[3.19] Assassin Penance Brand - Map Farmer - All Content

No changes. As stated, there are no changes and the build is still just as good as it has been. It's just incredibly difficult to craft now and therefore it's very expensive.

Enjoy!

Endgame tree - https://pastebin.com/HFsa70n6

Please refer to the Clusters jewels section, under Gear when it comes to my clusters as there are better options especially if you don't have to worry about balanced resistances :)

Add as soon as I can

Here we are going Assassin, it provides great amounts of crit multi for our attacks along with many other defensive benefits

I take Mistwalker, which is a vital node for Assassin providing Elusive. This gives us immunity from crits which is wonderful when tackling harder content with dangerous mods.

Next I take Opportunistic - Even with the MS loss in the most recent patch, I still prefer this node over Ambush and Assassinate as we really are not in any need of the cull. However, you may swap with AandA and give it a try!

Finally, I will take both Unstable and Deadly Infusion. These are the staple for any non-poison Assassin and are pretty-self explanatory. They provide great scaling with our power charges.

Weapons
To start, you can use the excellent Void Battery unique wand and dual wield these. These work amazingly and you can do everything with these guys. They scale excellently with our power charges.

Eventually, (and I do mean last upgrades or so, it's better to spend the currency elsewhere) you can go with two rares.
On these rares you can get a variety of insane mods such as
+1 level to physical/all/lightning skill gems
Spell damage
Phys as extra-lightning
Increased damage per power charge
Increased Aura Effect
Non-chaos as extra Chaos



Helmet

To start off, you can use a rare with life, resistances and can combine some powerful mods such as +1 power charges.

For min-maxing however, you can swap to a pseudo-7L helmet to slot your penance brand inside and use your chest for auras. These are crafted through Essences of Horror, and can even be upgraded further through Maven Orbs.



Chest
Again here, you can use a 6L ES chest for all content. Focus on Life and Resistances. Mods such as Frenzy on Hit are an excellent way to produce these charges and explody is all wonderful for clear.

For min-maxing you want to swap your 6L Penance Brand Setup for a 6L Aura Setup, the chest is mainly the same however, however you can try to get all of these mods and craft Avoid Ailments to help us reach not only our Avoid Ailments Cap, but also our Stun Cap.



Gloves
For Gloves, there is one essential master-crafted mod that is needed. You will require the crafted mod that converts Physical Damage to Lightning. It costs 1 Divine. The rest of the stats can be life and resists.

For min-maxing you will need to get a legacy-craft for the combination of the Sader conversion mod and the Incursion temple mod on a pair of gloves. This can be combined with Avoid Ailments to help our cap. And flat lightning damage.



Boots

Boots are rather simple. Life and resists and some Movement Speed and then gradually upgraded to include better mods like Tailwind which is very important and it increases our action speed. Another good mod is Avoid Ailments to help our cap. This is a shaper mod.



Amulet

You can use an amulet with life and +1 level to spells. While including some other damage mods like increased cold damage. Crit Multi, Phys as Extra Lightning

You can also use a Badge of the Brotherhood which gives you a massive clear speed increase.

Eventually, a rare amulet with +1 levels to spells. Crit Multi, Phys as Extra Lightning and Mana Reservation Reduction is BIS.

You can either anoint Crystal Skin for ailment immunity again, or Dark Arts for cast speed.



Rings

Here we use two Call of the Brotherhood Rings


These complete our conversion from lightning to cold. Make sure you are using Turbulent Catalysts on both to increase the conversion roll to 48%. These are required for the build to be effective.

Belt


Headhunter is the best option for doing 100% maps. As this build is hybrid it benefits of all of the mods that it can steal. This is not required though and and a Stygian with life and resistances with some elemental damage is very good too.

If you want more information about any of the items, or would like to mirror one of these. Just let me know in game @Alaxia.

Flasks
I used Bottled Faith - probably one of the best crit flasks in the game
Cinderswallow Urn with the Increased Critical Strike Chance unveil. Just a wonderfully useful flask. Keeps you alive and provides good utility. Atziri's Promise is a cheap way for easy damage. For the magic flask you can use either a Quicksilver Flask or a Diamond Flask, because of the MS nerfs I am currently using a Quicksilver Flask, but if you are not min-maxed it might be wise to use the Diamond to make sure your crit chance is capped. Finally I use a Wise Oak which is great offensively and defensively especially if your resists are balanced.



