[3.6] Storm Brand Occultist

Low Life POB: https://pastebin.com/a6MKtVA4
CI POB: https://pastebin.com/4abuta8g

Bandits: save Alira

Patheon: For Minor Pantheon, I use Shakari for poison immunity as well as taking a bit less chaos damage. Major Pantheon is up to you but I use Lunaris just for the movement speed and minor chance to dodge projectiles.


Just a bit of background, I league started this build in 3.6 and went CI after getting to maps. I cleared the atlas and killed Uber Elder as CI on a tabula having a quarter of the damage I do now. Therefore, there is a lot of customization on the tree depending on what you value, be it damage, health, utility.

Phoenix: https://youtu.be/W8uyJ3-Y3bk
T16 Estuary: https://youtu.be/mbfcyUgaXRY
T16 Elder Guardian: https://youtu.be/iiv2BhGGQQg
Will get Uber Elder video as soon as I spawn him again

We use Storm Brand with a few pieces of gear which have Elemental/Non-Chaos as extra chaos damage to boost our damage of Storm Brand significantly. We use Call of the Brotherhood rings to convert 80% of our lightning damage to cold damage which causes the chaos affixes to apply both to lightning and to the cold damage. We go the energy shield route on this build since it meshes well with Occultist ascendancy as well as the new es leech support gem being a significant damage increase (39% more damage, 10% increased damage, and 24% more damage if we are on full energy shield at gem level 20.)

Why Occultist? We go Occultist since it's ascendancy nodes synergize very well with this build. Wicked Ward and Vile Bastion significantly increase our ES pool along with giving us stun immunity and ES regeneration. We take Void Beacon to lower our enemies resistances since 70%ish of our damage is chaos and the rest is cold with less than 5% being lightning damage. Our final node is Withering Presence which boost our chaos resistance to 0% and also applies wither to enemies (6% increased chaos damage taken by enemies per second.) There are other ways to spec this but it'll be discussed in the following section.

There are two types of this build you can choose from.

1. Chaos Inoculation. Allows you to be immune to chaos damage. This is the route I took on league start until I could afford some options. Going the CI route will allow you to drop Withering Presence ascendancy node and spec into Forbidden Power. Going this I would recommend speccing into more Power Charges on the tree to boost your critical strike chance along with damage from the node spell damage per power charge. You can drop some crit nodes such as nimbleness, annihilation, and maybe doomcast if you aren't losing too much on the crit multi. A significant boost to this version is using Incandescent Heart since it has up to 20% of elemental damage as extra chaos damage and also dampens some elemental damage you take.

2. Low Life. This is the most damage since it allows you to run another aura and in 3.6 they introduced zealotry. Zealotry gives you 15% more spell damage as well as creating consecrated grounds on hitting rare or unique enemies which if they stand on it causes you to have 100% increased critical strike chance against them. With a new aura also comes a slew of new watcher's eye mods (discussed in gear section.) Low life also allows you to take the node Pain Attunement which gives you 30% more spell power while on low life (less than 30% life.) The price of this is having to obtain a Shavronne's Wrappings which are going for about 10ex at the moment.

Helm:

For the helm we use an Eber's Unification due to the elemental damage as extra chaos damage, make sure it is max rolled of 8%. The level 10 Void Gaze on the helm allows us to lower enemy resistance by 10% further if you are close enough. As for enchants getting either Zealotry or Wrath reduced mana reservation allows you to throw in a clarity for a little bit of mana regen but also eventually a clarity watchers eye for more ES. Strom Brand penetrating lightning resistance does pretty much nothing for this build. Storm Brand doing 40% more damage is about a 4-5% damage increase overall.

Body Armour:

This is for the Low Life route, it is required or else any chaos damage will kill u instantly and don't go into Hall of the Grand masters as Low Life or you will get culling striked so hard.

For CI version get an Incandescent Heart with preferably 20% of elemental damage as extra chaos damage.

Gloves

For gloves the highest dps will require them to be rare. TO obtain dps mods on the they either have to be shaped, elder or fossil crafted.
1. Shaped gloves have socketed gems have increased cast speed which is a global mod.
2. Elder gloves have increased attack and cast speed.
3. Fossil crafted with shuddering have a chance to give increased attack and cast speed if you have hit an enemy recently.
along with 1 of those you will need Energy shield on them but leave a prefix open. The open prefix will be crafted with increased damage while leeching which our ES leech gem provides.

Another option and one I used on league start is to use Voidbringer. If you are going the power charge route it's probably best to get ones with the most mana cost increase since you need to spend 200 mana to gain 1 power charge via Forbidden Power ascendancy node.

Boots


This slot is to your preference. I got boots with an open prefix so I can craft movement speed and chill immunity once I unlock the veiled mod. You can get a lot higher ES boots as well as crafting some yourself using dense and shuddering fossils. Boots are also a good way to fill resistances.

Amulet


For an amulet get an Elder one with gain % of non-chaos damage as extra chaos damage. I bought it rare with only that mod and multi modded it. I crafted
-increased cast speed
-%increased maximum ES
-%increased lightning damage(no higher dps craft)
-%increased damage while leeching (not on my amulet since i don't have the highest rank craft)

Rings


We use 2 Call of the Brothers which are a requirement for this build to work.

Belt


I use Bated Breath for a belt slot, it's cheap and fills a lot of roles. Gives us a a decent chunk of ES but also allows our ES recharge rate to apply quicker.

