[3.12] Remi's Penance Brand Trickster | Beginner friendly guide | Great Clear + Boss | All content

> Great clear and single target
This is quite difficult to find on most of the builds, either you have good clear speedbut lack single target, or have good single target but lack clear speed. But this build covers both of them, you have good single and target damage, though good single target also comes with investment on this build, so you don't really want to expect one shotting bosses with low budget.

> All content viable
Aside from the stupid Hall of Grandmaster map, this build will be able to do all other content just fine. If you want bossing, delving or mapping, it will perform splendidly on all of them. Though it is not recommended to do Atziri as her 2% reflect could kill us when we deal a huge chunk of damage.

> Satisfying explosions
Penance brand explosion can be very satisfying, with some mtx such as celestial herald of ash, it will make clearing become insanely satisfying. On top of that chunking bosses instantly from one hit is also pretty satisfying. On top of that, penance brand has a satisfying sound effect when enemies explode, when you take a look on the video showcase, you will get the idea of it.

> Great survivability.
On our build, we have multiple defensive layers. Though we are not using max block or cap dodge or anything, our approach is getting recovery on kill and avoid stun via Cinderswallow, leech from atziri's promise to recover our life pool and enduring cry to provide us mitigations and regeneration. We have a total effective life pool of near 5.4k life and 3k es, with the help of Ghost Shroud, we will be able to instantly recover our ehp when we get hit, and we have reduced damage taken against high damage, reducing chances of potential one shots. On top of that we have a decent chance to evade thanks to Escape Artist and Flesh & Stone, massively increasing our survivability.

> Not 1 button gameplay, active playstyle required
On this particular build, we will need to have wither totems up constantly on our bosses, on top of that we would need orb of storm for arcane surge buff since we can't proc arcane surge from our movement skills and vortex for a guaranteed chill on any bosses and constantly using our movement skills to proc the 20% increased cast speed from Wave thee Arcane, it just requires a lot of buttons to get the full damage potential. On top of that you need to constantly spam penance brand on bosses, so this build requires quite an active playstyle in order to get full damage.

> Delayed damage
This build deals delayed burst damage, some people could find it weird or frustrating to play with. Without Holy Conquest notable on brand cluster jewels, the clearing will be delayed by a lot but it doesn't mean that our clearspeed is reduced. Due to the delayed damage during clearing, monsters will be able to damage us before the get exploded.

> Elemental reflect
We are weak against elemental reflect as we deal a huge chunk of damage, generally means we will get one shotted instantly if we do happen to get our damage reflected back at us. We are also weak against silence since we are a spell caster, unable to cast spells would usually caught us offguard and would lead to potential death if you aren't careful enough.

> Not ssf friendly
As this is an eternity shroud build that you have to build around with, getting a full shaped gear with double shaped Call of the Brotherhood will be very difficult. Though the budget build can be done with a rather easier, but for the full potential of the build it requires a lot of time. This build can be expensive on trade league too but I had a budget setup for the build that could do all content just as fine.

> RNG can screw you
This is not actually a con, rather a double edge sword. This is all from Void of the Harness, sometimes you'd felt like you deal a lot of damage, sometimes you felt like you deal no damage at all. When it hits massive, it is massive, but when it doesn't, it feels like hitting with paper. So if you dislike rng on top of rng, this build might not be very suitable for you

Penance Brand is a physical spell skill gem. It is a spell that deals physical damage, but it converts half of its damage into lightning damage.

When you use the skill, it will create a magical brand that will attach to one nearby enemy. When attached, it will deal no damage to the enemy but it will charge up its energy on them while spreading the energy to nearby enemies. Energy charge speed can be increased by scaling brand activation frequency, which can be scaled by cast speed in this particular gem.

On reaching 20 energy, it will deal pulse damage so you don't waste any excessive cast speed (though the damage is low). When one of these condition is met
> Brands moves to another enemy (Holy Conquest)
> Brand is recalled via Brand Recall gem
> Branded monster died
> Brand duration ran out

It will consume all energy then deal a huge explosion damage based on the energy on the monster. Pulse damage and Explosion damage counts as a hit, but during the energy charging phase it doesn't hit.

