Brand runeword (need help!)

Soultego wrote: 6 months ago

Not 100% on this, but do believe that my golem was triggering the 35% Chance to cast

Amplify Damage

This effect occurred often and pretty sure it wasn't me getting hit each time

Cow runs was a good example as I'd always avoid being hit, but sure enough there was plenty of Amp to go around

That's what made Bowmancer interesting. no need for Curses or CE. Just lots and lots of

Arrows

Also like to add, my A1 Merc carried the Faith so still gained the benefits of

Fanaticism, but am curious what Nate used for his Merc

Did I misunderstand or do you think that your golem is triggering the Brand that you are using?

As far as i know, the cast on strike/attack/struck on your items only works when you do the attack (or being hit) not your minions or Mercenary.

Knappogue wrote: 6 months ago

Oooo, I didn't even think of the

Pierce or the IAS...hmmmmm. I have the

Jah to waste, I might try a Brand for fun and see. I currently have a 5/5 fire facet in the upped

Demon Machine. In your maxroll, did you happen to compare with an upped version?

Nope, I did with non-upped version, kinda forgot that thing can be upped to be completely honest. Whoops xd

Knappogue wrote: 6 months ago

According to Warren's IAS calculator I only need 8 IAS with my sorc using

Demon Machine to reach max attack frames. I use some crafted 10 IAS, dual leech, knockback gloves.

Sorry to distract from your original post, it just got me thinking lol

Ye, ye, you pretty much need just 10 IAS to reach max att speed, I was about to suggest you that you can always drop your

Belt and use, for example, Nosferatu, but then again

Razortail/Arach is kinda of a must for those kind of builds (depending on the class ofc) which I don't think it's worth it, in the end, but would need to put all those numbers in a sheet and properly compare (which I'm kinda lazy to do rn sorry).
And no probs, I often unintentionally distract people from their posts with some partly related questions, I don't personally mind it -- after all we are here to talk about/share stuff so everyone can benefit (even someone who just comes to read). At least that's my opinion/attitude...
P.S. I also have in mind to finalize my own Demon Enchantress (she's not there yet with all of the BiS gear) soooo it got me thinking as well about that, so thank you!

Schnorki wrote: 6 months ago

Rewriting this because my browser decided to randomly close itself right as I got done. -.-

Bone Spear, fun as it sounds, is a bit (read: a lot) terrible without synergies. Additionally, you will never get a full screen of multishot Bone spears, sadly. Firstly because despite being 100%, it is 'on striking', meaning you do need a successful hit to actually land in order to proc it. Additionally, multishot only checks 'on striking' on the original 2

Arrows, not the countless

Arrows beyond those. So even if every arrow lands, you'd still only get 2 procs in the center of your MS fan and no procs from there towards the sides of it.
...
Now

Strafe on the other hand gives you a metric boatload of spears reliably:
...
Even with

Strafe though, it is imo a visual gimmick more than anything else. Not something I would ever use for actual performance (sadly).

Ouch for rewriting the post (thanks again for doing it, that happens to me as well and I know how annoying and time-wasting that is). And thank you very much for your input/data/pics, this means a lot!

Strafe it will be then (sad that MS is how I assumed it would be)... I do wonder what's the interaction with Guided still, doesn't GA always hits thus produces the BS as well on top of that every time?

-------------DIVIDERDIVIDERDIVIDERDIVIDERDIVIDERDIVIDER-------------

I think I'll actually make a Brand in a

Demon Crossbow when I find one and then try both Brand Magic Zon (with

Guided Arrow and

Strafe) AND fully synergized Bone Necro but with the same CBow Brand, see how things goes in both cases.

Now I have 2 more question:
1) Does synergy for

Exploding Arrow Zon skill affect in any way dmg output of weapons that fire Explosive

Arrows (like Brand,

Demon Machine, etc. do)? I assume not. On top of that what does affects that dmg (nothing?)?
2) Does

Fire Mastery Sorc's skill affect in any way dmg output of weapons that fire Explosive

Arrows (like Brand,

Demon Machine, etc. do)? On top of that, does +Fire Skills (like from

Magefist) affect that dmg as well or that just affects the

Fire Mastery/

Enchant thus increases DE dmg overall? I assume not, since that's an effect and not an actual skill.

TheDoo wrote: 6 months ago

2) Does

Fire Mastery Sorc's skill affect in any way dmg output of weapons that fire Explosive

Arrows (like Brand,

Demon Machine, etc. do)? On top of that, does +Fire Skills (like from

Magefist) affect that dmg as well or that just affects the

Fire Mastery/

Enchant thus increases DE dmg overall? I assume not, since that's an effect and not an actual skill.

