TbXie's Ignite Penance Brand Elementalist Build Guide (PoE Necropolis 3.24)

Out Of Date

July 24th, 2024, 15:26

Due to the latest balancing changes, we do not recommend playing this build anymore, as it does not meet the high standards we apply to our guides in terms of fun and performance. We are leaving it up as a reference and it might be revived in a later patch.

Penance Brand Changes in 3.23 & changes to the guide therefore.

The big gem changes in 3.23 gave Penance Brand a huge amount of Flat Physical Damage instead of scaling its damage through gimmicky Cast Speed mechanics. Because it now has the highest tooltip in the game probably, which honestly doesn’t actually do much for our damage, as the damage is super delayed & the damage is balanced around having two brands, which we don’t measure as a bonus cause we can only have one ignite anyhow, this introduces a new way of scaling. Since we can ignite with all our damage, Physical as Extra Element because absolutely insane because we have so much Physical Damage to scale off of. The updated guide introduces two catalyzed Ming's Heart rings to gain a whopping 150% Damage and a Taste of Hate for even more Phys as Extra scaling. Further more, the Wands for an archetype like this are now widely more accessible as you no longer need insane amounts of cast speed on Wands.

Overall, the build has gained over double the damage it had before, while still remaining the confy powerhouse it has always been. Penance Brand League Hype!?

Therefore, we are now a Physical to Lightning converted Ignite build that deals fire Damage but scales through Physical Damage as Extra Chaos ;).

Introduction

With the introduction of the new Elementalist and the ability to Shock for an at least 15% more damage effect and Ignite with the exact same skill, while also getting a 25% More damage multiplier for your Ignite, all of which comes from two Ascendancy nodes, I think a lot of theorycrafters immediately realized how busted this combination would be. A good friend of mine, Rhaegar, who is a very well-known source of information within the PoE Community (f.e., he’s the one who got Ignite damage to be capped because he broke the game with Explosive Arrow) immediately talked to me about Penance Brand Ignite. This obviously spiked my interest, as I am a grand Penance enthusiast and was looking into the new Elementalist mechanics at that point.

The result is a build that found the sweet spot damage-wise at 8M DPS, (which is an insanely high number for Ignite builds or DoT builds in general), and 45M Damage per Ignite while being able to invest in an absolutely insane amount of defensives. The initial version of the build easily found 90% unconditional Physical Mitigation while maintaining Effective HP pools versus Elemental Damage that were competitive with builds that got to 90% Elemental Resistance. Obviously, that version used some “interesting” pieces of gear, as it was partly theorycrafted by someone who never had any issues buying any gear whatsoever (Synthesized +1 Endurance Charge Rings, for example).

Eventually we landed on settling for a more well-rounded yet reasonably acquireable character as the damage the build brings is plentiful for a DoT-based build that gets to run around for 99% of a fight while the Ignite is rolling. Whereas you ideally want to grab a couple of Uniques, none of them are super required so the build is definitely strong in both league-start & SSF environments!

Build Summary

Pros and Cons

Pros

+ Exceptional across the board
+ Top Starter Build for a new league in my opinion
+ Unbelievably tanky for a caster
+ Doable in Solo Self Found
+ Great clear & single target

Cons

– Ignite Penance doesn’t get to run Spreading Brand Mastery
– Needs to wait a couple of seconds to deal damage
– Probably not the best skill to level with (remains to be seen post updates)

Map Modifiers to be Avoided

Elemental Damage reflect is obviously impossible to run and Elemental Ailments avoidance should be rerolled too as that makes monsters immune to your damage. Other than that, this build excels at dealing with most map mechanics!

Playstyle, Mechanics & Strengths

While for a regular Penance Brand you would probably want to make explosions happen as often as possible, we don’t care about that. Since we’re an ignite build, we only care about maximizing one single hit and spreading that ignite. While its playstyle is definitely different from what we are used to from Brands, I’d argue that this build is one of the most potent all-rounders in he game at the moment!

The Mechanics behind the build are actually fairly simple. Because Elementalist has Shaper of Flames, you’re able to Ignite with any type of damage. This means that our Penance Brand, which first gets some of its damage converted to Lightning Damage (through the Gem), gets some converted to Fire (through Gloves) in order to maintain highest Fire Damage and therefore be able to maximize Ignite Damage then finally gains some Physical as Extra Damage gets to ignite for the entirety of its damage. Now, that by itself doesn’t sound too ridiculous, right? Therefore, it’s one of the best Physical As Extra damage users in the game right now.

