Brand -- Who uses it best?

[XCodes]

Brand -- Who uses it best?

I was floating around the runewords section of Arreat Summit because someone mentioned a rune combination that would be good for a Blade Fury Assassin. Well, that's when I noticed something.

Brand fires Explosive Arrows. Level 15 Explosive Arrows to be precise.

I didn't notice this before, and it got my brain thinking anew about how best to exploit this thing. I mean, it's gotta be exploitable, right? There has to be some way to tweak Brand so that it does obnoxiously high damage.

That said, in order to run the numbers I'd need some knowledge about how all the factors involved work, and I'm willing to bet that most of them have been answered already.

1) Does Brand fire level 15 explosive arrows exactly as detailed by the skill? Meaning do they gain the +146% bonus to AR that explosive arrows normally get as well as the 86-97 fire explosion damage?
2) What exactly transfers to the explosion? Physical Damage? Elemental Damage? CTC on Strike/Attack? CTC on kill?
3) If you use another bow skill such as Strafe, will the Strafe overwrite the Explosive Arrows? Same deal with Multishot?
4) How does Enchant work with Explosive Arrows? I've seen an explanation on the Sorceress forums but didn't really understand it. I think it said that it applies once to the arrow itself (the creatures struck directly) and once to the explosion (everything in the radius, including the creature struck)
5) Does Explosive Arrow actually have to hit in order to deal weapon damage, or does it automatically hit anything the arrow passes through?
6) How does the Fire Arrow Synergy Bonus apply to Explosive Arrows? Does it increase only the base Fire damage, or does it boost all Fire damage?

This is something of a project of mine. I once looked at this and compared whether the Amazon or Necromancer could use Brand better, but without regard to the Explosive Arrows ability. Now I'm curious whether a Necromancer, Sorceress, or Amazon could utilize this bow the best.

 

[Damric]

Re: Brand -- Who uses it best?

1) yes
2) only fire damage will stack on the explosion (from items, holy fire, enchant, anything). All of your other stuff just hits the target.
3) only normal attack will get explosive arrows
4) enchant boosts everything including the explosion
5) it can miss and still explode to cause damage. it's better to hit and pierce targets for more explosions though.
6) all of the fire damage as I recall

In 1.10, brand was very powerful due to the charge synergy bug from marrowwalks. A strafer with pierce could unleash a massive amount of mid damage bonespears to targets that are lined up behind eachother, causing much bonespear damage to the monsters towards the rear. Since 1.11, with no synergy, level 18 bonespears are much weaker. I had a Brand Strafer in 1.10, but scrapped it when they patched the bug.

A synergized necromancer could use brand effectively with normal attacks, especially if a friend were to enchant him. A strafer can still unleash tons of bonespears to wreak havoc. Enchanter sorceresses are probably still better off with Demon Machine, the fastest, piercing, exploder xbow. Never thought about using it for blade fury, but it would proc the bonespears as well.

 

[XCodes]

Re: Brand -- Who uses it best?

I wasn't thinking about using it with Blade Fury, either. I was just looking at the runewords when it popped out at me.

Anyway, here's an idea that jumps out at me now that I see all this. Instead of Freezing Arrow, an LF/CS 'Zon could stick this on a Switch and max Fire Arrow. Stack up some Fire damage on... stuff... (Demon Limb tertiary weapon?) and deal lots of magic and fire damage to packs of Light-Immune monsters.

 

[Alash]

Re: Brand -- Who uses it best?

What's really interesting is that unlike pretty much everything else, Enchant applies its full bonus to ranged weapons. Everyone can easily build a 2k enchanter, so that's 2k area of effect damage on a bow with neat stats and considerable physical damage. Couple that with a maxed out Freezing Arrow and you're providing three types of damage while never hitting below 3k damage. Add Iceblink on top of that and you have duo-elemental explosive arrows that freeze targets. Makes for an enjoyable cocktail.

 

[DH Amazon]

Re: Brand -- Who uses it best?

