Brand runeword (need help!)

Didn't find any post about Brand runeword specifically (apart from the "Tales from a Bowmancer"), so I was wondering could that rw be utilized somehow but also not necessarily bound by Necro only? I was actually having a lot of fun with

Guided Arrow on both my Bowadin (cold ranger Paladin) and just leveling up Physical Bowazon (which ended up using

Windforce mainly with

Strafe and occasionally with Multi Shot but rarely GA even tho it's usually part of that build as well). I was playing a lot with

Widowmaker and it's "magical arrow basic attack" is a lot of fun alone, plus when you mix GA on top of that it's super fun and lot less stressful about proper positioning and whatnot.
I would assume that having Brand yields more actual dmg than just using

Widowmaker, right?

Now my main question is... If I was to use the Brand, how would it behave in combination with other skills since it has that 100% proc of

Bone Spear? Like for example with Multi Shot? -And since it has a basic explosive arrows, does that means when you fire 1 shot with Multi Shot only your middle arrow is followed by a single

Bone Spear which then explodes on impact mimicking explosive shot but you also get a lot of physical arrows or you it just fills your whole screen with a bunch of Bone Spears or how in the actual hell does that work? Also how does it behave in combination with, for other example,

Guided Arrow's auto-targeting? The basic idea was to make a full Magic-based Bowzon (maybe a Magic CBowzon? who knows) and see how it goes.

Also would it be smart to build it in a non-Amazon specific bow so other class(es) can use it too, for example, I have another thing in mind and that is to make a Bow Necro but using Brand exclusively (maybe in combination with something less often used like

Bone Spirit). On that second note, having fully synergized

Bone Spear should significantly improve it's proc dmg, right?
Your opinions, suggestions and experience will be essential for tailoring my path.

P.S. I know Nate ended up using Faith for his RA and he said it made his Necro be "on a different level" than with the Brand, but I really want to try out Brand as a rw and see how it behaves. However I'm not that eager in jumping into that adventure absolutely blindly since I'm kinda low on all HRs and my Offline characters need some serious bases (offline grind became very meh for me).

I've been tempted to try a Brand Zon build. The 35% chance to cast a level 14

Amplify Damage which increases it's area of effect and gives it a 47 second duration alone makes it tempting. With a

Strafe zon amplify would be almost always proc'd. That along with 100% chance to cast lvl 18

Bone Spear, ignore target defense, 20% deadly strike, and prevent monster heal makes it an interesting consideration.

I seem to recall that Schnorki either tried or considered it?

mhlg wrote: 1 week ago

I seem to recall that Schnorki either tried or considered it?

*Sigh* Can you summon 1 Schnorki for me please? xd
Thanks for the input, yeah, on paper it looks very appealing.

TheDoo wrote: 1 week ago

mhlg wrote: 1 week ago

I seem to recall that Schnorki either tried or considered it?

*Sigh* Can you summon 1 Schnorki for me please? xd
Thanks for the input, yeah, on paper it looks very appealing.

I've done Hell Chaos runs in under 5 minutes just using a

Witchwild String because of its amplify, and this bow should easily top it. It won't be a killer like

Windforce or Faith but it will make for an interesting build.

Okay, now for the summoning. Abracadabra Schnorki appear!!! It might take a while.

Sorry to be the bringer of bad news... but Brand gives 35% Chance To Cast Level 14

Amplify Damage When Struck

Lanceor wrote: 1 week ago

Sorry to be the bringer of bad news... but Brand gives 35% Chance To Cast Level 14

Amplify Damage When Struck

Since you point it out. I am actually curious about the wording of these terms, on striking, when struck...

On striking, does this only mean as long as you cast a spell / attack?
When struck, this means the spell / attack lands on target, right? Or it means the char is being hit?

Flyhorse wrote: 1 week ago

Lanceor wrote: 1 week ago

Sorry to be the bringer of bad news... but Brand gives 35% Chance To Cast Level 14

Amplify Damage When Struck

Since you point it out. I am actually curious about the wording of these terms, on striking, when struck...

On striking, does this only mean as long as you cast a spell / attack?
When struck, this means the spell / attack lands on target, right? Or it means the char is being hit?

"On striking" means you hit something, "when struck" means something hits you

Dromar186 wrote: 1 week ago

Flyhorse wrote: 1 week ago

Lanceor wrote: 1 week ago

Sorry to be the bringer of bad news... but Brand gives 35% Chance To Cast Level 14

Amplify Damage When Struck

Since you point it out. I am actually curious about the wording of these terms, on striking, when struck...

On striking, does this only mean as long as you cast a spell / attack?
When struck, this means the spell / attack lands on target, right? Or it means the char is being hit?

"On striking" means you hit something, "when struck" means something hits you

...and "on attack" means whenever you attack (don't need to hit) AFAIK but you need to actually use it, not like cast a spell with it in your hands.

