Velyna's Storm Brand Inquisitor (PoE Lake of Kalandra 3.19)

August 19th, 2022, 17:57

Introduction

Kill uber bosses on a 3 button build! Smooth as butter to leaguestart, Storm Brand feels great from act 1 to endgame. One of the safest, most mobile playstyles around! Drop brands near an enemy and they die, no aiming or facetanking required. Combined with Inpulsa's Broken Heart the map clear goes crazy. Bossing feels good with investment also, I have killed all the new 3.18 Ubers.

Below is a video guide I made for Youtube. This is a good place to start and goes over gearing as well as Pros/Cons. The PoB’s and guide may be more current so make sure to check!

Overview

Pros

✔️ Easy Scaling – So much of our damage and defense comes from Ascend points and items/gems, the early league power scaling process is an absolute breeze.

✔️ Highly Mobile – Once the brands are out and ticking, your job is done and you can focus on dodging.

Cons

❌ Bossing Price – Storm Brand will clear your maps cheap but if you want to kill pinnacle bosses, it does carry a cost.

❌ Not For Everyone – Some people think brands feel ‘spammy’ with how much you refresh them. I have tried to fix this by not using swiftbrand.

How Does it Play?

You will see a pack, drop a brand near them, and they die. That’s literally it. The brands will jump from enemy to enemy within the pack, shocking and chilling everything until they explode thanks to Inpulsa's Broken Heart. As the enemies die you can be moving forward or dodging attacks, or even looting nearby!

Damage and Defensive Scaling

Nothing that reduces resistance works for us, because Inquisitors ignore resistance when critting. Our job is to stack crit as high as possible to maximize this benefit. Crit chance, crit multi, cast speed, spell damage, and percent/flat lightning should be the priority, roughly but not exactly in that order.

Defensively, we have Petrified Blood and The Burden of Truth to massively reduce incoming hits while Inquisitor regen solves petried bloods downside. The belt also allows flasks to recover ES + Life. Tons of armour, shock and freeze immune, Divine Shield, leech, regen, 78% elemental resistances, endurance charges, molten shell.

PoB Imports

The newest PoB’s for my builds are centralized here.

Make sure you are using the latest version of PoB Community Fork

The Stages

Leaguestart: Used for fresh leagues, or a start with near-zero currency. Its purpose is to get established farming early maps and buying gear for the next stage.

Midrange: We are now into the main build, Petrified Blood is running and we have a decent ES pool with The Burden of Truth. Inpulsa's Broken Heart is either acquired or next on the list. Wearing one Call of the Brotherhood, a Crown of the Inward Eye and the rares in our other slots are decent. At least the large cluster and one medium, plus the smalls.

Endgame: Full cluster setup, well crafted rares (especially wands/boots/amulet), and aiming for things like helmet/chest corrupts. Impossible Escape, forbidden jewels and watchers eye are the large purchases here.

Detailed info about Tree, Skills and Gear can be found here:

Pobs and Skills

Gear

Ascend, Bandits and Pantheon

A full explanation of bandit, pantheon and ascend choices can be found here:

Ascendancy, Bandits & Pantheon

Leveling

All of my Leaguestart PoBs contain step by step trees as shown below.

h3. Act 1

I ran a ranger into town for pierce, recommended but you don’t have to.

Level 1-12

Spark- Onslaught Support- Pierce Support

Level 12+

You can use either 2 wands or a shield for now, but you will need 2 good wands before you take the dual wield nodes.

Don’t level Arcane Surge at all, and only level clarity when you need to.

Sell some blue items unidentified for transmutes to buy gems.

Pick up some BBB BBG BBR 3Links along the way for later.

After doing tidal island and opening the cave you can get Frostblink, Orb of Storms and Steelskin in town.

I put Steelskin on my move button so it autocasts as a free defence layer. You might need an Amber Amulet to meet STR requirements for awhile. If the mana cost is too much stop leveling it or take it off entirely for a few levels.

You get Clarity/Vitality after killing Brutus, I wear both if I have the transmutes to buy them. If not get clarity first.

Act 2

You will get Herald of Thunder and Concentrated Effect as quest rewards.

Dont forget the Great White Beast quest gives a second run speed flask.

Help Alira.

Act 3

Do the library quest and buy Determination, Petrified Blood and Arrogance to start leveling in a weapon swap setup.

If mana is an issue when adding Zealotry, get a new Vitality or Clarity from the library vendor and level it again slowly.

Act 4-10

After killing Kaom and Daresso you can get CWDT from the vendor, link it to Immortal Call and Stone Golem for a nice defence layer. Adding inspiration will lower the high mana cost of this setup.

This was the setup I ended the acts and started mapping with, from here I moved towards matching the Leaguestart PoB setup.

Need Help?

I try to give all the information needed to enjoy the build and succeed, but questions do come up. If you need any help with my builds the best place to go is either My Stream or My Discord

You can also check out these handy resources here on the site:

GL out there, Exile!