PoE Brand, Heist builds with custom stat filters

Use Brand Recall to force the secondary debuff from Wintertide Brand to activate faster. Cold Snap for single target. Swap to Devoto's Devotion for more movespeed (also lets you drop the dex node). Can also swap Malevolence for Haste. Sadly can't really use Petrified Blood, on paper it's more ehp than Discipline but Vaal Discipline is more useful imo. Leave out LL if you want to be tankier. I left out Defiance Banner for now because of reservation issues. Get the remaining few k evasion from ring or amulet prefix or higher rolls on flask and gear or something, Utmost Intellect is also very use

Penance brand as hierophant using the reworked arcane surge on the cheaper side. Just sad that Penance brand is not much used and overlooked over the past several leagues, currently only 6 visible on the poe.ninja crucible ladder including me. It's often seen as a scaling build only used with great investment or with an aurabot. Bonus point, the mtx is wonderful and penance brand is one of my favorite skill. I understand it's hard to make it feels good and you can feel discouraged when you first try it but with a good understanding it's lovely to play (but beware you need to click a lot),

I've been trying to narrow down my league starter for Heist the past couple of days. Somewhere along the line, I decided I want to do a cold DoT Occultist, more specifically a Wintertide Brand Occultist (SC-trade). I have a few reasons (that may or may not be valid, politely let me know). Full reasoning summaries below, but TLDR: I think cold DoT Occultists will survive nerfing and might even be buffed by new Hexes. Wintertide brand also feels safe from nerfing, is non-meta, and there is always Vortex to fall back on. I may or may not be able to take advantage of new Hexes more easily. Al