also have fortify, so 20% less damage taken from hits, then I have some damage reduction from necro, some life and mana recovery from Kitava Teachings (5% every second) and then I stack a lot of mana stuff. 40% MoM, so my ehp is actually pretty high even though you see ~4k hp, the actual pool is around 6.6-7k and then I use Agnostic what basically makes me unkillable unless I get one shot. The ultimate defense would be adding Divine Flesh on top of this, but atm I can't afford to shuffle my resists that much.

And gameplay: I spam Arcane Cloak (with numlock trick), then I also spam brand recall (as I have it on left click) and pop 1 brand on top of every pack and this easily keeps me fully ramped on Indigon. On bosses, casting brand every second or 2 is fine to keep up Indigon. I can facetank most of stuff, so I can just stand there clicking my brand and looking at how stuff dies.

And for PoB and links to my character:

Here is my current character's PoB: https://pastebin.com/wavasHGa

Here is link to my actual character: https://poe-profile.info/profile/thedeathbeam/WorbViableAgain?realm=pc

And here is the final/planned version: https://pastebin.com/01qcSMtW

I have some workarounds on stuff because PoB do not supports everything so I can see my actual damage and regen and other stats, so don't be scared by that its all legit (runebinder 100% more activation frequency is basically just doing brand damage x2 for 2 attached brands):

== 60% arcane surge ==
12% more spell damage
12% increased cast speed
0.6% mana regenerated per second
== Essence Glutton ==
4% of mana regenerated per second
== Runebinder ==
100% more brand activation frequency

And here are some extra videos (pretty random, I recorded when i remembered I want to record something):

Catarina: https://streamable.com/vcsjcu

Shaper: https://streamable.com/e4q2hv

Lair of the Hydra: https://streamable.com/126vys

Channel: https://streamable.com/hxov5w

Underground River: https://streamable.com/w464dp

Veritania: https://streamable.com/lns9wl

(sorry for wall of text :d)