Fyregrass' Comprehensive Storm Brand Assassin Guide - Currently Dead Build. Revisit in 2 weeks.

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livejamie wrote:
Thanks for the response, you and your friend on reddit have both been very helpful. He did provide me with great answers but it's better to have them here than in deep in the daily question thread on the subreddit. :)

Here is my Elementalist Staff POB: https://pastebin.com/xczEfzeG

It's level 98, for the last two points I'd grab Doryanni's Lesson in the top right cluster jewel.

In my testing, the -9% Res is slightly better but maybe I'm doing POB wrong?

Glad to know 11 PC Elementalist is competitive with 12 PC Assassin, I think I might use your guide as a baseline and do it again if golems aren't changed.

It's exciting to see that Badge might be a normal price this league as it's a global drop, we shall see. :)


So the Crusader helm is better for you because you have a 7 link staff. I didn't notice the PCOC lvl 10 support but it lets you run awakened added lightning which means more flat damage is lower value. Fwiw if you ever do this build again, without this staff, you would need PCOC as a support and the hunter helm would be ideal, but indeed with your current set up your helm is defs superior.

One other major thing I noticed is that you don't have Wave of Conviction in your build. The Steelskin in your CWDT set up is totally irrelevant, guard skills share a cooldown and Steelskin at low levels is substantially weaker than Immortal Call anyway.

So I replaced it with WoC and you jumped from 8.1m dps to 11.9m dps. WoC is great but Mastermind of Discord makes it really OP. One last bit of advice to consider if it at all interests you, a new set of defensive techs I've added to my own guide.

Your curse on hit jewel can have the unnerve component swapped to evil eye. Unnerve as a damage debuff stacks with Brand Loyalty's inc damage taken meaning it is diminished in efficacy. Swapping to evil eye drops it from 10% to 5%, or 11.9m dps to 11.6m dps however in return it gives blind on curse which is effectively 50% evasion, a ridiculous amount of defensive power for 3% less DPS. Additionally, the Enduring Composure small cluster jewel node grants Endurance Charges when hit (1 per second for 4 seconds), at 3 charges this is 12% phys reduction, but more importantly, it means your auto triggered Immortal Call will grant even more phys reduction and for a longer duration. This will cost you 2 additional points on a 2 point small cluster, but its really good value.

I hope this doesn't seem nitpicky or anything, your set up is really strong and everything I just said is overkill, I just felt it was worth the mention as those defensive techs add a significant amount to survivability and without Wave of Conviction you were missing alot of free boss DPS (you can obtain weaker exposure via a large cluster jewel as well for mobs)

Hope this all helped, but it seems you don't really need it at all!

https://pastebin.com/MAMW19tN - Updated PoB if you want to see
Last edited by Fyregrass on Apr 11, 2021, 2:50:27 AM
I tried crafting an elevated explody chest like you list in the guide. I crafted prefixes cannot be changed an tried using a maven's orb and it wouldnt let me use the maven's orb.
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Fyregrass wrote:
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livejamie wrote:
Thanks for the response, you and your friend on reddit have both been very helpful. He did provide me with great answers but it's better to have them here than in deep in the daily question thread on the subreddit. :)

Here is my Elementalist Staff POB: https://pastebin.com/xczEfzeG

It's level 98, for the last two points I'd grab Doryanni's Lesson in the top right cluster jewel.

In my testing, the -9% Res is slightly better but maybe I'm doing POB wrong?

Glad to know 11 PC Elementalist is competitive with 12 PC Assassin, I think I might use your guide as a baseline and do it again if golems aren't changed.

It's exciting to see that Badge might be a normal price this league as it's a global drop, we shall see. :)


So the Crusader helm is better for you because you have a 7 link staff. I didn't notice the PCOC lvl 10 support but it lets you run awakened added lightning which means more flat damage is lower value. Fwiw if you ever do this build again, without this staff, you would need PCOC as a support and the hunter helm would be ideal, but indeed with your current set up your helm is defs superior.

One other major thing I noticed is that you don't have Wave of Conviction in your build. The Steelskin in your CWDT set up is totally irrelevant, guard skills share a cooldown and Steelskin at low levels is substantially weaker than Immortal Call anyway.

So I replaced it with WoC and you jumped from 8.1m dps to 11.9m dps. WoC is great but Mastermind of Discord makes it really OP. One last bit of advice to consider if it at all interests you, a new set of defensive techs I've added to my own guide.

