Hey Folks! It has been a bit since I have done one of my dumb little videos and I figured I finally had something worth showing off. I did not expect to be rolling a new character this late in the league, but I enjoy brand characters and Penance Brand of Dissipation is a little cracked right now. If I remember correctly, I started this character last Monday, leveled it through the campaign in two days, then threw on some pretty basic rare gear, and have been using that ever since. In any other league this would be a character walking around under a divine orb’s worth of gear… but given that dissipation is a flavor of the week build and wants specific things, it is causing a bit of inflation to happen. I think in total though I am wearing roughly 10 Divine Orbs worth of gear and a lot of it could be rolled either by yourself or through something like Rog crafting.
Right now I am using zero uniques in my build, but that is not to say there are not some that would probably work well with it. Since I am doing cold damage and lightning damage, I could see this potentially working well with an Inpulsa’s Broken Heart but I have not made that swap because I would end up losing some physical damage taken as elements conversion. I’ve wound up honestly fairly tanky for the sort of damage that I am dealing. The only three specific gear slots that I sought out was +1 level of physical gems on weapon, amulet, and caster shield which give my Penance Brand of Dissipation additional levels and more damage as a result. At some point I should probably spend some currency and try and get a +2 weapon or amulet but again… during an inflation league that would end up costing probably more than I am willing to spend. Another option would be a Replica Dragonfang’s Flight but those start around 10 Divine Orbs and higher for one with decent mana reservation efficiency.
To demonstrate the build I ran a quick Shaper Guardian map at t16. You can see that the mapping is honestly reasonable for a build that is not really focused on doing full-screen clears. The brands bounce between packs quickly shredding all of the monsters within them and my gameplay largely revolves around moving constantly while dropping fresh brands and attempting to keep my Divine Blessing Haste up all of the time. When I get to the boss it isn’t so much that I nuke it instantly, but it gets shredded pretty quickly. At this point, I have done Elder, Sirius, and Maven and in all of those cases, I was pretty much ending each phase before the mob had much chance to do anything. It took me a bunch of portals on Maven but only because I suck at the memory game and dropping puddles. Sirius and Elder I oneshot and it wasn’t even close. I’ve not done Shaper only because I have not gotten one of the four guardian maps to drop but I am grinding maps the atlas support hoping to see it.
I am having a heck of a lot of fun with this build and quite honestly… I am pretty happy with the state of all of my builds right now. I’ve spent some time tweaking Boneshatter to the point where it has much better survivability thanks to Defiance of Destiny. I am also very happy with the current state of my Righteous Fire Chieftain and the only thing I would really change on it would be to potentially add Oriath’s End for more explosions, then again I could also use one on Penance Brand just to help with the clearing. Then I have my Lightning Arrow Champion that I bought a Headhunter for because they are so damned cheap this league and that has been a lot of fun. I really don’t have a single build right now that feels like it is underperforming. There is room on each of them to improve but I am relatively happy with where they all are.