[3.10] LL Archmage Storm Brand MoM Hierophant (RETIRED)

fatfat you are actually very right, after 5mil shaper DPS I just want more defenses not really more damage...

sustain is definitely a problem with Archmage.

I do think that with a Pledge of Hands which gives 3 for the price of 1 it's a lot easier to handle the mana costs. But yeah I do see that Archmage is not a lock even though it gives more damage, it also has a large downside.

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I do think that with a Pledge of Hands which gives 3 for the price of 1 it's a lot easier to handle the mana costs.

That's true, I think if you do go archmage, Pledge of hands is BIS. 3.6k mana for 6 brands, that's actually okay.

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For archmage, is there a reason you can't go CI? It seems like since we just want a ton of mana to pump damage, it makes sense to go CI and get Sanctuary of thought. We should not have to worry about mana sustain as we can contiunally brand recall and just use mana flask. The added damage from archmage is way to high to ignore and seems very easy to scale. If you are concerned about the 50% less mana cost part on Sanctuary of thought, the build could utilize fevered mind and/or Apeps to crank storm brands mana cost (and damage)

You can go CI, LL just gives you free damage + 2 more auras. I'm not so convinced about the mana sustain, that's the only thing I'm concerned about. If you can spam brands + brand recall and can sustain mana through mana flasks while mapping and bossing, that's fine. Then archmage is great.

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0.06 * 1.4 * 1.3 * 1.3 * 1.4 * 1.1 * 0.5 * 5545 ~= 606

It's 0.4 isn't it? not 0.5. Storm brand has 40% dmg effectiveness. I didn't take the 10% increased mana cost on archmage, and the inherent added dmg into account, mb. By my calculations I get 644 added net lighting damage from archmage, everything included, which does give around 114% more damage. That's still doesn't solve mana sustain though, which takes 1.2k per cast.

It's worth exploring but I'm not convinced that 40% more damage (than woke added lightning) is worth screwing your defenses. Cause this build at this point has 8k ES, 5K mana with 40% mom, leech, with 6 mil shaper dps. That's more than enough dps. The mana regen problem will make you likely to get one shot from chaos damage at low mana. You could use a shavs instead of Ivory tower, but it cuts 1.3k es out.

Idk why in you have an additional 349 - 349 dmg on your fevered mind though. I updated the pob.

The 0.5 is the multiplier for SoT, you don't need to apply the damage effectiveness manually, it's applied automatically in pob. Take a fresh build and just add 100-100, you'll see that the damage per hit only goes up by 40 (well close enough anyway).

Sure. You don't have to run archmage if it's going to get you killed. I just wanted to make the point that the damage IS there and it's quite significant. It also further incentivizes investing in mana on the tree and on gear, allowing you to get more ES and a larger mana pool without losing damage.

Additionally I was specifically looking at Storm Brand builds because it's a skill you don't have to cast much. Particularly as a Hierophant and with the advent of the Second Wind support you get to spend most of your time casting the much less costly brand recall while maintaining the large damage gains of archmage.

The 349 additional lightning damage on fevered mind represents the additional archmage damage provided from the 50% increased mana cost of skills.

is LL hard to go?

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The 0.5 is the multiplier for SoT, you don't need to apply the damage effectiveness manually, it's applied automatically in pob. Take a fresh build and just add 100-100, you'll see that the damage per hit only goes up by 40 (well close enough anyway).

Sure. You don't have to run archmage if it's going to get you killed. I just wanted to make the point that the damage IS there and it's quite significant. It also further incentivizes investing in mana on the tree and on gear, allowing you to get more ES and a larger mana pool without losing damage.

Additionally I was specifically looking at Storm Brand builds because it's a skill you don't have to cast much. Particularly as a Hierophant and with the advent of the Second Wind support you get to spend most of your time casting the much less costly brand recall while maintaining the large damage gains of archmage.

The 349 additional lightning damage on fevered mind represents the additional archmage damage provided from the 50% increased mana cost of skills.

I screwed up the dmg effectiveness, you're right, the dmg is there. I left a pob with pledge of hands in case ppl wanna try. That seems to be the best way to do it.

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is LL hard to go?

No.

How is everyone's league start? I hope well.

Had a very easy league start with this. One of the easiest ever.

I am level 70 now, 2.6k life, 1.3k es, and 4.3k mana.

I leveled as a normal life/es hybrid until around level 45 when I started leaning into mana. After socketing in a Healthy Mind I was soon able to switch to archmage as my 4th link in stormbrand and that definitely made things go faster. (SB, Faster Cast, Added Light, Archmage).