Alternatively and probably a lot better would be to grab a Crystal Belt that is shaped. The mods you are looking for on a belt are Energy shield, increased maximum energy shield, increased energy shield recovery rate. ES recovery rate will apply to every aspect of ES such as leech and the amount you regen. There are some good damage crafts you have on a rare belt such as increased effect of flask, flask effect duration, 20% increased damage.

Shield

For a shield grab one with a decent amount of ES and try to get a damage mod such as cast speed(suffix), spell crit(suffix), spell damage(prefix). We can't craft 11% of non chaos damage as extra chaos damage anymore in 3.6 but there's still some decent crafts such as 8% lightning damage as Extra chaos damage, 8% cast speed, 5% chance to deal double damage.

Weapon


For a weapon you can buy one that has gain %of elemental damage as extra chaos damage and nothing else on it but make sure it is rare. Make sure the base is good aka not a dagger since the crit is negligible and we wont have enough dex to use it. If a weapon is rare and has more than 1 affix make sure it's a usable one such as crit multi past 28% or cast speed past 16%. We multimod this weapon to and the highest dps stats are
- (46-50)spell damage/4% of non chaos as extra chaos (I currently don't have this one unveiled)
- (15-18) increased cast speed
- adds (3-9) to (106-112) lightning damage to spells
- (25-28) to critical strike multiplier

Jewels

For Jewels try to max out resistances/attribute requirements and grab some damage modifiers

Defense
-%increased maximum energy shield
-%to all elemental resistances
-&fire,cold,lightning resist

Offense
-%global critical strike multiplier
-%critical strike multiplier with lightning skills
-%critical strike multiplier with elemental skills
-%increased cast speed
-%increased cast speed while holding a shield
-%Increased attack and cast speed
-%increased spell damage
-%increased spell damage while holding a shield
-%increased area damage
-%increased damage
-%increased lightning damage
-%increased cold damage
-%increased chaos damage

For watchers eye there's a bunch of mods
Zealotry
-increased cast speed
-enemies take increased damage on consecrated ground
-crit chance against enemies on consecrated ground (lower dps then others)
Wrath
-increased lightning damage
-increased crit chance (lower dps)
Discipline
-max ES regen
-increased ES recovery rate
Clarity
-extra ES

I use blue dream gem to have a 20% chance on kill to gain a power charge. you can replace this with any rare but I plan to get 2 more power charges on the way to level 100. It helps with clearing by not having to put down orb of storms to gain power charges.

Flasks


These are the flasks I use, they are mostly damage flasks with clearing ailments. For Atziri's Promise make sure it has the max of 15% of elemental damage as extra chaos damage.

Other notes:
you absolutely can dual wield 2 weapons by giving up a shield and will gain a lot more damage but give up roughly 1500 ES depending on how your character is specced.

Ways to improve gear further is to corrupt Storm Brand to hit 21/20, it does get a lot of damage from levels. Another massive way to improve damage is by corrupting a body armour in the corruption chamber of the temple, a +2 to gems or even +4 to gems is massive in power. There are new implicits you can try to target through the synthesizer in 3.6 such as more ES on certain pieces of gear or even having +2 to minimum frenzy charges on a shield as an implicit will boost your damage by a little bit.

Main:
Storm Brand - Added Lightning Damage - Concentrated Effect - Controlled Destruction - Energy Leech - Increased Critical Strike/Elemental Focus

Use Increased Critical Strike for clearing then switch it out for Elemental Focus on harder bosses.

3-Links Aura
Wrath - Vaal Discipline - Enlighten

an enlighten 2 or 3 is fine here, if using Voidbringer gloves you might need a level 4. Vaal Discipline is an trump card here, activate it when taking heavy damage and your health will shoot and stay at 100% for a bit barring one shots.

Zealotry - Blood Magic - Clarity

You might not be able to fit a clarity into this build without having a reduced mana reservation helm enchant which will be fine unless you have a watcher's eye with clarity on it. You might have to take a node on the tree for reduced mana reservation to fit clarity in.

IF you went CI, you can't use this and since you probably are specced into Forbidden Power use Wither - Cast While Channeling - Frost Bomb - Faster Casting.

DPS boost:
Vaal Righteous Fire - Vaal Blight - Increased Duration

Vaal RF boost spell power significantly when using it and Vaal Blight increased the chaos damage taken by the target by 20% as well as slowing everything to a crawl.

Movement Skill:
Flame Dash - Faster Casting - Arcane Surge(8)

I use flame dash for a movement skill, it works with the wand I use as a weapon and is almost a requirement to get around decay in synthesis.

1 Link:
Brand Recall

Throw this is somewhere, it's how you move all your brands on top of you to keep clearing without having to cast so often. Corrupting this to level 7 will increased the Cooldown on it and allow u to clear slightly faster.

4-Link Utility

Orb of Storms - Power Charge on Crit - Curse on Hit - Assassin's Mark

These links are up to you and are mostly for utility. If you don't want Power Charges on single target you can replace it with onslaught since the reworked gem gives you a 10% chance to grant onslaught on hitting a rare or unique enemy. You don't have to use a curse either, I just do to have a higher crit chance on single target bosses.

Another possible link to consider is using cast when damage taken with immortal call to protect you from some consecutive physical damage spikes but so far I haven't had the need to use this since Storm Brand chill's and freezes enemies due to call of the brotherhood cold conversion.