For those defensives, I used to really like the Golem Nodes. I still don’t think it’s impossible to go that route, but given the inacessibility of Golem Jewels nowadays, we opted out of the defensive Elementalist nodes and focused on Defenses on gear & in the passive tree. Since Physical Damage Reduction is incredibly hard to come by and generally is only found on Endurance Charges or the occasional affix, we also use those charges in this build. This combined with a ridiculous amount of armour for a Witch are getting us to 90% Physical Damage Reduction. Builds that get to 90% Physical Damage Reduction notoriously got nerfed in the past. The good thing this one just uses a combination of mechanics that’d be really hard to nerf! On top of its Physical Damage Reduction, it mitigates incoming Elemental Damage through stacking life and potentially an implicit on the chest piece, which in combination with a Health Pool of over 7000 makes the build rival builds that got to highest of mitigations before.

Videos

Level 88 A4 Veritania Map/Kill – Budget Gear

Passive Skill Tree, PoB, and Gem Links

You can find an optimized Path of Building here. Every build I release will use the community fork of Path of Building. You can find PoB’s Fork, by LocalIdentity, here.

If you are not comfortable with Path of Building, PoePlanner’s website offers you a non-PoB alternative to import the code from the above link. We strongly advise you to use Path of Building though.

More information about the Passive Skill Tree, as well as all the Gem Links can be found on our dedicated page.

Passive Skill Tree, PoB & Gem Links

Ascendancy, Bandits, and Pantheons

Our Ascendancy, Bandit, and Pantheon Power page goes into detail about all the choices you need to make in these regards.

Ascendancy, Bandit & Pantheon Power Page

Gear Summary / TL;DR

A lot of this is explained more in depth in the Gear Page, however we will provide you with a basic idea of what gear you’re looking for in this short summary.

Gear, Jewel & Flask Page

Our recommendation:

Item Slot	Item Name
Head	The Devouring Diadem
Amulet	Rare Attributes Neck with +2 to gems & DoT Multi
Chest	Rare Saintly Chainmail with Life, a lot of AR/ES, resistances and a Phys Taken as Craft
Gloves	Dragonscale Gauntlets with Phys Conversion, Life & Resistances
Boots	Armour Boots with Life, Movement Speed & Resistances
Belt	Leather Belt with Life, increased max Life & Resistances
Rings	Double Catalysed Ming's Heart
Weapon	2x Rare Multimod Wands with +2 to Gemlevels, Fire Damage & Fire Damage over Time Multiplier

Questions & Support

If you enjoy my content to such an extent that you’d like to support me and my work, or you have a specific question you request my private time for, you can buy me a coffee over at Patreon. At no point should you feel pressured to contribute, but if you do, your support means more to me than you will ever imagine.

Even though we try to make our guides as complete as possible, obvioulsy it’s possible you still have questions. We have an entire mod-team readily available to support you & your questions on Discord. You can find us on the ARPG Vault Discord. Make sure to open a Guide Help thread so things stay clear in the main channels.

Leveling

Even though we are very adamant about trying to give you a leveling experience that lies as close to your endgame playstyle as possible, we will recommend you to use the standard leveling setups until after act 10. Penance Brand just doesn’t function that well until you have some of your stuff going. Storm Brand is a very strong replacement until you get Cast Speed & Cluster Jewels. For more information about leveling, we refer you to the following guides:

Our step-by-step leveling walkthrough, which allows even more experienced players to save time and speed through the leveling process.
Our guide to Unique Items for leveling, which helps you gear up your characters for the leveling process.
Our beginner leveling guide, which answers many of the questions new players might have and will set you on the right path.

Getting to Brutus & Merveil

For starters, create a Witch in whichever league you want to start. Pick up an Explosive Trap from the vendor to start your journey and go to kill Hailrake and clear Mud Flats. Set up the following links after Mud Flats:

Explosive Trap

After killing Brutus, you will be adding an Added Lightning Damage Support to your Frost Bomb.

Level 12 and Onwards Setup

From level 12, after killing Merveil, you’ll be setting up for your road to level 28. You should be breezing through content at this point as these skills are really strong while leveling.
You are unlikely to use a 6- or a 5-link while leveling, so use as many support gems as your link allows.

At level 28, swap your Storm Brand for Armageddon Brand as it is a bonkers leveling skill if you so chose. Honestly, Storm Brand also does just fine if you prefer that!

Personally, I think you stick with Storm Brand or Armageddon Brand until you have completed Uber Labyrinth. If that is too long, I would recommend getting at least 2 Medium Clusters & 2x Cast Speed – Phys as Extra Weapons before swapping to Penance! Luckily, since there’s no re-speccing going on, you can freely swap back and forth to test when you prefer to swap around .