Energize is considered a debuff on the monster, so multiple Penance Brand on the same enemy will be able to stack the energy faster. Here is where it gets a little bit difficult to understand so bare with me, with runebinder means you can stack 2 penance brand on one enemy. Both of them charges energy on the same enemy (for example the first brand charges 1 energy per 0.1 second, but with 2 brands on the same enemy, it will be 2 energy per 0.1 second). But when the brand explode, the debuff is removed from the enemy, thus it will reset the energy count to 0, your second brand will start charging it up from 0 energy, but will expire soon pretty fast, but it will mess up the 20 energy explosion damage. So sometimes you need a reset to refresh the energy stacking.

Each Penance Brand has their individual duration, so by using Runebinder which allows you to place 2 brands on enemies, it will not explode in unison.

Do note that explosions from the penance brand overlaps on each other.
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Theorically when you use runebinder, the first brand in the enemy will deal the most damage since it consumes all the energy stacked by 2 of the brands, thus the second brand will deal lower damage. We would want to scale a lot of cast speed to get a lot of stacks faster and lower the duration so the delayed damage will detonate faster, since we deal no damage when it is stacking energy, and our main damage source is the 20 stacks explosion.

Since we will be scaling cast speed on our tree, we won't be going crit because we will be stretching ourselves too much, and thus unable to reach the full damage potential on 20 stacks (part of it is the crit nerf at 3.11 but it is not a huge nerf for our build). Since penance brand is a physical spell and deals phys damage, we will be double dip on this skill to get full damage potential. (Will be explained in section 1.5 - Mechanics of this build)
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How do we know if we get constant 20 stacks?
I made a simple calculator on google sheets which will calculate how many stacks of energy that will be on the enemy when your brand explodes.

Penance Brand Calculator (To use it, go to files > make a copy)

You will deal the damage based on the stacks that you put into the sheets every (insert your skill effect duration), so for my case which is every 1.24 seconds and constant 20 stacks and almost hit the pulsing damage. Due to the conditional cast speed we have (such as inc cast speed while you have ghost shroud), it is the best to stay under 20 stacks to avoid getting pulse damage which is a huge dps lost.

Ideally you want to scale a bit of duration and a lot of cast speed, but don't blindly scale your cast speed to the roof or else getting to the pulse damage means you are wasting your cast speed procs.

On the trickster ascendancy, he provides a lot of cast speed and defensive options compared to the other 2 shadow ascendancy. Since we will be double dipping on this build, getting Harness the Void pretty much mandatory. On top of that, shadow class is not very far away from the Runebinder keystone.

Compared to classes like Assassin, Trickster gets the upperhand of getting better survivability. Though he would lose a bit of damage compared to the Assassin ceiling scaling, but you could get almost the same amount of damage with Trickster but with a cheaper price (thanks to Badge being 20ex+). On top of that Trickster have built in defensive layers on his ascendancy while Assassin has none.

If you want damage but don't care about survivability, Assassin is your choice. But if you want a mix of offense and defense, Trickster is your choice. There are some other classes that can be potentially useful for Penance Brand such as Necro and Elementalist, but Trickster would be able to win them on damage wise, though not so much on survivability.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sigKS5-lGPU - Compilation of clearing + bossing (Shaper, Uber elder, Conquerors included)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_m5qbrdmoSI - Budget version VS Sirus lvl 7

Double Dipping
This is not a PoE term, rather this is a term used in video games and also IRL. But in video game, it basically means damage increased from a single source applied multiple times. For example you scale elemental damage and you use fireball spell, which the initial hit is scaled by the elemental damage. So when the fireball ignites, the ignite damage also gets scaled by the elemental damage, which basically means your elemental damage double dipped on fire ball because it scales both initial hit and ailment damage.

So what does it means on Trickster? We convert all of our physical damage to lightning damage, then convert all lightning again into cold, then ANOTHER conversion which convert cold into fire. So why do we do that? We will be using a stat called "Elemental damage gained as extra chaos" and "Non-Chaos gain as extra chaos". This stat is applied before and after conversion. Here is an example :

Phys > Lightning > Cold > Fire

With the Non-Chaos as extra chaos (all 4 of those dmg type is not chaos), it is gained 4 times from the conversion, and elemental damage is gained 3 times in total from the conversion (phys is not an element). If we don't convert our damage let's say cold to fire, means the elemental will only gain 2 times because we lose out from the fire conversion gain. So basically we double dipped an additional 3 times with non chaos gain as extra if we convert our damage 3 times.