Yes, starting in patch 2.6

Fire Mastery applies its bonuses to both the

Enchant Skill and the "Fires Explosive

Bolts/

Arrows" ability. So when you

Enchant yourself you essentially get the

Fire Mastery bonus applied twice to the same attack.

Since we're here, I might as well share my experience with a

Demon Machine wielding Enchantress that I previously built. I created it long before I was able to invest in BiS gear, and it's been mothballed since.

With 100% pierce and explosive bolts, firepower against crowds was awesome. I'd say it's up there with Lightning Javazons. But I found it had two big weaknesses:

1. Fire immunes necessitated a clunky weapon switch to have enough +Skills for the Frozen Orb backup skill to be of much use.
2. Slow moving crossbow
   Bolts and lack of IAS made it hard to hit individual fast-moving monsters.

A sunder charm and Infinity will obviously make #1 a non-issue. I haven't put much thought into a solution for #2 yet, but more IAS would probably help.

Lanceor wrote: 6 months ago

Slow moving crossbow

Bolts and lack of IAS made it hard to hit individual fast-moving monsters.
I haven't put much thought into a solution for #2 yet, but more IAS would probably help.

It is like you're in my head. I was JUST thinking about this. I wonder if replacing CoH with Dragon armor would be viable. Specifically level 14

Holy Fire coupled with the Enchantress's ~lvl 40

Fire Mastery. Could it put out enough heat to get these stragglers?

fredkid wrote: 6 months ago

Soultego wrote: 6 months ago

Not 100% on this, but do believe that my golem was triggering the 35% Chance to cast

Amplify Damage

This effect occurred often and pretty sure it wasn't me getting hit each time

Cow runs was a good example as I'd always avoid being hit, but sure enough there was plenty of Amp to go around

Did I misunderstand or do you think that your golem is triggering the Brand that you are using?

As far as i know, the cast on strike/attack/struck on your items only works when you do the attack (or being hit) not your minions or Mercenary.

this wasn't anything I considered while playing the bowmancer, but after reading thru this post made me realize that the chance to cast

Amplify Damage was most certainly triggering without me taking any hits/damage. my only conclusion would be either my golem and/or mercenary is triggering this effect. and since nobody is talking about their Merc triggering such effect, my assumption was perhaps it was Golem specifically doing so. hope that clears things up for you

EDIT: was bringing this up cause maybe the

Valkyrie can also trigger this chance to amp as well

Thanks Knappogue!
Also, can you give me your current equipment for Demon Enchantress (maybe a maxroll link or something)?

Also 5/5 fire facet is on par with

Shael (which I used on my DE). Even better would be if you could find 15/x jewel with x being something else useful like a single res for example because ED/min/max improves it by a negligible amount.

EDIT: Summarized comparison with some options and variants: As you can see the upped or non-upped DM doesn't really make any difference since you gain a tiny tiny bit of raw phy dmg and nothing else (you also increase dex req). I also put both options with cube+tp/id book+torch+8 GC slots as a standard (this can go a bit further if you are not using cube) with those 8 GCs being Sunder +7 Skillers or optionally +5 Skillers and 2 whatever (in my case I just took +2 all res GCs for the impact difference) but you can use SCs instead or whatever you like. On top of that I used absolute max +skills as it could be on equipment (meaning Arachs instead of Razor, SoJs [now that I think about it since you don't need mana? you can just use BKs instead] and so on). Used

Ormus' Robes with

Enchant as well instead of CoH because someone mentioned that gives you more dmg overall (in some other post).

On the other hand, I also compared each singular change if you are looking for that +IAS chance which maximizes your att speed (aka lowers min. frames to 11) and you can see that differences are almost negligible. However, you can also see that Brand indeed gives you a somewhat improvement in the DPS department. Now, again, keep in mind what you lose with Brand and that is mainly

Pierce but also big chunk of AR. A little note here: I did put the lowest/min. possible roll on the Brand (still don't think max ED would change anything, I think it will be like upped and non-upped DM difference).

P.S. I also put mine as it is, with some more alternatives (or rather with not ideal/perfect gear) just to show that it's not a huge gap as you may think.

TheDoo wrote: 6 months ago

Thanks Knappogue!
Also, can you give me your current equipment for Demon Enchantress (maybe a maxroll link or something)?

Also 5/5 fire facet is on par with

Shael (which I used on my DE). Even better would be if you could find 15/x jewel with x being something else useful like a single res for example because ED/min/max improves it by a negligible amount.

I'll edit this post with a few lines of ultra simple sheet comparison.

No problem man, sorry I couldn't answer 1. I'll send over a maxroll sheet later tonight.

TheDoo wrote: 6 months ago

Thanks Knappogue!
Also, can you give me your current equipment for Demon Enchantress (maybe a maxroll link or something)?

