Brand Recall

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Last bumped on Sep 22, 2022, 12:24:22 AM
I literally have no use for this skill. What does it do? Other than yank the brands back to us? Perhaps some tutorial on what you thought we would be doing with it?

About the only time I think it might be useful is paired with CWDT to bring a brand back if you are getting hit and need immediate defensive. But then you'd need to really pair with a skill cast of a brand (if that works, haven't tried) and then it moves from an offensive pairing to a defensive pairing.
it activates the brands as well meaning they all do 1 hit around you soon after you use it, which is I think somewhat asynchronous so it increases your average brand activation rate by 0-1 (average 0.5 I guess) extra activations per cooldown.

You can skew it towards 1 if your timing is really good in theory but not really in practise especially consider we have multiple brands out

Sort of lackluster but you can also focus single targets on it, forcing all brands to hit the dude once. bad thing is you gotta be close by the target.

Also not sure how it works with storm brand as the damage is only really clear on arma brand and storm brands damage is pretty terrible if it isn't attached to the enemy (force recalling onto a mob = not attached?)

And storm brand has a faster activation rate so it's not only harder to make good use of the asynchronous recall for extra activations too, and the flat "added activations per cooldown" is less significant relative to regular activation rate.

If only we have a new brand that does like 1 massive hit every 3 seconds or something then forcing it with brand recall would be great
Is there a reason we can't sell to the vendor at level 6 + GCP to get a 20 quality level 1?

Don't get why this operates like Empower when it's a skills support??
Love the skill. Being able to mow down packs/ bring our brands forward while moving is what makes brands go from semi-interesting self cast to refreshingly new and incredible to play.

But i too wonder why it only goes to level 6? It makes getting quality much more costly (although i guess it does make empower/+1 corruptions much more powerful - likely a fair trade)
lvl 80 elementalist, cookie-cutter passives, 6l armageddon brand, +2 to gem level on shield with empower to boost brand recall lvl as much as possible

Skill itself is good but the brands require babysitting even when spamming it. If the brand refresh was longer (idk, 2s vs current 1.2s) it would probably be huge quality of life improvement.
Good day!

I would like to propose a small processing of this stone of skills. My suggestion is based on my understanding of the purpose of introducing this skill stone.

Intro (you can skip it, but here I give my point of view and the main reasons that prompted me to publish this message)

Spoiler
As you know, brand recall when cast calls on the character brands and extends their duration. Also this skill gem has no cast time and increases the range of brands. This is the whole point and purpose of this stone of skills.
How does this affect the mechanics of the game through brands?

The player calls brands, which requires quite a long cast time, and then, instead of stopping and invoking brands again each time, he uses the brand recall skill stone. This stone calls brands to the character’s location and brands are riveted to nearby monsters. The player at the same time spends time only on the movement of the character towards the monsters.

The gameplay at the same time becomes quite simple: cast brands and then run around the location and squeeze the brand recall stone.
That is, the brand recall stone changes the gameplay, as a result of which the game through brands and brand recall becomes more like a game through RF or minions, when the character, in fact, not paying attention to the bulk of the monsters just runs around the location, lived at the same time cooldown brand recall.

You will say that this is good, the player gets a mechanic in which he can not waste time re-branding for weak monsters and focus on finding more powerful enemies, right?

This is where the cornerstone of this skill stone lies. It is connected with the fact that cooldown time on the stone of the brand recall skill and the time of the extension of the existence of brands on the same stone do not coincide. At the same time, the developers allowed us to reduce the cooldown skill from the brand recall stone by increasing its level either by using game items with appropriate properties (increased cooldown reduction) or by choosing the Hierophant class and choosing the class of the corresponding branch with the key skill in the skill tree.

As a result of the manipulation of reducing the cooldown time for the brand recall skill stone, we can achieve the effect when the increased duration for brands on the brand recall skill stone is more than the cooldown time for it.
This gives us the illusion that our problems with the constant re-branding of brands have been resolved and our character can now cast brands at the beginning of the location and then simply run along it and periodically use brand recall to increase the duration of the brands, right?

From the point of view of the GAME, it works: our brands are becoming practically eternal. The keyword here is "Practically." After all, the PLAYER is responsible for re-branding with brand recall.

Now imagine that the player has to press the same key EVERY SECOND with the metronome accuracy!
This not only affects the psychological state of the player, but also harms the health of his hands much more than mouse clicks. Yes, and the keyboard suffers.

As a result, the player gets very tired of this "game." HIGHLY.

GGG doesn’t want to make a player a metronome?

Imagine: The whole game, in addition to the player having to move the mouse, squeeze flasks, squeeze other skills, such as moving skills, also comes down to pressing the brand recall skill stone button EVERY SECOND!

And so, the introduction is over and now I will write my specific schemes for improving this stone of skill.

First enhancement scheme: Increase the lifetime of brands, which applies this skill stone to brands.

