The Jack of All Trades - Penance Brand Trickster Gear, Jewels & Flasks

Summary – TL;DR

As per usual, nothing matters more than capping your Elemental Resistance before anything else. This means modifiers on gear are subordinate to Resistances as long as you’re not capped. Since you’ll be running a decent amount of Unique items, it’ll be important to look out for a lot of resistances on your Rare pieces!

We’re providing you with an extensive analysis further down the page but chose to start off with an overview / recommendation.

Our recommendation:

Item Slot	Item Name
Head	Shaped Hubris Circlet with Life – ES – Resistances & a Penance Brand Damage Enchant
Amulet	Shaped Amber Amulet with Life – #% Phys as Extra & Multimod
Chest	The Eternity Shroud
Gloves	Shaped Sorcerer Gloves with Life – Resistances & Phys Conversion
Boots	Shaped Two-Toned Boots with Life – Movement Speed – Resistances – Dexterity
Belt	Shaped Leather Belt Life – Mana – Resistances
Rings	2x Shaped Call of the Brotherhood
Weapon	2x Rare Sceptre with +1 to (Lightning) Spell Skills – #% Phys as Extra &M Multimod Cast Speed & Non-Chaos as Extra

For crafting Rare items, you can check out all the affixes that can roll on an item base, depending on its level, influence, and many other factors, using our affix tool.

Armour Pieces

Because we’re building around The Eternity Shroud, every item in this list will be a Shaper Influence. While every single influenced item helps big time as soon as you get Eternity Shroud, the biggest damage jump occurs when all of your items are influenced and it mostly affects your damage versus bosses. Especially versus things like Sirus, Shaper and Uber Elder ignoring their Chaos Resistance is a pretty big damage spike.

This means that you’re going to want to get Shaper Influenced items in every slot as soon as possible. I wont be repeating this for every item in the following list but it probably is your most important item “affix”.

Helmet

As you’re playing a Trickster, your Helmet slot focuses on finding some Energy Shield as that also gives you Evasion. This Evasion then helps with the Energy Shield recovery from Trickster’s Escape Artist. You can go two routes here. You either go for a Hubris Circlet that just focuses on Life and Resistances or you forego the focus on Life here and try to get a +- 300 Energy Shield helmet. Both options are viable and probably are about the same efficiency-wise.

Since you’re most likely looking to craft most of your items yourself as they are fairly easy to obtain and all have to be influenced, it is optimal if you buy a Shaper influenced Hubris Circlet that already has an enchant. Either Penance Brand Cast Speed or Damage works perfectly fine but be weary about the Cast Speed and follow aforementioned instructions to optimize your Cast Speed.

Lastly, you would really appreciate finding a couple of Mana rolls on your gear. Whether that’s on a helmet, or any of the following pieces doesn’t particularly matter, but a baseline of 200 total Mana on gear will help your regeneration a lot and will make spamming brands feel a lot less clunky.

1. +# to maximum Life (at least 90)
2. +#% Elemental Resistances (until cap)
3. Penance Brand deals #% increased damage
4. +# to maximum Mana (any)

Body Armour

The Eternity Shroud is your Chest Piece of choice and is the cornerstone of your build. Even though it is a rather expensive chest piece at the start of most PoE leagues, I’d advise you to prepare all your items for it in advance so you don’t have to swap all your items once you effectively acquire one. Before you get a copy of the Eternity Shroud, any Evasion + Energy Shield chest piece that maximizes Tricksters Ascendancy nodes should be used.

Gloves

Nothing too special here either, you’re looking for an Energy Shield base (ideally Sorcerer Gloves) with Life & Resistances. Additionally, you have to find Dexterity on one of your items which is either your Gloves or Boots if you want to avoid grabbing 2 30 Dexterity nodes in the tree. Lastly, you need an open slot on your Gloves to craft #% of Physical Damage converted to Lightning Damage which you can find on the crafting bench. This is your last piece of conversion and is a mandatory stat as it equates to an incredible amount of damage.

