TbXie's Penance Brand of Dissipation Elementalist Build Guide (Poe Necropolis 3.24)

TbXie

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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.

Transfigured Gems

With the introduction of Transfigured versions of skills gems, Penance Brand of Dissipation Penance Brand of Dissipation introduced a specific way of scaling Penance Brand. With its mechanics, it was hugely interesting that the skill kept dealing its maximum damage when on maximum stages. This meant that after ramping, the skill would remain doing insane damage for quite a while. Whereas usually this was used to just use the skill hit based, I immediately thought of using it as an enabler for huge ignite proliferations. The result was a build that easily tackled the hardest mapping content that had ever existed, more specifically the highly juiced 3.23 Affliction League mechanic, Wildwood. Given its performance in such circumstances, I couldn’t write a guide about this specific way of using Penance Brand given how much fun it was for me. I hope you share the same sentiment after playing the build.

Disclaimers

Because a lot of people generally fall prey to misconceptions and false understandings of what a build’s goals, opportunities & possibilities are, I’ve made it a goal to be as transparent as possible about this. This build focuses a decent amount of its investment in scaling its explosions, area of effect and whatnot. Therefore, it never reaches its ceiling in terms of damage or defences. However, it is perfectly capable of blasting maps, and killing bosses who aren’t Ubers whilst staying relatively safe, especially because it’s a brand skill. I however do think the build is best played when its gear has been acquired on another character. When the character was initially playtested, the gear was all self crafted, outside of uniques, and the entirety of the almost perfect gear cost approximately 50 Divines. When you put it at that stage, your expectations won’t be cut short.

Introduction

I have an unconditional love for Penance Brand Penance Brand and always tried to make it as playable as possible, even when it wasn’t in the state it is currently in. Nowadays, Penance Brand Penance Brand and Penance Brand of Dissipation Penance Brand of Dissipation are just incredibly good skills which are an absolute blast to play. The combination with Shaper of Flames to turn the skill into an Ignite-enabler just allows for so many fun interactions to come together at a fraction of their regular costs. Therefore, this iteration of Penance will provide you with a super solid mapper on what is a very mediocre budget.

Penance Brand of Dissipation Elementalist

Build Summary

Video Showcase

Coming soon

Pros and Cons

Pros

+ Penance Brand is an extremely fun & feel-good skill
+ The clearspeed on the build is relatively high and extremely high for its budget
+ When knowing how to craft the items, relatively easy to get S-tier gear

Cons

– The required uniques are not always cheap though
– Can be hard to find weapons for this build

Map Modifiers to be Avoided

You should avoid No Regeneration and possibly reduced recovery rate for Energy Shield. Other than that, Elemental Reflect is impossible.

Playstyle, Mechanics & Strengths

To maximize Penance Brand of Dissipation Penance Brand of Dissipation‘s damage, it’s important to use Brand Recall Brand Recall. This allows you to keep some of your Brands at maximum stages which will trigger a big hit, resulting in a single big ignite, which will be spread. You will have to refresh brands, but ideally, never all at the same time, so you can drag one along with high stages whilst the others are gaining them and cycle them that way. Other than that, there’s not much to do. You are pressing your Aura-blessing every so often and are trying to move out of things which shouldn’t be hitting you.

The build currently makes use of Elementalist’s Golem ascendancies to run four Golems which are augmented with some extra Buff Effect. This leads to a decent amount of Damage & Defenses from your Golem-Friends. Those, alongside your defensive auras, are what make you durable enough to make mapping a breeze as well as provide you with enough Damage to make sure no enemy ever poses a threat. Because of the choice to combine Energy Shield & Evasion gear, we enable the Eldritch Battery keystone. This makes us not need Mana whatsoever and frees up a lot of investment elsewhere. I advise keeping around 4-500 Energy Shield so it does not feel imitative.

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, which is maintained and updated in a much more regular fashion than the original one. 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. Do note that this does not have the same amount of support as Path of Building has and it is highly recommended you install Path of Building to follow builds most optimally.

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, Bandits & Pantheon

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 summary.

Gear, Jewels & Flasks

Our recommendation:

Item Slot Item Name
Head Rare Suppression Helmet with Double Reservation Efficiency
Amulet Replica Dragonfang's Flight Replica Dragonfang's Flight
Chest Rare Suppression ES/EV Sadist Garb
Gloves Asenath's Gentle Touch Asenath's Gentle Touch w/ Elemental Weakness on Hit
Boots Rare Suppression Boots with Resistances, Life & Movement Speed
Belt Headhunter Headhunter or Bisco's Leash Bisco's Leash
Rings Polaric Devastation Polaric Devastation & Pyre Pyre or Rare Ring
Weapon Rare Wand w/ Levels to Gems, Fire Damage, DoT Multi, Cast Speed
Shield Rare ES/EV Suppression Shield with Resistances & Life

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, obviously 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

I highly recommend levelling this build as a different type of character. If you have the Forbidden Flesh & Flames, and some Leveling Gear, Penance is super fun though to level with. I played it through the campaign in under four hours, which qualifies it as well above average. However, without Shaper of Flames jewels, some nice leveling uniques & links, life is going to be hard.

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