Also 5/5 fire facet is on par with

Shael (which I used on my DE). Even better would be if you could find 15/x jewel with x being something else useful like a single res for example because ED/min/max improves it by a negligible amount.

I'll edit this post with a few lines of ultra simple sheet comparison.

Ok, I just made her in maxroll. I only added charms that directly effect her damage. Keep in mind that since this is a mess-around build she is built with junk I had laying around. NOTHING is maxed out, even skills and attributes could be done better lol
Also she is level 77, not sure why maxroll keeps defaulting to 99...
https://maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/fb2nl0wc

Knappogue wrote: 6 months ago

Ok, I just made her in maxroll. I only added charms that directly effect her damage. Keep in mind that since this is a mess-around build she is built with junk I had laying around. NOTHING is maxed out, even skills and attributes could be done better lol
Also she is level 77, not sure why maxroll keeps defaulting to 99...
https://maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/fb2nl0wc

Thank you for your effort! Yeah it's weird on maxroll, whenever you change your/Merc's level you need to press <ENTER> for it to actually confirm the change which is kinda annoying. Anyway, now we have everything nicely documented (at least at it's current state for yours and with some options for 99 [or whatever lvl you get to] and comparisons) in the post above. Hope that helps, enjoy

Edit: Also something that may interest you more (and yes it's not that big of a difference between

Ormus' and CoH but with CoH you get A LOT of res and other stuff):
Edit 2: Lemme put all of that on the same picture so you don't go bonkers scrolling up and down for both of our sake!

TheDoo wrote: 6 months ago

EDIT (it's waiting for your input then I'll edit it again):
DE comp sheet.jpg

As you can see the upped or non-upped DM doesn't really make any difference since you gain a tiny tiny bit of raw phy dmg and nothing else (you also increase dex req). I also put both options with cube+tp/id book+torch+8 GC slots as a standard (this can go a bit further if you are not using cube) with those 8 GCs being Sunder +7 Skillers or optionally +5 Skillers and 2 whatever (in my case I just took +2 all res GCs for the impact difference) but you can use SCs instead or whatever you like. On top of that I used absolute max +skills as it could be on equipment (meaning Arachs instead of Razor, SoJs [now that I think about it since you don't need mana? you can just use BKs instead] and so on). Used

Ormus with

Enchant as well instead of CoH because someone mentioned that gives you more dmg overall (in some other post).

On the other hand, I also compared each singular change if you are looking for that +IAS chance which maximizes your att speed (aka lowers min. frames to 11) and you can see that differences are almost negligible. However, you can also see that Brand indeed gives you a somewhat improvement in the DPS department. Now, again, keep in mind what you lose with Brand and that is mainly

Pierce but also big chunk of AR. A little note here: I did put the lowest/min. possible roll on the Brand (still don't think max ED would change anything, I think it will be like upped and non-upped DM difference).

P.S. I also put mine as it is, with some more alternatives (or rather with not ideal/perfect gear) just to show that it's not a huge gap as you may think.

Wow! Thanks man! So I see I forgot to include my on swap gear which is cta and Spirit. This character is definitely a upgrade-it-as-I-find-it. So I've got a a Highlords, Soj, and

Magefist on mules I can use. I'd replace the BK with the Soj since I love the CNBF part of RF. However that swap is a zero sum gain on skills, and it seems like +skills makes the biggest difference in this build. Fire skills GCs are probably going to be the biggest bang-for-my-buck upgrade I could do.

Thanks again for running these numbers!

Knappogue wrote: 6 months ago

Wow! Thanks man! So I see I forgot to include my on swap gear which is cta and Spirit. This character is definitely a upgrade-it-as-I-find-it. So I've got a a Highlords, Soj, and

Magefist on mules I can use. I'd replace the BK with the Soj since I love the CNBF part of RF. However that swap is a zero sum gain on skills, and it seems like +skills makes the biggest difference in this build. Fire skills GCs are probably going to be the biggest bang-for-my-buck upgrade I could do.

Thanks again for running these numbers!

Not a problem, glad I could help (it helps me too and whoever else sees this after).
Yeah, if you are using something else/tele with it then I guess SoJ is better option (idk with occasional

Meteor/FO for example), but if you are just running around spam shooting then maybe BK is better (that's personal preference I guess). I also love CNBF from RF (maybe have like 1-2 builds that don't use Raven xd) but ye... I mean, if you look at the numbers with your current setup and just added fire skillers it's not that big of a difference between other +skills gear, but if you already have that gear to "improve a bit here and there" then why not!?