Your curse on hit jewel can have the unnerve component swapped to evil eye. Unnerve as a damage debuff stacks with Brand Loyalty's inc damage taken meaning it is diminished in efficacy. Swapping to evil eye drops it from 10% to 5%, or 11.9m dps to 11.6m dps however in return it gives blind on curse which is effectively 50% evasion, a ridiculous amount of defensive power for 3% less DPS. Additionally, the Enduring Composure small cluster jewel node grants Endurance Charges when hit (1 per second for 4 seconds), at 3 charges this is 12% phys reduction, but more importantly, it means your auto triggered Immortal Call will grant even more phys reduction and for a longer duration. This will cost you 2 additional points on a 2 point small cluster, but its really good value.

I hope this doesn't seem nitpicky or anything, your set up is really strong and everything I just said is overkill, I just felt it was worth the mention as those defensive techs add a significant amount to survivability and without Wave of Conviction you were missing alot of free boss DPS (you can obtain weaker exposure via a large cluster jewel as well for mobs)

Hope this all helped, but it seems you don't really need it at all!

https://pastebin.com/MAMW19tN - Updated PoB if you want to see


This is exactly what I was looking for thank you.
livejamie
Hey, thanks for the guide, it is very well written and makes leaguestarting as Storm Brand sound very appealing, will in all likelihood do so. I have 2 Questions:

1: Is there any reason to not use Frenzy+Hextouch+Conductivity in the Lightningslinger setup? On that note, can you give any details about the progression within that setup? Assuming we have access to a 5l + 4l at some point, do we pair Storm Brand with 3 Damage supports or spread it out among Brand and Arc?

2: Could you elaborate on the benefits of the MoM setup? From an outside perspective (and looking at the PoB) it seems like we invest 3 passive points and 2 ring slots for roughly 500 EHP, wouldn‘t, say taking the Mending Wheel and wearing 2 Rings with T1/T2 life offer roughly the same amount of EHP with the benefit of giving a huge amount of resists?
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XenJerec wrote:
I tried crafting an elevated explody chest like you list in the guide. I crafted prefixes cannot be changed an tried using a maven's orb and it wouldnt let me use the maven's orb.


Perhaps this method was fixed? First I’ve heard of it. It worked for me earlier in the league, I will investigate ASAP, thanks for letting me know.
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Hey, thanks for the guide, it is very well written and makes leaguestarting as Storm Brand sound very appealing, will in all likelihood do so. I have 2 Questions:

1: Is there any reason to not use Frenzy+Hextouch+Conductivity in the Lightningslinger setup? On that note, can you give any details about the progression within that setup? Assuming we have access to a 5l + 4l at some point, do we pair Storm Brand with 3 Damage supports or spread it out among Brand and Arc?

2: Could you elaborate on the benefits of the MoM setup? From an outside perspective (and looking at the PoB) it seems like we invest 3 passive points and 2 ring slots for roughly 500 EHP, wouldn‘t, say taking the Mending Wheel and wearing 2 Rings with T1/T2 life offer roughly the same amount of EHP with the benefit of giving a huge amount of resists?


1. Mana costs. When you start off you barely have enough mana left to flame dash, and while there is a brief period where you can frenzy in Act 5/6, eventually you use the extra mana to put in a 4th skill. Additionally, frenzy’s attack speed is wasted due to the SS cooldown so it’s really just 12% more damage and this build has tons of damage, it only falls off very late in the campaign. By that point you can craft better wands, but also you still don’t have room for frenzy

2. We gain much more than 500eHP, it’s honestly closer to 1500 eHP, this is intended for day 1 of a league, we won’t have access to good rares realistically and high life rolls come at a massive premium. Later in the league, if you were starting this build day on week 2, you can skip the MOM variant entirely, but this is just the more efficient way to get low investment tankiness especially in a situation where we spend our first 5ex on 3 uniques (ephemeral bond, inpulsas and Agnerod)

Even investing in all the life nodes we have easy access to, and buying high life rares in every slot, we can’t usually reach 5k life. The only ways really to reach 5k+ eHP are through the use of MoM or Corrupted Soul and Corrupted Soul just isn’t feasible for day 1 of a league due to the fact that Replica Soul Tether hits the market day 3 at the earliest and Glorious Vanity alone costs 5ex on day 1.

In the past I have just gone pure life and it is very rough, the high life rares tend to cost 10-20c+ each during a league start and it makes getting the build off the ground a lot slower.
Thanks for the guide, I really like what I'm seeing so far.