Hope you guys understand the mechanics of it! If you are still unclear, you can check out EE's Conversion guide

*Note that in that video, the term "added as" is basically "gained as"

Corrupted Soul
Corrupted Soul is a keystone granted from a Timeless Jewel named Glorious Vanity in the name of Doryani. This will grants us a lot of extra energy shield but 50% of the damage we take bypasses the energy shield. Though this timeless jewel is one of the main source of ehp increase and it drastically increases our survivability.

Do note that This timeless jewel changes the passives, notables and keystones in the radius, meaning that nearby passives that is within the jewel range will be modified. The numbers in the jewel doesn't matter, what matters the most is the name, Doryani as we specifically need that keystone.

Using a divine orb will reroll both the seed number and the name, thus changing the small passives, notables and keystone granted by the jewel within the range. So be careful when you use a divine orb on it.

Path of Building (PoB) is a great tool for all poe players as it provides a "simulation" for a build. It can be used as theory making a build, getting a rough estimation on dps on our build. Do note that you could make unrealistic damage on PoB such as having 100% more damage constantly based on our conditional damage (for example having vaal righteous fire constantly up, always have flaskes on bosses etc), those will never happen on real situations, so you have to be careful on setting your configurations and skill setups. I will be guiding you on the notes section on which config you should tick and shouldn't tick.

If you haven't gotten PoB or you are using an outdated PoB, you can find the link on here : https://github.com/PathOfBuildingCommunity/PathOfBuilding/wiki/Installing-this-Fork

This is my current PoB (last updated 22/9)

https://pastebin.com/XVVhtx1K

General Information on gearing

All Rare Item have 6 affixes total, 3 prefixes and 3 suffixes. An item level (ilvl) will both restrict and allow certain affixes to roll on the item. In a nutshell, you would want a high ilvl item, affixes are basically the stats on an item, prefix and suffix is just a fancy way to categorize a majority of stats so an overpowered item will not appear.

The name of the item are usually random, it does not decide whether it is an good item or not.

Due to the unpredictable market price, I will not give an exact value, instead i will give a range of value, stating how expensive is that item. So this will be my pricing range.
Cheap - 10 chaos or below
Moderate - 10 chaos or above, but not higher than 1 exalted
Expensive - 1 exalted or higher

On rare items, I will put a link that directs you to the Harvest Softcore Trade site, which I had already filtered out the stats you need on your gear. Do note that this setup is for players who doesn't know how to properly filter out items with the trade site so they will not have a lot of trouble looking for the gear.

Please use official trade and don't use poe.trade. Poetrade existed way before official trade is up, so it is a very ancient website that has reduced performance. Think about a 1 y/o PC and a 20 y/o PC. Would you pick the older one or the new one to play your games? Main reason is because poetrade API updates way slower, you would found those item getting sold before you get the chance to purchase it because the update time is just too slow.

Official trade link (even works after delirium league ended) : https://www.pathofexile.com/trade/search/Delirium

PLEASE NOTE : all items listed below are endgame items or items that carry you on early stages of mapping, items below are not leveling items!
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2.2.1 Weapon
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Prioritize getting +1 to all lightning skill gems, open prefix for the non-chaos gain as extra chaos, and cast speed.

Look for these stats in your weapon
> +1 to all lightning skill gems
> Spell damage + Non-chaos gain as extra chaos damage
> Cast speed
> Elemental damage gain as extra chaos damage
> Physical damage gain as extra random element
> (any elemental) damage gain as extra chaos damage
> Spell damage
> Added lightning damage to spells

Price (budget) : Moderate

When you want to build around Eternity Shroud, you need to get the shaped version of the weapon. Elemental gain as extra chaos is huge but it is not within the priority of the weapon rolls.
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2.2.2 Helmet


If you are on a budget, use Eber's Unification to boost your damage. This item can be obtained by completing Pale Court, a prophecy chain.

Once you have your Eternity Shroud, you will be dropping Eber's into a shaped helmet with life and resistance. Highly recommend to get an es based helmet as we will get benefit from the evasion rating provided from Escape Artist.