Jewels
Without the extra conversion gloves you are going to need a Wrath Watcher's Eye that Converts the rest of your physical damage to lightning.
(25-40)% of Physical Damage Converted to Lightning Damage while affected by Wrath

This is the mod you will need. If you have the conversion gloves then you can switch to one that has both Hatred and Wrath mods. Like Hatred Critical Strike Chance and Phys as extra Lightning Wrath.

You will also need a Glorious Vanity Jewel like this, this will be socketed over Pain Attunement to give us Corrupted Soul for a ton more ES.


Another very good choice for a jewel is a Transcendent Flesh. Socketed in the correct place can provide an insane amount of crit multi. This is socketed on the left hand side just below Faith and Steel.

Finally, our Cluster Jewels, which are very important and provide lots of damage and support. We are using 2 Large Clusters and 4 Medium, 4 Small.

For Large Clusters, after the removal of Vengeful Commander, the best nodes are now
Blanketed Snow
Snowstorm
Widespread Destruction

These will be really expensive though, so try and get Snowstorm and Widespread Destruction to start.

For Medium Clusters you want to focus on brand nodes.



Three of the four clusters you will want to have Remarkable and Seeker Runes/Grand Design on. You really preferably want Seeker Runes as Grand Design now gives Brand Duration which if you have too much can mess up your Brands so only go Grand Design if you need some duration and don't get 4 like I have. Ignore my tree in regards to the mediums and get Seeker Runes and Remarkable with 1 Grand Design if you need. I just can't change mine for resistance reasons as I had them before they got changed.

These are the best damage clusters for us to use. For one of the four clusters you are going to want to have Holy Conquest which gives a sort of bouncing effect to our brands and is very effective. This has now been moved to a mastery, but Holy Conquest is still good.

For the final four small clusters I have just stacked four Fettle nodes to provide us with a larger life pool.

Our gems take a bit of a turn during our transition from end-game to min-maxing. To start this is what you will want to use.

6L - Penance Brand Setup - Penance Brand - Swiftbrand - Power Charge on Crit - Conc Effect - Inspiration - Increased Critical Strikes.

This will be your main damage set-up.

Along with that you can then use a 4L Aura Setup - Clarity (low level) - Enlighten(Lvl 4) - Wrath - Hatred


This will then swap when you are min-maxed. Once you acquire a pseudo-link helmet you can swap to.

4L Penance Brand Setup - Penance Brand - Swiftbrand - Increased Critical Damage - Inspiration

This will be socketed in your helmet, which means Penance Brand gets supported by all the extra crafts on the helmet and acts and a 7L!

and a 6L Aura Setup - Wrath - Enlighten (Level 4) - Vaal Righteous Fire - Herald of Purity/Clarity (low level) - Hatred


This is the best way to cram out our damage. We use both Hatred and Wrath for synergy with Vengeful Commander and then Herald of Purity for more damage. Clarity is for mana issues and Vaal Righteous Fire is for burst dps.

Other gem set-ups are here!

Wand 1 - Flame Dash - Enduring Cry -

Simple movement skill and enduring cry which is great for survivability.

Wand 2 - Awakened Spell Cascade - Inc Duration - Frost Bomb

Frost Bomb for more DPS during boss fights. Stops regeneration and applies Cold Exposure.

Gloves - Orb of Storms (level 3) - Awakened Hextouch - Arcane Surge (level 8) - Elemental Weakness


Very effective way to apply Curses using Orb of Storms.


Boots - Empower (level 4) - Brand Recall - Arcane Surge - Second Wind

I'll add it when questions are asked!

For Major Pantheon I recommend Soul of Lunaris, however you can change if you believe.

For Major Pantheon I use either Garukhan for the MS or Gruthkul for my phys damage reduction, however Abberath is also good for burning ground maps. Again this can be changed for whatever you fancy.

For levelling you can use Freezing Pulse until you reach Siosa and then take Armageddon Brand and use that until you can switch to Penance.

Freezing Pulse - Added Cold

Armageddon Brand - Inspiration - Concentrated Effect - Combustion.