This is something of a project of mine. I once looked at this and compared whether the Amazon or Necromancer could use Brand better, but without regard to the Explosive Arrows ability. Now I'm curious whether a Necromancer, Sorceress, or Amazon could utilize this bow the best.

Not good for ama. Sorceress has much cheaper and better option. Necro has good tank (golem) and low resist curse and corpse explosion for immunes, so its best for those 3.

Add Paladin to that list. He has holy fire aura and conviction.
Dragon armor gives lvl14 holy fire aura, it gives 63-75 fire and that is added to explosion arrow.
Add synergies to holy fire aura and it gives 365-435 fire. And couple hydras (89-108 fire damage) while striking. Hydras don't help much but are nice anyway (style points).

You can use full conviction (-150 resist) while using that bow.
No ar problems

Add friendly enchant sorc (best option), or use obedience at switch (74-96 more fire damage). Build at switch 2nd elemental zealot, so getting that enchant is easy and with obedience bosses are easy to take down.
Or use demond limb enchant charges.

Add Faith merc and Pala needs only 25 ias for 9frame speed. Or use 90 ias and other merc.

Brand has knockback so its good for those chars that don't have minions.

 

[lumpor]

Re: Brand -- Who uses it best?

4. Not only enchant. All fire damage.

I'm in the progress of making a brandmancer. Written a guide, that I won't release yet.

 

[NASE]

Re: Brand -- Who uses it best?

Not good for ama.

I disagree. Amazons can make an effective builds with that bow. It comes with good damage, good damage to demons, itd and some other mods that aren't useless like prevent monster heal, knockback and some deadly strike.
If you combine this with a faith merc and a bad player - one that runs in front of his tanks - you can make a build that is as effective if not more effective then a windforce amazon for going to chaos sanctuarry. It all comes down to exactly what you want from your bow.
Don't get me wrong, most people will opt for wf. Though that doesn't mean that some people can't make effective use of this bow. Try to find one of those threads if you don't believe me.

Problem is that it's like 4 times more expansive then wf, though lets ignore that fact for now. ;-)

 

[DH Amazon]

Re: Brand -- Who uses it best?

I disagree. Amazons can make an effective builds with that bow. It comes with good damage, good damage to demons, itd and some other mods that aren't useless like prevent monster heal, knockback and some deadly strike.
If you combine this with a faith merc and a bad player - one that runs in front of his tanks - you can make a build that is as effective if not more effective then a windforce amazon for going to chaos sanctuarry. It all comes down to exactly what you want from your bow.
Don't get me wrong, most people will opt for wf. Though that doesn't mean that some people can't make effective use of this bow. Try to find one of those threads if you don't believe me.

Problem is that it's like 4 times more expansive then wf, though lets ignore that fact for now. ;-)

I said too strongly that its useless for amas, its not, but those other classes can make char better around that bow, as it gives some group control for them. Amas has multi/strafe so they can use other and cheaper/better bows.

I agree, its good enough to clear chaos, even in full game. That cannot heal is godly. I even use cannot heal with WF ama, as its gives about double speed against poison immunes in full games. But no mana leech or 40ias compared to WF. Other classes don't need mana leech, so its perfect for them.
I see that best part of that bow is exploding arrow and amas can't use full potential of it. Other mods in that bow are great for amas as you said.

Its too expensive to try, never tried and never will. So no field experience with that bow, might be fun/good.

 

[mackscynox]

Re: Brand -- Who uses it best?

faith merc + gmb brand with amazon can use this thing well i guess. but not good as faith merc + wf i think. bow lacks many important things.

also to use it with full abilities (explosive arrow thing) u need to use "attack" skill, not strafe or multishot or other arrow skills. so not useful for zon but maybe useful with other classes. or just use attack skill with bowazon for PI ones. need to try this if it is effective

paladins can use this. because with bonespear and fire dmg, our zealot palas can harm PI ones. should i mention ctc amplify when struck (when pala uses bow its defense is low because many palas use shield/holyshield which improve defense a lot). even for this ctc i may just switch to this until amplify casted on those nasty PIs. should try it first....