For helmet enchantments, look for :
- Penance Brand deals 40% increased damage
- (Any aura / herald) reduced reservation
- Wither has #% increased duration

Price (budget) : Moderate
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2.2.3 Body Armour


For budget body armour, just look for a life + res and a 6l chest. But once you have some currency, you really need Eternity Shroud because it massively boost your both survivability and damage. Suggested to get either int base or dex + int base for the body armour in order to easily roll the colors.

For the rare armour, look for :
- +# to Maximum life
- +#% to (any elemental) resistance

Price : Expensive (depends on the links)
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2.2.4 Gloves


Any rare gloves with life and resistance will do, but you want to have an open prefix on them in order to craft on a "physical damage converted to lightning damage". This craft is unlocked from syndicate by unveiling gloves. It cost 1 divine orb for the craft.

For higher budget, you can get unnerve on hit on your gloves which you would need a double influence gloves for it.

For the gloves, look for :
- +# to Maximum life
- +#% to (any elemental) resistance

Price (budget) : Moderate
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2.2.5 Boots


Any rare boots with 25% move speed or above with life and res will work. Recommended to get a dex + int base on the boots for defensive stats and colors.

For a higher budget, you can double influence with hunter influence to get tailwind, for faster movement speed and cast rate. Do note that tailwind does not increases the brand activation frequency because of the game internal code that prevents it.

- +# to Maximum life
- +#% to (any elemental) resistance
- +#% to movement speed

Price (budget) : Moderate
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2.2.6 Amulet


recommended to get an amulet that fixes your attribute problems. For the stats, look for life and resistance.

- +# to Maximum life
- +#% to (any elemental) resistance
- gain #% physical damage as extra lightning damage

On a higher budget, you can go with a double influenced shaper + crusader with +2 levels to int / lightning gems for higher dps boost.

For the anointment, I'd recommend taking Corruption as it is the best offensive damage boost possible in the tree. Though the withered effect couldn't be calculated by the PoB.

Price (budget) : Moderate
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2.2.7 Rings


You can start off with a normal Call of the Brotherhood, but once you want a full Eternity Shroud setup, you will need a shaped version of it. Shaped Version of the Call of the Brotherhood can be obtained by chancing or using Trash to Treasure, since CoBT is the only non league specific base for two stone rings on cold + lightning res. (You need 2 of them, yep 2 of them has to be shaped)

The main purpose for the CoBT is to convert our lightning damage to cold damage for double dipping purposes.

You would need to use Turbulent Catalyst on the rings in order to increase the conversion roll on the ring.

Price (budget) : Moderate to Expensive
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2.2.8 Belt


Nothing new here and it's the same as other rare gears, any belt with life and resistance will do. You can get a shaped stygian vise on this league (Harvest League) to save a jewel socket, as stygian vise gives you an abyss socket.

- +# to Maximum life
- +#% to (any elemental) resistance

Price (budget) : Moderate

Cluster jewels


When you get this cluster jewel, you should drop Dark Arts alongside with the nearby nodes to allocate this cluster jewel.

Look for :
> 4-5 Passives Brand damage with 1 jewel socket
> Remarkable
> Holy Conquest

Holy Conquest maybe mandatory for most people as it allows your brand to instantly detonate when it attached on an enemy. Though this notable will reduce your single target damage if there's nearby enemies. Pretty much a double edge sword. I personally dislike Holy Conquest but I only use it for the cast speed, I don't really mind the DPS lost either and I don't mind the delayed damage during clearing with Penance Brand (Video Clearing is done with Holy Conquest)

We use Remarkable just for the cast speed. Though it does allow you to cast 2 brands in 1 cast, sometimes it helps on boosting your dps, but it is not really noticeable most of the time.
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Unique Jewels


Glorious Vanity grants you massive ehp boost, so you are recommended to get this jewel asap. This is my first upgrade on the build because the survivability boost from it is unbelievable. When you get this jewel, allocate the jewel socket below Pain Attunement then allocate the Pain Attunement Keystone. Do make sure your Timeless Jewel is in the name of Doryani

This watchers eye is not mandatory but it gives some damage boost. This is the only stat that will benefit us by a lot, the other wrath stats will basically does almost nothing unfortunately. Look for a high roll of Physical damage gained as extra lightning damage.
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Abyss Jewels

I personally look for High rolled life with some QoL on this jewel. Though you can look for an abyss jewel with high rolled physical damage to spells and physical gain on the it if you want more damage.