1. #% of Physical Damage converted to Lightning Damage (25)
2. +# to maximum Life (at least 80)
3. +#% to Elemental Resistances (until cap)
4. +# to maximum Mana (nice extra)
5. +# to Dexterity (as much as you need – if you need more)

Boots

I’d recommend a pair of Two-Toned boots here as you could really do with the additional Resistances they offer. On top of Resistances, you’re looking for Movement Speed, Life & Dexterity.

1. +# to maximum Life (at least 80)
2. #% increased Movement Speed (at least 20, ideally 30)
3. +#% Elemental Resistances (until cap)
4. +# to Dexterity (ideally 40)

Belt

Since you want Shaped items, a Leather Belt is the simpler choice here. Getting an influenced Stygian Vise is usually just too expensive and complicated to be worth it. Obviously, we’d prefer to grab an extra Jewel socket that way, but don’t go out of your way for it. Your belt slot basically follows the general gist of affixes you want on your items. Life, Mana and Resistances are what you’re after.

1. +# to maximum Life (at least 130)
2. +#% to Elemental Resistances (until cap)
3. +# to maximum Mana (nice extra)

Accessories

Amulet

The amulet slot here is a little bit weird as you want it to be influenced whilst being an Amber Amulet cause that lines up with your stat requirements. Getting a ton of affixes you like on top of those 2 requirements generally just isn’t easy to acquire. The way we most “easily” counteract that is by just trying to find or craft a base amulet and filling it up with optimal crafts on the crafting bench. Life & any type of Physical Damage as Extra is what you want baseline.

1. +# to maximum Life (at least 60)
2. #% of Physical Damage as Extra Lightning/Fire/Cold Damage (ideally 12 or more)
3. +#% to Elemental Resistances (until cap)
4. #% increased Mana Regeneration Rate (any)

Anoint

The easiest enchant to go for is Corruption. However, At certain thresholds, anointing Skill Effect Duration can be incredibly valuable. In the linked PoB for example, Corruption is the single best notable in the tree that does not scale your Brands’ duration. Potency of Will (or Exceptional Performance) however which just grants skill duration makes your Brand jump to next the stage before it detonates and therefore is twice as good as the Corruption I had anointed. The best way to check this is to just manually compare Corruption to either of the aforementioned Skill Effect Duration nodes and check which one is better for your current levels of Cast Speed / Duration! If it turns out you’re in dire need of Brand Duration, Potency of Will & Exceptional Performance both act completely the same and you can pick whichever one is cheaper to enchant!

Rings

Most of this was explained in the Build’s overview already. Two Call of the Brotherhoods is what you want here. Make sure you catalyze them too as that increases the amount of damage that gets converted. As one of your last upgrades, you’re going to chance a shaped influence Two-Stone ring. Make sure you grab a Cold & Lightning variant before you start chancing. Luckily there’s only one item you can chance as long as you don’t chance in maps (this removes the possibility of hitting league-specific uniques). Generally, Call of the Brotherhoods are decently rare and you’re better off using the Trash to Treasure prophecies rather then trying to use Orb of Chances.

Weapon

Both your weapons follow kind of the same rule of thumb as your Amulet. It’s going to be decently challenging to find a weapon that already has 3 out of the 4 almost “mandatory” affixes. The most optimal way of obtaining them, if they don’t exist is just acquiring the two modifiers that you can’t craft and multi-modding the item to complete it. You’re looking for Physical Damage as an Extra Element, +1 Level to your Penance Brand, Cast Speed and Spell Damage + Non Chaos as Extra Chaos Damage.

1. #% of Physical Damage as Extra Lightning / Fire / Cold (at least 20) *
2. +# to Level of all (Lightning) Spell Skill Gems
3. #% increased Cast Speed (at least 17%)
4. #% increased Spell Damage – gain #% of non-Chaos damage as extra Chaos Damage

Flasks

I believe flasks are highly preference-based. One isn’t just outright better than another one for specific / certain builds. Obviously, sometimes, there’s a set in stone set of Flasks you should be using just because they synergize with your build so well. I wouldn’t say those really exist in this setup, but I’d strongly advise you to stick with the setup listed here.

The first flask which I think is uncircumventable is Atziri's Promise. It’s a big QoL to fit in some Life Leech and since most of your damage is Chaos Damage, the leech is actually quite significant. It also gets you Chaos Damage based on your Physical and Elemental Damage so it really is a huge damage upgrade and should be picked up as soon as possible.

