Penance Brand Ignite Elementalist - Build Diary Day 1 Campaign Completion Update!

Hi all! I'm Slinky and I make some content around Wintertide Brand Elementalist usually, but this league I decided to try out the newly buffed Penance Brand and play it as Ignite! I have a previous post going over my rough plans, and this is a follow up with a Day 1 for those who are following along to see how things went.

POB: https://pobb.in/--RDH2SqV8jI

Some quick points for those who don't want to watch the video.

We started with Kinetic Bolt until Level 12, where you can get Storm Brand at the end of Act 1. We played Storm Brand until we get Penance Brand in the middle/end of Act 3 where we swapped fully.

Swapping instantly may feel a bit awkward if you have small amounts of cast speed, so there's a bit of delay in damage but the damage is good and the explosion is pretty large. You can wait a bit longer to pick up Swiftbrand from Clarissa after you do the Siosa quest in Library if desired.

As for first ascendency choices, both Liege of the Primordial and Shaper of Flames are great options. We personally chose Shaper of Flames, but I'll go over a little about both.

If you want to do all 4 golems as soon as you can, have them respawn automatically, and be tankier, go with Liege of the Primordial. You will want to skip investing into the damage over time nodes on the passive tree until you get your second lab done, but you can focus more on the hit based abilities, aura nodes, and life/tankiness nodes. The hit damage of the build feels great.

If you'd prefer to invest in ignite first, go with Shaper of Flames. As long as you get the Golem Commander node on the tree, you can use two golems still. I recommend using both Thunder Golem and Stone Golem. After a couple of levels on the golems, I had no issues with them dying since Stone Golem gives them a lot of extra life.

But we wrapped up campaign last night(10.5 hours, slow but player issue not build issue), so we will be working on map progression today and pushing the build further.

If you have any questions or constructive feedback, please feel free to leave a comment here, on the youtube video, or stop by either the YouTube or Twitch streams if you see me live. I hope you have a great leaguestart and stay sane exile! <3