I'm currently practicing for leaguestart with it and im having trouble with white/yellow maps. I understand the build is a bit on the squishy side but there have been a few bosses that I ran out of portals on.

Rolled an imbued wand, added a moonsorrow, capped resists, and have power charge on crit as a 4th link on arc+storm brand, is there a key to this leveling strategy i might be missing? I like the idea of transitioning into the build rather than rerolling from something else.

Appreciate how active you've been updating and responding! Thanks!
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Fyregrass wrote:


Over the next week I’m going to record a league starter video guide and release a preliminary update to this forum guide, there’s a lot of work to be done and I’ve just finished spending the last month simulating SSF and non SSF league starts to get a good feel for our new options heading into the league. This build is definitely still going to be great, and the fact that everything else is being nerfed merely means that while we hit our final set up slower, so will everyone else, so you won’t feel nerfed given that everyone else takes the hit.



Hey Fyregrass ty very much for the build guide. Amazing work!

Can you tell me from your test (or rather previous league start experience) in how much time do you get to Sirus A5?

I know that you have a new spellslinger and MoM version that shake things up but I did my test before your update and determined transitions for the good old build. I also choose to keep a spellslinger setup up to red maps, but then went full damage on transitioning to stormbrand instead of getting tankier.

I'm very curious how fast you managed to progres in previous leagues.
I quickly tested your new MoM setup and while it is more tanky I feel like it's not good for my goals. It's perfect for people that want to progress steadily, without the stress of death at any corner. But not great if you want to rush end game bosses and farm them asap. Too low damage in the 5ex MoM setup for that.
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Kalantek wrote:
Thanks for the guide, I really like what I'm seeing so far.

I'm currently practicing for leaguestart with it and im having trouble with white/yellow maps. I understand the build is a bit on the squishy side but there have been a few bosses that I ran out of portals on.

Rolled an imbued wand, added a moonsorrow, capped resists, and have power charge on crit as a 4th link on arc+storm brand, is there a key to this leveling strategy i might be missing? I like the idea of transitioning into the build rather than rerolling from something else.

Appreciate how active you've been updating and responding! Thanks!


Unfortunately we just get absolutely cucked by damage until we get the MoM variant going. You should be able to get to about 3.5k life and capped resists though with some cheap day 1 rares (1c), as long as you run fast and attack frequently enough you will be fine in the end.

If you’re used to playing tankier builds the pace that this build requires will probably feel uncomfortable, we definitely can’t tank failure damage, we’re pretty much just aiming to use the damage for early progression to rush out the MoM set up.

If you’re having a lot of troubles, you CAN drop ball lightning from the links and then run Frenzy + GMP + Blind + Chain, I’d also recommend looking for coral or vermillion rings on day 1. Having a CWDT immortal call set up is also useful. But we can’t do much more than that without killing our damage output.
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Rootsmann wrote:
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Fyregrass wrote:


Over the next week I’m going to record a league starter video guide and release a preliminary update to this forum guide, there’s a lot of work to be done and I’ve just finished spending the last month simulating SSF and non SSF league starts to get a good feel for our new options heading into the league. This build is definitely still going to be great, and the fact that everything else is being nerfed merely means that while we hit our final set up slower, so will everyone else, so you won’t feel nerfed given that everyone else takes the hit.



Hey Fyregrass ty very much for the build guide. Amazing work!

Can you tell me from your test (or rather previous league start experience) in how much time do you get to Sirus A5?

I know that you have a new spellslinger and MoM version that shake things up but I did my test before your update and determined transitions for the good old build. I also choose to keep a spellslinger setup up to red maps, but then went full damage on transitioning to stormbrand instead of getting tankier.

I'm very curious how fast you managed to progres in previous leagues.
I quickly tested your new MoM setup and while it is more tanky I feel like it's not good for my goals. It's perfect for people that want to progress steadily, without the stress of death at any corner. But not great if you want to rush end game bosses and farm them asap. Too low damage in the 5ex MoM setup for that.


It really just depends on the league, in 3.13 for example I had a headhunter on day 3 but killed Sirus for the first time on day 4. My farming strats usually don’t involve rushing Sirus kills out and especially with the new atlas passives I believe this league as well I am going to be focused on rushing out atlas strategies as opposed to Sirus farming, which is something that I leave for the latter half of week 1.

In heist? league I did Sirus 8 on day 3 fwiw, so it’s definitely possible, and I think I was sitting at 8/900k dps per brand off the top of my head. But that was skewed by replica soul tether being super cheap and available earlier as well as 6-L Agnerods being super common drops in heist.

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