I lucked out and dropped some early currency that let me buy a Pledge of Hands, but I haven't been able to socket the thing so it's just sitting there looking at me. I wanted to get it early in case the price goes up, as PoH is good for all Archmage builds.

Planning to stay with hybrid ES/Life/MoM for a long time. Every time I try to switch to LL or CI I end up screwing up my build...

But if I do switch then I am going to try a non-crit low life that is derived from the guy above who posted the Arc non-crit CI build...I really love that build...but if going low life it just opens many options. And also that build is hard to cap resistances with because it runs so many uniques. This version can run rare boots because it gets stun immunity from Presence of Chayula, and 2 rare rings instead of 1 rare ring. It has much worse mana regen because it doesn't run the mana regen amulet.

https://pastebin.com/2gvfmzF6

This PoB of course doesn't show the effect of Archmage or Indigon. I believe it will be just as high of damage as the OP.

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elmasone wrote:

How is everyone's league start? I hope well.

Had a very easy league start with this. One of the easiest ever.

I am level 70 now, 2.6k life, 1.3k es, and 4.3k mana.

I leveled as a normal life/es hybrid until around level 45 when I started leaning into mana. After socketing in a Healthy Mind I was soon able to switch to archmage as my 4th link in stormbrand and that definitely made things go faster. (SB, Faster Cast, Added Light, Archmage).

I lucked out and dropped some early currency that let me buy a Pledge of Hands, but I haven't been able to socket the thing so it's just sitting there looking at me. I wanted to get it early in case the price goes up, as PoH is good for all Archmage builds.

Planning to stay with hybrid ES/Life/MoM for a long time. Every time I try to switch to LL or CI I end up screwing up my build...

But if I do switch then I am going to try a non-crit low life that is derived from the guy above who posted the Arc non-crit CI build...I really love that build...but if going low life it just opens many options. And also that build is hard to cap resistances with because it runs so many uniques. This version can run rare boots because it gets stun immunity from Presence of Chayula, and 2 rare rings instead of 1 rare ring. It has much worse mana regen because it doesn't run the mana regen amulet.

https://pastebin.com/2gvfmzF6

This PoB of course doesn't show the effect of Archmage or Indigon. I believe it will be just as high of damage as the OP.

Wow lucky dude here....In your case, I think arc could be a solid choice as you need to cast a lot to make Indigon working. Besides I think spell echo and great spell echo just do nothing to storm brand.

Now level 82, 3.5k/3.5k/5.5k. Couple of thoughts:

- If you want to use Pledge of Hands plan on taking every source of cast speed.

- Even though it's 10% less damage you kinda need Spell Echo in the links for the cast speed. Faster to cast 4 with Spell Echo than 3 without.

- Even though it has less mana spent, Sanctuary of Thought has proven to be pretty necessary to achieve comfortable defense. It just gives too much ES to ignore, *and* 100% increased Area of Effect, which is insane for Arc.

- Arcane Cloak's mana spend isn't affected by Sanctuary of Thought or Fevered Mind either. It's always exactly 64% of current mana in my testing.

- Archmage's damage however seems to be decreased by less mana spend and increased by more mana spend as expected.

- I bought a Fevered Mind to increase my mana spend, liked it so much I bought another. Don't think I'd want more though. I do sometimes get low on mana. I have 600 mana regen btw.

- I have tested Arc and Storm Brand, but I've started favoring Arc and refunding my brand wheels in the skill tree and leaning more on Arc. Also I'm going to try Spark soon. On paper Spark should do more damage. We'll see.

- I think the main reason is I prefer Arc: In order to clear packs with storm brand, I have to either recast my brands on a new pack or run right into the pack to cast brand recall. That was getting me killed a bunch. Arc is longer range.

Arc also does more single target damage. However, this is only true if you can stand still long enough. Storm brand lets you deal kiting damage which has come in handing a few times for me. Or it can get you killed on last boss of Eternal Lab sometimes ;(

- If you go with the Brand ascendancy node you either can't take Sanctuary of Thought (losing 1.5k+ ES and 100% Area of Effect) or you can't get elemental ailment immunity which is too insanely good not to get especially with all these freezers in Delirium.

ddd

Very nice discussions going on in here regarding mana stacking and archmage. I am considering storm brand but something else caught my mind.. Is there a possibility to do magma orb and maybe even with gloomfang for an insane amount of damage? Probably overkill, but maybe we can trade some damage for defenses.

Currently plan is pledge of hands and cloak non-crit, but as mentioned here before CI non-crit is also a possibility.

Really interested in your thoughts about this magma orb/gloomfang idea.