Cooldown time should be increased in the same proportion.
For example, in the end, we will have the same skill stone, but it will increase the life time of brands not by 1.2 seconds, but by 4 seconds.
Also, the maximum possible cooldown time that we can get by game methods will be no less than 3 seconds (for Hierophant with a taken talent of the class, with a belt for cooldown reduction and skill stone level 17 (vaal base (7) + empower (+3) lvl gems + shield giving (+2) level of socketed gems + wand with (+1) to all spell gems amulet (+1) to all int and ((+1) to all str gems) and no less than 3.8-3.9 seconds for other classes ( with a cooldown reduction belt and skill stone level 17 (vaal base (7) + empower (+3) lvl gems + shield giving (+2) level of socketed gems + wand with (+1) to all spell gems amulet (+1 ) to all int and (+1) to all str gems).

The advantage of this method is that it will require minimal processing of stone skill mechanics.

The disadvantages are that this change is not suitable for playing with brand. Indeed, in this case, it will be much faster to cast new brands each time than to wait for the restoration of the brand recall ability while being next to the next group of monsters.

The second improvement scheme: Finally, do the mechanics of the "holding" keys in PoE.

Now in PoE you can’t just hold down the skill key having a recovery time and wait for it to work on the recovery time.
The only things that work with the keys held down are skills without recovery time, channeling skills, and character’s “run”.

Of course, there is an option of placing skills like Convocation, Vortex, Brand recall on the Left mouse button and when you hold down these keys, the hero will cast the skill immediately after the end of its recovery time. But this leads to even greater difficulties and confusion: We cannot move the mouse in the safe zone. We are having difficulty moving around some maps or at certain game moments. And finally, we cannot move the hero if the ability cannot be pronounced. Only during its restoration can a character move. As a result, we need to reassign other keys for movement, which takes one slot of our skills on the player panel!

The advantage of holding the key is that it is just a very convenient and useful game mechanic. The game has many skills with recovery time, which you have to CONSTANTLY live. why not just make them re-cast themselves while holding down the key?

Disadvantages of "holding" key: did not come up. Perhaps the developer will have to work?
(⁄ ⁄ • ⁄ω⁄ • ⁄ ⁄)

Third Improvement Scheme: Convert the brand recall skill stone to HERALD of Brand or Summon Brands (similar to Summon Skitterbots) or create a new skill stone.

Quite an interesting idea, in my opinion.
It consists in the following: The game has different heralds that give any bonuses to the character’s statistics (increase in damage, chance of poisoning) and an additional skill of the herald himself (ice damage over the area, summon scorpion, etc.).
So, why not create another Herald?
We will have a Herald of Brand, which will give a slight increase in damage to the brands themselves and automatically (when the herald is activated) call on the brands character while increasing their duration (as brand recall now does).
Or you can create something like Summon Skitterbots and call it Summon Brands. There will be a new aura stone of skill that will do the same functions as brand recall now does, but only in automatic mode (Or some kind of minion will be invoked, like immortal Skitterbots, and make brand recall functions only without the participation of the player).

Advantage: further development of brands skills, improvement of the gameplay without changing the game mechanics.

Disadvantages: you have to balance the new skill properly (bonuses from a new skill with mana reservation should justify the amount of reserved mana).

Finally

Of all that I have proposed, I myself am inclined to the second or third option, but I also could not miss the first option, as the simplest.


Above, I described my point of view on the future development of this skill stone, and I hope that the developers will get acquainted with my point of view and if they find it useful, in the future they will apply part of my experience on this skill stone.


P.S. I really want NORMAL to play with brands, but without adequate brand recall, this is not possible. And it would be nice when you feel like the master of Brands, who constantly surround you and attack the approaching monsters. And my hero at the same time moves around the location in search of worthy opponents...
* finger hurts again, pressing brand recall for 2 hours *

(∩ᄑ_ᄑ)⊃━☆゚*・。*・:≡( ε:)

P.P.S. Clickers and other third-party software do not work well with PoE, and I don’t want to, as a player, use any tricks.

(╯°益°)╯彡┻━┻

Thanks, and see you soon!
Last edited by qBickWazar on Feb 21, 2020, 5:16:50 AM
All I wish was that this skill was ground targeted, and recalled them to a position, rather than to on top of you. It's just so clunky and not fun to play it this way because it makes you feel like you need to hug enemies.
Question regarding Brand Recall’s interaction with Armageddon Brand...

When all brands activate and hit a signal target, what is the mechanic interaction with ignite?
Are all the brand hits added up as one single hit for one large ignite since they hit simultaneously? Or is the largest of the brand hits used as the ignite?
The 3.11 removing of brand duration reset has basically left this as one of, if not the most useless skills in the game.

Why use and invest in recall when you still have to frequently cast the brand for more duration anyway.

"But it's instant this way" you might say. Doesnt matter because the cooldown is so shit that you have to invest into recall clusters and passives to make it semi usable and by this point you have shot your builds damage in the knee caps for barely any extra convenience since you now have the added requirement of paying attention to the durtaion otherwise you recall nothing and die. Hardly a convenience investment.

Please at least give it some sort of usable reason to invest in again.

I prupose something like: "Recalled brands have their duration extended by half of their initial duration" with significant investment you could probably make it into its former glory and no longer require to cast the brand manualy after the initial time but the investment required would easily balance this in comparison to other builds with similar fluid playstles.

Last edited by Slammu on May 5, 2021, 10:51:20 PM

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