[3.5] Armageddon Brand Hierophant | One Button Nuke | WIP
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Welcome to my first ever build guide! Please note that this build is still a work in progress. From my experience with it so far and on paper this build has been doing really good but I am nowhere close to testing it out on any end game content, and since I have little to no build making experience I can’t say for sure whether or not this is going to be a “viable” build.
Pros: Several Defensive Layers Good for both Single Target and Clearing SSF friendly as gear is mostly irrelevant until T4+ maps Run and Bomb Playstyle Cons: Endgame Damage Scaling Isn’t Great Can’t Do Certain Map Mods (namely Elemental Reflect) Changelog Last Updated [12.14.2018]
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12.14.2018
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- Added some more gear options - Added Flammability Curse - Updated PoB 12.11.2018
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- Added some items to the gearing section - Updated Gem levels - Removed Lightning Golem added Scorching Ray Totems - Slightly rewrote some sections and fixed typos To Do List
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Finish Gearing Add video(s)? Test Endgame Viability Armageddon Brand VS Storm Brand
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From what I could tell so far there is little to no difference, it really depends on what gear you have to scale either lightning or fire. I personally found storm brand to be about 10% less dps in my setup than armageddon brand but it did seem smoother for AoE clearing. If you want to use the other you can with minimal changes to this build. Survivability/Defensive Mechanics
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43% Evade Chance 15% Block Chance 56% Phys Damage Reduction 75% All Res 40% Mind Over Matter Spell Life Leech Playstyle
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Step 1: Spawn in map Step 2: Cast Armageddon Brand Until Capped Step 3: Run around pressing brand recall until everything in the map is dead Step 4: Profit Gearing
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Will update in more detail later. Stats to look out for (in no particular order): Max Life Max Mana Damage to Spells (preferably fire) Cast Speed Resistances (if you need them, chaos res is good to have this league) Damage taken gained as mana Decent sceptre if you can’t find anything better and the free scorching ray can be helpful if you can’t spare the gem links. Great flask for this build, increases dps and the extra chaos resistance is always good to have. Many different options for chest piece but Carcass Jack is a decent all rounder, it adds dps, life, resistances, and increased AoE for our brands. Gems and Links:
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Armageddon Brand: This is the main skill, you could swap a few things around and use Storm Brand if you want but Armageddon has more flat dps which seems to be better overall. 4L: Armageddon Brand [20/20] Concentrated Effect [20/20] Controlled Destruction [20/20] Elemental Focus [20/20] 5L: Fire Penetration [20/20] 6L: Combustion [20/20] Brand Recall This skill is equally as important as the brand itself, if you are not pairing the two together you are doing it wrong! We are linking it to Arcane Surge for 100% uptime which is a huge buff to our dps and life leech from spells. 2L: Brand Recall [06/20] Arcane Surge [20/20] Scorching Ray Totems Greatly helps with single target boss dps, I prefer totems over self cast as it allows you to run around and dodge boss mechanics easier. 3L: Scorching Ray [20/20] Spell Totem Support [20/00] Multiple Totems [20/00] Flammability Curse Big boost to our damage overall, makes clearing and boss kills faster (around 7% more damage against bosses). 2L: Flammability [20/20] Blasphemy [20/20] CWDT Setup: Immortal Call provides an extra defensive measure and Cold Snap is used to generate Frenzy Charges to buff brand activation frequency. 4L: Cast When Damage Taken [01/00] Immortal Call [03/00] Increased Duration [20/20] Cold Snap [07/20] Movement Setup Use your movement skill of choice, most important link is fortify for that reduced damage taken. 3L: Leap Slam [20/00] Fortify [20/20] Faster Attacks [20/20] 4L: Culling Strike [20/20] OR Blood Magic [20/20] Ascendancy
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Normal: Illuminated Devotion; Extra spell damage from arcane surge is good and the spell damage leeched as life is huge for survivability. Cruel: Sign of Purpose; Additional Brand is a huge boon to clear speed, Brand Recall cooldown is QOL, and the extra damage doesn’t hurt. Merciless: Divine Guidance; 10% additional MoM which is great for survivability. Eternal: Sanctuary of Thought; Free energy shield, mana, mana regen, and reduced mana cost. Bandits and Pantheon
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Bandits: Help Alira, 15% all res makes capping resistances easy. If you don’t need resistances you can choose to kill all of them for the extra passive points. Pantheon: Your pantheon choice depends on personal preference and what content you are going to be running. For Major gods pick either Lunaris for the movement speed and avoidance or Arakaali for the reduced DoT, and for Minor gods you can go with either Ralakesh or Shakari depending on your needs. Passive Tree/PoB
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Levelling Guide
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Levelling Trees: The passive trees below can be used as a general guideline to use while levelling. Your first priority is going to be getting the Runebinder Keystone to double your dps, but after that the order is up to you. Some good nodes to prioritize early on are MoM (you want a health to mana ratio of 70/30 or 60/40 with divine guidance ascendancy node), maximum life, elemental overload, and the brand skill clusters. 23 Points: Skill Tree 46 Points: Skill Tree 67 Points: Skill Tree 103 Points: Skill Tree Good luck and stay sane exile! Last edited by LittleChickenBoy on Dec 14, 2018, 9:21:09 AM Last bumped on Jan 22, 2019, 9:01:01 PM
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Awesome, I was hoping someone smarter than me would have a go at brand builds. I was working with a AB totem build yesterday but I'm not a number cruncher and had no real idea how to optimize it. I was using a guide for a fire-oriented hierophant and tried tweaking the tree for totem usage. The biggest problem that I kept running into was with 'resists elemental damage' mod on mobs, but I'm pretty sure that was because my AB level was too low or because of gear choice. I was also using Soul mantle for the chest (for 4 total totems) and trolltimber for the health regen, but again, I don't know if that was optimal. Anyhow, looking forward to seeing what you come up with here.
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My approach for scaling late game is to run scorching ray totems (using dual totem support of course). This will increase single target damage immensely. You can also throw in flammability curse. Those together will reduce enemy res and give you that late game potential you need.
Gearing can help with that too. Carcass jack is a good example of how to get a 7 link brand. Good luck! |
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" Thank you! I initially tried to do Armageddon Brand linked to totems myself but I couldn’t exactly tell if a totem constantly recasting brands is more or less damage compared to the brands sticking on an enemy and constantly dealing damage. Armageddon Brand seems to have bad scaling in general but a fully leveled gem is around 9 times more damage than a low leveled one, so even a single gem level can make a big difference. |
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" I was thinking about using scorching ray totems to de-buff but I haven’t gotten the links to test it yet (decided to league start this on SSF for fun and gear has been abysmal) but I’ll definitely look into it. Thanks for the feedback! |
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Your path of building link skills is outdated, you forgot to add your scorching ray totems to it.
BTW think about adding Flammability as well. Last edited by kotli on Dec 13, 2018, 3:28:29 PM
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" Thanks for letting me know about the PoB, I forgot to update it when I added scorching ray to the build. In regards to the suggestion of adding Flammability, I've been testing it recently and the dps increase it brings definitely seems to be worth it, and the effective life lost due to having more mana reserved is minimal. For the time being it's a plus but I still have to test vs more rippy content. Thanks for the suggestion! |
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You`ve taken Runebinder wich gives you -1 to max totems. So where do you get you`re scorching ray totem from?
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" multitotem-support? add additional totem for 40% less damage from totem. So, 1-1+1=1 =) |
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" My bad. Shoul have read the skill description. :-( |