Don't go for normal jewels as almost no normal jewels will benefit us, if you want more damage look for an abyss jewel that grants you a lot of physical damage to spells.

Flask is one of the most overpowered items in this game, but it is very hard to fully utilize and manage your flask well even for a very experienced player. But with correct usage, you can avoid some near death situations. Note that life flask are recovery, not regeneration. This means that on some situations that prevents you from regenerate, life flask will still be able to recover your life.

For the flask setup, we will be using 1 Life flask and 4 utility flask, 2 of them are unique flasks

Divine Life Flask - This flask will serves as a recovery form for our life. We will be using this flask to save us from some life threatening situations or when our life pool is low in order to recover our life.
Prefix : Any
Suffix : Of heat (remove freeze)

Atziri's Promise - Atziri's Promise is BROKEN in this build, because of the 15% elemental gain and the phys gain as extra chaos, since we are a double dipping build, we benefit from this stat a lot, pretty much boost our damage 4 times compared to other builds. On top of that this flask is insanely cheap compared to the damage it gives us, so this flask is pretty much mandatory
Rolls : Prioritize elemental rolls then physical rolls

Quicksilver Flask - This flask is pretty much self explanatory, you don't want to move like a snail because it just feels bad, and this flask is here to solve that problem, increasing your movement speed and survivability because you're able to move out from danger faster.
Prefix : Any
Suffix : Of Adrenaline (increased movement speed) or Of Warding (remove curse)

Cinderswallow - This flask is insanely useful, it massively increases our survivability as it grants us recovery on kill. For the crafts we will be looking for avoid stun instead of crit because we are a non crit build, and stun is a big issue for spell casters, so this stat will benefit us a lot on survivability wise. On top of that this flask grants us onslaught buff effect, which is basically 20% increased cast and move speed. Don't forget that since we ignite too, this flask also grants us a lot of damage too.
Crafted stat : Look for 50% chance to avoid stun

Quartz Flask - This flask can be changed with any other flask based on your preference. I choose this flask because it grants me dodge and phasing, allowing me to pass through monsters without getting body blocked.
Prefix : Any
Suffix : Of staunching (removes bleed)

This section is for beginner players!

Path of exile's passive tree is very overwhelming to beginner players, but once you've understand the general concept of it you will be able to know where goes where and why.

On ranger class, we are only limited to a maximum of 123 passive points, so we could not cover the whole tree. Due to this we have to choose wisely on our passives on what to choose and what not to choose in order to fully utilize the passive tree benefit.

Generally we will go through a "wheel" on the passive tree. This is an example of a Life Wheel, which gives life nodes.


In the middle there is a small icon of a heart, if you don't believe me, look around on your passive tree and try to look for the same Icon. The same icons will give similar stats (not exactly the same) and it gives life modifiers!

Here is a wheel of a bow node, as you can see in the middle there is a bow icon


Generally we will take half or everything available in the wheel then move on to the next target wheel. This is the same for all other builds

20 points

40 points

60 points

80 points

100 points

113 points

Final Tree

Trickster is a very versatile spell caster class. Almost all the spell skills in this game could pretty much work with trickster. Trickster offers both offensive and defensive option at the same time, it is pretty much a class that offers balance.

Generally trickster is used on damage over time builds such as essence drain contagion, soulrend and so on. But on this version we aren't going for the Damage over time route, instead we are going for the on hit damage route.

Here is a quick rundown on the ascendancy nodes I will be picking.

Ghost Dance :

"

+3% Chance to Evade while you have Energy Shield
2% reduced damage taken per ghost shroud
every 2 seconds, gain a Ghost Shroud, up to a maximum of 3
When Hit, lose a Ghost Shroud and Recover Energy Shield equal to 4$ of your Evasion Rating
10% increased movement speed while you have Energy Shield

Ghost dance is very powerful for trickster as it grants you reduced damage taken which prevents one shots, and instantly recover your es when you get hit, which also prevents multiple hits under quick succession. On top of that, it grants you additional evasion chance which increases the chances of you recovering your ghost srouds when you got hit recently. It also gives additional movement speed which is a great QoL.