I've got an

Enchant sorc that uses

Demon Machine for the "fire explosive

Bolts". I just realized Brand also fire explosive

Arrows. Did you just inadvertently inform me of an upgrade to

Demon Machine???

Knappogue wrote: 1 week ago

I've got an

Enchant sorc that uses

Demon Machine for the "fire explosive

Bolts". I just realized Brand also fire explosive

Arrows. Did you just inadvertently inform me of an upgrade to

Demon Machine???

Just have in mind that

Demon Machine has a lot bigger IAS,

Pierce (kinda important for the explosion part) and base dmg. Brand in a bow can achieve as high as -10, I think and about half a normal dmg. Don't also forget that

Demon Machine can be socketed with something, like for example, IAS jewel thus achieve the 2nd (or was it 3rd?) min. possible frames?
Now, theoretically, you could build a Brand inside of a

Demon Crossbow which has -60 att speed, which leads me to original question, is it maybe better to try that path instead of classical bow one?

I considered making one once for an act 1 merc, boosting damage for a singer barb. But someone warned me that they tested it and it didn't work. Which makes sense, because everything around you is stunned, so your merc doesn't take hits to proc amp damage very often

Edit: my point being that you could use it on a merc for any physical damage build. You would want

Shaftstop and vamp gaze, lowest possible defense

TheDoo wrote: 1 week ago

I think and about half a normal dmg.

This part is not true tho have to correct myself (sorry for the double post), I just put it into maxroll and it says the lowest rolled Brand in

Blade Bow has about the same (if not a tiny bit more) dmg than

Demon Machine. However, the DPS is a lot lower. BUT, if you indeed use a

Demon Crossbow as a base, you do need 1 source of additional IAS to achieve the lowest possible frames, but the total DPS is actually higher than with DM. You do lose a big chunk of

Pierce and AR for much higher lvl explosive shots + other things (

Bone Spear proc, ITD, Knockback, Deadly Strike). Options are basically down to do you switch

Magefist for some IAS gloves (LoH are very decent here) or do you use Highlord's instead of Mara's (or whatever else you are using, maybe like +3 fire skills magic amu).

TheDoo wrote: 1 week ago

Just have in mind that

Demon Machine has a lot bigger IAS,

Pierce (kinda important for the explosion part) and base dmg.

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?

TheDoo wrote: 1 week ago

Options are basically down to do you switch

Magefist for some IAS gloves (LoH are very decent here) or do you use Highlord's instead of Mara's (or whatever else you are using, maybe like +3 fire skills magic amu).

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

TheDoo wrote: 1 week ago

*Sigh* Can you summon 1 Schnorki for me please? xd
Thanks for the input, yeah, on paper it looks very appealing.

@Schnorki, I summon thee, your attention has been requested

If at least there was a

Strafe oskill item for the Brand Necromancer...

Lanceor wrote: 1 week ago

Sorry to be the bringer of bad news... but Brand gives 35% Chance To Cast Level 14

Amplify Damage When Struck

Yea, I seemed to have overlooked that little fact.

fredkid wrote: 1 week ago

If at least there was a

Strafe oskill item for the Brand Necromancer...

Just as a random fun exercise:
Assuming that were a thing and considering that you could just run around with a Beast IG, you could probably get pretty solid

Strafe speed on a necro. Assuming further (just for the hell of it) you could actually push such a fana necro to an ideal 4/2/6

Strafe, you'd...actually still be surprisingly bad.

Or more specifically, highjacking some quick Maxroll numbers as a base:

Bone Spear scales too well at higher levels and necros have access to too many +skills to really make Brand worth it, even if you could push a maxed out

Strafe with it. In a perfect world (see above), you'd be at something like 2/3rds of the damage, give or take. Certainly not bad for pure magic dmg but also nowhere close to the real necro (who could be pushed beyond the 51 used here mind you).
At the same time, you wouldn't be in a perfect paper world. Sure, your actual dmg would move up a bit due to the physical component and potentially a bit of

Pierce (if that'd be affordable without losing too much IAS) but at the same time, you'd also drop again (significantly) due to lack of AR (at least on mobs where the ITD doesn't kick in) and esp. on single targets even more so due to the NHD on

Strafe that would inherently also impose the same NHD on the BS procs.

Would probably be just good enough to be a fun side build but most likely no more than that. Certainly nothing game breaking..

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

Upon further investigation...

Strafe Brand necro is indeed kinda fun!
Completely broken since necros have neither a sound nor an animation for

Strafe so you get the zon voice with no animation lock (but still frozen in place so...running man, basically) and as expected (see above) nowhere near the performance of a full Bone necro but definitely good enough to clean house on lower and mid player counts at a decent pace.