Also just a side note: if you (or someone else) ends up using

Ormus' Robes instead of CoH, you can quite easily top all res with those leftover small charms and some decent dual res (fire&cold)

Boots for example (and you can also put

Um into

Ormus' Robes) which is not that expensive as making new CoH as just an option -- you'd lose 1k DPS, 20 str, 8% LL and 8% DR for

Dol+

Ber+

Ist save.

What I would like to highlight is definitely a fact that if someone decides to go for the Brand variant instead, then you'd HAVE to use

Razortail no matter what for at least 33%

Pierce, otherwise Arachs could be preference for

Demon Machine since upgrade from 66% to 99% is not 'a must have'.

TheDoo wrote: 6 months ago

Also just a side note: if you (or someone else) ends up using

Ormus' Robes instead of CoH, you can quite easily top all res with those leftover small charms and some decent dual res (fire&cold)

Boots for example (and you can also put

Um into

Ormus' Robes) which is not that expensive as making new CoH as just an option -- you'd lose 1k DPS, 20 str, 8% LL and 8% DR for

Dol+

Ber+

Ist save.

So I want thinking about the armor Coh vs

Ormus and for fun I decided to throw on a Dragon armor in max roll. It brought my DPS up from 10k to 14k. Can you verify that? This is the first time I've used maxroll for character builds and that seems like a HUGE increase for just an armor swap, which includes me losing +2 all skills.

Knappogue wrote: 6 months ago

So I want thinking about the armor Coh vs

Ormus and for fun I decided to throw on a Dragon armor in max roll. It brought my DPS up from 10k to 14k. Can you verify that? This is the first time I've used maxroll for character builds and that seems like a HUGE increase for just an armor swap, which includes me losing +2 all skills.

Whenever you change something don't forget to remove all buffs then re-buff with everything again, otherwise that can mess up data majorly. I wasn't using maxroll for a very long time and since I started using it I kinda can't stop (tho somebody told me even maxroll has it's limitations and bugs so take everything with a reserve).

When I use your link and just swap CoH for Dragon, then re-buff everything (

Enchant), DPS is: 13.533; yes about 3k increase because dmg from

Holy Fire goes to both explosive part and enchanted base.
Edit: Potentially with skillers/BC it can look like this for you:

Demon Machine -- https://maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/8y2ru0wa (22.9k DPS)
Brand -- https://maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/082fq02g (24.9k DPS)

TheDoo wrote: 6 months ago

Whenever you change something don't forget to remove all buffs then re-buff with everything again

Very good to know!

TheDoo wrote: 6 months ago

When I use your link and just swap CoH for Dragon, then re-buff everything (

Enchant), DPS is: 13.533

I also added my CTA/Spirit on swap, I wonder if that's what gave me the extra 1k dmg?

Regardless, I think im going to skip on trying Brand. That a lot of runes for 1k in extra dmg. But I will be trying a Dragon. I've got one laying around...somewhere lol

TheDoo wrote: 6 months ago

because dmg from

Holy Fire goes to both explosive part and enchanted base.

And

Fire Mastery also gets applied to the

Holy Fire!

TheDoo wrote: 6 months ago

Edit: Potentially with skillers/BC it can look like this for you:

Demon Machine -- https://maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/8y2ru0wa (22.9k DPS)
Brand -- https://maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/082fq02g (24.9k DPS)

I just price checked plain fire skillers. Cheaper than I thought. I suppose I can part with a few mid runes for about 4 of them haahaa

Ah yeah, I didn't use CTA/Spirit for that calculation. That's definitely it. Yeah, Brand is too big of a Hustle for you for a small increase (also good to know for myself since I'm gonna stick to my DM as well on that build). Apparently thanks to your suggestion in the first place Dragon is the way to go then (tick from

Holy Fire itself will still be miniature but +fire dmg to basic att will be large enough to justify it).

Now back to the original idea, I still need to weigh if I'm gonna build a Brand for Zon and Necro... Hm...

TheDoo wrote: 6 months ago

Dragon is the way to go then (tick from

Holy Fire itself will still be miniature but +fire dmg to basic att will be large enough to justify it).

Now back to the original idea, I still need to weigh if I'm gonna build a Brand for Zon and Necro... Hm...

And a second aura on a sorc? sign me up for those style points!

So Brand for Zon and Necro? One bow for both? If so I'm guessing not a GMB nor a Mat? I've got a 4os

Diamond Bow you can have if you need a base.

Apparently to avoid IAS issues (some relation to

Demon Machine) it's best for Brand to be built in a

Demon Crossbow. Now that's gonna be something crazy to find and try. xd

And thanks all for being generous and helpful with the data, I knew it's not gonna be spectacularly OP build, just was thinking about some off-meta stuff I still didn't try.