Escape Artist

"

+5 to Evasion Rating per 1 Maximum Energy shield on helmet
+1 to maximum energy shield per 6 Evasion Rating on Body Armour
6% increased attack and cast speed per ghost shroud
cannot be stunned while you have Ghost Shrouds
10% Chance to Dodge Spell Hits if you have Energy Shield.

When we have an ES based helmet, we will get evasion rating which reduces our chances to get hit, additional maximum energy shield from our body armour (Eternity Shroud). It also provides us additional cast speed which is very beneficial for your build. On top of that avoid stun and spell dodge greatly increases our survivability as we have 10% chance to completely nullify a spell damage and can't be stunned by a monster a screen away from us. Though it is still recommended to get an avoid stun flask, as we will only get stunned during clear, in case we lost all of our ghost shrouds we won't get stunned lock.

Weave the Arcane

"

25% increased maximum Mana
Movement Skills cost no Mana
20% increased attack and cast speed if you've used a movement skill recently
20% chance to recover 10% of mana when you use a skill
6% reduced damage taken for 4 seconds after spending a total of 200 mana

The cast speed provided is very beneficial, on top of that, when your movement skill cost no mana, you don't need to worry about your mana running out on dire situations. It also gives us additional damage mitigation if we spent a total of 400 with any skill in the past 4 seconds. Which our penance brand cost about 70+ Mana and we constantly spam them, we will always have this 6% reduced damage taken up.

Harness the void

"

25% chance to gain 25% of Non-Chaos damage with hits as Extra Chaos Damage
15% chance to gain 50% of Non-Chaos damage with hits as Extra Chaos Damage
5% chance to gain 100% of Non-Chaos damage with hits as Extra Chaos Damage

This is the strongest ascendancy notable available in the game, the downside of it is being too rng. Sometimes when you hit the 5% chance, it deals A LOT of damage that allows you to almost 1 shot a conqueror. This is because we are double dipping, it benefits from all of our sources of conversion, making it 4 times more effective and thus deals a lot of damage.

1st Lab

2nd Lab

3rd Lab

4thLab

Kill All

So since we are a non crit build, we don't get benefit from Alira's Crit multi and the resistance can be easily replaced later on the game.

We also don't go for oak because 20% increase physical damage is pretty much nothing, and regeneration is quite useless on us because of our life pool.

Kraityn is known for being a shit bandit so don't worry about it

And thus we will be killing all of them to get 2 passive points.

Major God : Soul of Lunaris
Since our build is weak against physical damage, Lunaris is here to help us mitigate those physical damage. On top of that Lunaris also gives us pseudo survivability increase such as avoid projectiles and dodge which is very helpful. Prioritize the upgrades on this pantheon.

Minor God : Shakari / Garukhan

Shakari is when you have low chaos resistance, it mitigates a lot of chaos damage so don't underestimate this pantheon!

Garukhan is when you map a lot. The movement speed increase and bonus evasion helps us out a lot.

This is my endgame gem setup, do note that this is not a leveling setup. I don't have all 21/20 gems but if you do manage to get all 21/20 it is beneficial for us, though the difference is not huge.
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Main Link

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Gem order is applied here. So for example if you are on a 5 link, drop the control destruction. You can replace Awakened Controlled Destruction with a normal controlled destruction. Since it is rather cheap on this league (only 1ex+), it is highly recommended to get it.

Prioritize getting lvl 21 penance brand, it is quite a dps boost (each lvl of penance brand is pretty much 10% MORE damage)
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4 Link setup



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The aura setup is pretty much self explanatory. You can replace Herald of Ash with Herald of Purity for more single target damage, though I liked about the Herald of Ash MTX "explosions", so I decided to stick with it. Flesh and stone is MANDATORY for the build, so don't drop it for anything else. Put Flesh and Stone in sand stance (default)

Flame dash and enduring cry setup can be replaced in a 3l setup but I just decided to put it on a 4l because I have pseudo faster casting support on my sceptre. It can be replaced with a wither totem setup, then this setup moved to that 3l setup.