For your non-unique Flasks, I think a Jade Flask and a Quartz Flask go hand in hand with Trickster and its Escape Artist & Ghost Dance. The Evasion that you obtain from the Jade Flask increases the Energy Shield recovery from Ghost Shrouds while the Dodge Chance from a Quartz Flask synergizes really well with Trickster’s Evasiveness.

For the last two Flask-slots, you’re going to want at least one Life Flask, for which we recommend a Bubbling Divine Life Flask. Lastly, since you’re mapping fairly fast, you can’t go without a Quicksilver Flask of Adrenaline for the extra movement speed.

Regardless of which utility Flasks you go for and whether you follow our recommendations or not, you’ll need to stick to the suffixes we have picked for you (Staunching, Warding, Iron Skin). The affixes on your non-unique Flasks can be changed around, but I recommend the following setup (based on the Flask duration, charges, and affix priorities):

Our recommendation:

Slot	Flask
1	Bubbling Divine Life Flask of Staunching
2	Experimenter’s Quartz Flask of Warding
3	Experimenter’s Jade Flask of Heat
4	Atziri's Promise
5	Experimenter’s Quicksilver Flask of Adrenaline

Be sure to check out our Flask Crafting Guide to learn everything you need to know about how to set up your non-Unique flasks.

Jewels

Unique Jewels

You’re running a single Thread of Hope which Affects Passives in a Large Ring. This allocates a ton of Skill Points when you put it in the socket west of the templar start without having to path to them and saves you a tremendous amount of Skill Points.

Another unique jewel you really want to run is a Watcher's Eye with Physical Damage as Extra Lightning Damage while affected by Wrath. Since we really like any Physical as Extra this jewel is a really big DPS increase and is generally fairly cheap!

Lastly, a Glorious Vanity suits your build really well. Through the Doryani’s variant of a Glorious Vanity you’ll obtain the Corrupted Soul Keystone which grants you about 1500 Energy Shield! This item is a big source of your effective HP pool and should be picked up whenever you want more defenses!

Rare Jewels

Since I personally really like to be safe, which is why I recommend getting life on all of your Jewels. You should be running as much Abyss Jewels as possible while maintaining the Cast Speed rules. If you need additional Cast Speed to get to thresholds regular jewels with #% increased maximum Life, a source of Cast Speed and some Resistances are most likely your best bet. Otherwise, a combination of these affixes is ideal:

1. +# to Maximum Life (at least 20)

1. Adds # to # Physical Damage to Spells
2. Adds # to # Lightning Damage to Spells

1. Increased Cast Speed (if it helps thresholds)
2. Any necessary Resistances

Cluster Jewels

Cluster Jewels are incredible for Brand builds and more so for Brand builds that want to scale Activation Frequency. Especially the Medium Cluster jewels carry the build so extremely hard. Since you want to run 2 Mediums at least, you’re going to want 1 Large Cluster Jewel to socket them in to.

If you are looking for the most optimal way to acquire your Cluster Jewels, or have any other questions whatsoever about them, such as how to craft or price them, we refer you to our complete guide on Cluster Jewels.

The Large Cluster Jewel really shouldn’t be anything too special. Ideally, take one with 8 Passives but even an extra one doesn’t really matter too much. You probably need a Prismatic Heart here because the build is so stressed for Resistances. Other than that, Snowstorm is fairly “mandatory” as it is an incredible increase to your damage. Lastly, if you’re looking for the most optimized Cluster, using Doryani’s Lesson as a last notable is ideal.

The Medium Cluster Jewels are a source of Cast Speed, more damage multipliers, Brand duration and Attachment Range. You want 1 Remarkable, 1 Holy Conquest and 2 Grand Design notables for maximum Efficiency. All of these are incredible in their own way and getting Medium Clusters should be a top notch priority! I would almost go as far as to say that a Holy Conquest notable is almost mandatory for the build to function. Since Penance Brand has to explode to deal damage and we’re scaling duration, you want it to hop between monster packs and detach to cause early explosions while mapping. Otherwise, the damage will be delayed too much and it’ll feel super clunky.

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