Energy mechanics of transfigured Penance Brands

Is the energy "added" to the enemy unique to:

1. the source that attached the energy (i.e. gem),
2. the particular brand, or
3. the enemy itself?

The wording implies the last but my testing doesn't show that to be the case. Since there is no energy counter in the UI, I'm relying solely on the AoE size to try to gauge how much energy there is.

I was curious about the Dissipation transfigure that gets stronger the more energy there is on the enemy. You could scale it similar to Storm Burst by 1) increasing duration to make the brand last longer with a higher amount of energy, and by 2) increasing cast speed to make it add energy more frequently during that window.

The idea was to have a Dissipation brand - which ticks every 0.6s - along with a Conduction brand - which ticks every 0.1s but lasts less than a second - so that the latter would "feed" energy to the former. I would then constantly apply Conduction and be careful in reapplying Dissipation only when it has run out.

Thoughts? Or GGG, could you explain where exactly energy gets added to and whether such interactions are expected to work?

Also, are there any caps to the energy used by these transfigured variants? The vanilla gem does state one (20) while the others don't, and I want to confirm it's not just a description oversight. Thank you.

For those interested, further testing leads me to believe it's #2 -- the brand itself is accumulating energy. In Harvest and in Sanctum, the same brand that kills one enemy then attaches to another already has massive AoE, which only happens when it's at high energy and, consequently, is near the end of its life cycle.

I'm a little sad there's no interaction between any of the new brand gems, or evidently between the brands themselves of the same gem, but at the same time I like the new Penance Brand. It has scaling vectors different to Storm Brand, although it has it a lot tougher in some places, like clear. I only wished it played differently, which really it doesn't, at least not in the ways I've tried building it.

I still think there's good opportunity to differentiate (the gameplay of) Penance and Storm brand by allowing some kind of interaction between energy accumulation and expenditure.

Verdict? I want to take it to the next level before making one. It's nice and fun and powerful, especially in the beginning compared to old Penance Brand which required $$$ to shine. I have two ideas to try before taking it to ubers.