Flame dash is self explanatory, mobility allows us to travel faster and escape death, second wind is there to reduce the cooldown of it. Enduring cry acts like a life flask for us, though it can be quite clunky, but the amount of regen and defenses it gives us is massive. Portal gem is to let us stop picking portal scrolls, basically a QoL gem while mapping.

The last setup can be a bit confusing, why vortex? Why not arcane surge on flame dash? Since Weave the Arcane (Trickster ascendancy) makes our movement skill cost no mana, we can't trigger arcane surge on flame dash at all. So we will be using it on our orb of storm setup. Vortex is here to guarantee chill, though we would be able to chill the bosses, this thing here is just to help us out in case we can't manage to chill monsters (else we lose dps because of how Hypothermia works). Lastly culling strike on orb of storm is very helpful as it instantly kills any bosses, including sirus, when they have 10% hp left or lower, it pretty much instantly skip all of their defenses, instantly killing them no matter what.
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3 Link setup


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Cast when damage taken + Steelskin is a defensive layer for us when we take damage, shielding us so we don't take full damage in a short period of time which would usually end up killing us. Vaal RF can't be triggered with cwdt but it is used to increase our dps (only use vaal version). Do note the normal RF can be triggered by CWDT support, so be careful when you put a level 1 Vaal RF on it, which may burn you to death, you have been warned!

This wither totem setup is placed on the sceptre with faster casting. This setup is used to increase the chaos damage taken on monsters, allowing us to deal more damage to them. But the problem with wither totem is the duration of it, since each wither stack has an individual duration, you need to have your wither totem constantly up to deal full damage, make sure you put your totem somewhere safe so it can debuff the enemy while you're dealing damage to them.

You might be curious, if I take runebinder which -1 totem, how could I still use a totem? Multiple totem gives you +2 Max totem, so you can, since on default we can place one, so basically we can still place 2 totems.

Penance Brand on early level is quite bad especially without runebinder, so you are recommended to level as another skill (such as the speed leveling setup) then swap to Penance Brand when you have runebinder (which is around act 8-9)

This setup will be my speed leveling setup
lvl 1 : Stormblast
lvl 4 : +Orb of storm - onslaught, +Frost bomb - arcane surge - frostblink, Stormblast - Swift assembly - lesser poison
lvl 10 : change frostblink > flame dash
lvl 12 : +Storm Brand - added lightning
lvl 16 : +skitterbots, +Herald of Thunder
lvl 18 : change Lesser poison > trap and mine damage
lvl 24 : pick Wrath

At around Library, complete your 4l storm brand setup
Storm Brand - added lightning - swift brand - conc effect

When you have runebinder, remove storm brand and added lightning, replace it with Penance Brand and controlled destruction.

Once you have 2 call of the brotherhood (Prioritize these rings, your first upgrade), replace controlled with cold to fire.

Act 1 :
> Kill Hillock
> Enter Lioneye's Watch
> Talk to Nessa, buy Stormblast mines
> Go to The Coast, then The Mud flats, look for iron ring at this point
> Complete the quest then go to submerged passage
> At submerge passage, go back to The Coast via the waypoint, then go to Tidal Island
> Kill Hailrack
> Disconnect, go back to town
> Talk to Nessa, grab swift assembly and quicksilver flask
> Grab frostblink from quest reward
> Buy orb of storm, frost bomb, arcane surge and onslaught support
> Place orb of storm, linked with onslaught, then frost bomb linked with arcane surge and frostblink, then support stormblast mines with swift assembly and lesser poison
> Go back to Submerged Passage, enter The Flooded Depths
> Kill the boss then go back to town, then back to The Submerged Passage
> Go all the way to the Lower Prison
> Take the waypoint then go back to town
> Grab added lightning support
> If you found an orb of alteration and transmutation orb, use transmutation orb on your wand, vendor the iron ring with a green gem (viper strike), it will become a topaz ring, then sell the topaz ring with the wand the orb of alteration, it will become a wand with added lightning damage to spells
> Complete the Trial of Ascendancy
> Kill Brutus
> Go back to town
> Grab flame dash, replace it on frostblink
> Go to The Ship Graveyard
> Complete the Marooned Mariner quest on there
> Go to The Caverns
> Go back to town, grab rewards, take storm brand, support it with added lightning
> Go back to The Cavern of Wrath, kill Merveil

Stormblast mines will be your single target damage. Frost bomb will be your early clear until you get Storm brand.

