Reporting on Armageddon Brand Ignite - in case anyone else was thinking of trying it.

TLDR the skill got a lot more viable than it was before, but still isn't great.

3.11 buffed Armagedon Brand significantly, about 40% more damage with ignite, making it competitive with Fireball - plus the nice mechanical advantage of using brands.

Pros:

• Good clear speed. Ignite prolif is my favorite mechanic in the game, it kills respawning enemies like Beyonders and delve nodes in an effortless way, and makes Blight encounters super easy.

• The brand hitting repeatedly makes Emberwake ring pretty good, for very long ignite durations and more damage (from 2x ignites)

• Off-meta gear is cheap?

Cons:

• limited ways to scale damage.

• The brand's delay between attaching and hitting is very annoying, meaning that it often kills packs behind you if going quickly through a map (need to backtrack), or can cause sudden deaths if a pack you expected to be dead is in fact not. Very fast enemies chasing you around may not be hit reliably.

• Weak at bossing.

• Harmed by more map mods than most builds (ele reflect and avoid ailments...)

Compare to ED/Contagion, which has similar DOT playstyle but hits significantly higher damage numbers, with lower investment (allowing more defenses), and isn't affected by most map mods - I would rate this build a C-.

POB: https://pastebin.com/pqXfnV24 (multiply ignite DPS 2x, for Emberwake Ring).

There are some significant upgrades available still, such as a Malevolence watcher's eye and a +1 gems armor I haven't succeeded in linking yet, but I don't see that extra 20% or so DPS overcoming the big flaws of this build.

Suggestions of course welcome, but I'm mostly done with this character in the league at this point, I think.