Setup :
: Storm Brand - Added lightning
: Orb of storm - onslaught
: Stormblast mines - swift assembly - lesser poison
: Frost bomb - arcane surge - flame dash

Act 2 :

> Travel to The Forest Encampment
> Go to The Old Fields
> Enter the end
> Kill the Great white beast
> Go back to town, grab quicksilver flask
> Go all the way to The Crossroads
> Grab waypoint then go to The Chamber of sins
> Complete the Trial of Ascendancy at Chamber of sins level 2
> Kill the boss at there (yes i forgot the name)
> Go back to town
> Grab Summon Skitterbots and Herald of Thunder
> Go to The Broken Bridge, Kill Kraityn
> Go back to town, then go to The Crypt, complete trial of ascendancy there
> Go to The Western Forest, kill Alira
> Enter the Weaver's Chamber
> Kill the Giant Spider
> Go back to town, grab trap and mine damage, replace it on lesser poison
> Buy concentrated effect, support it on Storm Brand
> Go to The Wetlands, kill Oak, take waypoint, go back to town
> Grab rewards from Eramir
> Go to Vaal ruins
> Go all the way to Northern Forest then The Caverns
> Go to the Ancient Pyramid, kill the Vaal Oversoul

Your setup should be
> Flame dash - arcane surge - orb of storm
> Storm brand - added lightning - concentrated effect
> Skitterbots - Herald of Thunder
> Stormblast mines - swift assembly - trap and mine damage

Act 3 :
> Help Clarrisa
> Go to town
> Go to The Slums, then The Crematorium
> Complete the Trial of Ascendancy, kill Piety
> Go back to town, grab sewers key
> Go down to the sewers, then go all the way to The Market place
> Near waypoint, grab the waypoint, go to The Catabombs
> Complete Trial of Ascendancy then go back to Market Place
> Go to The Battlefield
> Go to Solaris temple, then Solaris lvl 2
> Talk to Dialla, then go back to The Battlefield then the docks
> After that, go talk to Dialla at Solaris lvl 2, then go to The Sewers, kill that undying blockage then go to the Ebony Barracks
> Go to Lunaris temple lvl 2
> Kill Piety
> You are suggested to craft resistance and life on your gear before or after killing Piety.
> After killing piety, go back to Ebony Barracks, then go to The Imperial gardens, complete the Trial of Ascendancy
> Go to the Sceptre of God then kill Dominus

Setup :
If you found a 4 link item, your priority is stormblast mines, if the colors aren't for stormblat mines (no greens, only blue), then go for storm brand
> Stormblast mine - trap and mine damage - swift assembly - elemental focus
> Storm brand - added lightning - conc effect - controlled destruction

Act 4 :
> Go to The Dried lake
> Kill Voll
> Grab the Banner, go to The Mines, all the way to The Crystal Vein
> Go to Daresso's Dream, Kill Daresso, after killing Daresso, kill Kaom
> After killing both of them, go back to Crystal Vein, talk to Dialla then go into Belly of the Beast
> Kill Piety once more
> Kill Malacai
> Go to The Ascend, then go to act 5

Setup : same as act 3

Act 5 :
> Escape Slave pens, then go control blocks, then to Oraith Square, then templar courts then chamber of innocence
> If you are low on level you can farm some exp on Chamber of Innocence
> Kill Innocence
> It is recommended at this time to do your First Labyrinth, when you have about 1k hp.
> Kill Kitava

After killing Kitava, make sure to craft resistance on your gear at your hideout because the -30% penalty applies. At this point it is pretty much progressing the acts, after you reached about act 9, Farm Blood Aqueduct over and over again until you get the levels for Runebinder, then go for penance brand setup. Farm Chaos Recipe at Blood Aqueduct to get some gear needed for maps.

Chaos recipe is : A full set of gear (rings, belt, amulet, weapon, helmet, body armour, gloves and boots, total of 10 items), sell it to a vendor unidentified for 2 chaos.

For the weapons, you will look for an upgrade around act 9, stat priority is listed at the weapon section